The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21st Century Dilemma

Jeronimo Progreso, some migrants have agreed to pay US$10,000 to finance the annual
fiesta in exchange for not having to return to the village to exercise their cargo
obligations (discussed in the first edition) to serve as village officers. By paying this sum,
they avoid actions that would strip them of community membership and of assets. While
I have spoken of farm and community abandonment, the impressive strength of
community identity sometimes results in the construction of transnational communities
that bring benefits back home in spite of enormous pressures to the contrary. xv
An interesting observation made independently by Kearney, Nagengast, and
myself, but unsupported by any systematic study, is that the abandonment of farmland by
emigrants from Oaxaca may be, in Kearney’s phrase, “giving the land a rest.” A
significant amount of land lies fallow and forest seems to be regrowing in some areas. If
these observations are accurate, they could translate into significant benefits for the
communities and for wildlife in the future.
On the other hand, the changes to Article 27 and the exodus out of the
communities have made community resources more easily available to outsiders. In
particular, since the Article 27 reform and NAFTA, many communities in Mexico have
found it difficult to maintain forests in the face of eager buyers from national and
transnational logging firms. This continues to be true in spite of subsequent legal
measures taken to give communities better control over their forests. Some communities
have succeeded in protecting their forests while earning significant income from wellplanned
sustainable cutting. Many others have found it impossible to resist the logging
firms, whose agents have been willing in some notorious cases to use legal maneuvering,
intimidation, violence, and murder to gain access to community forests. This struggle has