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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Renegotiating Gender And Class In The Berry Fields Of Michoacán, Mexico, Donna Chollett
Renegotiating Gender And Class In The Berry Fields Of Michoacán, Mexico, Donna Chollett
Anthropology Publications
This article examines the renegotiation of gender and class in a rural Mexican community where economic crisis in the sugar industry led foreign agribusinesses to promote blackberry and raspberry production for export and hire primarily women as berry pickers. Analysis focuses on the transition from a sugar economy where mostly men worked in the cane fields to non-traditional agricultural exports when women entered agricultural waged labor in unprecedented numbers. This restructuring of the regional economy raises important questions regarding the marginalization of differentiated subaltern groups and the nature of new sets of power relations between transnational agribusinesses, berry growers, and …
From Sugar To Blackberries: Restructuring Agro-Export Production In Michoacán, Mexico, Donna Chollett
From Sugar To Blackberries: Restructuring Agro-Export Production In Michoacán, Mexico, Donna Chollett
Anthropology Publications
In recent years, economic crisis in the sugar industry and the closure of an important sugar mill in Michoacán, Mexico, have fostered the entry of transnational agribusinesses that contract with local growers for blackberry production. Land concentration is under way as wealthy growers rent ejido (agrarian-reform) land to grow berries and small-scale growers shift to less capitalized berry production or migrate out of the region. An analysis of the impact of this transition, part of the globalization of the agro-food system, on campesinos, workers, and their communities reveals that a general improvement in the economy has been accompanied by increased …
Culture, Ideology, And Community: The Dynamics Of Accommodation And Resistance To Restructuring Of The Mexican Sugar Sector, Donna Chollett
Culture, Ideology, And Community: The Dynamics Of Accommodation And Resistance To Restructuring Of The Mexican Sugar Sector, Donna Chollett
Anthropology Publications
Neoliberalism has provoked profound and diverse consequences for rural Mexico, escalating the agricultural crisis for producers and workers in various sectors. Against this context, recent improvements in the sugar sector raise interesting questions about its relative economic success under the neoliberal paradigm. This article contrasts two cane zones--one that experienced economic recovery and another affected by abandonment of the sugar mill--to argue that in the interstices of modernizing neoliberalism, cane growers and mill workers who were subjected to politics of exclusion struggle to ensure the survival of their culture, community, and economic livelihood.
Restructuring The Mexican Sugar Industry: Campesinos, The State, And Private Capital, Donna Chollett
Restructuring The Mexican Sugar Industry: Campesinos, The State, And Private Capital, Donna Chollett
Anthropology Publications
Under the new agrarian policies and economic rules of Article 27, implemented in January 1992, the customary patters of political patronage and loyalty in the countryside no longer operate as before. Campesions now are challenged to think and act like entrepreneurs who assume investment risks in order to successfully participate in competitive markets. But most possess neither the economic resources nor worldviews to be the “campesino entrepreneurs” sought by the government or by the leaders of the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC) and the Confederación Nacional de Productores Rurales (CNPR), the two campesino confederations affiliated to the ruling PRI. This contradiction …
State Divestment, Reprivatization, And Peasants: Dialectical Transformations Within The Mexican Sugar Sector, Donna Chollett
State Divestment, Reprivatization, And Peasants: Dialectical Transformations Within The Mexican Sugar Sector, Donna Chollett
Anthropology Publications
The last decade has seen a critical reassessment of the role of the state in economic development, accompanied by substantial economic restructuring of Third World economies. One of the most profound manifestations of this transformation is the process of privatization. The sale of Mexico's state-owned sugar mills to private capital marks a historical turning point for the sugar sector and provides an opportunity to analyze the impact of privatization on rural communities, as peasants adjust to the changing structure of production and renegotiate their relationship with the Mexican state and the reprivatized sugar mill. The research examines reprivatization through a …