HEXTERMINATORS: LOS SUPER HEROES SUPER CABRONES
by Praba Pilar
There in the periphery of my vision, I saw blurry in the corner of my eyes, a large man, with beautiful gauzy wings 14 feet across fluttering across the supermarket. I turned my head and looked
closer, and saw a dangling 3-foot penis with a red Christmas ornament on the end snaking towards
me. “This is the Unsafeway!” he sing-songed to me dancing by, “genetic engineering is the Unsafeway way!” Behind him came a small Colombian woman with a coupon, “Value your family’s
health,” it said in a bold red banner across the top. As I glanced at the coupons for BGH milk and
New Leaf potatoes, I was turned in the arms of a beautiful genie. “Super Hex Man a la orden,” he
greeted, “please, help us with our labeling” and he handed me a strip of labels that read “warning: this product contains genetically engineered material which had not been adequately tested
and could be dangerous to your health.” He was applying these to the milk in the cooler. A woman
with a Hexterminator cape materialized, explaining to the growing crowd, “Safeway does not label
genetically engineered foods, so you have no way to choose what you feed your family. This is the
UnsafeWay, and today we want you to help us rechristen this store, Unsafeway.” She handed out
materials to the people gathered around. “We have come here today to hold this store accountable. We have come here today to label genetically engineered products ourselves. Our league of
Super Heroes will not let the people be poisoned in this way, we will stop this madness and apply
the labels ourselves.”
I was in the hands of the Hexterminators, a group founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 1998. A
collective of artist-agitators, activists, scientists and interventionists, they were part of the international campaign to fight the commercialization of the “Terminator” patent, which would have
a devastating impact on women and people of color around the world. After my encounter with
them in the supermarket, I had to find out more, so I invited the Hexterminator to my final resting
place in Puerto Rico to talk about their work.
Julia de Burgos: When I ran into your troupe in San Francisco I was bewildered and exhilarated.
What were you doing in that store?
Hexterminator: We were doing a joint action with EarthFirst! and Bay Area Resistance Against
Genetic Engineering, (Bay RAGE) for Earth Day. We went to Safeway to declare their policy to sell
genetically engineered products without labels unsafe, with Super Heroes in costume talking to
customers while blocking aisles, and other members of our group dressed as bankers ‘talking to’
the managers about our concerns. This got Safeway management on the phone, and they promised
us they would look into labeling. It was spectacle with content, and our outlandish costumes got
people interested and got us press coverage.
Julia de Burgos: And who or what exactly were the Hexterminators?
Hexterminator: The Hexterminators was an impromptu collective of performers, artists, activists,
poets, gardeners, multimedia and web artists that came together to fill a void in genetic engineering activism. We used art, creativity, humor and entertainment to bring attention to genetic engineering, while expanding the debate from strictly environmental concerns into issues of economic
and environmental injustice. We brought creative energy to genetic engineering activism through
radical street performance, multimedia art, web activism and outreach, visual art installation, radio interviews, panel discussions, university lectures, impromptu carnivals and direct action interventions.
Julia de Burgos: Were you influenced by the Brazilian Augusto Boal and his theories of a Theatre of
the Oppressed?
Hexterminator: Absolutely. The movement of the Theatre of the Oppressed developed by Boal
encourages the audience to become involved and recognize their own potential to be active and
make change. Boal changed the spectator into the spect-actor. As Super Heroes, we encouraged
our audience to become Super Heroes themselves, changing the way they perceived the world and
their place in it, hopefully politicizing and empowering them. A constant in our strategy was the
use of costume, ranging from outrageous to extremely conservative in order to blend in with the
surroundings. We found the fact of corporations patenting, manipulating and threatening the world
food supply to be an outrage that we could only address through serious absurdity. Our philosophy
was similar to Dadaism in that we felt we must fight insanity with insanity; this was central to our
work. The collage pamphlets, flyers and written materials we created reflected our Dada as well
as Yipee influence.
Julia de Burgos: I’ve heard activists in the US can be bit on the dry side. It’s not like back in my
day - now activists seem so puritanos, forgetting about sex, drink and salsa, although at least the
emergence of the Black Bloc has been exciting. What was your model?
Hexterminator: Infiltration. Early on we realized that we did not have the time to build an audience, so we infiltrated events where there would be a public gathered. We infiltrated all kinds of
events - gallery openings, university commencements, mayoral debates, farmers markets, public
hearings, museum receptions, parades, absurd science fairs, pretty much anywhere we thought we
could publicize the campaign against the Terminator.
Julia de Burgos: When I was visiting San Francisco at that time I went to see a movie at Artist’s
Television Access, and came upon a green field of Astroturf, with a sweet red children’s buggy filled
to the brim with gorgeous potatoes in the center. But they had little red biohazard flags waving
from each potato. It was unsettling and scary.
Hexterminator: That was one of our projects focused on the New Leaf Superior Potato. This potato, patented by Monsanto Corporation, produces insecticide through every one of its cells - though
it is a food sold in the produce section of markets, it is actually registered as a pesticide with the
Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.). Farmers no longer need to spray pesticides on the potato; the potato itself is a pesticide. Michael Pollan wrote an extensive article about this in 1998
for the New York Times Magazine, questioning the safety of this product for human consumption.
He explained that because the New Leaf Superior Potato is a pesticide, it falls under the jurisdiction of the E.P.A. and is exempt from Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) regulation. The E.P.A.
has entirely different standards of safety testing than the F.D.A. This reflects the safety standard
murkiness that comes up when foods are genetically engineered into pesticides or insecticides.
The window installation was meant to encourage the viewer to question the U.S.D.A., the F.D.A.,
their produce manager, and the supermarkets about this product. We wanted people to question
why there are severe warning labels on insecticide bottles, but no warning labels on the food. We
had educational information in the window with all the contact information for the regulatory
agencies, and an information booklet inside the business. We got a strong response to this installation; people were taken aback. We repeated this piece inside galleries or outdoors, and put it up
on our website as a model for others to use.
Julia de Burgos: Did you have any kind of institutional support?
Hexterminator: Not really, and we didn’t want it. We didn’t want to cede control of our interventions to an art gallery or to the jurisdiction of a non profit governing board. We did do an artists
residency at San Francisco State University, where we participated in an exhibition, arranged to
have scientists do presentations on the Terminator, and developed two performance pieces. But
mainly we did intimate scale performances on the street, where we could set up mini dramas or
Dadaist tableaux to catch the viewer off guard. One of my favorites was Super Hex Man, who
wandered the streets bemoaning his genetic experiment gone wrong. He had a set of blue eyes
hanging from his cheeks, and an extra set of legs coming out of hips - and would murmur sadly, “My
parents, they wanted blue eyes.” Behind him would be Miss Monsanto, the genetically engineered
Beauty-Queen-gone-wrong. She would break out into screams of rage and fury. Her skin, engineered
for flawless perfection, was instead broken by boils and lesions, a sadly repulsive glitch in her engineering. Nearby, Super Seed Girl and the Corporate Devil would be fighting in the street, with the
Corporate Devil trying to give away dead sterile seeds to people, and Super Seed Girl rushing up to
yell, “Don’t take that,” knocking the seeds out of the person’s hands while talking about the Terminator. It was spectacle, theatre, drama, and tragedy.
Julia de Burgos: One of my initial introductions to you came via an invitation by a comadre to join
Artists for Responsible Genetics. She brought your materials here, and when I reviewed them what
interested me was that you had members in Ecuador, Mexico, and other areas of Latin America.
Hexterminator: That was one of our hoaxes that ended up taking on a life of its own. We formed
Artists for Responsible Genetics to infiltrate the Mayoral inauguration of Jerry Brown in Oakland,
California. They were inviting non -profits to participate, and we needed to become a pseudo nonprofit venture in order to crash it and do invisible theatre. We cribbed the materials from Scientists for Responsible Genetics, published pamphlets, put up a website with free online membership
in about three hours, and got in. Presto, pronto, and then, artists from around the world started
sending us material and joining. We didn’t know what to do with the new members of this group,
but we quickly realized one function could be an artist’s skill share. This provided us with an
avenue into some of the larger non profits: we could provide them with free web designers, while
gaining support within those circles. ARG turned out to be a very useful tool, we used it as a front
group, and on paper the Hexterminators eventually became a project of ARG instead of vice versa.
Julia de Burgos: What about your infamous pieing?
Hexterminator: Around the time that we were doing our work, the College of Natural Resources of
UC Berkeley announced a $50 million business deal with Novartis Corporation. Under the strategic
alliance, Novartis employees would actually sit on internal college committees, receive first right
to negotiate for patent rights for any research discovery, and determine valid areas of research for
the graduate students. Novartis would derive private profits from a publicly funded institution.
Simultaneously, the University of California-Davis Chancellor announced a “strategic alliance” with
Monsanto, which would result in a new biotech research facility on campus.
When we found out about these new “strategic alliances” that public California universities were
forming with private corporations, we formed our own strategic alliance with the Biotic Baking
Brigade on Operation Double Fudge. In the first phase, Biotic Baking Brigade Agent Tart Classique
and Super Seed Woman delivered vegan pumpkin pies to the President and CEO of Novartis, and
to Gordon Rausser, Dean of the College of Natural Resources at UC-Berkeley. In the second phase,
Agent Cow dished up a banana créme pie to UC-Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoof.
At UC Berkeley we were in a packed press conference room and were tackled immediately after
the pies flew by security. We were arrested, detained, charged with misdemeanor assault and battery, and threatened with up to a year in jail. The charges were eventually plea bargained down.
Julia de Burgos: How did you become interested in the subject of biotechnology, and in creating
artwork about it? My experience has shown the strength of combining history, politics, and femi-
nism, yet this seems very technical, scientific, far from the domain of bellas artes.
Hexterminator: My interest was sparked by a project I did at Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco
in 1997 on the “5¢ for Fairness” campaign of the strawberry workers of the United Farm Workers
Union. I spent many months researching the campaign both off and on site in Watsonville, California, finding many layered cross roads of immigration, servitude, massive pesticide poisoning and
environmental racism in the structure of the industry and the effect on farm workers lives. I was
reworking this project in 1998 for the San Francisco Arts Commission, but this time my research led
me into a much broader inquiry, from farming, to agrochemical companies, through the mergers
of agribusiness with pharmaceutical corporations and into the “life sciences” industry. It led me
straight into the heart of the Biotechnology Revolution.
I was really shocked by advances in the biotechnology industry, and the terms being introduced,
like designer children, transgenic species, xenotransplants, eugenic civilization, pharming, ethnic
weapons, and the artificial womb. I found myself overwhelmed both by the concepts and speed of
the developments, wherein the human being has been patented, the human gene has been cloned,
and biotechnology is being applied to mining, energy, forestry, agriculture, animal husbandry,
marine biology, fisheries, medicine, and the military. The more I read, the more scientists I interviewed, the more meetings I attended, the more I began to see the thrust of the developments in
agricultural biotechnology as another wave of colonialism. A few scientist and economists were
raising urgent questions about the ecological safety of releasing plants with novel gene combinations, the ethics of creating transgenic animals, and the controversial ethics and economic effect
of patents on all life.
Julia de Burgos: You mention patents. Although patents have a long history in Western expansion,
wasn’t the recent patent controversy stemming from court decisions made in the US throughout
the 1980s that made all living organisms subject to patents? The signing of the Uruguay Round of
the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994 really changed the playing field - it was
the first time intellectual property was discussed as a trade issue.
Hexterminator: The patent controversy was about intellectual property rights. Patents give monopoly control to the patent holder over knowledge for specified periods of time. You know Julia,
over 95% of all patents are held by large corporations or government institutions, not by individuals or communities. The Council for Responsible Genetics points out that the diplomats involved in
writing GATT admitted that the text of the intellectual property provisions was drafted mostly by
the pharmaceutical industry. Historically, the traditional patent system has provided a method for
the Global North to appropriate the knowledge, resources, and discoveries about plants, medicinal
herbs, and animal breeding made by indigenous peoples. In 1993, things took a turn for the worse
- and the genocidal hand of the colonizer was displayed. That was the year that northern anthropologists and geneticists developed the Human Genome Diversity Project. The US National Institutes of Health and Centres for Disease Control gathered genetic material - hair, blood, and cheek
scrapings - from indigenous people in remote regions. Human cell lines of indigenous people in
Panama, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands were patented without any kind of agreements
or permissions, and unbeknownst to the people whose samples were taken. This is deeply disturbing. The Global North is taking cell lines from indigenous people because the effects of long range
genocide are leading to the elimination of indigenous people from the face of the earth. Rather
than risk potentially adverse effects caused by the loss of human biodiversity, they extracted biological material from expendable, soon to be extinct humans, and stored it for future use and commercial gain. Indigenous communities do not benefit from the privatization of their human cells
- foreign governments or corporations own them. The ownership of humans has brutal historical
antecedents, and this represents a form of slavery exercised on a cellular level.
I wanted to develop an art project to engage these economic and social aspects of biotechnology
here, in San Francisco, because we were turning into the world capital of the biotechnology industry. At the time, one out of three biotechnology corporations was located within 35 miles of a
University of California campus.
Julia de Burgos: We hear from the US government and the life sciences companies that biotechnology holds so much promise. It is promoted as a great leap forward for countries of the Third World.
They offer us Liberacion, sometimes I feel like breaking into the Internationale when I hear them
carrying on about how women will be freed from slaving in fields poisoned by pesticides or devastated by pests, and children will be fed miraculous bio-foods that will end malnutrition and we will
all get healthy and happy from the benefits of neutraceuticals. Will some of this technology help
women of the third world?
Hexterminator: Yes, it will help them - to become poorer, more malnourished, and have their cell
lines exploited and sold. Let’s look at the recent history of the industry. The year we founded the
Hexterminators, 1998, was the season of consolidation within the life sciences sector. This was researched extensively by the Action on Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group
- formerly known as the Rural Advancement Foundation International). Monsanto spun off its chemical division and spent over $8 billion acquiring seed and agricultural biotechnology companies.
They announced a $33 billion merger with American Home Products. Dupont, the world’s largest
chemical producer, divested its petroleum subsidiary to buy out Merck & Co’s pharmaceutical and
acquire the world’s largest seed company - Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. Bayer spent $1.2
billion to acquire the diagnostic division of Chiron, one of the world’s largest biotech companies,
and $465 million in Millennium Pharmaceuticals. The trend was to shift out of selling industrial
chemicals and into offering up a combination of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and seeds. The
new seed multinationals proceeded to withdraw seeds from the market, so that they could focus all
sales on genetically engineered seeds. This leads to a loss of biodiversity, which actually puts our
food supply at risk. It is ironic how the industry tries to sell the idea that what in effect leads to
less seed varieties and reduced crop diversity will lead to a more robust food supply.
Julia de Burgos: The biotechnology corporations act as if they are doing genetic engineering to
save humanity from starvation caused by overpopulation.
Hexterminator: Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey have an excellent section debunking these ridiculous
myths in their book Against the Grain, where they point out that two fifths of the world’s food
production comes from 17% of the land that is irrigated! The biotechnology industry repeatedly
tells us that there will be too many people to feed, but questions of hunger are related to complex
issues of politics, power and historic geopolitical inequalities, not a lack of food.
Julia de Burgos: The only product I’ve heard about that sounds promising is the rice genetically
engineered with Vitamin A. Two million children in poor countries suffer from Vitamin A deficiencyinduced blindness.
Hexterminator: It’s good you’re bringing that up. The industry’s marketing campaign has created
a lot of confusion. We need to be clear and precise about the cause and the context of vitamin A
deficiency-induced blindness - it is not like airborne tuberculosis or mosquito borne malaria. The
World Health Organization estimates about 250 million people globally are deficient in vitamin A,
increasing their risk of blindness, immune problems and other serious conditions. The Institute for
Food and Development Policy (Food First) has done extensive research on this illness, proving that
it is related primarily to poverty and rice monoculture - it is exactly because people have been
reduced to eating ONLY rice and almost no other food. The cure for this is not to genetically engineer Vitamin A into rice but to begin to implement sustainable development, so that people are
not reduced to subsisting on a diet of only rice. Otherwise, we get a cynical corporate approach to
world health issues that feeds on our ignorance about the causes of malnutrition.
The industry spends millions of dollars on this kind of greenwashing, so we need to follow the money. Products are being genetically engineered in order to have a longer shelf life, to serve as pesticides, to withstand larger doses of pesticides, to prevent saved seed farming - we can’t forget that
these same corporations which promote themselves as the cure for all society’s problems are the
same companies that have polluted our land and waterways with toxins, propped up dictatorships
to increase their bottom line, suppressed research raising dire questions of genetic introgression in
rural areas of Mexico, and placed the safety of the world’s food supply in the greased up hands of a
few wealthy men in suits.
Julia de Burgos: What about the Terminator you were named for? What is it?
Hexterminator: The Terminator, developed by Monsanto Corporation in conjunction with the
United States Department of Agriculture, is a genetically engineered seed technology that creates
sterile seed by programming a plant’s DNA to kill its own embryos. The patent applies to plants
and seeds of all species. If saved at harvest for future crops, the seed produced by these plants
will not grow - it dies. Pea pods, tomatoes, peppers, heads of wheat and ears of corn become seed
morgues.
Over a billion farmers, primarily in Africa, Asia and Latin America, depend on farm-saved seed as
their primary seed source. The technology is intended to force farmers to buy seed after every
harvest. Pat Mooney of the ETC Group pointed out that both Monsanto and the US Government argued that the Terminator was designed specifically with Third World farmers in mind. They specifically identified crops like wheat and rice in countries such as India, China and Pakistan.
The Terminator makes saved seed farming impossible. Even worse, if farmers can’t save seed, they
can’t continue to adapt crops to their farming environments, which spells disaster for food security around the world. The heads of Monsanto are acting like a vampire cult, sucking the life force
from poor farmers.
ETC Group spearheaded an international campaign to halt the Terminator through the United Nations, seed banks, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and other international bodies and NGO’s. There was a fiery backlash of protest against Monsanto around the world.
Julia de Burgos: Were there mass protests and organized actions?
Hexterminator: Yes, yes, yes - that same year, 1998, the Karnataka State Farmers Association in
India put out a stirring international call for civil disobedience and direct action against Monsanto
Corporation, recommending squatting or burning of their fields, squatting or destroying their offices, and other actions to damage the corporation. Thousands of farmers burnt down three fields
of genetically engineered crops in India to initiate the campaign, calling it “Operation Cremation
Monsanto.” Of course this was very exciting and inspiring to the rest of us around the world.
Simultaneously that year, decontaminations began in earnest in the US in solidarity with direct
actions going on around the world. A group called the California Croppers uprooted genetically
engineered test crops at UC Berkeley. Then came the Lodi Loppers, the Cropatistas, the Seeds of
Resistance, Reclaim the Seeds, the Bolt Weevils, just to name a few of the direct action campaigns
destroying crops and test sites in the US. Activists destroyed corn, sugar beet, walnut trees, melons, tomatoes and equipment at sites belonging to the Davis and Berkeley campuses of the University of California. Activists also damaged sunflowers, corn, greenhouses and irrigation equipment
belonging to the commercial companies Pioneer Hi-Bred and NK Seeds. The exciting part was that
this information was readily available on line - the movement publicized their decontaminations
through a volunteer press communiqué officer.
This was all happening within a context, in that year, there were over forty acts of crop destruction in Great Britain. Imagine, Julia, the destruction of genetically engineered crops had become
so frequent in Europe that farmers were refusing to plant them. Now, that is an activist job well
done, where we can see a clear cause and effect.
The response to the decontaminations in the United States was to label the groups “eco-terrorists,” step up security at the universities and change the laws to favor the biotech companies.
Democratic Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, from Davis, introduced a bill, approved by Democratic
Governor Gray Davis, which penalized any person who uprooted or harmed any field crop product
under study for twice the monetary value of the plants. The value included any costs associated
with the research, testing and development of the crop, driving the costs very high. The financial
penalties were on top of criminal sanctions. The approval of that bill into law had a chilling effect
on the movement in California.
Julia de Burgos: We hear in Puerto Rico that the environmental movement in the US is plagued
with problems of racism, diversity, lack of representation - even here in my lonely outpost I hear
murmurs that some of the campaigns of the Sierra Club have been clearly anti-immigrant. What
did you do to avoid this pattern?
Hexterminator: Hijole, the environmental movement in the US is plagued with very divisive issues
of race and class. Some campaigns reflect that the environmental movement is not dealing with
institutionalized racism, or the vestiges of White Supremacy visible all over the US. I remember
when the Political Ecology Group formed a whole campaign called “the Greening of Hate” because
they saw so much racism and immigrant bashing among environmentalists in the US. With my own
ears I’ve heard environmentalists de-politicizing immigration, ignoring the economics behind farm
labor demand and migrant farm workers, while blaming Mexican immigrants for environmental pollution. It is absurd. I’ve seen it at the international convergences, where the Third World Network
has to explain the disastrous political and economic effects of US originating polluters who shift the
debate away from their rampant violation of environmental standards to overpopulation.
It was different with the Terminator - the Terminator is really a colonial weapon. It transfers control over the world food supply to the laboratories of a few multinational corporations originating
from the US and Europe. It is designed to force Third World farmers into a dependency for embryo
transfers of entire species lines controlled through patents. You know that term in Spanish Julia,
“la misma mierda, diferente olor”, meaning, same old shit, different odor? Well, we caught on
pretty quick to the policy of extraction, exploitation and extermination. The “more advanced”
Western biotech executives offer, as did colonizers past, to help those poor little backward farmers of the Third World - by accumulating, patenting and selling those farmers’ genetic resources.
It’s the mining of a different kind of gold and silver, under the same rules: the life sciences own all
the seeds and farmers do all the work. I mean, look at the numbers - 90% of the seed germplasm
comes from the Third World, yet only 1% of the patents in the world are granted to people in the
Third World. There is no need to ship slaves around - slavery conditions are being shipped straight
to the farmer. Like the colonizers of the past, the life sciences industry wants to penetrate every
region of earth with its products. In our work, we tapped into the postcolonial dialogue and sought
out artists and activists working within that framework. Our outreach, materials and discourse
originated from an awareness of the colonialist aspects of this technology, this was the root of our
analysis, so we attracted rather than alienated immigrants and people of color.
Julia de Burgos: We Puerto Ricans have a widely misunderstood history, seen by many as the benefactress of the largesse of the US, but we were actually twice colonized, first by Spain, then by
the US. Que cabron, ey? When the US imposed citizenship on all Puerto Ricans in 1917, against
the vote of the elected Chamber of Delegates, it was primarily to get more soldiers drafted into
the US Army. I was involved in the 1930s with Négritude, we protested European colonialism and
its denigration of African culture, and promoted the idea that artists of African descent must look
to their African heritage, not to Western aesthetics, for inspiration. In a similar way, is important
that all political workers, including environmentalists, analyze the roots of oppression and touch on
colonialism and neo-colonialism in their work, because it comes in many shades and guises. New
modes of artwork tend to challenge, disrupt and eventually change what the meaning of art is. You
seemed to be trying to extend traditional forms of street theater by adding direct action, intervention, and interactivity.
Hexterminator: We wanted to work outside of the traditional confines of the art world and raise
the level of interaction with the general public beyond the proscribed boundaries of expectation.
We were experimenting with different methods to move the spectator to action. We were successful in getting our Super Hero characters in the media to speak to different aspects of this technology, furthering our activist aims.
All of our work was offered copyright free online in order to further the visual dialogue around
genetic engineering. One of the most fantastic parts was the amount of mailings, images, dialogue
and ideas that were sent to us from around the world, furthering our own theoretical development
of Artivism.
The danger of the Terminator continues. The companies that own the patents on the Terminator
are threatening commercialization. We need to consider the impact the implementation of these
technologies will have on the Third World, which are manifold. Women in the Third World don’t
just save seeds from harvest to harvest, they also cross seeds to improve and adapt the stock. This
is an instrumental part of farming in many areas. The Terminator would terminate 12,000 years
of agricultural practice, increase sales for the multinationals and decrease quality of life. Most
recently, I’ve heard the physicist and human rights advocate Vandana Shiva talking about the shift
from the war of the “haves” on the “have-nots” to a new war of the “live” on the “live-nots.” Terminator technology is a reflection of this war.
Julia de Burgos, born in 1914, was one of the foremost revolutionary poets of Puerto Rico, author
of the seminal feminist poem, “A Julia de Burgos.” She was part of the Puerto Rican independence
movement, and has been described as a woman of great sensibility, rebellious spirit, and exceptional intelligence. She died in 1953 on Welfare Island.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bulletin of the Council for Responsible Genetics, GeneWatch, Volume 12, No. 5, October 1999.
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de Burgos, Julia. Song of the Simple Truth, The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos. Compiled and
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“Enclosures of the Mind: Intellectual Monopolies”. A Resource Kit on Community Knowledge, Biodiversity and Intellectual Property. Prepared for the Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation Program by the Rural Advancement Foundation International. 1996.
“Initiatives for Protection of Rights of Holders of Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities”. Roundtable on Intellectual Property and Indigenous Peoples; World Intellectual
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Lappe, Marc and Britt Bailey. Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your
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Pollan, Michael. “Playing God in The Garden” New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998, p. 50
“The Gene Giants: Masters of the Universe?” Communiqué: Rural Advancement Foundation International, March/April 1999.
“Traitor Tech, The Terminator’s Wider Implications” Communiqué: Rural Advancement Foundation
International, January/ February 1999.