The New Shape of the Countryside: Agrarian Counter-Reform in Mexico

See Eric Wolf's Classic article on the closed corporate peasant community (Types of Latin American Peasantry,” American Anthropologist, 57: 452–471, 1955), which shaped anthropological studies in rural Latin America for several generations, for a discussion of peasant society before the era of modernization and internationalization. Wolf himself always recognized that the peasant community was molded by the social, political, and economic forces of the larger societies of which they are a part.

The Undersecretary for Agricultural Planning has argued repeatedly that there are as many as 13.5 million people in the countryside who will (should) be pushed out as a result of the reorganization of production. These people are primarily concentrated in the dry land grain-farming areas. Although he does not discuss where they might go, he often implies that their only alternative is to cross the border as undocumented migrants.

A note on data sources is in order. It is extremely difficult to obtain a systematic series of economic data in Mexico on any particular subject over a long period of time. This is the result of changing criteria for data collection, dissatisfaction with initial results, corruption at various levels in the chain of command, or simple inefficiency. Detailed census material for 1980, for example, was never published; throughout the country, the systems for data collection are sufficiently informal that different departments within the same ministry often publish differing data about the same phenomenon, even when they received their information from the same originating source! Another frequent problem is access to the information: In general, reliable information is not readily available, even for a price, although contacts and informal arrangements can release materials that money cannot buy. Rather than present a detailed discussion of these problems or the data sources, I will limit myself to offering a general qualitative picture of the themes discussed in this paper and refer the interested reader to a number of basic sources: 1) Centro de Investigaciones Agrarias, Estructura Agraria y Desarrollo Agrícola en México, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1974, offers a baseline study of the evolution of rural production during the crucial period up to 1960; 2) Esteva Gustavo , The Struggle for Rural Mexico, South Hadley, MA, Bergin and Garvey, 1983, provides a sympathetic history of peasant struggles; 3) de Alcantara Hewitt Cynthia , Modernizing Mexican Agriculture: Socioeconomic implications of technological change, 1940–1970, Geneva, UNRISD, 1976, analyzes the ‘second-generation effects’ of the implantation of the green revolution; 4) Austin James and Esteva Gustavo , (eds.). Food Policy in Mexico: The search for self-sufficiency, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1987, compiled an interesting set of essays on the innovative but flawed Mexican Food System (SAM); 5) Barkin David and Suarez Bianca , El Fin de la Autosuficiencia Alimentaria, Mexico, Editorial Océano/CECODES, 1985, evaluate the evolution of the cereal grain sector and trace the premeditated campaign to weaken the foundations of basic food production in Mexico; while 6) Sanderson Steven , The Transformation of Mexican Agriculture, Princeton, 1986, extends their thesis of the internationalization of agriculture; finally, 7) Appendini Kirsten , De La Milpa a los Tortibonos: La Restructuratión de la Política Alimentaria en México, Mexico, El Colegio de México, 1992, synthesizes a voluminous literature on particular aspects into a revealing and well-documented history of food policy formulation and rural social structures in the most recent period.

During the 1940–1960 period, average yields on maize doubled from 600 kg. to 1.2 tons per hectare in spite of the fact that almost no money was spent for research on varieties and techniques applicable to peasant dry land agriculture, where most of the grain was produced. Instead, the Mexican government chose to support the international effort to increase yields for wheat produced on irrigated lands with a costly package of chemical and mechanical inputs; this well-financed effort led to the release of several green revolution varieties, and yields rose from one ton per hectare in dry land conditions to four tons or more in irrigated areas where the full panoply of support was available. For a critical review of this experience, see Hewitt , op. cit., and Barkin David , and Suárez Bianca , El Fin del Principio: Las semillas y la seguridad alimentaria. Mexico, Editorial Océano/CECODES, 1983.

See Barkin David , Distorted Development: Mexico in the world economy, Boulder, CO, Westview, 1990, chapter 5, for a more detailed discussion of this process and its failures.

Barkin David and King Timothy (1970). Regional Economic Development: The river basin approach in Mexico. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge.

There are more than 100 different languages still actively used in Mexico by more than eight million people.

Even during the 1940–1960 period, macroeconomic policies operated to systematically channel resources from peasant agriculture to the rest of the economy. But the distribution of lands under the reform program and the associated productivity gains created sufficient dynamism in rural Mexico to counteract the gradual decline in the rural terms of trade. For more details on this process, see Barkin and Suárez , op. cit, 1985, and most especially their chapter on CONASUPO's price policies, as well as the more recent work by Solis, Ricardo, in, Comercio Exterior, 1991, on maize price policies.

Fox Jonathan , The Political Dynamics of Reform: State power and food policy in Mexico, Ithaca, NY, Cornell, 1992.

Austin and Esteva , op. cit., and Zepeda Jorge (ed.), Las Sociedades Rurales Hoy, Zamora, Mich., El Colegio de Michoacán, 1988.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of the effectiveness of the policies against the poor was the massive increase in migration to the USA. Although the numbers are speculative, it is generally acknowledged that more than five million undocumented Mexican workers are presently working there, in addition to the three million or so whose migratory situation was legalized as a result of the U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Clandestine harvesting of the corn crop, which could be directly consumed without further industrial processing.

Referring to sorghum, DeWalt Billie and Barkin David , Mexico's Second Green Revolution: A macrolevel/microlevel perspective, (Book manuscript submitted for publication.)

Once corporate participation in rural land ownership is permitted, the possibilities increase for individuals to overcome legal strictures on land holdings. Several corporate shells could be created to enter into agreements with local landowners in a particular region in order to secure de facto control over a land area far greater than that permitted in the legislation, much in the same way that some corporate entities circumvent the intent of the laws against corporate farming in some mid-western states in the United States of America.

La Jornada, (Mexico City daily newspaper), 1 October 1992, p. 28.

Barkin David , “La política de precios y la producción de maíz en México: Respuestas a la crisis,” in Hewitt de Alcántara, Cynthia, Reestructuración Económica y Subsistencia Rural: El maíz y la crisis de los ochenta, Mexico, El Colegio de México/UNRISD, 1992, p. 314.

Collier George , (The revival of peasant agriculture after energy development in southeastern Mexico: An unexpected outcome of Dutch Disease.” Paper presented at the 1992 meetings of the Latin American Studies Association, Los Angeles; processed, 1992), is studying the phenomenon in great detail in highland Chiapas. He found that in spite of the massive emigration in the 1970s of people taking advantage of new job opportunities, many have returned to implant a modern intensive (and environmentally degrading) cultivation system for maize as opportunities elsewhere have evaporated.

SARH-CEPAL, op. cit., Tables 1.1, and 1.1a.

CEPAL (Economic Commission for Latin America), Economía Campesina y Agricultura Empresarial. Mexico, Siglo XXI editores, 1982.

See Téllez Calva Luis José and González Gerardo Gómez , La Agricultura Mexicana Frente al Tratado Trilateral de Libre Comercio, Mexico, Juan Pablos/Chapingo, 1992. The Centro de Investigaciones Economicas, Sociales y Tecnologicas de la Agroindustria y la Agricultura Mundial at the Universidad Autonoma de Chapingo has stimulated a critical discussion of the impacts of NAFTA on different primary producing sectors in Mexico. Dr. Manuel A. Gómez Cruz, director of the center, has compiled many publications with the detailed sectoral studies.

This decision does not consider the entrepreneurial and financial beneficiaries who are in a class by themselves. It goes without saying that the benefits will also be unequally distributed among the members of this group, and that, as a result, there are likely to be important internal struggles among them.

It is interesting that some of these negotiations are taking place in unusual circumstances. Not only are the regional coalitions actively participating in the various groups organizing events to express their concern and even opposition to the NAFTA (where they are clearly using these platforms as another forum for negotiating their claims) also have begun to find ways of expressing their opinions through the analyses of many younger scholars who are voicing their positions in international fora, as was the case of the recent meetings of the Latin American Studies Association (September 1992) when a number of the organizers of panels on problems of rural Mexico invited important actors or spokespeople in rural Mexico to participate as speakers.

It is important to note that this process of local producer groups and their regional or national coalitions participating in the domestic and international negotiations to create new opportunities for their members is being actively supported by international foundations and foreign-based NGOs who have assumed an effective advocacy role in the domestic political system.

Barkin , 1990, op. cit.

This short paragraph owes a great deal to Guillermo Bonfil's insightful argument that a recognition of the vitality of Mexico's indigenous past is essential for a solution to the country's present problems; see his book, México Profunda: Una civilización negada. México: Grijalbo/CONACULT, 1987. The search for these solutions is the basis for our present research agenda. In one of his last articles, (“Por la diversidad del futuro,” Ojarasca, Number 7, April 1992, pp. 12–18), he vividly expresses the problems created by the confrontation between the trend towards neoliberal globalization and the possibility, indeed the necessity, of a different, more plural 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 are developing these ideas as social analysis, action programs, and political platforms.

See Bonfil's important book (note 25) with regard to Mexico, and Eric Wolf's different approach to the problem of the role of cultural diversity in world development and the threats which the internationalization of the economy represent for both nature and people; Wolf's book is: Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley, CA, University of California, 1988.