CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE RURAL MEZCAL SYSTEM: THE CASE OF THE QUERÉNDARO REGION IN MICHOACÁN, MEXICO

Abstract

The traditional Mexican mezcal socio-ecosystem has extensive biocultural and economic wealth presence in rural communities. However, in recent years an intense demand has been experienced in global markets generating processes of agro-industrialization of diverse traditional practices and thereby negatively impacting the sustainability of the system. Regarding this matter the research aims to characterize and typify the existing relationships between producers and their socio-environmental contexts, contributing elements to the construction of greater degrees of local sustainability within rural contexts, using the Queréndaro region, in the central north of Michoacán state, as a case study. Our results show that the sustainability of the analysis units varies between and intra diversed categories, while sustainability is not a characteristic of the type of mezcal, but of the producers. It is their traditional cultural relationships, their history and their association with nature the criteria which make this element to be created.