In Guatemala, resistance from farmers and indigenous rights groups has led to the repeal of the controversial ‘Monsanto Law’ which would have authorised stricter property rights over new plant varieties. On Thursday, the Congress of Guatemala voted 117-111 in favour of repealing the “Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties”, which was supposed to come into effect on 26 September. The law has been widely rejected by farmers, indigenous groups and other sectors of civil society for threatening food security. Since last week, popular movements have blocked roads in several cities to call on lawmakers to dismiss the law. The repeal comes after the Constitutional Court, the country’s highest legal body, provisionally suspended the law’s entry into force in a decision taken on 29 August. Opponents say the law endangers the rights of indigenous peoples and farmers by granting transnational companies like Monsanto intellectual property rights over new plant varieties in Guatemala. Anyone who reproduces patented seeds without authorisation would be punished with four years in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 quetzales ($1,300). In a press conference, Antonio Gonzalez, member of the National Network in Defence of Food Sovereignty in Guatemala (REDSAG) and the Latin American Agroecological Movement, said that “this bill risks biodiversity, native seed varieties that are over 7,000 years old and that never required patents or labs, but have been able to sustain the lives of the Guatemalan people. We are speaking of privatising ancestral knowledge and one of the risks is the disappearance of the milpa system.” The approval of the law was a provision of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) with the United States, signed by Guatemala in 2005.