10 November 2009 | Interviews | Food Sovereignty
Inland
Herminia Saquimux, Guatemalan researcher on agriculture
1:38 minutes
Download: MP3 (1.1 Mb)
October 20th, 1944, is one of Guatemala´s most important dates. The end of Jorge Ubico dictatorship gave place to a series of democratic changes that would be later known as the Guatemalan Revolution.
First, Juan José Arevalo and then Jacobo Arbenz´s administrations promoted social policies to favour the people, among them an agrarian reform to put an end to the inequalities of the rural world.
After this, the CIA, the US government, and companies such as United Fruit would be in charge of restoring the old regime, which in a certain way is still in force.
In an interview with Real World Radio, Researcher Herminia Saquimux, from the Centre of Legal Action on Human Rights said that the problem of hunger faced by tens of Guatemalan municipalities has distant origins.
“The problem of hunger in Guatemala started with the invasion of Spanish conquerors, because this is when the process of land foreignization started”,
And in 2006, with the signing of the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement with the US (CAFTA-DR) the situation was worsened.
“The invasion of GM seeds appeared with CAFTA. We are an agricultural country, but our best lands are used for export products, and small lands are used for the subsistence of the domestic market”, concluded Saquimux.
