Yuriria Iturriaga/ II: Not just bread...

V

Having examined the origin of the construction (self-construction) of the human, in the preceding text (La Jornada, 12/5/25), and jumping forward thousands of years, it is notable to note that the decline of peoples is linked to the substitution and alteration of basic cereals, true carbohydrates: rice, corn, wheat of the Triticum family and farinaceous tubers, by artificial products; which have been sickening humanity, but above all the majority who have no other option but to ingest - to satisfy hunger - food substitutes for edibles that may satisfy temporarily but harm the human organism. In other words, there is no better example of the transformation of the world's societies, of their organization in the distribution of labor and material resources to satisfy basic needs, than revealing the importance of the global capital invested in our planet: first, the capital invested and circulating in the food industry (especially those that are eaten, but do not nourish); Second place, the arms industry, from self-defense to missiles and intra- and extra-planetary war projects; third place, drug production and trafficking; fourth place, human trafficking, from adults of both sexes to children... and the list goes on.

Obviously, changing the current paradigm at the top of capitalism will not be easy, but if we do not consider starting to gradually plan and execute a strategy to recover our historical cultural values, which does not include the monocultures that cereals of the Triticum family require, recovering not only sufficient production, but also surplus for export (without resorting to production systems suitable for wheat, whose techniques appear due to the characteristics of these cereals, whose species do not grow to the same height or mature at the same time and, for this reason, must be cultivated in different plots and at different times). If we do not recover the discoveries and the millennial experience of the populations that domesticated corn, rice and floury tubers, forcing these products and their respective sustenance, which are the soils corresponding to each of these plant species, those currently responsible will be the ones who will deal the final mortal blow to their peoples, because they could not understand that the technological advances of the West, where the peoples who fed and feed on cereals of the Triticum family were born and developed, have characteristics that forced the peoples who depended on these foods to seize the lands of their neighbors and to do so they invented the increasingly deadly and sophisticated weapons with which they frighten and subdue us.

But, on the contrary, if the leaders of Asian, Meso- and South American countries, and those of the equatorial belt, whose tuber-bearing soil is distinct from that of the Andes and Mesoamerica, decide to recover ancient crop traditions that built great civilizations (architecture, astronomy, mathematics, arts, culinary arts, a non-exhaustive list), they would begin to save the history of humanity, enriching and humanizing it, for the good of all, including the peoples who live off wheat and could well invent ways of cultivating, harvesting, and preserving the cereals on which they live. Without forcing the rest of the world to transform our lands into wastelands and forcing us to buy their fertilizers and insecticides, products our crops don't need, if the forms of polyculture that were established for 10,000 years in Asia, Africa, and America around the Tropic of Cancer, allowing for the development of exceptional cultures without bellicosity, are maintained. Hopefully, we can be protagonists of this change, but if not, it's our best wish for future generations.

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