Tierra y Liberdad!… y… Marihuana!

When Emiliano Zapata (and anarchist school-teacher Otilio Montaño) drafted the Plan of Ayula in 1911, with its then radical call for land reform in the state of Morelos, little did they realize not only that it would remain an inspirational and influential more than a century later… and not just in Mexico, but as an extention and distallation of revolutionary ideals and basic Marxist philosophy (IF workers should control of the means of production, then it follows that those that work the land — the peasants — should control the land… and take it by force, if necessary). After all, it’s the peasants that produce our most basic necessities.

Over the last 110 years, while Zapata did not “win”, not completely, the Morelos peasant farmers did largely gain control of their own land… only to find themselves at the mercy not so much of greedy overbearing landlords… as beholden to the more sinister, and much harder to fight, “market forces”. Certainly, we all need corn and beans… but what we’re willing to buy (or what the market has found a more profitable to sell us) has radically changes…

And the heirs to Zapata have too.

Enter the new Plan of Tetacala.

Drafted by the Asociación Civil de Pueblos Unidos del Sur de Morelos y Artistas Legales, and over 100 ejidatarios (the communal farmers, whose ancestors received title to the properties, in large part due to Zapata’s efforts in the Revolution, and the impact of the original Plan of Ayala) drew up their manifesto demanding they be given control over at least one seemingly essential unit of production. Marijuana.

With marijuana legalization simply a matter of drafting regulatory procedures, it’s difficult to say why the matter has not be settled. Assuming it’s not that the Senators are all stoned, it’s likely a matter of more pressing legislation, … and (left unsaid)… cue bono? The producers, or corporate interests?

One might include the so-called “cartels” as a corporate interest… the major market being exports, and the “cartels” having, for the last century at least, controlled the business. When it was figured out that marijuana was a good business and seen as a basic commodity by (white) people north of the border, it was no longer tenable that brown people in work clothes, squatting out in the countryside, not white men in suits sitting in air-conditioned offices in New York or Toronto, or London would be the ones to call the shots, make the decisions, bank the profits. Openly, anyway.

And… so… those white guys in suits, mostly out of Canada (which legalized marijuana several years ago, getting a jump start on the “respectable” white suburbanite market) have been lobbying the Senate to write regulations favoring them. The Plan of Tetacala seeks — in the best tradition of Zapata — to transfer control of the growing, processing, sales and marketing of marijuana to those who have been the last to profit from the crop.

At it’s most basic, the plan calls for communal farmers to be authorized to grow marijuana on their land without being criminalized by police corporations or authorities.

Their lawyer, Andrés Saavedra Avedaño, pointed out that with the Plan – whose motto is “Land to cultivate and freedom to smoke it” – it is intended to recover the value of land under cultivation and “celebrate a continuation of the Plan de Ayala (by Emiliano Zapata); the aim is for the peasants to be able to recover their lands ”.

“There is the same premise [in the Plan of Tetacala as in the Plan of Ayala*… Liberating the lands and the hands that work them for their benefit, in the face of the historical betrayal that persists against these sectors, and that has been evidenced in the attempts to regulate the plant carried out by the State ”

According to the signatories and their lawyer, the most important article of the Tetecala Plan is number 9, which says: “The cultivation, production, planting, transformation, transportation and distribution of marijuana are allowed for people in the agricultural sector whose objective is to relationship with production to improve their condition and social growth of their communities, facilitating their condition and access to free cultivation of their lands “

Source:

Morelos: ejidatarios firman plan para sembrar cannabis sin ser penalizados