jayson m porter
@RogueChieftan
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writer/scholar: environmental justice, food systems, agrochemicals, & racial ecologies in Mexico & the Americas @nacla @BlkPerspectives @Brown_IBES @UofMaryland
DC | Philly | Mexico City
Joined April 2009
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Wow. Rings of Fire already made it onto a syllabus this spring!! Please let know if you've used Rings of Fire or Fish Hacks in the classroom. I'd love to thank you and know what works and doesn't work.
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I’m still stuck on this idea: investing in more sleep for climate justice. If everyone in the United States was encouraged to sleep an additional hour or two, the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could be huge. Like the size of smaller, more sustainable countries huge.
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Karen Vega, la primera modelo oaxaqueña en contar su historia en Vogue
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What is a diversity committee, if not racism persevering?
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I was today years old when I learned that the National Black Farmer Association provides scholarships from $2,500 to $5,000 for Black students pursuing agriculture-related studies. Please share, so we can farm for the culture. (Citation: Farming While Black, 2018)
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Facts. How’d California become the No. 1 agricultural powerhouse in the United States?? By underpaying Black, Mexican, Filipino laborers for decades on the dispossessed lands Patwin, Yokut, Serrano and so many other indigenous peoples.
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Grad students today can’t get funding with CVs that are more robust and far-reaching than those that secured tenure in the 1970s and 1980s.
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There are doors for normal humans, and than there are doors that memorialize Emiliano Zapata and the century-long struggle against violent agribusiness and for social justice in the countryside.
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I mean no offense, but I feel like scholars of color tend to enter academia more intentionally.
sometimes people think that academia is a calling but tbh the only reason I'm doing a PhD in literature is because I happened to be sitting in an American lit survey class when it dawned on me that I can't snack for a living & I was out of ideas
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Here’s a beautiful image of Palestinians harvesting olives in the late 1930s from an archive in Sinaloa, Mexico. For generations, people around the world, especially in semi-arid climates, have learned how to care for plants and trees from Palestinians. Another world is possible.
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what if diversity hires where like spousal hires and you could bring an academic homie?
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My first PhD advisor was forced to resign for abusing students. Thankfully I was able to protect myself and leave. But relying on him for letters as I tried to run away was so scary. Idk what his letters said, but I only got into one school: NU. These powerful profs are scary af.
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The Semiotics of Taste and Travel: Cha, Tea, & place making in Colonial Migration
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Why am I writing diversity statements for programs with next to no Black people? They have everything to prove, not me.
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Call me crazy but gentrification in Mexico City feels like more the result of wealthy Mexicans and transnational companies than foreign tourists and remote-work settlers.
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To be clear, I’m a gringo. But it’s wild to hear so many gringos in Mexico City not even try to speak Spanish to cafe & restaurant staff members. I love when these gringos assume they can just speak English with me, bc I love pretending I don’t speak English to avoid rude people.
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My advisor checked in to see if ok yesterday morning. I said not really & asked to postpone our afternoon meeting, so I could protest. He sent me back the ACLU's rights of protesters guide, wished me luck & support, & said he was available whenever. I smiled & hit the streets.
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With three TT job interviews this upcoming week, I’m trying to keep my nerves steady by reminding myself that I can play offense this week rather than defense, because search committees generally want interviewees to succeed. Let’s get it!
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It’s crazy full professors are splitting rooms at hotels to make conference trips more economical. How do we expect grad students, early career scholars, & contingent faculty to afford these prices? Do we love the hotel model? Can universities host conferences more in the US?
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I just got a TT job offer, but I'm not sure I'm ready to enter the market. In any case, it got me to write the first sentence of my dissertation today. it's since been deleted, though. shit sentence.
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Wow. It's been exactly 12 years since I was jumped by ten people on my high school's football team for telling them to stop the rampant sexual assaults happening in the locker room after school. s/o to my face for being a trooper through four reconstructive surgeries. Grateful.
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I won a Fulbright, y’all. Thanks to everyone who helped me get this chance to research and teach philosophy with children in Mexico City.
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It’s been made public, but I still have few words. My first PhD advisor died last week of causes I don’t care to discuss, & despite/bc of our complicated past, this has been the hardest most difficult week of my academic life. I’m hurting in every way, so sorry excuse my silence.
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Yep, we sure did publish an article called “Cotton, Whiteness, and other Poisons,” and we really hope you read it, share it, and sit with it!
Cotton, Whiteness, and Other Poisons | Environmental Humanities | Duke University Press
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being interdisciplinary is beautiful but so is collaboration. we can't and shouldn't learn everything.
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After a family weekend of rest, I’m ready to share that I’ve agreed to join the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (
@BrownEnvt
) as a Voss Postdoctoral Fellow, 2022-2024. I’m honored by this time to focus on my research & writing. Excited to move to Providence & CDMX!
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When the pandemic began, I was living & researching in Mexico. It’s been tough finishing my dissertation from a distance. So I’m happy that I can finally say, with the certainty and support of a two-year environmental postdoc, that I’ll be moving back to Mexico City in 2022.
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Conferences need spaces for academics to discuss what they don’t know and have fun thinking together. Humility workshops. Listening parties. IDK spaces.
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Please don't judge me, but being on the job market is a geography lesson. I legit had no idea where Tufts was, and I thought Stanford was in southern California. Did you know that the Ivy League is actually a colonial highway from Philadelphia to Boston?
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My cousin Jolanda was recognized in NYC last week with a huge award for a decade of amazing work in the youth justice sector, and I’m like: what award her dress win?
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Nothing prepares you for the loneliness of dissertation writing. I long for more collaborative work.
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Twitter has taught me more about fellowships and what to apply for next year than any individual or institution in academia. Crazy.
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Don’t talk to me about red state governments and their impacts on universities while the donors at elite universities in the northeast are proving to be more conservative in the most actionable ways.
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I’m lowkey jealous of people who can or want to read for pleasure. I wish I could rekindle some joy for it, but reading has mostly been work for me. Academia can make you feel embarrassed that you didn’t grew up reading books for pleasure.
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when I started grad school literally no one in my cohort had heard of my undergrad institution, and I had only dreamed of attending theirs.
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Found this gem at a thrift store, and I didn’t even realize the buttons are old Mexican pesos.
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Between 1898 and 1939, hundreds of U.S. graduate students studied how to reinforce U.S. empire. With topics like expanding coconut industrialization in the Philippines or killing sugar-cane pests in Puerto Rico, graduates helped extend U.S. power. This would make a fire study.
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I thought going from a phd program at a state school to one at an elite school was going to change how I think; I’d get smarter than ever before. My cohort legit thought so little of me and my Mississippi & Oklahoma education. I was very wrong.
MS and OK prepared me and more.
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Interdisciplinary teaching is not an alternative. Historians shouldn’t be focused on training history majors. More than the job market, this is about teaching engineers, doctors, educators, & everyone else critical & historical ways to think about race, gender, colonialism, etc.
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Municipal archiving in Mazatlán, Sinaloa with nothing but heat. No chairs or tables, no staff, just 90+ degrees.
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I don’t know what most academics are doing. Publish this, publish that. Tenure this, tenure that? Our world is burning & we’re more than complicit. Most of us are actively not doing what we could if we were about that life. So much hiding behind these doctorates. Can I hide mine?
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I don’t mean to sound rude, and I could be very wrong, but I don’t think many postdocs are longing for ice cream socials.
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Here are some works on Afrodescendientes in Mexico. This is a paltry display of the vast and growing literature on this subject in Spanish. I have a few books being borrowed, surely, but I could also do better.
#LasVidasNegrasImportan
#BlackLivesMattters
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Environmental racism in California:
“California counties with a majority Latinx population use 906% more pesticides per square mile than counties with fewer than 24% Latinx resident.” Pesticide Action Network
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I just did my first interview! If you identify as Black, have lots of hair, & ride bikes or scooters, I would love to talk to you about your relationship with helmets. I see too many Black folks riding unprotected, & I want to know which helmets best serve us. Send me a message!
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Honeys produced by native Yucatán bees by region and month
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If you were a 5th grader visiting a college campus, you’d prefer to eat in the dining hall with college students over eating as a closed group in a library and other academic building, right?
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This is my great grandma Winona & goddaughter Sairah. Grandma was a farmer born on family land in Maryland in 1909 & Sairah lives in College Park today. After my 1st postdoc at Brown, I’ll return to my birth state as a presidential postdoc at UMD & TT asst prof in 2025! Honored.
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Why are turkeys just roaming around Harvard like this. Is it a pilgrim, colonial thing? I’ve seen at least 7 this morning.
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I just got my first job-market rejection this morning, & I can hardly move. I’ve been waiting to exhale & now I can’t breathe. I interviewed but failed to secure the job. I really wanted it but this is super fair. I’ll be ok, but I’m not built for this. I don’t want to be either.
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Academia is constantly humiliating. I’m terribly embarrassed and stressed, because I have to finish and defend my dissertation without a summer stipend. Hoping to sell 400-500 books to cover three months rent and moving expenses.
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PhD submitted to ProQuest!
Making the Coast Pacific: Oilseeds, Environmental Violence and Justice in Guerrero and Sinaloa, 1900-1960
I can't wait to share it anyone who wants to read.
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What is unskilled labor? My dad picked tomatoes throughout high school to help his parents, and he still credits that experience for giving him the hand strength and dexterity to become an all-American baseball player and trauma surgeon. Happy birthday dad!! Smooches 😘
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I defended my dissertation a year ago today, and I’m excited to share that earlier this week I decided to start sending book manuscript chapters to Duke University Press this December. I couldn’t be happier and more honored that they want to see my dissertation in book form.
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if academics are so smart, why are so many so unhappy in academia? 🧐
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the way scholars of the United States have made me feel like i don't study race because i study Mexico is wild to me.
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Hey hey all, I’m jayson!! I’m an environmental historian focused on agrochemicals, biofuels, & environmental injustice in southern Mexico. I defend my diss this summer and will join
@BrownEnvt
as a Voss Postdoc in the fall.
#BlackInEnvironWeek
#BlackInEnvironRollCall
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I could scream! Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada is open again! 😭🥳
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Hold on, the United States Air Force controls the entire GPS that everyone in the world uses?
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Many conversations in academia feel so deeply unserious.
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If you wanted to introduce your friends and family to the histories of environmental racism in the United States, which readings would you suggest and why? I’m asking for all of our friends, families and communities.
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Oh wow! Thanks everyone for your kind, funny, and brilliant ideas of support. Since I’m not craft, I’ll make sure to share this idea with my new colleagues at
@BrownEnvt
. I appreciate all the support and care. Cheers to more rest, resistance, and recovery!
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Environmental Humanities 2023 Best Article Prize! What a surprise, honor and joy to be recognized with one of my favorite people, Brian Williams (
@brainilliams
). Many thanks to the incredible editorial team at
@EnvHumanities
and to everyone who read, shared, and taught this work!
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While the world watches the
#FrancevsCroatia
, South Street is closed and Eagles fans are rewatching the Super Bowl.
#WhyPhillyWhy
🤦🏾♂️
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I study Mexico, & I’m just supposed to be fine w/ the fact that my publications in English will be valued more on the market than those in Spanish? I should just sit & watch the academic market actively devalue ethically, equitable, & urgent knowledge production? I feel complicit
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I’m getting excited to teach an environmental history course in the fall on Plants & Diaspora
@UMDHistory
!
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No wonder the Tohono O’odham believe that each saguaro is a human spirit. These giant cacti are flesh and bone.
Have you ever seen the interior of a saguaro? 🌵 Ranger Kira at Picacho Peak State Park shared this cool video, in case you forgot your x-ray vision goggles. 😎 Saguaros have 15-20 woody ribs that support the immense weight of the columnar cactus as it soaks up and stores water.
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These comments have been pretty mean. I didn’t suggest that gringos (like myself) aren’t a problem; we are. Just not the only one. I think transnational corporations, racism, and classism also play a role in gentrification across CDMX, not just in La Condesa-Roma. humble opinion.
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An unexpected perk of going to campus was finding out that I had this to pick up. It was also sweet of the graduate school to frame it.
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I am very excited to read about the correspondence between W.E.B. Du Bois and Max Weber. Coming out August 2019.
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I got to pick out my own office at University of Maryland today and then have lunch with my department chair. It was such a cool experience and generous conversation. This is one way to return to my birth state that I’ll never forget or take for granted.
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Aww that time I pulled up at the Sinaloa state archives in Culiacán and one of the directors nearly screamed at the sight of another Black person. Such a warm welcome. 🥰
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After all these years in grad school, I am embarrassed to tell my parents that academia wasn’t the move. They have no clue.
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Ford, Fulbright, Guggenheim, Wenner-Gren, Mellon, etc.
Neoliberalism is turning people who are fighting oppression into game show contestants competing for individual prizes from private donors
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I'm doing this all wrong. I gave talks at Oxford, Harvard, and Colegio de México last year, and nothing gave me life or butterflies like these fifth graders did. I feel so motivated and energized and grateful.
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My little sister and I are both taking our general exams this week, as we try to become the first PhDs in our entire family. I'm so glad I'm not alone and proud that my sister will finish before me now that my Fulbright year extends my fund by one year. Wish us luck, y'all.
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I finally pressed the “fuck it button.” My first job application: submitted.
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I should be presenting research and a dissertation chapter at Columbia University today, but that school isn’t acting right, and I’d prefer to stand in solidarity with
@GWCUAW
. Listen to, value, and pay students!!
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Dating is the worst. She suggested a place that averages $100 per person for a first date, and I had to tell her it’s a bit out of my budget 😔. What a terrible feeling.
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Are there any graduate program where faculty members get course leaves when they accept new graduate students? I think faculty members need more time to dedicate to their grad students experiences, especially for first gen and students of color.
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My plants & diaspora syllabus is beginning to look like a biogeography of blackness and indigeneity course, and I love that.
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My advisor turned around my 16,000-word (w/ footnotes) diss chapter in less than 24 hours. It was my first chap & his feedback gave me wings & direction. he wanted me to feel good about it asap & rest for holidays. It feels real-ish now. I have a dissertation to write in 2021!
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I was a finalist for a three year postdoc at Columbia’s Earth Institute last year, & cried so hard when I didn’t get it. Now, a year later, I’m so grateful that I didn’t win that position. Job market season is brutal beyond words; it breaks you down over & over, but keep faith.
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“Miss Nayarit Blessing Chukwu, lleva la responsabilidad de representar al estado en Miss México 2020...es Licenciada en Mercadotecnia, egresada de la Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit. Tiene ascendencia afroamericana mexicana y radica en Tepic, Nayarit.”
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I'm a history ABD. I write on the ecological life & death of arsenical pesticide use vis-a-vis oilseed cultivation (copra, sesame, cotton, & opium) & military eradication campaigns in Guerrero & Sinaloa.
@AgeofRevs
@Historias_pod
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Before US authorities used racism to deport 500,000 Mexicans in the 1930s, the Mexican govt tried to control how racist US films about Mexico reached Mexicans by sending letters like these to municipalities warning local authorities of the incoming racist depictions of Mexicans.
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Environmental racism has long shaped Afro-Mexican life & social movement in Guerrero. But Black muleteers like Vicente Guerrero also used their environments to shape Mexican Independence. Thank you for publishing!
@washingtonpost
@madebyhistory
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“Doctora Helia Bravo "La reina de las cactáceas" (1901-2001). Nace en la Villa de Mixcoac en la ciudad de México. Fue la primera bióloga mexicana en titularse. Fue responsable del herbario Nacional y fundadora del jardín botánico de la UNAM.” Desde: Me encanta la biología.
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I got to see both of my parents on the same day my dissertation committee made me feel like the smartest person in the world for 2.5 hours. I'm not sure you can overdose on love, but I almost did on Tuesday.
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It might be more accurate to call the academic job market a lottery.
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So much has happened in the world since I became ABD in 2019. It’s wild that early scholars are expected to write books & teach classes like nothing has changed in the world. We’ve experienced so much loss and grief. I move with much more urgency, but little is strictly academic.
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Proposal defended. Off to celebrate this new ABD life with my mom. Thanks for all the support, y’all.
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Seventy-five percent of sesame seeds grown in Mexico go directly on McDonald's buns. Oilseed history in Mexico, like that of petroleum, is a history transnational business, their monocrops, and their monopolies.
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