Monsanto in Mexico Update | Indigenous farmers threaten to end consultations if GMO planting continues

http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2016/06/monsanto-in-mexico-update-indigenous.html

Comment by Devon Peña:

When we last reported on the situation with GMOs in the southern Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán, there were many reasons to celebrate since a federal judge had overturned the approval of GMO soy plantings in this region as a threat to the indigenous beekeepers of the region (see our posts of March 16 2014and July 24, 2014).

Those rulings profoundly recognized Mayan indigenous autonomy. As quoted in our report of March 2014:According to press reports…(Mar 11, 2014) the court “determined that the effective protection of indigenous rights requires the exercise of certain human rights of a procedural nature, mainly the access to information, participation in decision-making and access to ensure justice.” 

You would think this was a clear victory. It apparently is not. This is, after all, Mexico, a place where the state of economic exception remains just as brutal and anti-indigenous as always. Here is the problem: While the courts have ruled that consultation with indigenous peoples is required as part of the process for reviewing permits for GMO crops, the planting of transgenic soybean (and maize) apparently continue unabated, without the proper legal permissions and in defiance of standing federal court orders prohibiting transgenic crops until the indigenous consultation process runs its course, and then presumably only if there is indigenous consent.

I am posting a report from the Mexican site, Desinforménos, that discusses the current situation in the peninsular Mexican state of Campeche. It is vital that nonGMO movement activists remain aware of and engaged with the continuing indigenous struggle against transgenic soybeans which remain an active threat to bees and beekeepers. This struggle is far from over and if we disengage and take the pressure off, then the Mayan beekeepers struggles will have been for naught. The translation is mine.