The El Barzon
debtors’ alliance, which
originated in the state of
Jalisco, is now a
nationwide movement.
A relentless media
campaign has kept its
cause in the public eye.
In early spring, 1993, a group of small farmers and
rural-commune (ejido) members in the town of
Autldn, in the west coast state of Jalisco, got
together to defend themselves against the local banks
that were preparing to repossess their land. They took
the name El Barz6n to demonstrate to the community
that there is strength in a united front, a barz6n being the
piece of steel, wood or leather which joins traditional
plows to teams of mules or a tractor.
This debtors’ alliance quickly spread throughout the
state, and in August, about 500 barzonistas attracted
national attention by walking or driving their tractors
onto the main plaza in Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital, and
announcing that they had come to “negotiate with the
authorities.” The authorities refused to receive them, so
the barzonistas stepped up the pace of their protest, using
their tractors to block the highway between Guadalajara
and Chapala, home to a large U.S colony. At the same
time, other members of the movement traveled up to the
U.S. border to carry out a similar blockade on the inter-
national bridge between Ciudad Juirez and El Paso.
In November of the same year, their pleas for debt
relief still unheeded, the barzonistas aimed their tractors
southward, toward Mexico City. Since the date of the protest was close to that of the unveiling of the ruling party’s presidential candidate, fed- eral authorities stopped the barzonistas while they were still a day away from the capital and arrested their leaders, claiming violation of fed- eral highway regulations. Although the organiz- ers of the march were soon released on bail, the “nto the tractors never reached Mexico City. Since then, El Barz6n has rapidly become a
national movement. The group has maintained a relent-
less publicity campaign to keep its cause ever in the pub-
lic eye, staging sit-ins in municipal palaces, courtrooms,
bank offices, manufacturing plants and other key
locales. The barzonistas have been relatively well-
treated by the Mexican federal authorities-a sharp con-
trast to the cold shoulder which human rights advocates,
unionists and indigenous leaders have received from the
past few administrations. The reason for this difference
in attitude is relatively simple: the barzonistas are gen-
erally well-educated, well-connected, and until recently,
fairly prosperous.
In addition, the barzonistas know Mexican law better
than most. They have engaged the services of nearly 500
Mexican lawyers and presently have a total of 350,000
cases pending in the courts. Estimates of the size of the
organizations under the Barz6n umbrella vary between
500,000 and a million members. Not surprisingly, given
the class origins of most barzonistas, many of these
groups are located in states now governed by the center-
right opposition National Action Party (PAN).
The group’s basic argument hasn’t changed since its
first appearance, when members protested against the
sudden opening of Mexico’s border to international
trade of all kinds, including agricultural products. This,
they argued, placed Mexican farmers in direct competi-
28NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEXICO
tion with U.S. farmers who enjoyed federal subsidies for
the production of grains and milk, while they, along with
other Mexican producers, were forced to shoulder finan-
cial costs five to ten times higher than those paid in the
United States.
he first Barz6n group was organized by
Maximiano Barbosa, a young militant of the rul-
ing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who
was born in the village of Casimiro Castillo, 25 miles
from Autlin. Barbosa used to cultivate sugar cane, corn
and about 500 acres of watermelon and cantaloupe for
export to the United States. When the current economic
crisis rolled over Mexico, the squeeze between rising
fuel, water and fertilizer prices on the one hand, and
government-controlled sugar cane and corn prices on
the other, cost him dearly. He sold off various plots of
land, one by one, to settle his accounts with the banks.
When a series of torrential rains caused by the El Niho
current washed out all his crops in early 1993 and
reduced him to his last and original farm, Barbosa
became an overnight militant and the organizer of a new
civic movement. Considered by his friends to be a nat-
ural political leader and by his enemies an opportunist,
Barbosa, now 36, and his followers have managed to
force the banks to develop more tolerant policies regard-
ing overdue debts.
All in all, the barzonistas say that through court
action, they have saved nearly 12,000 properties from
the auctioneer’s gavel. Barbosa ran for federal deputy in
his district on the PRI ballot, but did not win because of
a lack of backing from the party hierarchy. Since that
campaign, he has retreated from the public eye, and the
barzonista torch has passed on to Juan Jos6 Quirino, a
35-year old economist from Zacatecas who has
recruited merchants, manufacturers and service compa-
nies into the fold.
Quirino is of a very different political persuasion than
Barbosa, being a member of the center-left Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD). Yet he could hardly be
called a working man who has risen within the ranks.
Quirino has two master’s degrees and owns an English-
language school in Zacatecas, in addition to holding 500
acres which he still farms. Before his business dealings
began to wind down, he also traded in grains, fertilizers, cheese and cattle, interests which he says he can no
longer afford to pursue, since he has exhausted his
working capital and still owes the banks some $300,000.
In spite of his declining fortunes, it was Quirino, not
Barbosa, who made it into Mexico City’s big leagues.
He led a big barzonista group to the main entrance of
the Mexican Senate building last April, where he suc-
cessfully attacked a stringent new debtors’ law and
forced the legislators to rewrite it. Significantly, he car-
ried off his campaign with no violent encounters.
In addition to the groups organized by Barbosa and
Quirino, other groups have emerged that also call them-
selves barzonista and focus on the problems of credit-
card holders, small restaurant owners and other debtors.
The Barz6n movement, in fact, is described by some as
a catchall organization for persons with any kind of
financial grievance involving the banks or the federal,
state and municipal governments.
The movement has become so effective that it has pre-
vented the auction of a number of properties scheduled
to be repossessed by the banks simply by sending the
word around that Barz6n was opposed to the foreclo-
sure. In most cases, prospective buyers have backed off.
Juan Figueroa, national secretary of the organization,
says he has written a proposal for a new law which
would penalize the banks on counts of usury if they
repossess more property than they can use for their own
operations. (Mexican law defines usury as charging
interest on interest.)
Figueroa’s proposal is not likely to prosper in the
Mexican Congress, but it may serve to pressure for more
solutions to Mexico’s widespread debt problems.
Although official government programs have provided
solutions and long-term rescheduling of the debts of
more than five million people, experts estimate that 50%
of the nation’s credit problems are still hanging fire. So
long as this continues to be the case, the role of El
Barz6n can only grow.
At year’s end, El Barz6n was showing signs of insti-
tutional maturity. The group has formed a youth affil-
iate to train the upcoming generation, and it was talk-
ing about forming its own bank. El Barz6n was also
moving onto new political terrain when it demanded
the partition and return to ejidos of over a million
acres which it claims the banks took over during the
ongoing internal debt crisis. On November 12, the
group presented formal accusations of criminal negli-
gence against former President Carlos Salinas and his
finance minister, Pedro Aspe. El Barz6n alleges that
associates of high government officials engaged in
illicit enrichment during the process of privatization
of the country’s banking system.
The movement has smoothed over some of its rough
edges, and it is in the process of forming political
alliances with like-minded groups, and perhaps moving
a bit toward the left. Last summer, Quirino announced
that his Barz6n group was joining forces with the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation (ELZN) of
Chiapas to establish a democratic front opposed to
Mexico’s current neoliberal economic model. Although
political analysts doubt that the barzonistas are
presently capable of forming a new political party, they
say there is little doubt that the group will continue to
be highly influential in Mexican politics in the coming
years.
