by Deroy Murdock
Scripps Howard News Service and National Review Online
September 2003

VALLE VERDE, Mexico, September 2003 – Just 18 miles from the turquoise beaches and abundant buffet tables of Cancun’s Hotel Zone, this poor village’s roughly 400 residents would consider running water a luxury. These citizens, an estimated 80 percent of whom are unemployed, occupy rickety, uninsulated shacks that feature corrugated roofs balanced upon thin tree branches. While wiry, flea-bitten dogs run about aimlessly, one little boy in blue shorts bangs on an old, red pickup truck, then entertains himself with a weathered piece of lumber.

The morning of September 12 promises relief from the usual squalor, however. A group of free-market activists arrives to distribute two tons of genetically-modified food as three vanloads of journalists watch. Suddenly, a band of environmentalists crashes the event.

This quickly becomes the Battle of the Orange and Green. The former – members of CFACT, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow – wear orange T-shirts that say, “Free-Trade Fiesta.” Most are American college students from the University of California, Davis, Tulane University and campuses in between. The Green, primarily members of Friends of the Earth and the Green Warriors, wear green shirts that condemn genetically-enhanced foods: “Transgenics = Poison. Organics = Life. You decide.”

Standing before a large CFACT banner taped to the side of a small classroom with a dirt floor, the group’s president, David Rothbard, address the crowd of Valla Verdens and news people.

“We are here at the WTO along with a number of other NGOs that believe that political and economic freedom and safe technologies are the path to prosperity for people all over the world,” Rothbard says.

He barely begins speaking before Raul Benet, a Mexican Friend of the Earth, screams from atop a dirt mound 15 feet away.

“I’m very angry that these Americans have come here today with this propaganda,” Benet says. “This is another form of colonialism. This is another conquest. This is a conquest of our grains.” Benet stands in front of twin, white banners – one in English, the other in Spanish. Each says: “Don’t let big business rule the world.”

Celia Ruiz, an older woman who has lived here for a year, favors the food distribution effort.

“We live in a village that has been marginalized from society,” she says. “We don’t have water. We don’t have light. So, I think what these people are doing today is a good thing.”

Asked if she fears what critics claim about GM foods, Ruiz says, “They don’t scare me, no.” She adds: “What these people are bringing us is something to benefit us and our health.”

“This is demagoguery,” complains Mario Vasquez, a driver. “This is bad. You know why? This is pig food. And they come and donate it to us?”

Pigs should eat so well. Villagers, mainly women with small kids, line up behind C-FACT’s truck for packages containing corn flakes, rice, beans, cooking oil, pasta, sugar and even lollipops. These items, C-FACT says, were purchased from local stores. While C-FACT did not discuss the still-theoretical risks of GM foods with the Valle Verdens, these poor Mexicans had a more immediate and concrete matter on their minds: finding something to eat.

“Every day, people here have to go around trying to get food for their kids,” says a young woman named Arjelia Maimendez. Genetically-enhanced or not, she is pleased to discover that the free-marketeers have contributed domestic products. “These are all Mexican foods. They’re good for the people. They’re made here. They are ours.”

Dr. Elena Khan, a Green Warrior and Mexico City contagious disease specialist, has her doubts. She worries that GM foods eventually may prove dangerous. “You need 20 years to know what is going on” with these items, she says.

“Why limit choices?” Niger Innis demands of her. Innis, spokesman for New York’s Congress of Racial Equality and a co-sponsor of the food donation, continues: “We are not trying to impose genetically-modified food. We are giving more options and more choices.”

Innis is uniquely unimpressed with Dr. Khan’s technophobic timetable. “People are starving right now,” he says. “Not 20 years from now. Right now.”