Peasant, environment and maize "modernization" in Zacapoaxtla, Mexico, 1974-1982

Abstract

This chapter analyzes farm modernizing efforts placed in the 1970s by the Mexican national government in the Zacapoaxtla, Mexico region of Totonac and Nahua subsistence farmers. The case explores relations between environmental and political change, and the role that peasants play in that change. The postrevolutionary Mexican government began deliberately targeting peasants for such projects in the 1960s not only to increase food output in the country, but also to revive the regime's populist self-representation and to squelch rising dissent. The Zacapoaxtla project began in 1974 with the priority placed on modernizing maize. By modernizing is meant the introduction of scientific technology such as hybrid seed, synthetic pesticides, and synthetic fertilizer that was the standard toolbox of the Green Revolution modernization programs. However, after the first three years of the program, the top priority placed on maize was abandoned by the technicians implementing the program in favor of the goal to organize peasants into marketing and purchasing cooperatives. Northern Sierra peasants rejected most of these proposed farm technologies, partly because the methods were environmentally and economically inappropriate. In this sense, the Zacapoaxtla environment conditioned the state project and therefore participated in political change © 2005 Springer.