The verses that Joxe Manuel Lujanbio Txirrita has given to the war in Cuba could be claimed by many who, following the call of Ho Chi Mihn, have exploded in combat: “In the end the exile was made with the reflection / Len could also sell Cuba without dying so many men.”

More than two million people – almost four million in some estimates – lost their lives. The Yankees exploded three times more of the bombs launched in World War II. 15% of all forests and fields were burned by poisonings released from aire.El Agent Orange, produced by Dow Chemical and Monsanto, perfumed them with 45 million litres of aircraft and helicopters. Decades later, in 2016, while a special court in The Hague judged Monsanto as the seller of that deadly dioxin, Monsanto is imposing itself on Vietnamese agriculture.

Investigator Mick Grant has not approached The Hague in search of chronicles for The Ecologist magazine in the days of the trial, but Vietnam. With the laying on the ground, at dusk, he realized that all the Yankee consumer icons illuminate the avenues of the City of Saigon/Ho Chi Mihn: Starbucks, Golden Arches, Colonel Sanders facing KFC, Coca-Cola... But not in Monsanto: “To say Monsanto here is to talk about the Revelation.” Is it -- or was it?

Between 1961 and 1971 the Americans dispersed as part of the chemical and biological war Agent Orange with dioxin, herbicide and violent perishable, burning trees to uproot Communist soldiers and guerrillas the protection of tropical rainforests and, spilling over rice fields, leave the enemy without food.

Mick Grant has visited the Museum of War Memories in the City of Ho Chi Mihn. The story of The Eologist has begun with the photo of a musician who ambitions the museum: a blind man playing the piano... no, but blind, created with a face without corners for the eyes. The 17-year-old has suffered a disaster during the third generation due to Agent Orange’s dioxin.

In this War Crimes Museum, before opening to the West, we can observe the atrocities still produced by poisons in children and young people, the deficiencies and deformations of all kinds of eyes, arms, legs, head... Like the rest of the victims, the pianist has not received any compensation, so it remains for him to try to win the daily rice, music setting the window of horrors.

Agent Orange is so violent that he has sickened many U.S. military and employees who used that weapon. They and their offspring cause DNA damage. The Washington Government has received 291,000 complaints from veterans of the house, and to answer them it has spent over $1.5 billion.

Complaints from Vietnam affected in EE.UU. They were not equally lucky, they have not received any compensation, either from the Monsanto or Dow corporations or from the Government. Henry Kissinger, the leader of war and poisoning, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, together with Le Duc Thor, the representative of Vietnam in the negotiations. Le Duc Tho, the only man who has renounced the Nobel Peace Prize...

Food poisoning

Over the next few days, Mick Grant has visited the banks of the Mekong River with another local researcher, a human rights activist. What do the U-Minh Park sites that were spared in the jungle 50 years ago until the Yankees destroyed them?

A guide takes you on the boat. There are no forests, but the banks of the river are separated. Finally, the drivers have been able to land at some point on the coast, and have discovered, through the ranks of sides, how difficult it is to revive a tropical rainforest that was in ancient times. Trees are very scarce, like other plants, with no trace of wild animals. Eucalyptus plantations have also been made, harder in dioxin.

The Mekong mangladiates, when the Ría falls, look better. However, the Vietnamese researcher has taught him that it is nothing more than a mere appearance. Officials have planted new mangroves, but cosmetics are more than anything. After the burning of the Orange Agents, the marshes here have new enemies: the decrease in the flow of the large reservoirs, the gigantic viveros of shrimps and prawns... and the change in the climate.

“But,” says Grante-, Monsanto also wants to take advantage of climate warming: patenting plant seeds that resist drought better, rice that survive in salty waters... The sea level in the Mekong Valley is increasing. But one day it will also rise too much for those water levels.”

The friend and he have toured the agricultural supply warehouses. Like all over the world, here are also seeds, synthetic fertilizers and poisons from Dow Chemical, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and other agro-giant giants. Where is Monsanto?

Uses the brand name of a company acquired in 1998: DeKalb Genetics. Previously, Monsanto had returned as soon as the United States. The American embassy invited the experts and leaders of the multinational to give lectures on the advantages of GMOs, thinking that the solution to the food shortage in Vietnam lies in their seeds and pesticides.

They have convinced the high officials and politicians of the place, apparently, or bought it by chance. In 2014, the experimental sowing of four transgenics was approved. Along the way are GM rice permits. Several organizations in the City of Ho Chi Mihn have declared that they want 30-50% of Vietnam’s crops to be genetically modified seeds by 2020. The total control of crops produced in relation to seeds and poisons will remain at the disposal of the patent holders.

When millions of people still suffer from the mutilation of the old Agent Orange dioxins, Monsanto introduces the Vietnamese Roundup – glysofate – along with the transgenic seeds that survive with this venom. Glysofate has been accused of various diseases, from autism to cancer and congenital diseases, as well as those affecting nature's ecosystems. Monsanto and Coca-Cola: What the United States did not achieve with a terrible military attack, the dominance of Vietnam, is being achieved by controlling markets, culture and food.

Meanwhile, in the almost antipods on the planet, the Monsanto Tribunal has examined allegations of crimes against the multinational in The Hague. I had to answer two questions about Vietnam: If Monsanto is guilty of war crimes for helping the U.S. Army to massacre citizens, and if, by producing and selling Agent Orange, he made the mistake.