The terrain on which the indigenous struggle
has been cultivated is nothing more complex than the extreme poverty
which Salinas’ National Solidarity Program has been incapable of
mitigating. The Chiapas insurrection is an “armed critique”
of the government’s social policy.
BY JULIO MOGUEL
When Carlos Salinas de Gortari became presi-
dent in 1988, he announced a plan for a new
war on poverty, one that would reach out to
the 48% of the Mexican population then classified as
poor, and especially to the 19% classified as extremely
poor, or indigent. Salinas’ plan became the National
Solidarity Program (Pronasol). The Solidarity program
captured the imagination of many Mexican progres-
sives because it was also meant to respect and encour-
age community initiative, participation and responsi-
bility in the planning and administration of the
program. It was meant, in short, to transform Mexico’s
authoritarian state-society relations. Six years later, as
Salinas prepares-he hopes-to transfer power to his
designated successor, it is clear that the program has
fallen far short of its goals.
At his inauguration, Salinas promised that Pronasol
would confront poverty and eradicate it. While the
program’s budget grew from $547 million in 1989 to
$2.54 billion in 1993, we are not speaking here of
extraordinary amounts of money. The amount spent
between 1989 and 1991 was less than the amount
spent between 1980 and 1982 in anti-poverty activity.
If we divide the total investment in Pronasol into the
official number of the Mexican poor (40.3 million
people), it works out to $53 per year, or 15 cents per
day, per person. In the case of Chiapas-the poorest
state in the republic-where around 70% of the popu-
lation, or 2,247,347 chiapanecos fall below the official
Julio Moguel is a member of the economics faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and is the coordinator of the supplement “La Jornada del Campo” of the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
poverty line, Pronasol funds amount to 13 cents a day
for each one of them. This represents about one eighth
of what the World Bank considers to be the line of
absolute poverty in Mexico-about three new pesos
(one dollar) a day-and about one seventieth of what
the country’s National Population Council (Conapo)
considers necessary to satisfy the basic needs of a
family.
In Mexico, the reality of poverty is impressive.
Official statistics reveal that 40.3 million Mexicans
(about half the population) can be classified as poor,
and that 17.3 million of these live in indigency. And
the problem is approaching disastrous dimensions. In
1989, the Consultative Council of Pronasol calculated
that without a program of income redistribution, a
sustained 3% rate of economic growth would lift the
poorest 10% of the population out of poverty in 64
years; the next poorest 10% would have to wait 33
years to satisfy their basic needs; the following 10%
would have to wait 21 years, and the next 10%, 10
years.
The rural drama, even as reflected by official
sources, is particularly eloquent, especially in the face
of Salinas’ inauguration pledge to “eradicate extreme
poverty.” Between 1984 and 1989, extreme poverty in
urban areas grew in absolute numbers from 4.3 to 6.5
million people, and then declined to 4.8 million by
1992. No such decline occurred in the Mexican coun-
tryside, where extreme poverty grew in absolute num-
bers before and after the existence of Pronasol.
Between 1984 and 1989, the number of indigents grew
by 1.7 million. Between 1989 and 1992, yet another
400,000 joined the ranks of the extreme poor. In sum,
neoliberal policy applied during the cycle 1984-1992
38NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEXICO
produced more than 2 million new poor people in the
countryside.
Other data show a process of growing impoverish-
ment among the social sectors to which most Mexi-
cans belong, within a framework of growing polariza-
tion. Between 1982 and 1991, salaries paid to laborers
in manufacturing industries lost 36% of their purchas-
ing power. The real wages of white-collar workers in
those same industries fell 22%, and the value of social
services fell 23%. But the hardest hit lived in the
countryside. Average real wages paid to agricultural
workers fell 51% over that same period. At the same
time, the gap between rich and poor was colossal. In
1990, just over 2% of the Mexican population
received 78.55% of the national income.
On the first of January, 1994, Mexico awakened
to the news that a group of heavily armed
indigenous rebels in the state of Chiapas had
assaulted and seized half a dozen district capitals,
among them San Crist6bal de las Casas. Two days
later, the country’s astonishment was replaced by the
general conviction that in a few short hours, some-
thing truly significant had happened. In a small corner
of southeastern Mexico, all the certainties and values
of a long phase of social peace and political stability
crumbled.
The terrain on which this process of indigenous
struggle had been cultivated over the past ten years
was nothing more complex than poverty, or to be
more precise, an extreme poverty which neoliberal
policies were incapable of mitigating. The Chiapas
insurrection was thus converted into an “armed cri-
tique” of the social programs of the Salinas Adminis-
A peasant family on the road in
Altamirano,
Chiapas.
tration, particularly Pronasol. The program was not
only incapable of improving the abysmal social situa-
tion of the least well-off, but it also proved unable to
achieve its genuine-though never explicit-objective
of neutralizing and containing the discontent generat-
ed by the application of structural-adjustment policies.
Most of the state’s more than three million people
suffer dramatic inadequacies in their living conditions.
Of all the dwellings in the state, 43% have no indoor
plumbing, 35% lack electricity, 50% have dirt floors,
and 74% are classified as overcrowded. Eighty percent
of the employed population earns an income of less
than two minimum wages-placing them below the
official poverty line. Of the population over the age of
15, 30% is illiterate and 62% never completed primary
school. Using these indicators to construct an index of
marginalization, Conapo ranks Chiapas the poorest
state in Mexico, followed by five other states with
“very high” indices of marginalization: Oaxaca, Guer-
rero, Hidalgo, Vera Cruz and Puebla.
Chiapaneca society is not only the most backward
in the country, it also has the highest levels of inequal-
ity and discrimination. In the area of the peasant insur-
rection, only 667 individuals own 817,400 acres,
which means on the average each one holds about
12,251 acres. In contrast, the region’s communally
held property amounts to only 1.5 million acres.
The Chiapas “armed critique” of Salinas’ social
policy is not exclusively-nor even fundamentally-
about the amount of resources provided. As in sandy
soil, the waters of Pronasol were lost the moment that
they were poured. Neither does the “critique” ques-
tion the lack of intelligence and insight brought to
bear in this war on poverty. The problem lies with the
VOL XXVIII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1994
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39REPORT ON MEXICO
strategy itself. Anti-poverty policies akin to Pronasol
have been developed and promoted by important
international organisms-particularly the World
Bank-throughout Latin America over the past eight
years. Applied simultaneously with the neoliberal
policies of adjustment, they constitute an indispensi-
ble component of that process. The first program of
this type was Bolivia’s Social Emergency Fund
(FSE), which was created at the
beginning of the 1980s with the
firm support of the World Bank.
Since then, similar funds have
been formed in at least ten coun-
tries in Latin America, among
them, Pronasol in Mexico.
These new programs are differ-
ent from the older forms of state
intervention. They were de-
signed, to begin with, to neutral-
ize or compensate for the most
detrimental social effects of the
policies of economic adjust-
ment-particularly the sharp
declines in real wages. They then
became important instruments of
long-term “structural change.” In
neither the short nor the long
term were these programs intend-
ed to “eradicate poverty.” Rather,
they were holding actions,
designed to make the bitter medi-
cine of adjustment policies less
painful. Neoliberal reforms were
to redynamize the economy, so th
on, the tasks of generating the co
and social justice could be undertal
These anti-poverty programs
impact on the macro variables of p
or relative prices-and, therefore,
ments of redistribution. They woul
tered accumulation of capital-th
force of the economy-at risk by
vate riches. They were not evali
their ability to eradicate poverty,
assuage the growing misery wh
unmanageable and politically dang
The “design” or “format” of th
grams was therefore fundamentall
beginning. Resources were not
works of reconstruction, or to pr
economic rehabilitation; rather,
small investments which would ha
impact. Without altering any of t
conditions of adjustment or restru
grams achieved-from the pe
model-high social and political returns from the
investment.
In addition, resources were channelled according to
local demand, thus reducing the heavy and clumsy
planning bureaucracies, and lowering administrative
costs. In many cases the government also decided to
work with and through non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) in the administration of the projects,
Above: In the high sierra mountains, indigenous people appear skeptical as President Sali-
nas promises that Pronasol will bring electricity to the area.
Right: A Zapatista guerrilla near Ocosingo, Chiapas.
implemented solely thus reducing costs even further, and giving greater
hat-perhaps-later responsibility to local organizations. This is, however,
,nditions for equity only one side of the coin. Responsibility, in this
ken. model, does not equal real power. The central govern-
tried to avoid any ment still exercises great political control over the
olicy-like salaries anti-poverty programs.
eliminated any ele- On the whole and in its parts, the Mexican anti-
d not put the unfet- poverty model represented by Pronasol reflects these
ie neoliberal motor components of strategy and format. Investment is a
threatening any pri- drop at a time, with a generally low ceiling for each
uated according to project. This makes it difficult to achieve any real
but their ability to objectives of development. Its logic is basic short-term
ich was becoming assistance, and it operates within a clientelistic frame-
erous. work.
e anti-poverty pro-
ly defined from the hiapas is the state in which the largest number
directed to major of Solidarity committees were registered,
)jects of social and which ought to suggest that it is the state in
they were used in which the greatest changes were made in the “state-
ve local or regional society” relationship. The peasant insurrection in the
he macroeconomic jungle demonstrates that this may be the case, but in a
icturing, these pro- different sense from that assumed from the statistics
perspective of the and official declarations. Of the 8,824 registered Chia-
40 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON MEXICO
pas Solidarity committees, 1,229 operate in the area of
coffee production. These committees correspond to
the groups that have been receiving emergency aid in
the areas terribly battered by the fall in international
coffee prices and the disbanding of Imcaf6, the state
coffee company.
Of the remaining 7,595 Solidarity committees, the
two biggest categories of investment are school
improvement (the escuela digna program) and munic-
ipal funds. This distribution is clearly tied to an instru-
mental rather than a political-social logic. The escuela
digna program is directed in almost all cases to the
renovation of classrooms, and its committees are
formed in almost all cases by teachers and parents of
schoolchildren. The municipal funds are funnelled to
bases of traditional political power-especially in Chi-
apas-among caciques, ranchers and PRI officials.
According to a recent survey conducted in Altos de
Chiapas, most of the municipal funds are channelled
into the construction of assembly halls, with no partic-
ular linkage to any type of educational or cultural
agenda. Pronasol’s investments in Chiapas show a
pronounced tendency toward the categories of “wel-
fare” and “basic infrastructural support.” Pronasol
moves clearly on the plane of social assistance, with
resources-given the magnitude and extension of
poverty in the area-that are quite limited. The pro-
gram has a clear political-clientelistic character.
In Chiapas more than anywhere else, the manage-
ment of Pronasol went out of its way to refrain from
altering the socioeconomic relations of power. The
decentralization of authority and the management of
programs simply meant that economic and political
power were given to the local political bosses-
caciques-and farm owners. Many resources were
used to finance the construction of sumptuous public
works. Other resources-when they arrived-were
dropped in the extensive ocean of Chiapas poverty,
proliferating in small works of limited impact. Impor-
tant resources like those directed to the growing of
coffee could not compensate for the fall in internation-
al prices over the last several years, nor for the conse-
quences of the withdrawal of other governmental sup-
port programs.
Pronasol did not modify the state-society relation-
ship in the locations with the greatest incidence of
poverty either, despite the fact that some of its archi-
tects considered this to be the program’s greatest con-
tribution to strategies of social reorganizaton and
efforts to end poverty. The transformation of state-
society relations was to have been carried out by
Pronasol through the creation of 150,000 Solidarity
committees officially registered in 1993 at the national
level. But such a huge figure simply corresponds to
the sum total of the groups that received funding.
Many committees are so ephemeral or temporary
that their life span is exactly as long as their funded
project. Others limit the direct involvement of their
“members” in work and activity. The formation of the
committees mostly has to do with political-electoral
necessities rather than any specific anti-poverty
requirements. No clear correlation exists between the
locations with the highest indices of marginality and
the organizational effort made by the promoters of
Pronasol, if this is measured by the number of com-
mittees constituted.
The state of war that broke out on January 1 demon-
strated that the Solidarity committees have very limit-
ed powers of social transformation. The regional
forces that today are proposing policies of change and
social, economic and political rehabilitation are none
other than the insurgents of the Zapatista National
Liberation Army (EZLN), and the peasant and popular
organizations with their own independent bases of
development. Many of these independent groups were
at some point catalogued by Pronasol as enemies of
the pro-salinista strategy of development, because
they lacked “democratic methods,” reproduced “cor-
poratist vices,” and refused to be incorporated into the
PRI-dominated chain of command. Today, these defi-
nitions and perspectives of the “change in the relations
between the state and the people” seem part of ancient
history. The “critique of Chiapas” has forced us to
rethink all the old categories. The poor and indigent
are demanding a real dialogue. The old discourse aged
decades in the ten days that shook Mexico.
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