ABSTRACT
Despite being widespread, reports of the death of the peasantry are vastly premature. In one particular case, however, such reports could be said to be accurate. On September 10, 2003 a South Korean farmer and peasant organizer named Lee Kyung Hae climbed atop a truck near the barbed wire surrounding the World Trade Organization Ministerial Meeting in Cancún, Mexico, flipped open a small pocketknife, and stabbed himself in the heart. He died two days later. In a pamphlet published earlier that year, Hae had written:
My warning goes out to all citizens that human beings are in an endangered situation. That uncontrolled multinational corporations and a small number of big WTO Members are leading an undesirable globalization that is inhumane, environmentally degrading,
farmer-killing, and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately. Otherwise the false logic of neoliberalism will wipe out the diversity of global agriculture and be disastrous to all human beings.3
