PRIVATIZING THE COUNTRYSIDE - THE MEXICAN PEASANT MOVEMENT AND NEOLIBERAL REFORM

The latest round of state-driven modernization, initiated with the drastic liberalization of agricultural trade undertaken in 1990 and extending through the revisions of Article 27 of the Constitution and the laws which implement it in early 1992, has not abolished the agrarian question in Mexican politics. Nevertheless, it has altered profoundly the terms under which agrarian politics and agricultural policy will be fought out in the years to come. In 1990 the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari opened the borders to agricultural imports and scaled back or cut most agricultural subsidies. The 1992 constitutional amendment to Article 27 put an end to 70 yr of land reform and laid the legal foundations for the privatization of the ejido, the land reform community. This article sketches the background of the current round of reform and the peasant response to it and attempt to assess the impact, political and economic, of the Salinas reforms on the movement and on the countryside more generally. -from Author