Over thousands of years since Jesus Leon's ancestors developed corn from a wispy grass, Mexican farmers have had an abiding relationship with the crop they call maize.

Near Leon's hometown in southern Mexico, a museum features ancient murals depicting humans being born of corn stalks. Patches of white, blue and red corn dot the mountainsides of the region.

But in just over a decade, the bond between many Mexican farmers and their favorite plant has been broken. An estimated 1 million farmers in rural Mexico have lost their livelihoods.

Passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and the Mexican government's end of protective tariffs triggered a flood of U.S. corn pouring south into the Mexican heartland. That corn - grown more cheaply in the United States with the benefit of taxpayer subsidies - sent prices in Mexico into a tailspin from which they have never recovered.

Corn farmers in the Midwest were big winners under NAFTA, which opened a dependable new market in Mexico that grew to nearly 6 million tons last year and could double within a decade, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

The plight of Mexican corn farmers could come back to bite the Midwest, in more ways than one. Many ex-farmers and their families have emigrated to Missouri and other rural areas that are hard-pressed to handle them. And the story of Mexican corn has provided a cautionary tale to other poor nations pressuring the United States to reduce its subsidies to farmers, something the Bush administration has already proposed.

So Midwestern corn growers, already struggling with low prices for their crops and record diesel fuel costs, aren't shedding too many tears for their Mexican counterparts.

Greg Guenther, who farms 730 acres near Belleville, Ill., observed that U.S. farmers face constant barriers in trying to sell around the world. At the moment, the United States is fighting with Mexico to avoid a 20 percent tax on corn syrup, which the World Trade Organization has ruled illegal.

"I don't want to sound cold-blooded about this, but what are the chances of those Mexican farmers ever getting beyond barely making a living? Maybe this is a good thing for them and will help the Mexican government focus on how they can have a better life," he said.

Some segments of Mexican agriculture have prospered post-NAFTA: high-tech corn farmers, who have increased Mexico's overall corn output; poultry and hog operations that prosper from cheap feed corn; and fruit and vegetable growers who now ship their produce to the United States.

There are uncalculated costs to free trade, on both sides of the border. With little or nothing to earn from selling their corn, many Mexican farmers began heading to the United States.

Other farmers found a dependable cash crop to replace corn: marijuana. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office, the amount of marijuana seized annually along the Mexican border has doubled to 1.1 million pounds since 1994, the year NAFTA took effect.

"It makes people very angry when they think about what has happened to our corn and all that it has meant for us. But it's invisible to the world. It's as though we don't exist," said Leon, 40.

When NAFTA was negotiated in the early 1990s, neither the Clinton administration nor the Mexican government suggested that some Mexican farmers would suffer as a result.

Yet, since the agreement went into effect, 900,000 farmers and other agriculture workers have lost their jobs, according the Mexican government. Private research organizations have placed the number as high as 1.3 million. Many have left the country.

Deborah Meyers, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, recalled negotiators making the opposite case when NAFTA was debated in the U.S. Congress in the early 1990s.

"The idea was that bringing greater growth to Mexico, fewer Mexicans would need to leave. Mexico said, `we want to export our tomatoes, not our people'. But, in fact, it led to greater migration," she said.

The problem for small farmers became apparent early when the Mexican government scrapped plans for a 15-year transition period for reducing tariffs on U.S. corn, instead removing most of the tariffs by 1996. As a result U.S. corn exports to Mexico spiked.

"It was a little gift to their friends, the guys who were doing the importing," Alejandro Nadal, an economics professor at the College of Mexico in Mexico City, said during an interview in his office.

The result, according to Nadal, was a 48 percent drop in Mexican corn prices, which triggered the upheaval in Mexico's farm sector that continues to this day.

Meanwhile, Mexico dismantled its price regulation agency, which was to have been phased out gradually, while reducing state support for agriculture.

In the United States, corn subsidies averaging $4.2 billion in recent years give farmers a leg up on the competition. Mexico gives smaller subsidies to its corn farmers - but farmers in half of its 32 states get no corn subsidies.

No wonder many farmers see a brighter future north of the border. And Mexico has little reason to complain about emigration: The $16 billion sent home from the United States last year from ex-farmers and others to their families has grown nearly three-fold since the mid-1990s and ranks second only to oil revenues in foreign currency Mexico takes in.

Luis de la Calle is a former Mexican government official who was instrumental in drafting NAFTA, and who still defends the agreement as a great benefit to his country.

He said freer trade was needed, in part to reduce the number of small farmers eking out a living in the countryside. "You cannot have 25 percent of the population trying to live off 5 percent of the gross national product," he said in Mexico City.

But instead of using subsidies to help the small farmers who could no longer make a living from the land, the Mexican government has given them to well-off farmers, he said.

Jon Doggett, the St. Louis-based National Corn Growers' vice president of public policy in Washington, said that critics of trade polices ought to compare the Mexican subsistence farmers' quality of life with the richer existence they can find in the United States.

He added, "Is that the best way to feed the world, by continuing to encourage subsistence style agriculture? While one of our farmers can feed hundreds of people, theirs can feed a family and maybe a few more people. And basically, our job is to feed people."

In Mexico, many in rural areas are mainly concerned about feeding themselves, a task that often becomes a challenge when the males in the family leave the farm.

At a recent church-sponsored gathering in Mexico City to talk over the corn crisis, Gaudencia Munoz, 52, said that her son had left the family farm for the United States because "there was no other way for him to live."

Manuela Pereda, 51, echoed other participants in saying that many in her community of Tuxtepec simply quit growing corn because prices are so low. With men gone, fields that get planted are tended by women and children, she said.

Yet 200 miles east in other fields of Oaxaca, several farmers said they planned to continue growing corn for their families despite the inability to sell any for profit.

Farmer Jesus Leon continues to plant his corn. But he also traveled in September to the United States, hoping to tell his story and influence future trade policy in ways that benefit small farmers.

Traveling in Missouri with the financial support of Maryknoll, a Catholic mission movement, and Catholic Relief Charities, Leon even visited the boyhood home of Mark Twain in Hannibal. In nearby Palmyra, Mo., he found kindred spirits at the farm of Lowell and Marcia Schachtsiek during a gathering arranged on his behalf by the Missouri Farmers Union, an advocacy group for family farmers.

Lowell Schachtsiek said later that many U.S. farmers, too, had been driven off the land by plummeting corn prices that recently reached a modern low of $1.50 a bushel. "People are paying more for a bottle of water than a bushel of corn," said Schachtsiek, 63.

As a result of the meetings in Missouri and elsewhere, U.S. farmers agreed to take part in a gathering with their Mexican counterparts with hopes of changing policies in both countries. No date has been set.

Eventually, Leon journeyed to Washington, where he met with staff representing 15 members of Congress. They perked up when he Leon got to the part about how problems in Mexico affect congressional districts in the United States.

"There has been an abandonment of the countryside and a new migration of people, some to our cities. But many are coming here to the United States," he said.

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