Plight of Mexican farmers/peasants (Chiapas News)
gwelker@mail.lmi.org
Tue, 13 Sep 1994 11:39:44 EST
MEXICO CITY (Reuter) - After years of struggling through a farm crisis that
shows no sign of abating, Mexican peasants are abandoning the countryside in a
massive exodus that threatens to swamp Mexico's overcrowded cities and swell
emigration to the United States.
Sweeping reforms aimed at drawing investment to the backward rural sector
such as granting peasants not just title to the land, but also the right to sell
it, have unwittingly exacerbated the flight from the countryside.
A study by the private Permanent Agrarian Council says 76 campesinos quit
farming every day in Mexico as low commodity prices, high interest rates and
shrinking subsidies have made it nearly impossible to scrape a living off the
land.
"This year we fared worse than last year, and last year we barely covered
our costs," said Rafael Jacobo Femat, a 42-year-old who grows tomatoes on 9.8
acres of a communal farm in La Laguna, a once thriving rural area that straddles
the northern states of Durango and Coahuila.
"The population of La Laguna used to be proud that it didn't send braceros
(migrant laborers) to the United States, but now the emigration to the United
States from this region is growing," Luis Sanchez Aguilar, a native of La Laguna
and president of Mexico's Social Democratic Party, told Reuters.
The government's own statistics show around 9 million rural Mexicans live
in extreme poverty.
Agricultural experts say the rural crisis is the result of eight decades of
land redistribution that led to a profusion of tiny plots, many carved out of
barren land, to fulfill one of the tenets of the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution that
every campesino was entitled to land.
As other countries adopted mechanized forms of agriculture and took
advantage of economies of scale, Mexico clung to policies that encouraged
labor-intensive, subsistence farming.
"Mexico is now going through the dislocation that took place in Britain in
the 18th century and in the United States and France in the 19th century," said
publisher and economic commentator Sergio Sarmiento.
He said the upheaval reflects the artificially high number of farm workers
in Mexico. "There are 5.5 million agricultural workers in Mexico, compared with
3.5 million agricultural workers in all of the United States," a country with
three times Mexico's population, Sarmiento said.
Although the North American Free Trade Agreement shields the Mexican farm
sector from immediate competition, Mexican farmers will eventually have to
compete against U.S. agricultural exporters who are four times more productive.
The reform-minded government of President Carlos Salinas amended agrarian
laws in 1992, ending the peasants' rights to farmland and permitting companies
to own farmland in a bid to attract investment to the backward sector whose
production costs are way out of line with commodity prices.
But the reforms have been slow to bring in desperately needed investment,
and many campesinos accuse the government of helping large landowners swindle
them out of land.
"Salinas sent us to hell, took away our credits and now the banks are
taking away our trucks, everything we have," said Jose Rodriguez, a 68-year-old
campesino from San Pedro de las Colonias in Coahuila.
The agrarian reforms were also the last straw for Maya Indians in the
heavily agricultural state of Chiapas who took up arms against the government
last January.
The government has acknowledged the peasants' troubles, and has poured
millions of pesos in grants in the countryside in the run-up to the August 21
election, but Salinas refuses to retreat despite the criticisms.
"Mexico's (revolution-era) agrarian reform was the correct move when we
were 30 million inhabitants, 45 million or 60 million, but the population has
grown and the land hasn't," Salinas recently explained.
The winner of the presidential election, Institutional Revolutionary Party
candidate Ernesto Zedillo, has promised technical and marketing assistance, an
extension of support programs and more credit -- but no shifts in the policy
which economists say is inevitable.
The government, meanwhile, is trying to stem the flow of peasants to the
cities, particularly to overcrowded Mexico City with its 20 million inhabitants,
by promoting industrial activity in rural areas as part of trade and investment
laws.
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