Nearly 200 years ago, Father Hidalgo rang the church bell in the small town of Dolores and declared independence for Mexico. Today, the 16th of September, is for Mexicans what the Fourth of July is for Americans. They celebrate together and remember their 10-year-long war for independence.

But as the World Trade Organization brought together its many evil heads in Cancun last week, we remember that neither Americans nor Mexicans are really free from tyranny. It is no longer a king that keeps us down. We are now under the boot of an oligarchy of money-hungry corporations.

Sympathizers of Mexico's Zapatista rebels took control of a state-owned radio station long enough to play a message deriding the WTO and other trade abominations such as NAFTA and the World Bank. Thousands of protesters marched into downtown Cancun only to be turned back by a brigade of armed police officers and chain link barricades. Two naval warships loomed offshore, just in case. Luckily, the police did not shoot tear gas or rubber bullets at the crowd like they did in Seattle in 1999.

It is hard to describe the foul malevolence of the WTO. Massive American agribusiness is using the WTO to force genetically modified foods into world markets that do not want them. Even if you don't think putting fish genes into corn is playing God, these crops would pull the rug out from under agricultural third-world economies by flooding their markets.

These fat-cats claim that the Frankenstein-crops will produce food for the starving people of the world, even though we already grow more than enough to feed the world. The problem is that it is more profitable to feed grain to cattle for American cheeseburgers than it is to send bread to starving children in Africa who have no money to pay for it. If the WTO has its way, more food will be grown, yet more people will go hungry.

We've-Taken-Over also protects American subsidies on agricultural products. Farmers in developing nations cannot compete in a global market with American crops, but the advantage is still not going to the American farmer.

George Naylor, an Iowa farmer protesting in Cancun and leader of the National Family Farm Coalition, said, "U.S. farm policy does not benefit the U.S. family farms. It's just for the benefit of big exporting companies and the industrialization of the food system."

Don't think the WTO is content with total control over the planet's food supply. They want our water too. At the request of multi-national water corporations, the WTO has started work on the General Agreement on Trade in Services. This new plan makes it easy for profit-chasers to take control of water systems from local governments. They claim it is an unfair business practice not to take out some profits on a product as great as water.

In 2000, Cochabomba, Columbia became an example of the horrors of this water privatization as Bechtel (one of the weapons dealers invited to campus last week) used a subsidiary to take over the water system and gouge the Columbian people. You can read about their struggle against Bechtel at www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/timeline.html"

The WTO has no accountability to the public, yet they can make or break laws that concern how every human gets their food and water almost everywhere on the globe. I think it's time we get rid of this tyrannical shadow government and earn an independence day we can celebrate everywhere.

Adam Zmick is a junior in engineering. He is part of the Spirit of Seattle. He can be contacted at opinions@dailyillini.com">opinions@dailyillini.com">opinions@dailyillini.com.