Food First Policy Brief
FOOD FIRST
INSTITUTE FOR FOOD AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY
398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA
Tel: (510) 654-4400 Fax: (510) 654-4551 E-mail:
foodfirst@igc.apc.org

POLICY BRIEF No 1

CHIAPAS AND THE CRISIS OF MEXICAN AGRICULTURE

by Roger Burbach and Peter Rosset

December 1994

To order printed copies:
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[original title was: Land, Liberty & Food in Chiapas]

About the authors:

Roger Burbach is Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas
based in Berkeley, California, and is a frequent collaborator with
Food First. He has written extensively on Latin American and
U.S. policy, and is currently completing his next book, which focuses
on globalization and the rise of 'postmodern' societies.

Peter Rosset is a leading rural development analyst and is Executive
Director of Food FirstQthe Institute for Food and Development Policy,
in Oakland, California. He was formerly Executive Director of the
Stanford University Regional Center in Chiapas, Mexico.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The rebellion in southern Mexico led by the Zapatista National
Liberation Army is rooted in the profound agricultural crisis of the
state of Chiapas. Is Chiapas an isolated case in an otherwise
"modernizing" Mexico, or, rather, is it symptomatic of a larger
malaise affecting the entire country? In this Policy Brief we argue
for the latter viewpoint, suggesting that the Chiapas uprising should
serve as a wake-up call to Mexican society.

With the bulk of the Chiapan population dependent on agriculture, over
seventy five percent of the state's population lives below the poverty
line. Almost twenty percent of the economically active population has
no cash income, while another thirty nine percent makes less than the
minimum wage of $3 per day. This poverty stands in stark contrast
with the agricultural wealth of Chiapas. A state with less than four
percent of Mexico's population, it is the country's largest coffee
exporter, the third largest maize producer, and among the top three
states in exports of bananas, tobacco, and cacao.

Due to agrarian reform programs begun in the 1930s, over half the
agricultural land is held in ejidos, or agrarian communities. But the
peasants and Indians who work these lands lead meager existences.
Most of this sector is located on marginal lands of low fertility and
scarce water resources. In the Lacandon rainforest of Chiapas, from
whence the Zapatistas come, the ejidos and agrarian communities are
essentially cut off from market access. The best lands are under the
control of a group of wealthy land owners who control the state's
economy and are linked to the ruling PRI party.

While the Zapatista uprising has focused attention on the appalling
living conditions of the majority of the inhabitants of Chiapas, the
conditions there are not all that different from those affecting the
rest of rural Mexico. A study prepared for the World Bank declared
that "Mexico is probably the best representation of a bimodal
agricultural system," with "a small number of powerful, well
capitalized" enterprises, and a vast majority who are
impoverished. Throughout Mexico the best lands are under the control
of a small minority who dominate the country's agricultural
economy. With ties to the ruling PRI party, these agrarian
businessmen, who also control Mexico's export markets, have, over the
decades, benefited from the financial and technical resources of the
Mexican state.

During the 1970s the Mexican state did allocate major resources to the
ejido sector, including the creation of state marketing agencies that
bought peasant commodities at subsidized prices. But this strategy of
development failed because of the extensive corruption of government
bureaucrats and the program's top-down nature. When the state
withdrew its support in the mid-1980s, due to the Mexican debt crisis,
the ejidos found themselves more impoverished than ever.

Today the Mexican government is implementing neo-liberal economic
policies aimed in part at abolishing the ejido. Article 27, the
agrarian reform clause of the Mexican constitution, has been gutted,
and under NAFTA, import barriers are being dropped, enabling cheap
corn and other staple foods to flood Mexican markets, impoverishing
the peasantry even further. As demonstrated by Chiapas, the
progressive impoverishment of rural peoples can only lead to further
social unrest and the eventual destabilization of larger Mexico.

The Zapatista movement in Chiapas is demanding a reversal of
neo-liberal policies, proclaiming, for example, that NAFTA is a "death
certificate" for the Indian and peasant peoples of Mexico. The
Zapatistas are calling for a new agrarian reform program for the
entire country, one that will not only redistribute the better lands,
but also provide peasants with the resources they need to create a new
agricultural economy to meet their needs rather than those of rich
landowners and the Mexican state. Only if Mexican society heeds the
wake-up call of Chiapas and acts on these proposals can stability be
restored and prosperity for the majority achieved.

Introduction

On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)
seized six towns in the highland area of the Mexican state of
Chiapas. The Zapatistas have repeatedly returned to international
headlines since then, as the conflict has continued to simmer and
periodically erupt. In their declaration of war, and in many
subsequent communiques, the Zapatista rebels refer to issues of land
and agriculture as fundamental to their struggle.For example, in their
March 1, 1994, list of demands, they stated that "we want the great
extensions of land that are in the hands of ranchers and national and
foreign landlords and others who occupy large plots...to pass into the
hands of our peoples."1

The fact that a guerrilla insurgency has arisen around agrarian issues
is a clue to the existence of a crisis in Mexican agriculture. But is
this a local crisis in Chiapas, or is it symptomatic of a larger
problem? We believe the latter to be the case. Other symptoms of a
broad crisis include Mexico's widening agricultural trade deficit with
the U.S., the fact that Mexican farmers are in default on 61% of
outstanding farm loans,2 and the continuing out migration from the
Mexican countryside toward cities and the United States.

This crisis should have been addressed head on by Mexican
policymakers, as it threatens to undermine many aspects of the
national economy and polity. Continued neglect of the large rural
population can only accelerate migration to cities where employment
opportunities are clearly insufficient. The likely collapse of the
nation's ability to feed itself means that Mexican food security will
depend increasingly upon the vagaries of international markets and the
nation's capacity to import. And finally, the social stability of
Mexico has been jeopardized by the increasing neglect of the rural
poor, as the Zapatista movement and rural unrest elsewhere amply
demonstrate.

In the vacuum created by the inaction of the Mexican government (or
actions that have intensified the crisis), it is incumbent upon
Mexican civil society to take the lead in formulating new directions
in rural development that can meet the needs both of the rural poor
and of the national economy. Impressive first steps have been taken in
this direction by the National Democratic Convention (CND). Convened
by the Zapatistas, the CND is a forum in which alternatives are being
debated. It includes thousands of representatives from peasant
organizations, unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civic
and community groups, etc.

In this Policy Brief we argue that Chiapas is but the tip of the
iceberg of the rural crisis confronting Mexico. We begin with an
overview of the situation in that Southern state, which we then expand
to a discussion of the national agricultural sector. Based on this
background analysis, we conclude with a variety of policy
recommendations.

Chiapas

The backward, impoverished, and polarized condition of agriculture in
Chiapas is a fundamental cause of the January rebellion. The bulk of
the populace lives off the land, most in conditions of abject
poverty. Nineteen percent of the state's economically active
population has no cash income, while another 39 percent earns less
than the minimum wage, which is about $3 a day. 3 About three-quarters
of the people of Chiapas are malnourished, and half of them live in
dwellings with only dirt floors. Thirty percent of the children do not
attend school.

The state's official statistics claim that the infant mortality rate
is about 39 per thousand, the same as the national average. But a
recent independent study in Chiapas found that most infant deaths in
Indian villages simply go unreported to the authorities, and that the
real infant mortality rate is 54.7 per thousand.4 Mortality rates
among all age groups in Chiapas are high due to infections,
malnutrition, anemia, and many diseases that are preventable with
vaccinations.

This impoverished population exists in a state that is one of Mexico's
most agriculturally developed and productive. With just 3.8 percent of
the country's land and a similar proportion of the country's people,
Chiapas is the largest producer of coffee, the third largest in maize
production (some years it is first), the fourth largest cattle
producer among Mexico's 38 states, and numbers among the top three
states in tobacco, banana, soy, and cacao production.5

On the surface, the rather simple explanation for this situation is
that the large commercial land owners control the land of Chiapas,
while the Indians and peasants are landless or own small subsistence
plots at best. This is belied by the striking fact that 54 percent of
the land of Chiapas is controlled outright by what are called ejidos
or agrarian communities with communal land titles, both of which are
worked by campesinos and Indians. Referred to as the ejido sector, the
ejidos and agrarian communities have been established as a result of
land distribution programs carried out by the Mexican government since
the late 1930s. Most of the lands in the ejido sector are farmed by
individual families while a few are operated as collectives.

To understand why a prosperous commercial sector exists in Chiapas
alongside an impoverished peasantry, one has to look beyond the
statistics on land ownership. A study by the U.N. Economic Commission
for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) based on 1990 and 1991
census data provides us with an insight into the internal economic
structure of the ejidos and the agrarian communities.

In Chiapas there are about 179,000 agricultural producers in the ejido
sector of which about 19,722, or 11 percent, are commercially viable
producers marketing about ninety percent of their agricultural
production. At the other extreme are the subsistence peasants who
constitute 31 percent of the ejido sector with about 27 percent of the
land. They consume most of what they produce, marketing one-third or
less of their production, an amount that does not enable them to
obtain the basic necessities of life. (ECLAC, 1994)

The remainder, 58 percent of those in the ejido sector, are considered
"diversified" producers, meaning that they market a significant
portion of their production. But most of these producers barely eke
out an existence on their lands, earning an average annual income of
about $300 from their marketable surplus. The marginality of the
"diversified" sector is also revealed by the fact that over half of
them produce corn and beans, staple foods destined for home
consumption or the local market. These two crops generate very limited
cash returns. The main cash crop for most of these producers is
coffee, a commodity that lends itself to small scale production.

Those at the top of the ejido sector, the commercial producers, do not
owe their relative prosperity to control over extended tracts of ejido
land, since they cultivate only about 15 percent of the land while
constituting 11 percent of the producers. Although specific figures
are not available for Chiapas on capitalization and investment for
these individual units, the ECLAC study generally attributes the
viability of the commercial producers to their greater access to bank
credit and to their use of tractors, fertilizers, and pesticides on
their lands. Many producers employ wage labor on their lands, thereby
increasing their productivity. They also have greater access to
irrigated and better quality lands.

The Private Sector

While the commercial producers in the ejido sector produce an economic
surplus, it is the private agricultural producers who dominate the
Chiapan economy. Although the 1990 census of the Mexican government
compiled information on the private producers in Chiapas and the rest
of Mexico, our ability to analyze this critical group is limited
because the government has refused to release any of this data.

However, a recent study of Soconusco, the region of Chiapas with the
most developed commercial agricultural sector, provides some basic
insights into the structure and economic clout of the private
sector. Located on the Pacific coast next to the frontier with
Guatemala, Soconusco comprises only 7 percent of the Chiapan land area
but has 18 percent of its population. As Daniel Villafuerte Solis, the
author of the Soconusco study notes, "on the one hand there is a
system of capitalist agriculture comprised fundamentally of
plantations oriented towards the international market, while on the
other there is a peasant and minifundia economy that produces maize
and a few commercial products sold in the capitalist market to provide
a subsistence existence." 6 In Soconusco, the best lands are dominated
by plantations, producing bananas, sugar cane, coffee, cotton, and
cacao for the export market, while beef cattle are also raised on many
of the large estates for the domestic and international markets.

The lands of Soconusco are about equally divided between the social
and the private sectors. However, approximately 19,580 producers are
in the ejido sector, while there are only 3081 farms and plantations
in the private sector. The average size of land holdings in the ejido
sector is 11 hectares, while that of the private sector is 81
hectares. At the pinnacle of the Soconusco land system are 144
holdings between 500 and 1000 has, and 109 in excess of 1,000
hectares.7

Poverty and Mexican Agriculture

To fully understand Chiapan agriculture, one has to step back and look
at the general state of Mexican agriculture. The reality is that
Chiapas may have one of the most impoverished Indian and peasantry
populations of Mexico, but its plight is not all that different from
the rest of the country. As a study prepared for the World Bank noted,
"Mexico is probably the best representation of a bimodal agricultural
system" with "a small number of powerful, well capitalized"
enterprises, and the vast majority who are impoverished.8 The
backward, impoverished, and polarized condition of agriculture in
Chiapas is a fundamental cause of the January rebellion. The bulk of
the populace lives off the land, most in conditions of abject
poverty. Nineteen percent of the state's economically active
population has no cash income, while another 39 percent earns less
than the minimum wage, which is about $3 a day. 3 About three-quarters
of the people of Chiapas are malnourished, and half of them live in
dwellings with only dirt floors. Thirty percent of the children do not
attend school.

The Private Sector

Moreover, on a national level, as well as in Chiapas, Mexican
agriculture is in crisis. In recent years, Mexico has imported between
one-fifth and one-third of the staple foods needed for domestic
consumption.9 The appalling inability of Mexico to feed its own people
is rooted in the poverty of the rural sector. Nationwide, the
peasantry and rural population constitutes about 24 million people, or
30 percent of the country's inhabitants. According to an ECLAC study
in 1989, just over half of the rural population of Mexico lives below
the poverty line, while about 7 million are desperately poor. (ECLAC,
1989)

A recent study of Mexican poverty revealed that 700,000 to 900,000 of
the extremely poor in the countryside are landless. Even among those
who do have land, 50 percent are minifundistas who are forced to seek
off-farm employment in an effort to survive.10 Poverty is most highly
concentrated among the rural Indian population, which makes up 40
percent of the very poor in Mexico while constituting just 8 percent
of the country's population. Overall, poverty is most pronounced in
the areas with the highest proportion of Indian inhabitants,
particularly the southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero,
and the Yucatan peninsula.11

Although Mexico does have a modern export sector, it is questionable
how well it will be able to compete in the international market, now
that Mexico has joined GATT and NAFTA. Mexican exports of fruits and
vegetables have largely stagnated in the 1990s. Few experts expect the
Mexican commercial sector to flood the U.S. market or drive California
growers out of business. Indeed, U.S. tomatoes, along with grapes,
peaches, and apples from the U.S. west coast are now flowing
southward, capturing middle class consumer markets in Mexico during
the summer months. Moreover, Chile and Brazil are also competing
intensely in many of the same areas of the U.S. market into which
Mexico hopes to expand. As David Runsten, an expert on Mexican fruit
and vegetable production concludes, "at least in the short term Mexico
will not be terribly competitive in the U.S. market."12

Mexico's prospects for substantial growth in the more traditional
agricultural products--coffee, sugar, bananas, cacao, tobacco, and
cotton--is also quite limited, given the glut of these commodities on
the world market. No important new export niches exist for Mexico in
these crops, and its profits will be negligible or moderate at best.

Perhaps the most telling statistic about Mexico's food crisis is that
it imports about 20 percent of the country's main staple food, corn.13
The backwardness of Mexican maize production is a tragedy of historic
proportions, given that Mexico's Indians were the original
domesticators of maize. How is it that Mexico, with one of the world's
most important native crops, and an aggressive land reform program,
which is also one of the pioneering exporters of fruits and vegetables
to the U.S. market, today possesses an agricultural system in crisis
with few prospects for substantial growth in coming years?

Mexican Agriculture: A Case Study of Failure

Mexico is a case study in the failure of a series of development
strategies employed over the decades. The fundamental reason for these
failures is the divorce between the government's commitment to land
redistribution and its productivity objectives. In the 1930s President
Lazaro Cardenas gave meaning to Article 27 of the 1917 constitution by
expropriating many of the largest estates and turning them into ejidos
or agrarian communities. Beginning in the early 1940s, the government
embarked on a strategy of building a rural infrastructure of dams,
irrigation works, roads, and electrification projects that created a
climate favorable to private investment in large scale commercial
agriculture.

Pursued until 1965, this strategy appeared reasonably successful and
was even dubbed the "Mexican miracle" as cheap food flowed into the
cities to facilitate industrialization. And due in part to the
adoption of Green Revolution research and new seed varieties on the
large commercial, irrigated farms, Mexico by 1963 became a net grain
exporter.14

Much of this boom in agriculture occurred in northern Mexico,
particularly in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa. But most of the
southern part of Mexico experienced a different process of
development. In Chiapas, agrarian reform arrived somewhat tardily,
leading to the breakup in the late 1930s and early 1940s of many of
the old latifundia that had served as the backbone of the oligarchy's
control of the state for centuries.15 By 1950 Indian communities in
many of the highland towns had gained control over half of the land or
more, forming ejidos, or communal farms.

But the best lands in areas like Ocosingo, the Grijalva Valley, and
the Soconusco region remained under the control of wealthy farmers,
plantation owners, and nouveau riche cattle ranchers. And even in the
highlands, many of the old latifundia owners ceded only their more
marginal lands to the Indian communities. As permitted by the law,
they kept the choicest property (often up to 3000 hectares) for
themselves, including the machinery, buildings, and agricultural
processing facilities. Some family estates were actually larger than
officially recorded as each member of the family placed tracts of land
in his or her name, thereby evading the law. Moreover, the parceling
out of lands actually helped the oligarchs stabilize the labor force
they needed to work their lands: the Indians could not produce enough
on their own marginal plots and were driven to augment their income by
serving as common laborers on the nearest estate.

In the highland areas as well as the rest of the state, a group of
caciques, or powerful local strongmen, aligned themselves with the
ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to manipulate the
bureaucracies and to turn local politics to their advantage. The
caciques were usually mestizos or ladinos, but many were Indians. Some
would be appointed as municipal presidents by the state governor,
others would gain control of key properties and assets that they used
as a source of local power, and still others would manipulate local
credit, commerce, and transportation facilities, extracting their cut
in exchange for "assistance" or protection. The caciques helped insure
that the Indians would be kept in line, providing a constant and
stable work force for the state's agricultural economy. In effect, the
caciques greased the wheels of a system that still favored the rich in
Mexico City, San Cristobal de las Casas, and the provincial towns
dominated by ranchers and businessmen.

By 1970, the glaring inequities and problems of this agricultural
system were obvious not only in Chiapas but at the national
level. Throughout Mexico, subsistence food crops such as maize and
beans were replaced by modernized livestock production and associated
forage crops such as sorghum. And the Green Revolution in wheat on the
large commercial farms in the north gave way to fruits and vegetables
destined for the export market. Staple food production, particularly
maize, once again became a peasant crop, grown on the poorest lands
with traditional techniques and low yields. As a result, Mexico in the
early 1970s became a major importer of basic foodstuffs.16

Failed Strategy for the Peasantry

Beginning with the presidency of Luis Echeverria (1970- 1976) and
continuing until the onset of the debt crisis in 1982, the Mexican
government switched gears once again and invested heavily in
agriculture, including the ejido sector. More land was distributed,
including some of the modernized estates in the north, and a variety
of social programs were launched to assist the rural poor and to
encourage development in the ejidos and agrarian communities.

An umbrella agency, the Public Investment Project for Rural
Development, was set up in the office of the presidency to coordinate
projects as diverse as feeder roads, small irrigation works, and
peasant training. The government also created purchasing organizations
to bypass the caciques and local middleman to buy staple grains and
other commodities from the peasants and the ejido sector. Many of
these projects were heavily supported by the World Bank, which saw
Mexico as a model for its new policy of trying to assist small scale
agricultural producers in the third world.17

After more than a decade of heavy public investments and subsidies,
this statist strategy of development also ended in failure in the
early 1980s. At best it created a "modernized subsistence sector" as
one student of Mexican agricultural development has labeled it.18 The
ejido sector and the peasantry in general became appendages of the
state. They were not empowered to take the initiative from
below. Bureaucratic corruption abounded, and huge investment projects
often failed because they were hatched in a government office in
Mexico City and had little or no input from the peasants and
agricultural technicians who worked in the field.

Here again Chiapas at a state level illustrates the larger failure of
Mexican government policies. The Mexican state invested heavily in
Chiapas in large scale investments during the 1970s, and the economy
boomed. Led by the agricultural sector, Chiapan economic growth
during the decade was 10.5 percent, even higher than the national
average. Cattle ranching was a driving force behind the agricultural
transformation of the state. In 1970, Chiapas had two million head of
cattle; by 1980 the figure had risen to 3.8 million, and by 1983 it
peaked at 4 million.19 Export crops, including bananas and cotton,
also grew rapidly, doubling their total production during the
decade. In 1970 Chiapas produced 7.7 percent of Mexico's agricultural
crop exports; by 1980 its share stood at 12.4 percent.20

During the 1970s the Mexican government and the World Bank encouraged
ejidos and peasants to participate in cattle production, largely
through credit programs. But instead of assisting the small producers,
these credits actually reinforced the power of the large cattle barons
and accelerated the process of capital accumulation within the cattle
industry. They encouraged the campesinos and ejidatarios to focus on
the riskiest part of cattle production--the raising of calves, which
were often sold to the large ranchers to fatten on their extensive
grazing lands. The small calf producers suffered substantial losses
due to diseases, poor sanitation facilities, insufficient technical
assistance, and a lack of genetic improvement programs. Moreover, the
smaller producers had limited markets, often being compelled to sell
their calves to the local cattle baron at the price he dictated. It
is no wonder that by the late 1970s, faced with heavy losses and few
profits, many campesinos and ejidos actually preferred to illegally
rent their lands to large cattle owners, thereby accentuating the
process of land concentration in the state.21

The cattle boom was particularly destructive in Chiapas. Based on
extensive grazing, the cattle industry fomented the concentration and
monopolization of land, the displacement of traditional agricultural
crops, the continued destruction of the rainforest, and the illegal
occupation and renting of ejido lands by large cattle producers. In
spite of heavy outlays for the ejido sector, poverty and
underdevelopment were not alleviated in Chiapas. By 1983, 30 percent
of Chiapan lands were controlled by latifundistas while at least
100,000 peasants were landless.22

Dutch Disease

The term "Dutch Disease" is used to refer to the economic dislocations
that occur when petroleum emerges as a major revenue source in a
national economy. Dutch Disease struck Mexican agriculture in the
1970s with a particular vehemence. The massive state investment in
agriculture from 1970 to 1982 was in large part underwritten by the
petroleum boom in Mexico. Petroleum revenues were used to finance many
agricultural projects and large international loans were secured for
other projects based on anticipated revenues from future oil sales. It
was the eventual collapse of oil revenues in the 1980s that led the
Mexican government to terminate most of the programs for the ejido
sector and precipitated a new and deeper crisis of Mexican
agriculture.

Here again Chiapas is especially illustrative of the devastating
consequences of the oil boom for agriculture and the
peasantry. Northeastern Chiapas became one of the major sites for the
development of the Mexican petroleum industry. Exploration and
drilling were carried out from 1969 to 1971, and during the remainder
of the 1970s oil and natural gas production boomed. The emergence of
this industry dramatically altered the Chiapan social and economic
scene. While the engineers, managers, and skilled personnel were
brought in from outside of the state by PEMEX (the government-owned
petroleum company), thousands of Chiapan peasants came to the
northeast to work in the menial jobs of construction, maintenance, and
transportation.23

The northeastern petroleum enclave soon became a glaring social sore
in the state of Chiapas. Agricultural lands and production in the area
were destroyed and the peasant population uprooted.24 Moreover, like
most boom town areas, the living conditions were substandard.
Dramatic increases occurred in the indices of prostitution, violence,
crime, and alcoholism. There was a lack of housing and public
services, while prices for basic goods skyrocketed, touching off an
inflationary spiral that affected the entire state.

Coinciding with the petroleum boom, the Mexican government built huge
hydroelectric dams on the Grijalva river to provide electrical power
for the rest of the country. The new reservoirs flooded over 100,000
hectares of some of the best lands in Chiapas while an equal amount of
land was lost due to micro-climatic changes and the isolation of large
stretches of land. About 90,000 people were forced to move, placing
new pressures on the urban areas and the remaining lands of Chiapas.25

The increasing orientation of agriculture towards the international
market, combined with the onslaught of the petroleum industry in
Chiapas, dramatically altered class relations within the peasant and
Indian communities. Peasants who had accumulated some earnings as
workers in the petroleum fields or who had in one way or another been
able to build up some savings during the boom period, began to use
their small capital to invest in Green Revolution technologies. This
soon led to pronounced class stratification within even the
traditional Indian villages.26

One study of the highland Indian community of Zinacantan presented to
the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development shows how
many of the young Zinacantecos who returned home from the petroleum
fields invested in fertilizers and herbicides to grow corn. As the
study points out: "Before, Zinacantecos had deployed household members
in labor-intensive cultivation, giving advantage to elders who could
subordinate youthful kin. Today as Zinacantecos purchase and use
chemical fertilizer and weed sprays, their farming has become much
less labor-intensive and more to the advantage of those who control
commercial transport and capital. The work of the field hand has
become more of a commodity to be bought and sold, to the advantage of
a class of youthful men who have brought new wealth--derived from
construction contracting, commerce, and trucking--into farming." 27

The Debt Crisis

Although the debt crisis emerged full blown in Mexico in 1982, its
full impact in agriculture was not felt until 1986. From 1982 to 1986,
agriculture actually fared better than the rest of the economy because
of improved exchange rates for agricultural exports, favorable
weather, and a slight increment in government-guaranteed prices. But
then agricultural production slumped as cuts in subsidies for staple
foods took effect, and slashes in the government bureaucracy resulted
in demoralization and increased corruption as government employees
took what they could before being forced out of work. For many
ejidatarios, accustomed to government funding and bureaucratic
supervision, the termination of state projects led them to virtually
cease farming their lands except for what they needed for subsistence
consumption.28

Chiapan agriculture experienced a very particular dynamic as the debt
crisis unfolded on the national level. Towards the end of Echeverria's
administration in 1976 he launched a new land reform program that
targeted some of the bigger commercial farms, particularly in the
northwest. As in the earlier part of the century, Chiapas was at first
bypassed in the new land distribution program. But intensified
agitation by peasant and Indian organizations in the late 1970s and
early 1980s finally forced the hand of state and federal
authorities. The situation became so explosive that in early 1983,
President Miguel de la Madrid, just months after taking office, made
an emergency trip to Chiapas.

His efforts to control the growing social upheaval characterized the
manipulative approach of the government. He first set up a commission
to deal with land tenancy disputes and then placed the state under
strict military control.29 The state governor he appointed, General
Absalon Castellanos Dominguez, launched an extensive land reform
program that granted large blocks of land primarily to ejidos and
Indian communities. By the time he left the governor's office in 1988,
more land had been distributed in six years in Chiapas than in the
previous thirty years.30

The land reform program however did nothing to alleviate conflict in
the state or to increase production. The government's strategy in
distributing land was to ignore or undermine independent peasant and
Indian organizations that had fought for the land while favoring
groups and organizations that had been acquiescent or aligned with the
PRIQfor example, the National Confederation of Campesinos (CNC). Of
493 major land grants made in the state, only 27 went to communities
or ejidos aligned with militant peasant organizations.31 In many
cases, the CNC, knowing which lands the government was about to
expropriate, would arm peasants aligned with it or use the police to
move in and violently expel independent peasant organizations already
occupying the lands.

Castellanos Dominguez also did his best to insure the security of
those ranchers and big land owners who remained. As in the earlier
reform in Chiapas, the large owners who were affected by agrarian
reform retained the prime lands for themselves. Many others were not
touched and even issued special decrees exempting them from any future
land expropriations. By 1988 about 70 percent of the cattle ranches in
the state were official exempted from land reform.32

Unlike the rest of Mexican agriculture, the slashing of
government-sponsored credits for agriculture, combined with the
upheaval over land, had an almost immediate effect on Chiapas. The
production of maize in the state between 1982 and 1987 fell by almost
20 percent, while that of beans dropped 18 percent. But other cash and
export crops in Chiapas boomed, due largely to the devaluation of the
peso and the resulting higher earnings of cash crops on the
international market. The production of soybeans, peanuts, sorghum,
and tobacco during the period grew by 150.8, 244.1, 144.8 and 261.2
percent respectively while the output of cacao and sugar cane
doubled. Banana production displayed only a "modest" growth of 25
percent. The amount of beef marketed increased by 400 percent from
1982 to 1987, although the size of the state's cattle herd dropped by
22 percent, revealing that ranchers were liquidating their herds in
order to reap immediate profits.33

Neo-Liberal Recipes

The national crisis of Mexican agriculture reached new proportions in
1989-90, when the import of basic foodstuffs rose dramatically, with
corn imports alone totaling $4 billion per annum. There was a
consensus among virtually all observers, Mexican and international
alike, that dramatic changes had to occur in the country's
agricultural system.

However, the government of Salinas de Gortari did not adopt solutions
designed to assist or develop the ejido sector. As Jose Luis Calva
notes in a study of the conflict over Mexican agriculture, an assault
on the ejidos was backed by a "Holy Family" of actors, comprised of 1)
foreign interests, particularly the World Bank and the United States
government, 2) conservative business interests in Mexico, and 3) the
"modernizing" technocrats of the Mexican government. The assault had
two main legislative thrusts--the transformation of the ejido as it
was defined in Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, and the passage
of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which favored the
commercial export oriented farms over the ejidos.

Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, which in 1917 had established
land redistribution and the ejido as the building blocks of agrarian
reform in the countryside, was basically gutted by Salinas in
1992. The new legislation enacted by the PRI-dominated Congress ended
land redistribution and made it possible for private and foreign
investors to invest in or buy existing ejido lands. Certain limits
were placed on the move toward privatization, such as the requirement
that two-thirds of the ejidatarios on a given ejido have to agree to
any privatization scheme, and the setting of limits on the size (2,500
has) and number of shareholders (25) that could turn a former ejido
into a commercial corporation.

Since the passage of the legislation, there has been no immediate
"counterrevolution" in the ejido sector. Most ejidos, out of inertia,
have simply continued operating as in the past. But partisans of the
legislation as well as its opponents agree that the changes in Article
27 mean that the ejido will gradually disintegrate and be replaced by
a system of private landholders, both big and small. Capitalist style
farming will assume increasing importance with the ejidos languishing
or being sold off.

The authors of study prepared for the World Bank, but not endorsed by
it, concluded that "the changes to Article 27 are unlikely to achieve
the lofty goals of enhancing productivity and modernizing agriculture
that are desired by the Mexican government."34 They argue that foreign
capital will invest minimally in the ejido sector, given its general
marginality and poor quality lands. Their prognosis is that some
ejidos will shift to private livestock production due to its low
capitalization requirements. Only a few of the "best endowed
agricultural areas" will consolidate under large scale entrepreneurs
who will concentrate on providing inputs for food processing
operations. Most of the ejidos will stagnate or be parceled up among
their members.

Furthermore, there is little hope that the large commercial farms will
step in to replace staple food production by the peasant
producers. The ejidos produce two-thirds of Mexico's beans and corn
and 70 percent of the rice. 35 The problem for the ejidos and the
Mexican peasantry in general is compounded by the fact that they will
also be subjected to NAFTA and the logic of the international
marketplace. The elimination of tariff barriers between the United
States and Mexico means that a third world, undercapitalized, and
impoverished agricultural system will be forced to compete against the
most powerful and heavily capitalized agricultural complex in the
world. U.S. corn producers, particularly in the Midwest, have the
added advantage of farming some of the richest lands in the world,
while Mexican maize producers farm depleted lands, often hillsides
that never had rich and deep topsoils. In effect, the prices of many
commodities produced by peasants will be driven downwards as
international grain trading companies flood the Mexican market with
cheap agricultural commodities.

The impact of NAFTA is illustrated by the productivity figures on
corn, the single most important crop of the Mexican peasant. While
Mexico averages 1.7 tons of corn per ha., the United States produces
seven tons. One might think that Mexico could remain competitive
because its labor costs are only a fraction of what they are in the
United States. But this is not the case. To produce one ton of corn in
Mexico 17.8 labor days are required, while in the United States only
1.2 hours are needed to produce that same ton of corn!36

Figures on bean production, the other historic Mexican staple, also
reveal a dismal future for Mexican peasants. Mexico produces about
half a ton per hectare, while the U.S. weighs in with 1.6 tons. In
Mexico 50.6 labor days are needed to produce each ton of beans while
in the United States, just over half a day of work is required.37

These striking differences in productivity leave little doubt that
U.S. grains will inundate the Mexican market. Aware of these
repercussions and the potential for social upheaval in the
countryside, the Mexican government has taken steps to minimize the
economic shock. Tariffs and import quotas on grains will gradually be
eliminated, and Procampo, a government system of subsidies, has been
established. Under Procampo, producers of seven agricultural grains
and staples will receive about $100 per hectare per year. They can
use this subsidy to grow corn, fruits, vegetables, or any other
commodity. The subsidy payments will gradually be phased out over the
next 15 years.

The logic behind Procampo is that the ejidatarios and others who
produce commodities that cannot compete with imported grains will
gradually shift into other, more profitable areas of production, using
the income from Procampo to help finance that transfer. Such an
outcome is highly unlikely. A hundred dollars per hectare is only a
fraction of what is needed to change over to new crops. David Runsten
and Robin Marsh, in a study of the potential for small scale fruit and
vegetable production in Mexico, project costs that run in the
thousands rather than the hundreds of dollars per hectare. The cost of
strawberry production, for example, is about $10,000 per ha., while
that of broccoli is $2,300.38

Moreover, fruit and vegetable production, the area where Mexico will
supposedly enjoy an advantage because it can produce for the winter
market, needs irrigated lands. Unfortunately, the bulk of small scale
maize production now occurs on rainfed lands, making it even more
costly to shift to fruits and vegetables. And even if the Mexican
government would encourage small scale fruit and vegetable production
by funding irrigation projects, agricultural inputs, and technical
services, it is questionable just how much the U.S. market could
absorb. Mexico already produces 70 percent of the imported vegetables
marketed in the United States. To squeeze out other international
producers and take over an even larger share, Mexican produce would
have to drop in price, thereby reducing profit margins.

Jose Luis Calva, in a study of the impact of NAFTA, concludes that
three million families, or about 15 million Mexicans will be expelled
from the countryside as the market for basic grains collapses.39 Many
will migrate into subsistence or marginal occupations in the nearby
cities while others will try to cross illegally into the United
States. Another study by Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, and
Gustavo Gordillo de Anda, argues that these migration figures are
"vastly exaggerated." 40 They look at corn producers according to
household income levels, and assert that some, particularly those with
higher incomes, will adapt and remain in the countryside. However,
even De Janvry, Sadoulet, and Gordillo, who are supportive of NAFTA,
conclude that "modernization and diversification" in the ejido sector
will depend on access to institutional services such as "credit,
technical assistance, insurance, marketing, delivery of inputs, and
extension services that were formally delivered by government." At
present, they see an "institutional vacuum" as the Mexican government
dramatically reduces spending in the agricultural sector as part of
its neo-liberal program.

The Search for Alternatives

Over the decades Mexican agriculture has been one of the most studied
agrarian systems in the world, particularly by Mexican and U.S. social
scientists. Their points of view span the ideological gamut, from
conservative and neo-liberal, to reformist and Marxist. But they all
have one common point of consensus--Mexican agriculture is in
crisis. And they all agree that this crisis is most pronounced in the
ejido sector.

However, analysts differ fundamentally over how Mexico can escape this
crisis. The economic strategy of the neo-liberals and the Mexican
political technocracy calls for "modernization," meaning the
elimination of the ejido and the disappearance of marginal
agricultural producers who cannot compete in the marketplace. They
argue that all state interventionist policies for the past two decades
designed to assist the ejido have failed, leading to the existence of
an uncompetitive, undercapitalized, and underproductive agricultural
sector that encompasses over half of the country's land and most of
its rural population.

The neo-liberal program is a recipe for further disaster and
marginalization among the Mexican rural population. The state of
Chiapas will be among the hardest hit by the gutting of the ejido
system and modernization via NAFTA. Far from the U.S. market for
fruits and vegetables, Chiapas is one of Mexico's largest corn and
grain producing states. In 1990, about nine out of every ten
ejidatarios produced maize, with 95 percent of the maize coming from
rainfed lands.41

Some have argued that since much of the maize production in Chiapas
occurs on subsistence plots, the drop in market prices will have
little impact--ejidatarios and peasants can simply go on producing for
their families, regardless of market prices. However, the commercial
price of maize has a very direct impact on the well- being of families
of Chiapas. According to a government survey, 67 percent of the maize
produced in the ejido sector in Chiapas is sold on the market, with
the rest going to the household. This means that the meager standards
of living of Chiapans will deteriorate even more as foreign corn and
other grains penetrate the Mexican market and drive down prices and
the income of the poorest families. Small wonder that one of the first
communiques by the Zapatista National Liberation Army declared that
NAFTA "is a death certificate for the Indian peoples of Mexico."42

This leads to a larger questioning of the neo-liberal society that the
PRI wants to construct around NAFTA. As George Collier, Stanford
University's out-going Chair of Anthropology, says in his new book,
Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas:

A broader accountability is called for on behalf of those who have
been disadvantaged by the growing differentiation in the Mexican
countryside... "Modernizers" need to reconsider whether our societies
can afford the impoverishment of the masses that accompanies economic
restructuring... In the final analysis, can modern economies and
modern states afford societies in which so many people are losing
their economic power as purchasers and consumers? 43

An alternative approach has to begin by recognizing that the Mexican
state's policy of intervention in the campesino economy has failed.
But it has not failed because of any inherent "backwardness" of the
ejido or because of a lack of initiative on the part of the Mexican
peasantry. It is the development strategies of a "modernizing" Mexican
state that have created havoc in the countryside and perpetuated
poverty.

As David Barkin argues in Distorted Development, "in spite of
innumerable government programs created precisely to aid agricultural
modernization, the history of institutional intervention in Mexico
demonstrates a definite socio-economic bias against the majority of
poor farmers." 44 During the periods when the state did turn its
attention to the ejido, it acted in a paternalistic manner at best,
and exploitatively at worst, always putting political control before
economic development and favoring the urban industrial economy at the
expense of the agricultural sector.

The very process of agrarian reform under Article 27 has been
incomplete and patchy, driven by a twin desire to buy peasant support
through concessions and to relocate excess population to remote areas
as a means of defusing conflict. A substantial proportion of the ejido
sector is located on marginal lands of dubious fertility and scarce
water resources. And in many cases, like the Lacandon in Chiapas the
ejidos and agrarian communities are essentially cut off from market
access.

The Zapatista call for reopening agrarian reform by annulling the
reforms to Article 27 must be taken seriously. Although land reform
became taboo in the 1980s' international political environment, it
needs to be returned to the agenda. The problem with many Latin
American land reforms, like the Mexican one, is that they have by and
large left high-quality lands in the hands of large-scale, wealthy
producers, while the poor have been relegated to basically useless
areas.

The Zapatistas in their March 1 declaration on land reform spelled out
additional measures that have to coincide with an authentic land
reform program: "Land titles must be accompanied by support
services...and fair prices for our products like coffee, corn and
beans. The land to be distributed should be of good quality and should
be complemented with roads, transportation and irrigation systems."
This is a recognition by the Zapatistas that in the contemporary world
it takes more than land to be a successful farmer.

Peasants were hard hit between 1980 and 1992 as the amount of credit
available for growing corn fell by 77 percent.45 At present there is a
clear bias favoring large commercial farmers in the delivery of
support services such as credit, technical assistance, subsidies,
roads, irrigation, and marketing. In order to succeed, small
producers must be given a fair shake in all of these areas. In
Chiapas, George Collier has shown that when peasants have access to
the capital resources necessary, they are rapidly able to increase
productivity.46 The problem is that so few of them ever have access to
those resources.

The issue of fair prices must be addressed as well. Between 1980 and
1992 the support price that farmers received for their corn dropped by
20 percent, making it increasingly difficult for peasants to stay in
business.47 Moreover, an overvalued peso tends to make food imports
cheaper than domestic production. It is our belief that corn prices
should be considered a national security issue, much as rice prices
are in Japan. High producer prices assure food self- sufficiency at a
national level. They provide incentives to farmers at the same time
as they guarantee a minimum standard of living for even the poorest
peasant producers.

There are two ways to keep prices up: subsidies and tariff
barriers. The problem with the former is that subsidies generate
budget deficits, while the latter is now difficult as NAFTA calls for
a 15-year further "ratcheting" down of Mexican grain prices. Clearly
Mexico must reopen discussion of such clauses in NAFTA, as they
essentially lock the rural masses out of any possible benefit from
economic integration.

As we have discussed earlier, the majority of the Mexican peasantry
now obtains a sizable part of their income from off-farm activities, a
fact that needs to be recognized and even viewed as a strength.
Investment targeted at rudimentary food processing in communally-
owned plants can dramatically alter the proportion of the value-added
to agricultural commodities that stay inside the community and keep
people employed in the rural areas.48 Here the Chinese Township
Enterprises provide a major example of how rapid agricultural and
manufacturing advances can be made in the countryside. Owned by the
local communities, these township enterprises account for much of
China's agricultural production and one-third of the country's
manufactured goods. Largely through access to government credit and
an environment conducive to their development, these little heralded
township enterprises have achieved an economic dynamism that is as
brisk as that of the much acclaimed coastal cities and free enterprise
zones of China.49

Mexico's current neo-liberal environment places too much emphasis on
international economic efficiency and competitiveness, thereby
ignoring the basic needs of the population. Too many people are
simply left on the margins of the economy, unable to contribute to
economic growth either through their productive activities or as
consumers through their aggregate demand. The experiences of Japan,
South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as China, show that, on the contrary,
true land reform and full incorporation of the peasantry into the
economy can be the basis for powerful growth.50 Peasants become
consumers creating dynamic internal markets, which in turn give
domestic industries the base they need to compete effectively in
foreign markets.

Furthermore, there is substantial evidence that smaller- scale
production units worked more labor intensively can outperform
large-scale commercial farms in terms of yields per unit area,
production costs, and employment.51 This further demonstrates that the
only solution for Mexico's food crisis is a real agrarian reform, not
one where peasants are once again relocated to the country's worst
remaining soils, while the best lands are held in larger estates.

Under NAFTA even the urban industrial economy will not provide the
necessary employment opportunities for the Mexican population. Setting
aside the debate over how many will be expelled from the countryside
by NAFTA, approximately one million people per year will be entering
the job market for the next twenty years. At present a total of
400,000 people are employed in the maquiladoras, more than those who
work in non- maquiladora export production.52 Even if NAFTA fulfills
the export dreams of the Mexican technocracy, it is difficult to see
how the Mexican economy, if it follows its current urban industrial
strategy, will absorb the surplus working populace in the coming
years.

Ultimately, the key to a new agriculture is the empowerment of the
peasantry. The ejidos and agrarian communities have to be given the
resources they need and empowered to find their own solutions. The
renewed cry of the Mexican peasantry for tierra y libertad under the
Zapatistas demonstrates that the historic tillers of the land in
Mexico are determined to shape their own destiny. Modernization has
failed. Now it is time for the creativity and innovation of the
peasantry to assume center stage in Mexico. The main question is how
much blood and repression the PRI and the Mexican state will impose on
the Indians and the peasantry before they are permitted to transform
their lives and the lands they till.

ENDNOTES

53 For a compilation of EZLN communiques, see: Ben Clarke and
Clifton Ross, eds. (1994), Voice of Fire: Communiques and
Interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation Army, New Earth
Publications.
53 InterPress Service. "Mexico: crecio 158% en tres anos la
cartera vencida." IPS wire service report, 3 March 1994.
53 Benito Salvatierra Izaba, et. al. (March 1994), Perfil
Epidemiologico y Grados de Marginacion, Centro de Investigaciones
Ecologicas del Sureste, San Cristobal de las Casas, pp. 3, 8.
53 Ibid.
53 Agenda Estadistica de Chiapas, 1993, Secretaria de Programacion
y Presupuesto, Direccion de Informatica, Geografia y Estadistica,
Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, 1993.
53 Daniel Villafuerte Solis (1992), Desarrollo Economico y
Diferenciacion Productiva en el Soconusco, CIES, San Cristobal de
las Casas, p. 25.
53Ibid., pp. 27-30.
53 Billie R. DeWalt and Martha N. Rees with the assistance of
Arthur D. Murphy, RThe End of Agrarian Reform in Mexico: Past
Lessons Future Prospects,S Transformation of Rural Mexico, Number
3, Ejido Reform Research Project, Center for U.S.- Mexican
Studies, UCSD, p. 44.
53 Jose Luis Calva (1993), La Disputa por la Tierra, pp.164-67.
53 Elisabeth Sadoulet, Department of Agricultural and Resource
Economics, University of California at Berkeley, forthcoming book.
53 Calva, op. cit., and Jaime Seplveda, Coordinator (1993), La
Salud de los Pueblos Indigenas en Mexico, Secretaria de Salud,
Instituto Nacional Indigenista, Mexico, p. 15.
53 Roberta Cook, Carlos Benito, James Matsen, David Runsten,
Kenneth Shwedel and Timothy Taylor (1991) RImplications of the
North America Free Trade Agreement for the U.S. Horticultural
Sector,S in North American Free Trade Agreements: Effects on
Agriculture, Vol. IV, Fruit and Vegetable Issues, American Farm
Bureau Research Foundation, Park Ridge, IL.
53 Marilyn Gates (1993), In Default: Peasants, the Debt Crisis and
the Agricultural Challenge in Mexico, Westview Press, Boulder, CO,
pp. 36 & 48.
53 Ibid., pp. 34-35.
53 Maria Eugenia Reyes Ramos (1992), El Reparto de Tierras y la
Politica Agraria en Chiapas, 1914-1988, Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de Mexico, pp. 76-83.
53 Gates, op. cit., p.36.
53Ibid., pp. 36-38.
53Ibid., p. 40.
53 Jose Luis Pontigo Sanchez (1988), La Ganaderia Bovina en Dos
Regiones de Chiapas: Costa y Norte, Centro de Investigaciones
Ecologicas de Sureste, San Cristobal de las Casas, pp. 11-12.
53 Daniel Villafuerte Solis (1990), RLa Economia Chiapaneca en los
Ochenta,S en Anuario de Cultura e Investigacion, Instituto
Chiapaneco de Cultura, Chiapas, pp.176-178.
53 Pontigo Sanchez, op. cit.
53Ibid., pp. 2&17
53 Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas (1988), Industria Petrolera y
Desarrollo Regional en Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutierrez, pp. 16-23.
53 Roberto Thompson Gonzalez (1989), Explotacion Petrolera y
Problematica Agraria en el Sureste de Mexico, Centro de
Investigaciones Ecologicas del Sureste, San Cristobal de las
Casas, pp. 283-285.
53 Erwin Rodriguez (1988), Reforma Agraria: Cambio Estructural en
Chiapas: Avances y Perspectivas, Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas,
Tuxtla Gutierrez, p.28.
53 George Collier with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello (1994), Basta!
Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, Food First Books.
53 George A. Collier (May,1990), RSeeking Food and Seeking Money:
Changing Productive Relations in a Highland Mexican Community,S
Discussion Paper 11, United Nations Research Institute for Social
Development, pp. 1-2.
53 Gates, op. cit., pp.46-48.
53 Reyes Ramos, op. cit., pp. 118-119.
53 Erwin Rodriguez, op. cit., pp 45-46.
53 Reyes Ramos, op. cit., p117.
53 Ibid., p.119.
53 Neil Harvey (1994), RRebellion in Chiapas,S in Transformation
of Rural Mexico, No. 5, Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies,
University of California at San Diego, pp. 9&12, and Villafuerte
et al. (1991), Problemas y Perspectivas del Desarrollo de la
Ganaderia Bovina en Chiapas, Ponencia presentada a la Reunion
Estatal de Ganaderia, Tuxtla Gutierrez, p. 4.
53 Billie DeWalt et al., op. cit., pp. 56-57.
53 Gates, op. cit., pp. 60-61.
53 Jose Luis Calva (1992), Probables Efectos de un Tratado de
Libre Comercio en el Campo, Fontamara, Mexico City, pp. 14-16.
53Ibid.
53 Robin R. Marsh and David Runsten (1994), RFrom Gardens to
Exports: The Potential for Smallholder Fruit and Vegetable
Production in Mexico,S prepared for XVIII International Congress
of LASA, Atlanta, Georgia, March 10-12,p. 13.
53 Jose Luis Calva (1992), Probables Efectos de un Tratado de
Libre Comercio en el Campo, Fontamara, Mexico City, p. 35.
53 Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, and Gustavo Gordillo de
Anda (1994), "NAFTA and Mexico's Corn Producers'" Paper presented
at the XVIII LASA International Congress, Atlanta, Georgia, March
10-12, 1994.
53Harvey, op. cit., pp. 14-16.
53 Clarke and Ross, op. cit.
53 Collier, op. cit.
53David Barkin (1990), Distorted Development: Mexico in the World
Economy, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, p. 35.
53 Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara (ed), "Corn and the crisis of the
1980s: economic restructuring and rural subsistence in Mexico."
Special Issue, Transformation of Rural Mexico, No. 2, 172 pp,
1994.
53 Collier, op. cit.
53 Hewitt de Alcantara, op. cit.
53 Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet, "Investment strategies
to combat rural poverty: a proposal for Latin America," World
Development 17(8):1203-1221, 1989.
53 Interviews conducted by Roger Burbach in China in June, 1994.
53 Jeffrey Sachs, "Trade and exchange rate policies in growth-
oriented adjustment programs," pp. 291-325 in Vittorio Corbo et
al. (1987), Growth-Oriented Adjustment Programs: Proceedings of a
Symposium held in Washington, DC, IMF and World Bank.
53 Miguel Altieri and Susanna Hecht (1990), Agroecology and Small
Farm Development, CRC Press; Robert McC. Netting (1993),
Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of
Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture, Stanford University Press.
53 Barkin, op. cit., p. 2.

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1 For a compilation of EZLN communiqus, see: Ben Clarke and Clifton Ross, eds. (1994), Voice of Fire:
Communiqus and Interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation Army, New Earth Publications.
2 InterPress Service. "Mxico: creci 158% en tres aos la cartera vencida." IPS wire service report, 3 March 1994.
3 Benito Salvatierra Izaba, et. al. (March 1994), Perfil Epidemiolgico y Grados de Marginacin, Centro de
Investigaciones Ecolgicas del Sureste, San Cristbal de las Casas, pp. 3, 8.
4 Ibid.
5 Agenda Estadstica de Chiapas, 1993, Secretara de Programacin y Presupuesto, Direccin de Informtica,
Geografa y Estadstica, Tuxtla Gutirrez, Chiapas, 1993.
6 Daniel Villafuerte Solis (1992), Desarrollo Econmico y Diferenciacin Productiva en el Soconusco, CIES, San
Cristbal de las Casas, p. 25.
7Ibid., pp. 27-30.
8 Billie R. DeWalt and Martha N. Rees with the assistance of Arthur D. Murphy, RThe End of Agrarian Reform in
Mexico: Past Lessons Future Prospects,S Transformation of Rural Mexico, Number 3, Ejido Reform Research
Project, Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies, UCSD, p. 44.
9 Jos Luis Calva (1993), La Disputa por la Tierra, pp.164-67.
10 Elisabeth Sadoulet, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley,
forthcoming book.
11 Calva, op. cit., and Jaime Seplveda, Coordinator (1993), La Salud de los Pueblos Indgenas en Mxico,
Secretara de Salud, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, Mexico, p. 15.
12 Roberta Cook, Carlos Benito, James Matsen, David Runsten, Kenneth Shwedel and Timothy Taylor (1991)
RImplications of the North America Free Trade Agreement for the U.S. Horticultural Sector,S in North American
Free Trade Agreements: Effects on Agriculture, Vol. IV, Fruit and Vegetable Issues, American Farm Bureau
Research Foundation, Park Ridge, IL.
13 Marilyn Gates (1993), In Default: Peasants, the Debt Crisis and the Agricultural Challenge in Mexico, Westview
Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 36 & 48.
14 Ibid., pp. 34-35.
15 Maria Eugenia Reyes Ramos (1992), El Reparto de Tierras y la Poltica Agraria en Chiapas, 1914-1988,
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, pp. 76-83.
16 Gates, op. cit., p.36.
17Ibid., pp. 36-38.
18Ibid., p. 40.
19 Jos Luis Pontigo Snchez (1988), La Ganadera Bovina en Dos Regiones de Chiapas: Costa y Norte, Centro de
Investigaciones Ecolgicas de Sureste, San Cristbal de las Casas, pp. 11-12.
20 Daniel Villafuerte Solis (1990), RLa Economa Chiapaneca en los Ochenta,S en Anuario de Cultura e
Investigacin, Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura, Chiapas, pp.176-178.
21 Pontigo Snchez, op. cit.
22Ibid., pp. 2&17
23 Universidad Autnoma de Chiapas (1988), Industria Petrolera y Desarrollo Regional en Chiapas, Tuxtla
Gutirrez, pp. 16-23.
24 Roberto Thompson Gonzalez (1989), Explotacin Petrolera y Problemtica Agraria en el Sureste de Mxico,
Centro de Investigaciones Ecolgicas del Sureste, San Cristbal de las Casas, pp. 283-285.
25 Erwin Rodrguez (1988), Reforma Agraria: Cambio Estructural en Chiapas: Avances y Perspectivas, Universidad
Autnoma de Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutirrez, p.28.
26 George Collier with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello (1994), Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas,
Food First Books.
27 George A. Collier (May,1990), RSeeking Food and Seeking Money: Changing Productive Relations in a
Highland Mexican Community,S Discussion Paper 11, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development,
pp. 1-2.
28 Gates, op. cit., pp.46-48.
29 Reyes Ramos, op. cit., pp. 118-119.
30 Erwin Rodriguez, op. cit., pp 45-46.
31 Reyes Ramos, op. cit., p117.
32 Ibid., p.119.
33 Neil Harvey (1994), RRebellion in Chiapas,S in Transformation of Rural Mexico, No. 5, Center for U.S.-
Mexican Studies, University of California at San Diego, pp. 9&12, and Villafuerte et al. (1991), Problemas y
Perspectivas del Desarrollo de la Ganadera Bovina en Chiapas, Ponencia presentada a la Reunin Estatal de
Ganadera, Tuxtla Gutirrez, p. 4.
34 Billie DeWalt et al., op. cit., pp. 56-57.
35 Gates, op. cit., pp. 60-61.
36 Jos Luis Calva (1992), Probables Efectos de un Tratado de Libre Comercio en el Campo, Fontamara, Mexico
City, pp. 14-16.
37Ibid.
38 Robin R. Marsh and David Runsten (1994), RFrom Gardens to Exports: The Potential for Smallholder Fruit and
Vegetable Production in Mexico,S prepared for XVIII International Congress of LASA, Atlanta, Georgia, March
10-12,p. 13.
39 Jos Luis Calva (1992), Probables Efectos de un Tratado de Libre Comercio en el Campo, Fontamara, Mexico
City, p. 35.
40 Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, and Gustavo Gordillo de Anda (1994), "NAFTA and Mexico's Corn
Producers'" Paper presented at the XVIII LASA International Congress, Atlanta, Georgia, March 10-12, 1994.
41Harvey, op. cit., pp. 14-16.
42 Clarke and Ross, op. cit.
43 Collier, op. cit.
44David Barkin (1990), Distorted Development: Mexico in the World Economy, Westview Press, Boulder, CO,
p. 35.
45 Cynthia Hewitt de Alcntara (ed), "Corn and the crisis of the 1980s: economic restructuring and rural subsistence
in Mexico." Special Issue, Transformation of Rural Mexico, No. 2, 172 pp, 1994.
46 Collier, op. cit.
47 Hewitt de Alcntara, op. cit.
48 Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet, "Investment strategies to combat rural poverty: a proposal for Latin
America," World Development 17(8):1203-1221, 1989.
49 Interviews conducted by Roger Burbach in China in June, 1994.
50 Jeffrey Sachs, "Trade and exchange rate policies in growth-oriented adjustment programs," pp. 291-325 in
Vittorio Corbo et al. (1987), Growth-Oriented Adjustment Programs: Proceedings of a Symposium held in
Washington, DC, IMF and World Bank.
51 Miguel Altieri and Susanna Hecht (1990), Agroecology and Small Farm Development, CRC Press; Robert
McC. Netting (1993), Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable
Agriculture, Stanford University Press.
52 Barkin, op. cit., p. 2.