ABSTRACT
Early in December 2017, a group of fifty-four indigenous corn farmers from nine countries were joined by nongovernmental organizations and academic, and artistic allies in Ek Balam, Yucatán, where we drafted the Declaration of Ek Balam. The chapter recounts the organizing work and circumstances that brought these corn protectors together, the significance of the principles and policies of the declaration, and the status of maize biocultural diversity, the threats posed to this civilizational heritage, and the strategies and ongoing responses of a unique global grassroots action network. The Ek Balam declaration illustrates the possibilities for transnational circulation of local struggles and networking practices (‘glocalization’) involving place-based indigenous community responses to threats posed by the new enclosures of a neoliberal phase of settler colonial capitalist maldevelopment.
