Spring 2007, Volume 50, Number 1

CONNECTIONS
by Marge Healy, PBVM

Oh, I’m from Iowa, that’s where the tall corn grows!

The streets of Santa Cruz, Guatemala are bumpy, rutted and cause the trucks to lumber along ever so slowly. Walking down the street I observed an elderly, indigenous couple following a truck from which, with every jerk, tumbled a few grains of dry corn. The couple quickly gathered them and commented to me how sad they felt that someone would be so careless as to let the corn be scattered.

The couple had a grounded sense of who they were. The Mayan indigenous, who call themselves the People of Corn, have a creation story that explains how humans are made from corn. They are taught that corn, the staple of their food, is sacred; and, that a grain of corn alone by itself will cry until it is gathered with other grains.

Next to the Presentation Sisters’ home in Chupol, Guatemala, where I lived from 1991–2000, a large outdoor Sunday market had vendors who, from their 100 pounds sacks, sold corn to the families who made tortillas daily to eat with their meals. Sunday after the market closed down a few individuals would come to search among the stones for the scattered grains of corn. I do not know if it was their hunger or the cries of the isolated grains that motivated their search.

Being a true Iowan, “corn” is part of my life. As a child there was the joy of eating corn-on-the-cob picked from our own garden. As an adult in both Bolivia and Guatemala I learned not only new ways of eating corn and information about other cultures, I came to realize our interdependence and oneness on our planet Earth.

One “aha moment” with corn happened in Guatemala during a diocesan meeting for pastoral agents. As we listened to political, social and economic analysis of the reality, I sat up straighter when the presenter said, “Right now the price of corn isn’t bad, but wait for a few more weeks when they begin to harvest the corn in Iowa.” Yes, the corn that was about to be harvested in Iowa, in Dubuque County, was going to affect the price of corn that was going to be sold in the open market near our home in Chupol.

Now ministering in Iowa with the new Latino immigrants I had another “aha moment” in February when I heard on National Public Radio that the price of tortillas in Mexico had jumped markedly. Visiting with some of the newly immigrated, the Mexicans confirmed the news report saying that some of their own families had experienced a doubling in the price. The radio report indicated that while in Iowa the ethanol plants are a plus for corn producers and the alternative fuel seems a welcomed advance, the poor in Mexico are feeling adverse effects.

With the free trade agreement (NAFTA) and the corn subsidy program in the U.S., corn imported to Mexico these past years has been cheaper than the Mexican grown corn, forcing Mexicans with small family farms to allow their fields to lie fallow and to look for work in other places. Today many immigrants work on Iowan private and corporate hog, chicken and dairy farms, as well as in the meat packing plants, construction and in the service sector. Now as the price of corn goes up in Mexico as a result of the ethanol plants in the U.S., one wonders who has taken into account the poor who depend on the tortilla to feed their family.

Around the world our lives are intertwined. While political and economic decisions have created an unbalanced distribution of wealth, there is also the potential for political and economic decisions that is life giving. In this season of Easter hope, may we in the heartland celebrate the beginning of a new growing season, be grateful for the richness of the earth, and make political decisions that take into account all of our brothers and sisters.

May we be the ones who walk the earth in bare feet, careful of creation and all its resources that have been given to us to share with one another and make sure those down to the seventh generation enjoy for their uses. She Who Brings Peace by Megan McKenna

Sister Marjorie Healy