The Mexican Mixteca:
Trapped in Agriculture’s Tailspin
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“Take this message to people: We’re barely living. There’s no work here. Round-trip bus fare to Huajuapan [a medium-size city some 30 kilometers away] is 34 pesos, and if we make 50 pesos for a day’s labor, that hardly leaves money to buy a glass of water. We’re trapped!” Farmer José Murguía Ríos smiles and speaks softly, but keeps his grip on his listener’s arm as if to impress the urgency of his plea.
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Murguía and his family live in the village of Ayuquililla, part of the mountainous, semi-arid Mixteca region of southeastern Mexico. Cactus, low shrubs, goats, and rocks share the sun-baked landscape with some 1.5 million humans, nearly half of whom have indigenous ancestry and a quarter of whom cannot read or write. Goat herding is a major pursuit, supplemented by marginal, rainfed production of maize and beans, some garden crops, and even wheat. The thin, unfertile soils receive 300–700 millimeters of poorly distributed rain each year. The less dependable rains, together with poor soil management and unfavorable policies, have nearly shut down the area’s low-input farming systems.
Harvesting Nothing
Fully half the region’s residents have fled to jobs in larger cities or the United States. They leave behind ghost towns peopled largely by the very young or very old, with a huge demographic hole where the economically productive adult population ought to be. Families are separated, and many stay-behinds depend on support from the outside. Those who lack external support must seek what seasonal work they can of f-farm, though the depressed local economy offers little. Nearly everyone weaves hats to buy maize (one hat fetches 1.7 kilograms of maize) when grain stores run out. This year reserves vanished quickly. The rains failed, so farmers in many villages harvested nothing.
“The ones who choose to stay have a variety of reasons,” says Julio César Velásquez, a CIMMYT research affiliate who knows the region’s inhabitants well. “There are strong ties—to the land and traditions; to family, especially their parents; and to country living. Some people have tried the cities but had problems. The point is, these people should have the right to choose. Right now, they’re being forced off their land.”
Under the Mixteca Farmer Experimentation Project, funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Ford Foundation over 1998–2001, Velásquez has tried to provide more choices to Mixteca inhabitants. Working directly with farmers in one of the Mixteca’s drier zones, he and an associate helped them to identify, test, and share new practices such as composting, drought tolerant maize varieties, grain legumes, alternative crops, drip irrigation, and live barriers that keep soil in place on the steep hillsides but also produce food. Farmers have learned to conduct experiments, analyze findings, and present results at annual gatherings of participating villages. “There’s a critical mass of enthusiastic farmer-experimenters,” says Velásquez. “Most importantly, isolated groups are communicating, sharing results, and planning concerted action to better their lot.”
Experiments in Survival
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Farmer Luciano Soriano Castro, of Lunatitlán Village, spoke of his own enthusiasm over the project’s activities: “Julio César came to our town, explained his intentions to the local authorities, and then called an assembly. Several of us met with him afterwards. I was most interested in composting.” After a year’s experimentation, some farmers devised their own liquid compost that measurably improved yields.
When Velásquez brought a group of Mixteca farmers to CIMMYT headquarters, one visitor—Zacarías Muñoz Martínez of Zapoquila Village, a high-altitude location—noted a plot of triticale and later requested seed of “that odd wheat.” When he tested it, the results were good and impressed his peers. “What interested us was that triticale yielded more than our wheat,” he says. “We’ll use it to make tortillas.” Muñoz and some other farmers had tested the grain for this purpose and found it excellent. A relatively young farmer, Muñoz is an oddity in a village peopled by women and old men. His farm is among the few in the village with access to a natural spring, which gives him a rare advantage. To make the most of their limited water resources, several other farmers in Zapoquila have installed simple drip irrigation systems for growing garden vegetables—a plus for household nutrition—with help from Velásquez.
In Ayuquililla, Productoras de Amaranto, an association of women farmers, is experimenting with growing morel mushrooms, an occupation they learned from a specialist invited by a local NGO.* Velásquez provided technical support and encouragement. “Right now we’re in the investment and learning stage, but we’ll eventually share any profit we make,” says Marisol Peña Huerta, the association’s president. The group also grows amaranth, a nutritious pre-Colombian crop, and prickly pear cactus, whose leaves are used in savory Mexican dishes and whose fruit can be sold locally. “We’ve also seen promising results with a couple of grain legumes,” says Velásquez.
Achieving material gains is only part of what Velásquez aims to accomplish. He is almost as concerned with bolstering farmers’ self-esteem and community spirit. “If I can get people communicating with each other, get them motivated and organized, then I’ve achieved something valuable,” he says.
“I’d like to commend Julio César and the Hilton and Ford Foundations for supporting farmers who are largely forgotten by the rest of the world,” comments Larry Harrington, director of CIMMYT’s Natural Resources Group and project supervisor. “We’re actively seeking funds to continue this work.”
* Centro de Apoyo Comunitario, Trabajos Unidos (CACTUS, A.C.).
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For more information: Larry Harrington (l.harrington@cgiar.org) |
Published on October 2001
August, 2004