1The Rio Balsas depression has been one of the main regions for livestock production in the Mexican dry tropics for over a century. In the past thirty years, the region has specialised in the extensive production of calves that are then fattened in other parts of the country. This specialisation tends to hide the existence of large numbers of small farmers who draw their incomes from food crops and agricultural wages and who play a central role in the functioning of the livestock holdings. However, increasing integration of the region in markets and specialisation in breeding have involved small farmers in a rapid impoverishment process and triggered a landholding concentration movement benefiting large cattle breaders.

2The agrarian history of this society shows that the roots of the process are old and based on differences in productivity and accumulation to the benefit of the livestock farmers that date back for several centuries. Ambitious agrarian reform did not affect the bases of this differentiation. On the contrary, they have been reinforced in the past decades. In fact, the authorities have long backed the ‘pastoral vocation’ of the Tierra Caliente and interventions have enhanced this feature.

3This judgement is derived to a considerable extent from the geographical and climatic features of the region. The lack communications, the hilly landscape and the dry tropical climate contribute to reducing its ‘comparative advantages’. The alluvial Tierra Caliente depression is streaked with rock outcrops with elevations ranging from 350 to 800 metres and lies between two mountain ranges rising to over 3,000 metres. These barriers block the masses of sea air from the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico and shorten the rainy season. Seventy percent of precipitation is between July and September and ninety percent between mid-June and mid-October. In spite of the relatively abundant rainfall (generally more than 800 mm per year), precipitations are torrential and random and form a danger to agricultural activities. It is not always enough to compensate the year-long high evaporation and makes a strict agricultural calendar necessary for farmers.

4The soils are not favourable for agriculture either. Over half of the area is covered by regosols and lithosols that are rarely more than 25 to 30 cm deep. They are poor soils and susceptible to erosion. The proportion of more fertile feozems and cambisols increases near watercourses. The first human settlements were in such areas.

The creole agricultural revolution and the development of private property (1450-1870)

5The Middle Balsas possessed diversified agriculture focused on Altiplano markets from the middle of the 15th century. The population was concentrated along the main watercourses, where two food crop cycles were possible each year (maize, beans, squash) on wooded slopes that were cleared, burned and cropped during the rainfed cycle and on beaches periodically flooded and fertilised by the rivers. Cotton was also grown on the beaches and used by farmers to pay tribute to the State.

6In addition to their work in the fields, the farmers were employed in mines controlled by the central power or on small cocoa plantations near springs and which were owned by the administrative or religions nobility. At the time of the Spanish conquest, this agrarian System provided subsistence for a population estimated at 20,000.

7The first century of Spanish colonisation was marked by the pillage and destruction of this society. Once the mining resources and local labour had been exhausted, the Middle Balsas region long remained on the fringe of the economy of Nueva Espana. The despoiled Indian communities concentrated their activities in the alluvial beach areas and reduced their exchanges with the creole population to sales of cotton.

8A mixed blood population did not become established until the 18th century when the large cereal farms spread in the Altiplano. Sharecroppers and small farmers expelled from the Bajio haciendas settled on the land left vacant by the Indian communities. They introduced new means of production which completely changed the way in which the environment was exploited.

9Draught cultivation resulted in considerable increase in productivity and in particular multiplied by three the area that could be cultivated by slash and burn techniques. It also enabled the new arrivals to establish exclusive, permanent rights of use of the land that they cultivated. These rights had long been unknown to the native communities as the long period of forest fallow or the annual flood rendered individual appropriation of land impossible. By sustaining their installation on land, the creole farmers were able to carry out some development work on their ranchos, such as irrigating the small plots of sugarcane planted after rainfed food crops.

10The cattle that made possible this agricultural revolution grazed the vast stretches of scrubland belonging to the Indian communities and whose status was stable thanks to rights of commonage. The creole livestock farmers thus benefited very early on front a rent derived from free access to Indian land that had remained jointly owned. A distinct difference in productivity and accumulation already separated the creoles from the Indians.

11The components of the creole farming System spread to the Indian villages as much as allowed by individual accumulation. The community rules governing control of land weakened throughout the 19th century and individual appropriation became widespread.

The heyday of large estates (1870-1930)

12Front 1870, the development of communications enhanced the integration of producers in the national market and facilitated the arrival of a new wave of migrants from the Altiplano. Whereas the ranchos were specialised in the production of fattened cattle for the Mexico City market and production of sugar for sale in the region, Indian farmers were hit hard by competition from the large cotton estates in the northern part of the country. Their incomes fell and they became increasingly indebted. The larger cattle breaders and dealers succeeded in appropriating the land belonging to the old Indian communities and that of small farmers through usury and mortgage loans. Estates varying in size from 1,000 to 20,000 hectares were established.

13The farming System that they established was based on the concentration of very large areas in a catchment. The operator thus controlled the water supply required for the sugar plantations and the various ecological stages through which the cattle moved. The high pastures were grazed during the rainy season and the animals were then brought clown to more humid grazing land at the bottom of the slopes and then to the cultivated land in the valley bottoms where the stubble was grazed at the end of the dry season. A single cowherd could look after a large number of cattle and intermediate intake was kept very small.

14However, herd size and the size of the area planted with sugarcane depended on the number of landless farmers that each owner managed to settle on his estate. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers produced crop residues eaten by the cattle during the most critical period. They also planted and cut sugarcane. By taking half of the sharecroppers’ maize harvest and an average ofa third of that of his tenant farmers, the owner built up a stock of grain for fattening the beef cattle and pigs sold in Mexico City.

15The sharecropper just managed to feed his family and sometimes one or two pigs with the harvest share left to him. He was in any case dependent on the advances on harvest allowed to him by the owner. A few tenant farmers had a slightly greater margin for accumulation, but the appropriation of crop residues by the landowner forbade the ownership of more than two or three head of cattle and made it impossible for them to build up a capital.

The limits of an agrarian reform (1935-1960)

16The agrarian reform law was only applied in the region after 1935, but it led to the redistribution of over 150,000 hectares of land. In order to escape expropriation, many of the estates were divided into ranchos of not more than a thousand hectares. Usufruct of confiscated land was awarded to the former sharecroppers and tenant farmers grouped into ejidos. They each received a 5 to 6-ha plot considered to be sufficient to cover the minimum requirements of their families. In contrast, the wooded slopes were cultivated in undivided form as grazing land for cattle. However, this redistribution was limited to land and did not concern the other means of production - tools, draught teams and capital. Only a few former tenant farmers possessed a draught team. The vast majority of ejidatarios who had been sharecroppers or agricultural day labourers did not even have enough autonomy not to need advances of seed maize.

17The cattle breaders thus held on to the monopoly of credit and draught. They controlled the access of small farmers to land and awarded themselves rights of commonage and free access to the ejidos rangeland. In order to obtain means of production, the ejidatarios sometimes had to become sharecroppers as during the hacienda era or at best obtain usurial loans obliging them to give away over a third of their agricultural production. The livestock farmers thus succeeded in conserving their pre-agrarian reform incomes. They also benefited from support from the major Altiplano oil industries who financed producers’ credit and required payment in sesame seed. Oilseed crops thus developed strongly in the ejidos where it was rotated with maize. However, the margin for accumulation by small farmers did not increase when the usurers had taken their share.

18Small farmers thus had to seek means for generating a surplus outside the Tierra Caliente area. Migration movements started very rapidly to commercial farming regions such as the Gulf of Mexico sugar plantations or the irrigated perimeters on the Pacific side of the country producing export fruit and vegetables. Poor farmers found labouring jobs during the dry season. The wages were scarcely sufficient to feed these migrants and their families but migration saved the maize that would have been eaten if they had stayed in their villages.

19The increase in the margin for accumulation by poor farmers remained insufficient to compensate the unequal relationship with the cattle breaders. Thirty years after agrarian reform, the gap in productivity and accumulation between livestock farmers and small farmers had not closed. The latter hardly achieved sustainability level and were vulnerable to any variation in price, in agricultural wages or in the area that they farmed.

Transformation and crisis in the agrarian System (1960-1990)

20In the early 1960s, agrarian society had to face various crisis factors. A new generation of producers demanded access to land and division by inheritance resulted in the division of a fair number of plots, resulting in holdings that were not large enough to cover the minimum requirements of a family. The official policy of supplying urban centres at low cost simultaneously contributed to reducing the prices paid to maize and sesame producers. Faced with competition front regions where the second agricultural revolution had spread rapidly and enabled an increase in labour productivity, farmers’ incomes dwindled rapidly.

21The cattle breaders themselves were shut out of the Mexico City market by ranchos in the humid tropics whose production conditions were much more favourable. However, the demand for animals less than 18 months old developed in this fattening area and enabled cattle breaders in the Tierra Caliente region to specialise in the extensive production of calves. Development of the road System disenclaved the region in 1970 and facilitated the arrival of cattle buyers and the transport of young animals and also enhanced the importing of cheap maize. Changes in the macroeconomic environment thus led to a decline in food crop and sesame production while extensive cattle farming was the only activity in which there was a return on labour.

22This specialisation was accentuated by the diffusion of new means of production (motorised mechanisation, Chemical fertilisers and pesticides). However, the resulting increase in field crop yields did not compensate either the fall in farm prices or the decreased productivity of farm labour. In contrast, that of the large livestock farmers increased considerably. By purchasing tractors they were able to increase the areas that they cultivated themselves and remain the masters of motive force. The extension of sorghum and the use of fertilisers and herbicide resulted in larger quantities of crop residues and they were able to build up fodder reserves.

23These conditions enhanced the rapid growth of herds. The number of head of cattle was multiplied by three in less than thirty years. Livestock pressure on undivided rangeland therefore increased considerably and overgrazing became so common as to threaten the livestock System that had been functioning since agrarian reform. The exhaustion of grazing land led to the appropriation of undivided land by livestock farmers. Each one attempted to enclose and defend as large an area of grazing land as possible. The capital accumulated by each producer and his ability to finance fencing set the limits of this appropriation. Enclosure also spread to the plots of small ejidatarios which were enclosed by the cattlemen in exchange for rights of commonage for crop residues. This land appropriation finally elbowed out the small farmers by taking from them all possibility of undertaking similar specialisation in cattle breeding. The lag in accumulation had become final. Small producers were limited to forage production for the large operators and to the sale of their own labour.

Might integration in markets enable intensification?

24In order to decrease the fall in the profitability of traditional maize and sesame crops, attempts at intensification from the mid-1970s onwards have resulted in the irrigation of over 4,000 hectares in the Southern part of the region. Some traders started to develop tomato and above all melon production for export or for urban markets. However, vegetable production requires considerable operating capital and access to markets is still controlled by large trade monopolies. Access for a producer with no capital is only possible through a sharecropping arrangement with a trader who undertakes to supply all the inputs and to sell the crop.

25Relations of production are often even more unfavourable. The greater part of melon production is performed by North American entrepreneurs who rent the land nearest the main watercourses from ejidos and installe irrigation Systems themselves. The rent paid to the ejidatario is no more than the added value that he would have gained from a rainfed maize crop. The profit that he can obtain lies more in the guarantee of work for himself and his family throughout the production cycle. In any case, the farmer receives only a fraction of the added value created on his land. He earns half if he is a sharecropper and less if his land is rented.

26The substantial profits of vegetable production considerably increased farmers’ incomes. However, this intensification remains limited in area (no more than 1% of the land in the region is irrigated or irrigable) and in time. High temperatures and the repetition of crop cycles also enhance the spread of pests and a parallel increase in production costs. Dwindling margins soon lead to the shifting of investors to Virgin’ land where their profit margins are sure to be higher. The conditions of intensification thus remain extremely precarious, concern a limited number of producers and do not seem to change the imbalances of the agrarian System in the Tierra Caliente area.

27Small farmers had to leave the region once again to seek income to enable them to survive. The migratory routes that established after agrarian reform became extended to the USA where wages are ten times as high. This severely sanctioned illegal immigration is therefore based on clandestine networks whose effectiveness (and the profits that may be hoped for) depends in the amount that the immigrant can afford. Prices start at 400 dollars - nearly 6 months of the lowest wages - and so the option is not available to the poorest. However, it enables the survival of many holdings whose structures fall short of sustainability. However, it is much rarer for the arrival of dollars to increase operating capital. As the largest profits are more readily available to the livestock farmers, emigration increases the difference in accumulation and enhances the capacity of expansion of the oligarchies.

28Growing cannabis offers even better prospects for earning money, as long as the particularly violent repression is avoided. The hemp plants have to be hidden and so the crop is scattered over a very large area. The small minifundia farmers thus only have access to the enormous rents from hemp trafficking by sharecropping the rangeland of a large cattle breaders or by being a wage-earner on the plantations. They also bear the brunt of repression. The difference in accumulation by cattle breaders and minifundia farmers increases here again.

29The many departures for the USA or for the cannabis plantation have contributed to increasing the cost of agricultural labour in the Tierra Caliente area. The daily wage paid during peak periods of the rainfed crop cycles increased by 150% in real terms from 1980 to 1989. The rise first affected small growers of maize or sesame, both of which are labour-intensive crops. The farmers reacted by simplifying their crop management sequences and hence reducing yields, without it being possible to make up for the loss by increasing the cultivated area. As cultivation seasons lasting three or four months is not favourable for the survival of a large population of labourers or part-time farmers. The impoverishment and exodus of poor farmers continued, aggravating the seasonal shortage of labour.

Differences in productivity, impoverishment and exclusion

30The productivity gap between minifundia farmers and the large livestock farmers has increased continuously for thirty years. In 1989, it was 1 to 5 for labour productivity and 1 to 7 for monetary income per worker. Extensive livestock farming has become the only activity that ensures the sustainability of non-irrigated holdings. This requires more than 5 hectares per workers and access to the meagre grazing land that remains under common ownership to cover the minimum requirements of a family and to ensure its survival. However, this type of specialisation process now takes place in a saturated context in which land and forage prices are rising continuously. Only drug crops and trafficking or exceptional success in the United States enable a small number of people to reverse the current differentiation mechanisms.

31The others, that is to say the vast majority of minifundia farmers, do not seem to have an alternative to part-time farming and total subordination to the livestock farmers to whom they supply the crop residues grazed by cattle. But for how long? The farm size forming the sustainability threshold is increasing steadily and ‘emigration dollars’ will not be enough to set up the younger generation on even smaller holdings. The expulsion procedure is accelerating and with it the mechanisms of renewed concentration of landholding. Little by little, the social landscape of the Tierra Caliente area is recovering the features that it displayed before agrarian reform.