The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

mexico: seizing control of biodiversity 253cally justified.” 32 Nonetheless, the study was reported in many internationalnewspapers, including Le Monde. 33“Since then,” Alvarez-Buylla told me, “my laboratory has carried out anotherstudy throughout the country that found that the national level of contaminationis on average from 2 to 3 percent, depending on the type oftransgene, with some much higher peaks.”“What do you think about this dispute?”“I think it has nothing to do with scientific rigor and that it is maskingother interests. What’s important to me now is to find out the medium-termeffects of the contamination on criollo corn. That’s why my research teamdid an experiment on a very simple flower, Arabidopsis thaliana, which hasthe smallest genome in the plant world, into which we introduced a gene bygenetic engineering. 34 We then planted the transgenic seeds and observedtheir growth. We found that two genetically completely identical plants—they had the same genome, the same chromosomes, and the same transgene—could produce very different phenotypes [floral forms]: some had flowersidentical to the natural variety, with four petals and four sepals, but othershad aberrant flowers with abnormal bristles or bizarre petals. And some wereplainly monstrous. In fact, the only difference among all these plants wasthe location of the transgene, which was inserted completely at random, bymodifying the plant’s metabolism.”“What does that have to do with corn?” I asked, contemplating one of the“monstrous” flowers that the scientist was displaying on her computer.“From this experimental model we can extrapolate what risks happeningwhen transgenic corn cross-pollinates with local varieties. It’s very worrying,because there is a fear that the random insertion of a transgene may affectthe genetic inheritance of criollo corn in a totally uncontrolled way.”The Monsters of Oaxaca“The monsters are already in our mountains,” said Aldo González, one of theleaders of the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca, towhom I had just recounted my conversation with Alvarez-Buylla. It was amorning in October 2006, and we were on our way from Oaxaca to a Zapoteccommunity in a remote mountain area. González had put a portablecomputer on the backseat of his car. “It contains my war chest,” he said with