Mexican Peasants and the Mexican State: Reform and Continuity

Abstract

State-rural poor relations in Mexico remained fairly stable (between 1970 and 1994) in regard to their political role and consequences for the majority of the rural poor. A small subset of the rural poor, those able, or potentially able, to compete in the national and international agricultural markets have experienced a growing pluralist enclave. This two-tiered arrangement was created during a period when multiple agents of change challenged the status quo: on-going electoral reforms, debt crisis and repeated economic crises, innovative organizational strategies on the part of the rural poor, and a neoliberal economic reform program which drastically changed the level and nature of state intervention in the economy. These agents of change have had much less impact than expected on state-peasant relations. This reduced impact is due to the mediating effect of three filters: the nature of the PRI, the strategies adopted by the organized rural poor in regard to elections and partisan politics, and the synergy that has developed between neoliberal reform and the corporatist system in Mexico. These findings for state-rural poor relations have important implications for the democratization of Mexico.