How Mexicans are escaping rural poverty (and not going north)
Mexican peasant walking to town with a donkeyload of firewood for sale
The New York Times a couple of days ago had a long and well researched article on the slowing of Mexican migration to the United States. Yeah.
Mexican is getting wealthier. In fact Mexico is now 80% urban, something that has a lot to do with this. Peasants eking out a living on the land are disappearing. Instead they are taking jobs in towns. Just this morning the newspaper Reforma reported that in the last eighteen months, Mazda, Volkswagen, Pirelli, and Proctor and Gamble are opening huge new plants in Guanajuato, the state in the center of the country where I used to live.
Many might think this sad. But life as a peasant is not a bundle of fun.
So I thought it might be worth linking to earlier blog posts about Mexican peasants, maize, farming, and migration to the United States.
Why it’s not worthwhile for Mexican peasants to go north.
How Mexican peasants are escaping rural poverty.
Why Mexican peasants don’t want to grow maize.
Mexico’s maize production and importation (2008).
How Mexican peasants came to be growing maize in the twentieth century.
Of course, the great unknown in all this is how much drug money is contributing to prosperity.
Starting about 18 months ago we began seeing reports of the decline in north bound immigration Word got around fast that jobs had dried up. There is also a situation of free fall for amounts of remittences sent south and a reverse trend where Mexican families are sending MONEY north to help the families that used to send money south.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/01/recession-causes-record-drop-in-money-sent-to-mexico-/1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/world/americas/16mexico.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/06/world/americas/immigration.html
Great links, Rachel, thanks.
Looking at that photo of the donkey laden with firewood, I am very curious to know what you might have to say about solar ovens. Are they such a total “duh” as they seem?
Without trying place judgement on commodity pinto beans for Walmart (they have their place, but not at my table), our Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project has been able to get heirloom beans grown by mostly indigenous farmers a place to thrive. The quantity is relativity small but there are peasant farmers who want to farm and we’ve been able to create a market for their wares. We’ve used NAFTA to import small quantities. Everybody wins. So far. Most of our production, about 85%, is in California but the Mexican farmers are great and we have this importation thing down and I can see doubling and tripling imports at the rate we’re going.
I’m trying to imagine the farmers i’VE met moving to the city and it breaks my heart a little.
another unknown is to what extent mass urbanisation can be sustained; tha rapid change from one lifestyle to the other is bound to raise new dilemmas given the new way that urbanised peasants will regard the change in their lifestyle, if the events in greece are anything to go by