Radio Mundo Real

The main struggle of the National Union of Regional Peasant Autonomous Organizations of Mexico (UNORCA) is to recover the peasant and rural network of a country whose countryside has been devastated by agribusiness and trade agreements.

This is what Olegario Carrillo Mesa, representative of UNORCA, said at the People´s Food Sovereignty Now! Forum, which will end on November 18th in Rome, with a series of demands to the international institution on Food and Agriculture, the FAO.

Community land ownership is one of the key elements in this process of struggle of Mexican peasants, and also the budget allocated to strengthen food production by peasants.

Biodiversitu of Alliances

The Forum showed the inclusive and broad feature of the struggle for food sovereignty. In fact, approximately 140 people from the most diverse organizations participated in it, coming from five continents.

“In this Forum of Peoples for Food Sovereignty”, stated Paul Nicholson from La Via Campesina, “I´m sensing an overwhelming atmosphere and will to consolidate alliances”.

“The paradigm of Food Sovereignty has the ability to include extremely diverse movements: organizations of peasants, consumers, rural women, pastoralists, fisherfolks, rural youth, and development organizations”, said Nicholson, defining this as a “biodiversity of alliances”.

Back with the Mexican case, since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the crisis of the peasant and indigenous rural sector has deepened dramatically, states Olegario.

However, despite the huge difficulties of alliance-building and peasant struggles in Latin America and the world, Olegario is confident of the success of the struggles, because “it is not about complaining, it is about action”.

Photo: http://peoplesforum2009.foodsovereignty.org