Economic restructuring and rural subsistence in mexico

Abstract

"The twentieth century is coming to a close amidst efforts on the part of a great many countries to reform the rules which have structured economic and socio-political relations over the course of several generations. This is a voluntaristic attempt, unusual in the comprehensiveness of its scope and the conviction with which governments and peoples embrace the need for change. It is also, however, a process born of necessity. Previous models of socio-economic organization have in varying degrees reached their limits and threaten to break down altogether if not fundamentally modified. The economic crises of the 1970s, followed by the debt crisis of the 1980s, provided the immediate stimulus for change in most countries, and certainly in the case of Mexico. Fundamental shifts in world commodity and financial markets made it impossible for the Mexican government to meet its obligations to international creditors; and behind those obligations lay a complex structure of internal transactions, of both an economic and a political nature, which were then no longer viable. Conflicts of interest within Mexican society which had not been resolved, but could be assuaged through recourse to international borrowing, were forced into view - just, it might be added, as they were in any number of other countries, including, most recently, the United States. Among the major issues to be confronted, once the debt crisis erupted, was the structure of subsidies and programmes which had developed over a number of decades to regulate the provisioning of maize in Mexico. Maize is both the single most important crop produced by Mexican farmers and the basic staple of most rural and urban diets; and as such, it plays a central role in the livelihood of the majority of the Mexican population. The precarious position of both low-income producers and low-income consumers has long constituted an argument for governmental intervention throughout the maize system. The centrality of that product in the national diet has also lent weight to repeated efforts to promote national selfsufficiency and to protect local maize producers from foreign competition."(pg 1)