While the cri- sis in Mex-
ico is not
new, until the dawn of
1994 it had been
extremely well hidden.
A well-financed cam-
paign had proclaimed
the country ready to
join the ranks of the
advanced industrial
nations, and the offi-
cial criers were not
only Mexican. Pundits
in Washington were
joined by colleagues in
Paris and Geneva to
usher the nation into
the hallowed circle of
well-behaved and
wealthy nations, the
GATT, NAFTA, and
now the OECD. 1 But
in Mexico, the claims
that global integration
will bring prosperity
ring hollow for a large
and growing segment
David Barkin is currently
senior fellow at the Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy,
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He is on leave as professor
of economics at the UAM-
Xochimilco, Mexico City.
Lorracor oe Lana (Lane Lurueri, Karael iunno, i , i’zL. Linocut on paper, 11 1/2x 18 1/2″.
of people whose strug-
gle to survive is be-
coming more desper-
ate-and perhaps even
more hopeless-as the
well-publicized recov-
ery of recent years
produces a cornucopia
that only feeds a few
Mexicans and their
designated foreign
partners. This polar-
ized reality encom-
passes all parts of the
country and all dimen-
sions of society: local
cultures and fiefdoms,
regional marketplaces,
national culture, and
internationalized con-
sumption. The acceler-
ating process of inter-
national economic
integration is weaving
urban and rural differ-
ences into a single bat-
tleground of conflict-
ing interests, thrusting
modern systems into
traditional backwaters,
and leaving important
parts of Mexican soci-
ety unprepared to com- nPte in an fcnnnnmic
and social environ-
ment that offers fewer, though
more attractive rewards to a small
elite.
In rural Mexico, the battle lines,
now so sharply drawn, can proba-
bly be traced to the mid-1960s.
This was the period when the
country finally proclaimed itself
self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs,
an historic achievement made
possible by the successful appli-
cation of the agrarian-reform pro-
gram put in place in the 1930s.
This land reform, based on the
breaking up of the colonial
hacienda system, was the result of
one of the most important
demands of the Mexican Revolu-
tion of 1910 to 1917, the redistri-
bution of land-written into Arti-
cle 27 of the 1917 Constitution,
A highly
capitalized
commercial
agricultural sector
transformed Mexico
into an important
participant in the
international market
for fruits and
vegetables.
but only effectively implemented during the presiden-
cy of Lizaro Cdrdenas, from 1934 to 1940. The land
reform redistributed hacienda land by creating rural
communities-ejidos-whose members could work
the land individually or collectively, depending on
political circumstances. Although the community
members-ejidatarios-did not have the right to sell,
rent or mortgage the land, their parcels were consid-
ered to be private property, to work as they pleased
within the guidelines established by the community
itself.
Post-Cdrdenas administrations accorded less atten-
tion to this program and did not finance any significant
technical assistance for these communities. The stimu-
lus of having their own land to work was sufficient,
however, to encourage most farmers to dramatically
improve their productive conditions. Contrary to what
many experts predicted, these poor, unschooled peas-
ants were able to increase the productivity of their
lands at an average annual rate of more than 3% fol-
lowing the redistribution of the 1930s, doubling their
meager yields to more than 1.2 tons per hectare by
1960.2 The system put in place by Cardenismo
encouraged the peasants to achieve substantial
improvements in productivity by the back-breaking
application of inherited cultivation practices, together
with the fruits of local experimentation with seeds,
fertilizers, and soil and water conservation techniques.
Despite this encouragement, however, the peasants
were condemned to poverty by a rigid system of state
control of credit and by the prices of agricultural
inputs and products.
The import-substitution industrialization scheme of
the post-Cdrdenas period was also part of the develop-
ment strategy. By producing consumer
goods for the elite and more popular
items for the masses, it contributed to
general welfare by creating a rapidly
growing demand for labor at a time
when migration from the countryside
was just beginning. The gains were
real, as the purchasing power of mini-
mum wages increased almost five-fold
from a post-war low in 1946 to its
apogee in 1976, while workers and
peasants were able to claim an increas-
ing share of national income, rising
from 25% to 37% in the same period.
Further improving the lot of workers
and peasants, the populist state was
offering important educational oppor-
tunities and medical care to virtually
every segment of society.
Agricultural development over the
half century following Cirdenas’
reforms created a highly polarized rural society. Most
ejidatarios were relegated to their traditional cultiva-
tion systems, producing maize and beans and a variety
of other products for domestic consumption. They
were highly constrained by an inefficient and corrupt
federal bureaucracy, and unable to introduce modern
farming systems or new crops for lack of credit or
capital. Meanwhile, a highly capitalized commercial
agricultural sector emerged as a result of substantial
public investments in irrigation, rural road networks,
agricultural research, production of high-yielding vari-
eties of seed, and new cropping systems. Financed by
generous agricultural credit-subsidy programs, and
encouraged through a broad array of private and pub-
lic incentives, these commercial farmers forged a new
economy in the areas in which they operated, quickly
transforming Mexico into an important participant in
the international market for fruits and vegetables as
well as for cattle.
In most of the country, the rural bourgeoisie chan-
neled its struggle to control the countryside through
the public-investment program. Multi-purpose river
basin development schemes, strategically placed
throughout the country, opened up vast territories for
commercial cultivation of crops destined for a new
animal-feed industry and nascent fruit and vegetable
markets in the United States, and later in Europe and
Japan. With their new products and markets, the neo-
latifundistas, as they were labeled by Mexican acade-
mics, began a cumulative process of investment and
social differentiation that facilitated new forms of
social control in the countryside. Social control was
now imposed by the marketplace and enforced by a
racist caste structure that made it more difficult for an
NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30REPORT ON MEXICO
indigenous and mestizo peas-
antry to participate in the mod-
ernization of rural Mexico.
Nowhere were these obstacles
to progress more imposing than
in the regions inhabited by the
nation’s many indigenous peo-
ples. Whether in the colorful and
well-known communities in the
tourist centers among the
Pure’hpecha of Michoacin, the
Mayas of Yucatan, the Mixtecs
and Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the
Tzotziles and Tzetzales of Chia-
pas, or in the less accessible terri-
tories of dozens of other ethnic
groups, the local pattern of
cacique control was reinforced
by draconian systems of official
“justice” and police control, sup-
plemented where necessary by Workers load freshly ha
the arbitrary exercise of military near lxmiquilpum, Mexi
force, sometimes camouflaged by
a real or invented search for drugs. Official programs
for local development, together with private conces-
sions for the exploitation of natural resources, com-
bined to threaten the traditional systems of resource
management with a logic and pattern of extraction fre-
quently incompatible with the social needs and eco-
logical possibilities of the area. These outside pres-
sures on resources were exacerbated by tensions
created by growing population and poverty that often
forced the communities to violate their own norms of
resource conservation. As a result, indigenous com-
munities and their regions were commonly even more
devastated than other regions of the country in the
name of economic progress and survival.
By 1990, rural development had left more than half
the country’s total rural area and its cultivated land to
ejidatarios, colonists, and indigenous communities.
The more than three million people in these commu-
nities, who make up the “social sector” in Mexican
agriculture, were a major factor contributing to the
country’s political stability. As recently as 1990, they
accounted for more than one half (55%) of the total
domestic maize production, and controlled 20 million
hectares (49 million acres) of arable land-more than
half the total, though much of it of marginal quality. 3
They are now engaged in an increasingly difficult
struggle to survive, as the neoliberal policies of mod-
ernization through international economic integration
threaten their very existence. With the uprising in
Chiapas, Mexico was rudely reminded that many
groups in rural society had been permitted to partici-
pate neither in the fruits of the revolution nor in the
rv coc
benefits of more recent material
progress.
he Mexican government
has for half a century chan-
neled resources into the
physical and institutional infra-
structure necessary to consolidate
the development of a modern
rural sector. This deliberate role
began as early as 1943, when the
government joined with interna-
tional groups to facilitate the
development of what would
become an imposing global struc-
ture of research institutions creat-
ing and encouraging the “green
revolution.” Behind this seem-
ingly benign label, “naive” for-
eign scientists decided that tradi-
,ested garlic in a field tional research institutions in
Mexico were a brake to progress.
So they collaborated with others,
with more venal motives, to terminate programs that
were helping dry-land beneficiaries of land-distribu-
tion programs.
In the ensuing decades, rural policies became more
complex but their objectives remained the same: to
promote newer, higher-valued crops cultivated by a
group of better-schooled farmers. The original pro-
gram to develop dwarf wheat varieties, cultivated
under irrigated conditions in the northwest, was
acclaimed a success by 1960 and its group leader, Nor-
man Borlaug, was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize
for feeding the hungry. Little concern, however, was
expressed for the traditional wheat farmers who groped
for new ways to eke out a living as their traditional
seeds, sown in rain-fed lands in the central plateau,
could not compete. These displaced farmers were the
forerunners of large contingents of small-scale
landowners who became contract producers and day
laborers for a new agroindustrial complex serving
domestic and transnational interests. With declining
real incomes and fewer job opportunities, internal and
international migration became a significant feature of
Mexican life. As the men left in search of wage
incomes, women were obliged to join the wage-labor
force in increasing numbers, exposing themselves and
their children to heretofore unknown health risks asso-
ciated with the use of pesticides and sewage water in
irrigation and a wide variety of hazards in other occu-
pations.
The new production systems, requiring the intensive
use of irrigation and agrochemicals, have had environ-
mental effects that are still being sorted out. Over-irri-
VOL XXVIIi, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 199431 VOL XXVIII, NO 1 JULY/AUGUST 1994 31REPORT ON MEXICO
gation has initiated a destructive
cycle of salinization, while the use It is the g of petrochemical fertilizers and pes-
ticides has produced a good deal of inten
water and land contamination. encou
The impoverishment of the peas-
antry heightened with the imposi- emig tion-beginning in 1984-of neolib-
eral programs of economic of mo
stabilization. At first, the adminis- 13 milli tration of President Miguel De la
Madrid channeled resources to pro- from the ducers of export crops, abandoning
its commitment to food self-suffi- peol:
ciency. Although it modified this governme policy later in the 1980s, when annu-
al food imports rose to an alarming “redunc
$5 billion and the popular outcry for blocking change became widespread, supports
for maize and beans were channeled rural I mainly to the nation’s richer farmers,
working in the irrigation districts
and the fertile plains of the north, rather than to the
peasant farmers who traditionally sowed these crops
on rain-fed lands. By the time the Administration
announced the decision to negotiate NAFTA, howev-
er, there was an explicit commitment to eradicate the
traditional forms of cultivation of basic food crops in
rain-fed areas. In fact, the present Unaer-Secretary of
Agriculture, Luis T611ez, has stated unequivocally that
it is the government’s intention to encourage the emi-
gration of more than 13 million people from the rural
areas during the remaining years of this decade, peo-
ple who not only were “redundant,” but were actually
preventing progress in rural Mexico. In the meantime, however, in 1993 a transitional income-support pro-
gram, Procampo, was substituted for the traditional
price supports, as a way of accommodating popular
demands for assistance with international pressures
against subsidies.
In early 1992, a constitutional reform of Article 27
was promulgated that paved the way for a reorganiza-
tion of land tenure and the introduction of corporate
capital into farming. Its goal was to modernize rural
production in a way that a corrupt and underfinanced
bureaucracy could not. By permitting ejidal title hold-
ers to enter into a wide variety of commercial con-
tracts, the private sector is expected to finance land
improvements and cultivation. The new program
probably will be very effective in pushing a select
group of farmers into export production and facilitat-
ing urban expansion. The remaining millions of farm-
ers, whose plots are too small and/or whose land is of
marginal quality, will be isolated from the institutional
and financial supports that allowed them to continue to
t
r
r
r
r
r
p
N
farm in the face of unfavorable mar-
vernment’s ket conditions. To many thoughtful
critics, the country can ill afford the
ion to effects of a narrowly defined pro-
age the gram like the one presently being implemented. 4 The environmental,
*ation political and social problems that
another massive rural-urban migra- “e than tion would occasion are beyond the
n people capabilities of the system to man-
age.
ural areas, Yet the present economic pro-
gram of modernization and integra- tion offers the prospect of a bright
it feels are future for a small but significant
segment of the population. 5 Foreign
ant” and investment will flow into the coun-
try to create numerous new enter-
>rogress in prises, both in agriculture and
lexico. industry. This new investment will
install the most modern work
“processes and produce high-valued
products for the international markets. We might even
anticipate that part of this production will be directed
to local markets where it will drive out less modern
producers unable to compete, either because of low
productivity, inadequate capitalization, or the inability
to survive the intense marketing battles. Local produc-
ers throughout the country are already beginning to
enter into various kinds of production agreements with
Mexican and foreign interests to produce under con-
tract for export and local specialty markets, accelerat-
ing a process that was evident 30 years ago.
The winning groups will be dispersed throughout
rural Mexico. They will be concentrated in the northern
irrigation districts, but many investors will choose to
improve productive infrastructure in other parts of the
country in order to get around the labor bottlenecks that
frequently occur in the North. Furthermore, technologi-
cal advances will offer opportunities for other farmers
to take advantage of special programs to increase pro-
ductivity in basic food-producing sectors. Recent
advances in the achievement of food self-sufficiency,
for example, are based on important advances in yields,
resulting from the use of new seed varieties and agro-
chemicals. This is evidence of the official decision to
promote domestic food production without tying it to
the traditional producing groups who, in the official
view, would hold back the pace of modernization.
Similarly, for those organized groups of ejidos will-
ing to accept production agreements with the private
sector, generous flows of resources will be available to
promote technological change in which members of
the “social sector” can participate. It is evident, how-
ever, that these joint ventures are less attractive to
32 NAL1A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEXICO
investors and more difficult to
manage than originally imagined;
the showcase collaboration
between an ejido and the transna-
tional food conglomerate
GAMESA in the northeastern
part of the country was recently
dismantled because of disagree-
ments about the way to account
for investments and to distribute
profits. 6 Past experience also sug-
gests that private investors are
generally unwilling to sustain
long-term commitments as mar-
ket, production and technological
conditions change. Because of
the lack of such a commitment,
most foreign investors are
unwilling to contribute to the
conservation activities that-for
local farmers everywhere-are
normally a part of the production
process. This lack of long-term
A recent arrival from the countryside plays an accordion for coins outside a new Kentucky Fried Chicken in Mexico City.
commitment has ominous consequences for the
preservation of natural resources.
There is no doubt that the new, more flexible institu-
tional structure will offer profitable opportunities for
important groups of farmers. The most significant
development in this regard is the increase in organiz-
ing efforts by the many regional peasant groups who,
in turn, are members of national and provincial coali-
tions. The new negotiating strategy of the agriculture
ministry clearly demonstrates its preference for deal-
ing directly with the coalitions, rather than with indi-
vidual producer groups. Although the producers’
groups are presently experiencing substantial difficul-
ties in obtaining financing, it seems obvious that these
obstacles will be reduced through the complex politi-
cal negotiations that the NAFTA process stimulated. 7
This expansion of the arena for negotiation, and the
active participation of local groups in complex discus-
sions about the way in which they will be included in
the modernization-integration process, offers an
important new channel for well-organized regional
coalitions to attempt to obtain privileged access to
new productive opportunities in the neoliberal envi-
ronment. 8
Afew years ago, I proposed a “war economy” as
a complementary strategy for rural develop-
ment. 9 Building on the experience of Great
Britain during World War II, this strategy suggests
that a concerted effort to mobilize idle domestic
capacity for food production among small-scale pro-
ducers in Mexico would contribute to stimulating the
growth of the domestic market for
consumer goods by the country’s
workers and peasants. The simu-
lation exercises conducted in con-
junction with this proposal
demonstrated the substantial link-
age effects of this approach in
generating income and new
employment opportunities
throughout the economy.1 0 The
peasant-based food self-sufficien-
cy strategy offered by this propos-
al, however, now seems insuffi-
cient, in light of the further
intensification of the official
assault against peasants in rain-
fed agricultural areas. Because of
important shifts in the world mar-
ket, occasioned by the competi-
tion to subsidize food exports
among the advanced industrial
countries, basic food production
itself has been devalued; it no
longer can offer a viable option for economic
advancement for most people in rural Mexico. In the
face of the narrowly focused model of industrial mod-
ernization, there is a critical need for a more diversi-
fied productive base, taking advantage of abundant
and varied natural resources and the enormous reserve
of inherited knowledge stemming from Mexico’s cul-
tural diversity. Such an approach requires programs to
productively employ a significant part of Mexico’s
population that still struggles to remain in the country-
side. ”
This approach must offer a new development strate-
gy that explicitly redresses the inherited imbalance
between rural and urban areas. In one way or another,
this requires a recognition of the importance of rural
society for national-and urban-welfare. The histori-
cal pattern of discrimination against rural producers
imposes an unacceptably heavy burden on society as a
whole. To reverse this pattern, ways must be found to
help rural communities diversify their economies, and
to rebuild their patterns of diversified production
which have long been an integral part of their survival
strategies. In this new context, traditional food pro-
duction will become one of a number of enterprises in
which peasant communities engage as part of their
overall strategy to survive, to improve their standard
of living, and to defend their social and cultural
integrity. In the new-world process of economic inte-
gration, they must find additional productive activities
as well as forms of paid employment that offer greater
income, because food production alone will no longer
allow them to live.
VOL XXVIII, No 1 JuLYIAuGusT 1994 33 VOL XXVIII, No 1 JuLY/AuGusT 1994 33REPORT ON MEXICO
In Mexico, one way to begin this
process is to identify small projects
that might help individual communi- Rural co
ties and regional groups use the must find
resources they have, in as creative and must find
productive a way as possible. Small- productive scale projects, for instance, are under-
way involving groups who can con- as well
tribute to the essential task of of paid er
protecting endangered species as a
way of generating additional incomes becau in traditional food-producing commu-
nities. The incomes generated by product
using conservation funds to employ will no lo local people and to construct appro-
priate tourist facilities to stimulate them
visitors will allow rural communities
to strengthen important environmental
programs while at the same time
diversifying their traditional produc-
tive activities as a means of defending their communi-
ties. Two examples of communities working to protect
endangered species are in nesting areas of the
Monarch butterfly and the marine turtle.
A similar approach involves an abandoned “geyser”
which is spewing brine over the lands of a Michoacin
commercial farming community. The community is
thinking about how to transform this “nuisance” into
something productive. The “geyser” was created by
the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) in its
search for exploitable geothermal resources, but the
engineers did not consider it important enough to har-
ness for power generation. So, for more than a quarter
century it has simply been cordoned off and left to
contaminate the land. A proposal is being developed
to enable the community to participate directly in the
transformation of the site into a tourist attraction, a
spa, a training area for sporting activities, and even a
showplace for alternative energy sources. This is a
complex activity, because the community requires
outside assistance to develop a proposal and to deter-
mine its feasibility, and the CFE must acknowledge
that it has abandoned the geyser and give the land
back to the community. Another example, also in
Michoacin, involves a group attempting to create an
agroindustrial park powered with geothermal energy,
as part of a plan to diversify rural production and to
reduce losses from spoilage and inadequate marketing
channels.
These are examples of the ways in which people are
attempting to confront the growing imbalance between
rural and urban development, and the resulting polar-
ization in the countryside. They offer ways in which
people can begin to use the natural resources at hand
to protect not only the resources themselves but the
m
re
a
n
s
io
n
t
very economic viability and social
integrity of communities whose exis-
munities tence is in question. The three cases
dd itional cited above are only examples of approaches that might encourage oth-
activities ers to look for different projects with
the same goal: to diversify the pro-
s forms ductive base so that rural communi-
ployment, ties can continue to exist, even to
thrive, and to continue to produce
e food food as part of a broader strategy for rural development. This strategy n alone draws part of its inspiration from the
ger allow need to protect the rich heritage of
natural diversity that is so important
o live. in Mexico, using strategies that also
encourage the preservation of the
extraordinary reserve of cultural
diversity that has managed to survive
in spite of the systematic attack to
which it has been subjected during the past centuries. 12
Clearly, the economies of North America are inte-
grating. For Mexico, this integration will mean more
trade and some new jobs; production will continue to
increase in certain privileged sectors, like automobiles
and consumer products for export. Traditional indus-
tries, if left to themselves, will continue to wither with
a further weakening of the labor market, increasing
social polarization. At the same time, with the “shrink-
ing” of the public sector, there are fewer institutions
prepared to deal with the problems that the neoliberal
strategy is creating and with the people that it is leav-
ing behind. The salinista modernization strategy is
based on the presumption that foreign investors will
bring sufficient resources to Mexico to pay to correct
the problems, but this seems like a major gamble.
Policymakers today are unwilling to “darle tiempo
al tiempo”-give time a chance, as the popular Mexi-
can expression has it-to allow society to adjust to the
process of international integration that is linking
nations and cultures. They forget the lesson of another
popular saying: “simply by waking up earlier, the sun
won’t rise sooner” (“No por mucho madrugar,
amanece mdcs temprano”). That is, Mexico-the coun-
try, its people, its culture-will not magically change
its course, its very essence, simply because the Presi-
dent orders its industrial structure modified, its
resources sold or leased, or foreign goods imported on
a massive scale. The country is beginning to realize
the nature of the changes underway, though it is still
too soon to predict the modifications that people will
demand. It is likely, however, that the neoliberal
dreams of today’s ruling elites will not survive the
vigorous rejection of Mexico’s diverse, but impover-
ished peoples.
search for these solutions is the basis for the present research
agenda of the author and several colleagues. In one of Bonfil’s
last articles (in Ojarasca, April, 1992, No. 7), he vividly details the
problems created by the confrontation between the trend
towards neoliberal globalization and the possibility, indeed the
necessity, of a different, more pluralistic world, if humanity and
the earth itself are to survive. This current of thought has
become increasingly influential in Mexico and elsewhere in the
Third World, where people of many different persuasions and
approaches have adopted this approach in social analysis, action
programs, and political platforms.
12. For a discussion of the role of cultural diversity in world develop-
ment, and the threats that the internationalization of the econo-
my represents for both nature and people, see Bonfil, Mexico
Profundo, with regard to Mexico, and Eric Wolf’s different
approach in Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley,
California: University of California, 1982).
Menu
