Neoliberalism, Transnationalization and Rural Poverty: A Case Study of Michoacán, Mexico

256 Pages·1995·30.904 MB·English

by  John Gledhill

Neoliberalism, Transnationalization
and Rural Poverty

Neoliberalism,
Transnationalization
and Rural Poverty
A Case Study of
Michoacan, Mexico
John Gledhill
First published 1995 by Westview Press, Inc.
Published 2018 by Routledge
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Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: Structural Adjustment, Neoliberalism
and the Mexican Countryside
Into the Nineties, 4
Social and Political Dimensions of Economic Policy:
A Broader View, 6
Social and Political Dimensions of Environmental Crisis, 9
From the Local to the Global, 12
Agricultural Crisis, 1982-1990, 14
From Economy to Politics and Society and Back Again, 21
2 On Audacity and Social Polarization:
An Assessment of Rural Policy Under Salinas 24
Campesinistas and Technocrats, 26
From Structural Adjustment to Procampo, 28
The Crisis Continues, 32
The Death of the Peasantry? 36
The Fate of Capitalist Enterprise Under Salinas, 42
3 Social Life and the Practices of Power:
The Limits of Neocardenismo and the Limits of the PRI 47
Toward a More Skeptical View of Salinista Politics, 48
Political Cultures in Regional and National Space, 53
Hegemony in Regional Space, 57
Wealth, Power and the Realism of the Popular Classes, 65
The Political Value of the Inevitability of Violence, 68
The PRD and the Social and Political Roots of Disillusion, 73
v
vi Contents
4 The Trans nationalization of Regional Societies:
Capital, Class and International Migration 79
The Political Economy of Transnational Class Relations, 81
Economic Factors in Differential Patterns of U.S. Migration, 88
Variation in the Social Organization of Migration, 93
Rediagnosing the Crisis, 97
5 A Rush Through the Closing Door?
The Impact of Simpson-Rodino on Two Rural Communities 100
Cerrito Cotijaran: A Community of Poor Relations, 101
International Migration from Cerrito Cotijaran, 106
The Formal Provisions of the Simpson-Rodino Act, 111
The Cotijaran Response to Simpson-Rodino, 115
Thwarting the Legislators, 121
Guaracha: A New Wave of Emigration? 124
6 The Family United and Divided:
Migration, Domestic Life and Gender Relations 135
Marriage Breakdown and Multiple Liaisons, 136
International Migration and the Parallel Family, 143
Marriage in the North and Migrant Identity, 147
The Family That Stays Together, 152
The Social Causes and Impact of Female Migration, 155
A Broader Crisis of Patriarchy? 160
7 American Dreams and Nightmares:
The Fractured Social Worlds of an Empire in Decadence 166
Crisis in California, 167
Labor Market Development and Ethnic Segmentation, 171
Constructing "the Underclass," 17 6
The State, the Taxpayer and Immiseration, 179
Nativism, Ethnicization and the Links Between Hegemonic
and Subaltern Ideologies, 186
8 Neoliberalism and Transnationalization:
Assessing the Contradictions 198
Transnationalism as Resistance and Accommodation, 199
Class, Politics and the Decline of Community, 203
Why the Mexican is More Cabr6n Than the Gringo, 207
Rural Reform, Political Closure and the Future of the Left, 211
Bibliography 223
Index 233
About the Book and Author 243
Tables and Figures
Tables
1.1 Levels of Production of Selected Crops
in Relation to Real Guaranteed Prices, 1985-1989 18
5.1 Distribution of Male Migrants by Sector, Guaracha, 1990 126
5.2 Sectoral Distribution of Migrants
by Marital Status Category as Percentage
of Total in Category, Guaracha, 1990 127
7.1 Percentage Distribution by Industry
for All Employed Men in Los Angeles County,
Compared with All Fathers of Mexican Origin
by Legal Status, 1980 173
7.2 Occupations and Incomes of Different Ethnic
Groups in Los Angeles County, 1980 175
7.3 Ethnic Power Disparities, Los Angeles, 1992 183
Figures
1.1 Map of the State of Michoacan 2
1.2 Map of the Cienega de Chapala, Zamora and Los Reyes 3
5.1 Distribution of Ejido Land Between 60 Ejidatarios,
Cerrito Cotijaran, 1990 103
5.2 Resident and U.S. Migrant Household Heads
by Age Group, Cerrito Cotijaran, 1990 107
vii
viii Tables and Figures
5.3 Distribution of Cerrito Cotijaran Migrants by
Destination in the United States, 1990 109
5.4 Distribution of Guaracha Migrants by
Destination in the United States, 1990 110
5.5 Married Male U.S. Migrants by Age Groups and
Migratory Status, Cerrito Cotijaran, 1990 116
5.6 Single Male U.S. Migrants by Age Groups and
Migratory Status, Cerrito Cotijaran, 1990 117
5.7 Married and Separated Female U.S. Migrants
by Age Groups and Migratory Status,
Cerrito Cotijaran, 1990 118
5.8 Married or Separated Male U.S. Migrants
by Age Groups and Migratory Status,
Guaracha, 1990 125
5.9 Unmarried Male U.S. Migrants by Age Groups
and Migratory Status, Guaracha, 1990 128
5.10 Unmarried Female U.S. Migrants by Age Groups
and Migratory Status, Guaracha, 1990 133
Acknowledgments
The principal fieldwork on which this book is based was carried out between
August 1990 and September 1991. I am very grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foun-
dation for Anthropological Research for providing the funding that made this work
possible. I was also able to carry out a month's follow-up work in the Cienega de
Chapala in December 1992, thanks to a grant from the Central Research Fund of
the University of London, which I equally gratefully acknowledge.
My most recent visit to Michoacan was in November 1994, courtesy of an
invitation to participate in two conferences from the Colegio de Michoacan in
Zamora. The Colegio has provided invaluable logistical and intellectual support for
my research over many years. Thanks are due, in particular, to its current president,
Brigitte Boehm de Lameiras, and secretary, Heriberto Moreno, and to my other
friends and colleagues, Esteban Barragan, Oscar Gonzalez, Gail Mummert, Cristina
Monz6n, Victor Gabriel Muro, Andrew Roth, and Sergio Zendejas, all of whom
made significant contributions to this book, although they are absolved from all
responsibility for the analysis and conclusions I offer. I am also grateful to the
generation of masters students I taught at Colmich in 1989 and again, less inten-
sively, during my 1990-1991 visit. I hope they learned something useful from me.
I certainly learned a lot from them as I advised them on their field projects, some
of which introduced me to areas ofMichoacan I had never previously visited.
My greatest intellectual debt in this study is to my co-worker Kathy Powell. For
practical reasons our time was divided between Los Reyes and the Cienega during
the whole 1990-91 field season, but she did the real fieldwork in Los Reyes and I
have drawn heavily on her deeper historical and ethnographic knowledge of this
area. I have also asked her for specific information relevant to several points of
interpretation, and it is no ritual gesture to state that she is in no way responsible
for any defects in the arguments I present.
I have benefited greatly from supervising the Ph.D. dissertations of some
excellent graduate students at University College: Victoria Forbes-Adam, Robert
Aitken, Patricia Fortuny, and Margarita Zarate, to place them in chronological
order. Other colleagues who work or have worked in London University, Jutta
ix