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In 2007, Monsanto lobbied the Peruvian government in order to introduce GMO crops
in Peru. At that time I was living in a rural area in the US what allowed me to imagine what the consecuences in Perú
might be. The agricultural catastrophe I was witnessing would be of greater magnitude in my country because we have a rich
biodiversity of crops that would go extinct. During that year the introduction of GMO seeds
could have happened any day so the public opinión needed to know about this approaching danger as quickly as posible. I
emailed authorities in charge of the most visited art museum in Lima –MALI- to explain the situation and
to request its façade to exhibit art against GMOs. They seemed not to understand me so I resorted to explain it
in a simpler way: a photo of a corn field near my town and a paragraph: July 12, 2007 Subject: Transgenic Corn Field I share with you this photo that I took in a transgenic corn field in Massachusetts.
The sign is a requirement from the seed company, it alerts that it is “prohibited” to take seeds away to plant them in another field
because those seeds are somebody´s “intellectual property”.
Can you imagine the shame of having those signs in our land? Maybe in Cuzco? I got no results but I realized
that emails like that could work for my purpose, so I forwarded it to my contacts in Perú and it went viral. That is how I
started my email campaign that lasted many years, which included text, images and sabotaged videos from www.monsanto.com. The email "Monsanto Comemaiz" shows
me posing with a Kellogg’s
corn flakes box as a codpiece, the background image is the application form -from the US Patent and Trademark office- filled by Monsanto
to request the patent of corn DNA in 2004. The last paragraph of the email reads: I
dedicate this photo to Monsanto and its lobbyist in Peruvian government, congratulations and…good apetite!
I silkscreened that email on the inside panels of unfolded Kellogg´s corn flakes boxes -a prominent
brand, known to contain Monsanto´s patented, genetically modified corn-. The exterior package design of the corn flakes
box remains unaltered.
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