Emociones, Semillas Nativas y Cambio Climático: El Movimiento de Soberanía de las Semillas en Chiapas, México

Abstract

What role do emotions play in the creation of interpretive frameworks that allow communities to respond effectively to the challenges posed by climate change? This article explores this question empirically from the perspective of small indigenous peasant communities in the central region of Chiapas, Mexico. The study shows that the spiritual, cultural and material meanings that indigenous communities assign to the traditional milpa agroecosystem and to their native seeds, particularly maize, converge in a conjunction of emotions that enables these communities to recognize the risks posed by environmental degradation and climate change, and to mobilize politically around the frame of seed sovereignty. Particularly important is the informal system by which children inherit maize seed from their parents, which imposes on new generations the moral and social obligation of reproducing the milpa. This reproduction is necessary to keep alive the spirits of their ancestors and deities, which are thought to be embodied in the seeds, and to preserve the environmental conditions needed for future generations to live from the maize and the land. The regional social movement around seed sovereignty embraces and amplifies the emotions that underlie this moral and cultural commitment, at the same time as it emphasizes the risks posed by conventional agricultural practices (agrochemical use, deforestation, and quasi-monoculture) and environmental deterioration to the sustenance of the milpa and seeds. Three key foci comprise the agenda of this movement: agroecology, agrobiodiversity conservation, and adaptation of the milpa to climate change.