October
2003
Guest
Editorial: The Mango Manifesto
By Claudette Silver
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Although it was certainly coincidence that brought
my Caribbean holiday destination to within 60 miles of Cancun, Mexico,
the site of the fifth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference,
it was my restlessness that drew me into the thick of it. For as cynical
as I can be at times, I still believe in being counted, I still believe
in the masses, and most certainly I believe in countering the cultural
homogenization that’s spreading rapidly from Bombay to Bolivia.
Massive protests, much like those of Seattle in 1999, were planned for
the entire week prior to the start of the meetings. Tens of thousands
of people from across Mexico and the globe were projected to descend
upon Cancun, and workshops and public events on everything from organic
farming to alternative economies were organized across the city.
Now remind me again, why all the protests?
Plain and simple, the goal of the WTO is to remove all barriers that
hinder trade among nations. I’m pretty confident they’d
tell you the same thing. The trouble is, however, that much of what
the WTO considers to be “barriers” are also things we call
environmental laws, fair labor practices and consumer safety regulations.
For example, the Bush Administration recently filed a complaint with
the WTO to force the EU to lift its ban on genetically modified foods,
claiming that U.S. farm commodities have been unfairly denied access
to European markets. To make things even more juicy, if any country’s
laws are found to be in violation of WTO policy, they are forced to
change the law or face perpetual trade sanctions, often totaling in
the millions of dollars. Large industrial nations like the U.S. or EU
member nations are hit hard enough by trade sanctions—imagine
their impact on developing countries.
Small, local farmers have been slammed as well. Each year, billions
of dollars in subsidies are given to large agri-businesses, who then
drop their prices below production value and export their goods for
sale in the developing world. There is simply no way local growers
can
compete. It’s a practice called “dumping” and is
happening from Asia to Africa, and certainly right here in Mexico.
This practice
is leading small farmers down the path of extinction, no doubt.
Sadly, there are many reasons for dissent.
So on September 10, 2003, the first day of the meeting of ministers,
I felt compelled to be counted.
I boarded a bus for Cancun at about noon and arrived just over an hour
later. Straight away, I found one of the many sites erected to disseminate
information about the demonstrations. They informed me of a march for
farmers’ rights and food sovereignty slated for one p.m. I looked
at my watch…the procession had just begun.
The first thing that struck me were the number of children everywhere—actually,
the number of families. Normal people. Mothers. Working people. It
felt
good. I floated through the crowd, snapping pictures. For a while,
I followed behind the Agricultura Organica group who carried a large
banner
warning of the dangers of genetically modified corn. A little later
I came upon a group of women standing off to the side holding a sign
that read No Transgeniticos, No Mas Miseria. Almost everyone, everywhere
wore green bandanas in solidarity.
All in all, I followed alongside the protest for about an hour, until
the procession had gone as far as the police barricades set up just
outside the meeting zone.
Mortal Protest
With remarkable ease I approached the fence line, noticing a group
of about 50 Koreans wearing signs around their bodies that read “WTO
Kills Farmers.” They chanted in Korean and raised their fists,
much like the Black Panthers of the 60s. Police, of course, were on
the other side of the barricade.
As I stood at the fence line, I was especially interested to watch
as one man climbed to the top of the barricade, shouted something in
Korean,
and unfurled a banner that read Grant Korea Developing Country Status.
He had such a clear and focused presence on the barricade—I found
myself staring for several minutes. I snapped a few more pictures and
decided that the heat was getting to be too much.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned of the magnitude
of the day’s events.
As I stood at the breakfast counter ordering my cafe solo, I glanced
at the headline of the local paper. Protesta Mortal—Suicido, it
read. And there he was. The man whose picture I had taken atop the barricade.
The front page carried two photos—one nearly identical to the
picture that I had taken, and the other...shot a few moments later...showing
the man plunging a knife into his own heart. I thought I would vomit.
I walked away with my coffee and newspaper, shaken.
Over the Internet, the news spread quickly. The man’s name was
Lee Kyung-Hae and he was a small rice farmer from Korea. He’d
fought for the rights of small farmers for quite some time, and had
even undertaken a hunger strike outside WTO headquarters in Geneva
earlier
this year. Apparently, almost no one in his delegation knew that he
planned to take his own life that morning.
Of course I didn’t know Lee Kyung-Hae, and I didn’t even
witness the horrific act. Yet the rest of the day felt foggy and damp,
although the Yucatan sun beat down on me as heavily as it had done
every
day since I arrived.
Many in Cancun began to call Kyung-Hae’s suicide a martyrdom,
while others pointed to possible depression or mental illness. One thing
that’s for sure is how awful it must have felt to continually
fight against a monolith like the WTO. Talk about David and Goliath.
As I lay in bed that night, I thought about the mango tree that grew
in our backyard in Florida when I was very young. The tree was so voluptuous
and so prolific that we simply couldn’t eat all the fruit. So
my grandmother would sell the extras, four for a dollar, to all within
earshot. At one point we had so many that she practically set up a
roadside
stand. They were always gone in seconds.
There is something really beautiful about buying what you eat from a
person and not a machine.
The events in Cancun make me believe this more so than ever—buy
small and buy local. It’s a manifesto I try to live by wherever
I go. It’s not enough but it’s what I can do.
For more information on the World Trade Organization, see www.wto.org.
For information on agricultural “dumping” and solutions
visit www.oxfam.org.
