Acknowledgments

Native American food sovereignty leader Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe) once related how her father challenged her to walk the walk by saying, “You know, Winona, you’re a really smart young woman, but I don’t want to hear your philosophy if you can’t grow corn” (“Seeds of Our Ancestors, Seeds of Life,” TEDx Talks, 2012). My father shared similar folksy wisdom with me. He was the eldest of a large family that sharecropped or rented farmland in Iowa. At college was the first time he had an indoor toilet. His family was dirt poor but always had a home garden, a tradition he continued when he became a father. After retirement, he and my mother then farmed a couple of acres on her family’s homeplace in northwest Alabama. With a catfish pond, timber, fruit trees and berry bushes, beehives, and a summer garden, they were remarkably self-sufficient.

From my mama’s consistent cooking I enjoyed many homemade dishes of corn. My big brother, Tim, supplied corn jokes and guided my love for the lyrical wisdom of Broadway musicals (especially Stephen Sondheim’s verse “Greens, greens, nothing but greens” from Into the Woods that inspired parts of the conclusion). I am grateful to have grown up with him on the southern vegetable meals our mama made from scratch: they typically consisted of peas, cornbread, turnip or mustard greens with pepper sauce, skillet-fried squash or okra, creamed corn, and fresh tomatoes on the side. So, when I moved to Guatemala, I felt at home with Mesoamerican cuisine of black beans, tortillas, field greens, and fresh salsas.

For their summer garden Mama started her seeds in old yogurt containers and Daddy kept track of other inputs: fertilizer, a few store-bought seeds (since mostly he saved or traded local seeds with relatives), and, despite my objections, some occasional pesticides. He usually spent about one hundred dollars a season. When the garden harvest came in, he would relish the first ear of sweet corn. He called it his “one-hundred-dollar corn on the cob.” He considered everything else from the garden to be completely free. With joy he gave away his produce to family, friends, community members, and almost anyone who stopped by and “sat a bit” on the porch in the southern tradition. Before he died from cancer during the pandemic, he asked that this epitaph be engraved on his tombstone: “Closer to God in a garden.” I am grateful to him for that sense of abundance and generosity and how sacred the sowing of seeds can be. While my own gardening skills pale in comparison, I try to live up to his largess by generously sharing my time on the porch of public scholarship to help fix the problems about which I write.

Unfortunately, not all professors work for the public good. In 2015, Mars Inc. hosted a food symposium at a farm-to-table restaurant in downtown Davis, to brainstorm priorities for the new UC Davis World Food Center. During the cocktail hour I found myself chatting with a group of scientists who had put their brains in service of agribusiness corporations. One was studying the gut microbiomes of factory-farmed cows and another analyzed big data to help corporations predict food demand. A third saw my name tag and pointedly asked, “What does Native American studies have to do with food?” I explained I was writing an article about Guatemala’s uprising against the 2014 Monsanto Law, which would have legalized genetically modified corn. Another man nearby overheard the word Monsanto and asked excitedly, “Oh, is Monsanto here?” Glancing toward the scientist who had questioned my participation as an Indigenous-allied anthropologist, I quipped, “Perhaps I should change my name tag affiliation to Monsanto to listen to what people might say to me and learn what it costs to buy a professor’s research agenda.” Afraid I might contaminate his chance to schmooze company reps, the Monsanto aficionado looked nervous. Backing away, he made excuses to get another drink.

That night I decided to go beyond the article I was working on and instead write a book. I reckon I should thank that sneering scientist for the inspiration. Happily, many other university colleagues refuse to sell out their research agendas to big business. At UC Davis I have been grateful for conversations with Amanda Crump, Ryan Galt, Ines and Juan Hernández-Avila, Beth Rose Middleton, Susette Min, Maywa Montenegro, José Juan Pérez Melendez, Bob Rice, Jaquelyn Ross, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, Julia Schreiber, Kate Scow, John Slater, Julie Sze, Stefano Varese, Anne Visser, Louis Warren, and Keith Watenpaugh. Zoila Mendoza was a supportive and generous departmental chair, helping me with funds for books when I was broke. I am grateful to Tessa Hill for creating a space at UC Davis in support of public scholarship and for grants to support Q’eqchi’ agroecology efforts. Elizabeth Delo’s disability defense helped me stay healthy to finish this work. Daniel Cordova handled book orders and travel reports with alacrity and good cheer, and Heather Bosworth brought a ray of sunshine to university bureaucracy. Down the road, Melissa Moreno, Juan Barajas, Adelita Serena, and Scott Cosca do inspiring food justice work in Woodland.

I am grateful to my many graduate students and postdocs who felt more like colleagues than mentees, including Nadya Alexander, Cinthya Ammerman, Gio Batz, Alejandra Cano, Marc Dadigan, Laura Gálvez, Jessa Rae Growing Thunder, Becky Kaump, Mayra Sánchez, Ingrid Sub Cuc, Marina Vergara, and most especially Kenji Tomari who has generously offered his graphic design talents for many a good cause. Undergraduate research assistants Lena Buelow, Sandra Vivian Calderón, Rocio González, Marissa Jacquemin, Christine Kelly, Janelle Vasquez, and especially Celia Amezcua (who pounded out a draft translation to Spanish to share with colleagues in Mexico and Guatemala) all cheerfully supported me with tasks small and large. Another wonderful group of students workshopped a book draft in an overload group study course and amazed me with their online sleuthing skills. They included Victoria Arana, Bella Di Francesco, Michelle Estrada, Dayna Garcia, Elliott Ge, Julia Kennon, Noah King, Sam Saxe-Taller, Binti Sohn, and Caitlin Weeth.

Beyond the altruistic and astute suggestions from two of the three anonymous reviewers and the nine external letter writers who read the manuscript for my promotional review, correspondence and conversations with other academic and activist colleagues made this book better, including Marisa Brandt, Claudia Irene Calderón, David Carr, Jennifer Casolo, Jennifer Devine, Emily Eaton, Liz Fitting, Ellen Foley, Meredith Fort, Jonathan Fox, Erich Fox Tree, Tom Guthrie, Ryan Isakson, Cindy Isenhour, Barbara Rose Johnston, James Klepek, Jessica Lawrence, Rachel Lee, Enrique Mayer, Jim Nations, Lindsay Naylor, Diana Ojeda, Tore Olsson, Adrienne Pine, Analiese Richard, Sergio Romero, Carrie Seay-Fleming, Finn Stepputat, Glenn Stone, Diana Taylor, Jacob van Etten, Brent Woodfill, Paula Worby, and, most especially, Nick Copeland, who is a road bearer for solidarity scholarship and a stellar comrade in every sense of the word. A special shout-out goes to Jon Padwe for the pitchfork analogy. From the Q’eqchi’ Scholars network: Alberto Alonso-Fradejas, Cristina Coc, Sara Mingorría, Stefan Permanto, Heather Teague, Richard Wilk, and Becky Zarger, b’antiyox eere.

I have reaped many other harvests from the perennial seeds planted by my esteemed mentors: Laura Nader (for a model of how to use anthropology to “study up” and challenge corporate power), Michael Watts (for introducing me to agrarian studies and for an unforgettable rant about factory chickens being forced to wear red contact lenses), the late James C. Scott (for how vernacular diversity is the best resistance to empire), Marc Edelman (for a unique undergraduate induction into environmental anthropology), and the late Norman Schwartz (for enchantment with Petén and the milpa system).

Beyond the NSF GRFP and Berkeley Fellowship that supported my research, funding for follow-up work came from the Land Deals Politics Initiative, the UC Davis Academic Senate, an L&S Dean’s Office research recovery grant, the Davis Humanities Institute, and overload teaching in the First-Year Seminar program. Above all, I give thanks to Michael Ladisch and the Open Access Fund from the UC Davis Shields Library to make this book freely available online. The Mellon New Directions Fellowship was manna from heaven; it allowed me to take courses to understand the environmental health science around pesticides. Although taking a year and a half for this toxicological training prolonged my time line to completion, my dear editor, Lorri Hagman, supported the project even past retirement. Editors Larin McLaughlin and Joeth Zucco, proofreader Judy Loeven, and indexer Ben Murphy did superb work. I look forward to working with Raúl Figueroa Sartí and Maria Alejandra Monterroso on the Spanish edition.

Every Cassandra needs friends who recognize the doom that others dismiss. Vic Edgerton and Nancy Alderman enriched my understanding of toxic threats. Locally, I am grateful to the core group behind the Woodland Coalition for Green Schools—Clara Olmedo, Laura Martínez-Chavez, Deborah Zavala, Shengchi Huang, Jen Hulbert, David Kupfer, Susan Pelican, and Juliette Beck—who were willing to go to war with me when the school district sprayed pesticides while children were in school. Neighbors Carole Sciebienski, Mark and Mary Aulman, Clara Olmedo, and Laura Martínez-Chavez kindly looked after my home and garden during research trips.

Speaking of sojourns, this book builds on many years of ethnographic work in six villages across two countries, acknowledged in greater detail in my first two published monographs. Here I wish to reacknowledge two of my village hosts, the late Nina and Deysi. They first taught me to mold and toast maize tortillas over a hearth, as their Indigenous ancestors have done for millennia. More than hosts, they were like the sisters I never had. Both died in their forties of gruesome diseases linked to pesticide exposure. While their untimely deaths can never be made right, I hope that this book may help save others from the same fate. My other sister-friends are the brilliant women who have led ProPetén over the last two decades—Rosa María Chan, Rosita Contreras, and Yadira Pantí—and who always had a desk space and good chisme for me. Another ProPetén pal, Luis Pantí, went underground in 2010 to help me understand the maize-cattle nexus and Guatemala’s vulnerabilities to GM corn. Survey work with Amilcar Corzo and the late Oscar Obando provided other important data points. Two Belizean research assistants in particular, Juan Pop and Lydia Keh, went beyond duty to guide me through Q’eqchi’ origin stories, milpa practices, and maize recipes that unfolded into the “Wealth Trilogy” from which I have drawn many examples. It has been a joy to collaborate with tireless Q’eqchi’ peasant organizers Alfredo Che, Domingo Choc, and especially José Xoj, all of whom clarified or confirmed aspects of their culture over many days spent in Guatemala, chat threads, and video calls.

When new threats emerged in 2023, I was fortunate to meet with Juan Castro, Carmela Curup, and the whole Bufete para Pueblos Indígenas team. It has been a delight to message and strategize with them as well as with Byron Garoz, Mario Godinez, Eliane Hauri, Ronny Palacios, David Paredes, and Pablo Sigüenza. Many of them courteously reviewed draft copies of this book’s manuscript. The illustrious Elena Álvarez-Buylla connected our Guatemalan WhatsApp group with Doctors Alejandro Espinosa, Alma Piñeyro-Nelson, and Emmanuel González; they all graciously shared resources and solidarity from Mexico. During a final period of “action” research, other investigative reporters, columnists, and nonprofit policy analysts shared scoops and photos they could have easily hoarded but did not: Jeff Abbott, Kajkoj Ba Tiul, Ricard Busquets, José Manuel Chacón, Carey Gillam, César Mendoza, Gary Ruskin, Mark Schapiro, and especially Luis Solano, who has taught me so much about Guatemalan power networks.

I understand from Zapatista scholars that the translation for “resistance” in Tsotsil Mayan is a word akin to “suffering.” Having written this book on the tail end of cancer and through the travails of Long COVID, I am grateful to open-minded doctors who helped bring me back to health: Stacy Berrong, David C. Fisher, Eric Gordon, Sonia Reichert, Arturo Savaadra, Sudershan Singh, and Diana Wilkinson. For alternative healing my thanks go to Linda Coco, Susan Fischer, Sara Heitler, Alzada Magdalena, and Bhavya Theissen. Michael Singer supplied the medicine of his wit; Miguel Hilario ánimo for the revisions; Rob Lautt the courage not to mince words; and Ryan Hammond nourishment through copyedits. If I have forgotten to acknowledge anyone, please forgive my memory lapses.

Above all, I am grateful for and to Adelaide, my miracle daughter born after oncologists predicted that my chemotherapied body could never have children. Born with gluten and other food allergies (perhaps related to my prior conditions), she shares my love of all things maize, especially corn chips. She laughed her first deep guttural chuckle as a baby when my own mama blew her a dandelion puff. Adelaide became a lover of other weed flowers, collecting countless bouquets of the yellow oxalis blooms that have taken over our herbicide-free yard. Over the many years this book unfolded and expanded, she was ultra patient with her mother’s “boring” life typing at the computer, which caused many late-night (but always home-cooked) dinners. An aspiring journalist, she has chosen this career path as her rebellion to a mama “who takes too long to write a book.” Her obsession with the Back to the Future movies inspired the idea of how “residual counterhegemony” is often a more powerful version of resistance than trendy political correctness (see my eponymous article in Antipoda 40 [2020]).

Through fierce vigilance I have tried to protect Adelaide’s body and brain from pesticides. In our society, mothers (especially single mothers dealing with deadbeat dads) bear disproportionate responsibility for emotional labor, the worry of schedules and household management, and the work of modern consumption. I am busy enough. I would rather not also assume the “triple shift” work of scrutinizing labels and instead be able to rely on a democratic government that seeks structural solutions to remove pollutants on everyone’s behalf. As ecologist Sandra Steingraber emphasized, mothers should not have to serve as de facto regulatory agencies (see her Raising Elijah [2011]). I am fortunate to live in a state with an active citizen lobby for greater legislative protections that hopefully will offer future mothers some relief from defensive label reading. If for every act of green consumerism we also take time to call our regulators, write our representatives, or take to the streets, all our children collectively will lead healthier lives. I hope you, gentle reader, gain inspiration to act from this story.

Action updates on this struggle are posted on my personal website. For more information about how to support or donate to any of the local grassroots movements cited here or for other feedback, you are welcome to write to me at kernelsofresistance@yahoo.com.