The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21st Century Dilemma

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Environment. Cambridge: Harvard; Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2002. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton; Jagdish Bhawati, 2004. In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York: Oxford; Amartya Sen, 1999. Development and Freedom. Random House: New York. Many websites track globalization from a perspective similar to the one presented here, among them, www.foodfirst.org iii Many websites track globalization from a perspective similar to the one presented here. www.foodfirst.org is one of these and offers multiple links to others. iv To the many studies on the left, such as Sen and Stiglitz that emphasize growing inequalities, one can contrast a series of World Bank studies in 2004 that maintain that inequality is not on the increase, (David Dollar. “Globalization, poverty, and inequality since 1980.” WPS3333.) and World Bank studies that recognize a complex array of inequalities balanced against advances in general welfare (Martin Ravallion “Looking beyond averages in the trade and poverty debate.” WPS3461 and, anonymous, “Pro-growth, propoor: is there a trade-off” WP3378) all Washington DC: World Bank. v Of the many treatments of the Zapatistas, George Collier’s Basta: Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas stands out because of its sober judgments and historical depth based on the author’s more than thirty years experience as an anthropological researcher in Chiapas. 1999. Oakland: Institute for Food and Development Policy. For a focus on the issues treated here, see also Tom Barry, 1995. Zapata’s Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico. Boston: South End. vi J.F. Hornbeck, 2004. NAFTA at Ten: Lessons from Recent Studies. Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. vii A running account and analysis of these figures may be found at the website of The Environmental Working Group, www.ewg.org viii John. J. Audley, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Sandra Polaski, Scott Vaughan, 2004. NAFTA’s Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mexico for the Hemisphere. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ch. 1. Controversy over these figures and over the effect on migration is intense—my confidence in the logic of the analysis presented in the first chapter of the Carnegie report is a judgment based on the view that, a)the effect of Article 27 reforms should be combined with the effect of NAFTA as they constitute part of the same neo-liberal initiative, b)it is unreasonable to believe that the massive increase in corn imports has had a negligible effect on small-scale corn producers, c)the shift of investment to irrigated agriculture that is agreed to have occurred because of NAFTA is bound to have had a significant effect on producers without irrigation, d)arguing from many different lines of evidence, it is clear that migration to the U.S. has increased significantly, in spite of its increased costs and risks, and e)I am reluctant to completely dismiss the claims of peasants and migrants and their organizations in Mexico that the effect is large. Hornbeck, cited above, disagrees and cites other studies that support his judgment. ix Information on San Jeronimo up to August, 2004 is based on interviews and personal communications from Michael Kearney and Carole Nagengast, who continue their long-term study of San Jeronimo. x Based on my visits to coastal communities and informal interviews, January, 2000. xi Sergio Zendejas and Pieter de Vries, 1995. Rural Transformations Seen from Below: Regional and Local Perspectives from Western Mexico. Transformation of Rural Mexico, #8. La Jolla: Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies, UCSD. Billie R. DeWalt, Martha W. Rees, with Arthur D. Murphy, 1994. The End of the Agrarian Reform in Mexico: Past Lessons, Future Prospects. Transformation of Rural Mexico, #3. La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD. xii Lynn Stephen, 2002. “In the Wake of the Zapatistas: U.S. Solidarity Work on Chiapas.” In David Brooks and Jonathan Fox, eds., 2002. Cross Border Dialogues: U.S. Mexico Social Movement Networking. La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD. xiii In addition to the work cited in the first edition, see Carole Nagengast and Michael Kearney, 1990. “Mixtec Ethnicity, Social Identity, Political Consciousness, and Political Activism.” Latin American Research Review 25, no. 2. 13 Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, 2004. Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States. La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD. Leah K. VanWey, Catherine Tucker, Eileen Diaz Mcconnel, 2005. “Community Organization, Migration, and Remittances in Oaxaca.” Latin American Research Review. V40, no.1, Feb. xv Michael Kearney and Federico Besserer, 2004. “Oaxacan Government in Transnational Context.” Ch.17 in Fox and Rivera-Salgado.
xvi John Ross, 2000. “Defending the Forest and Other Crimes,” Sierra, july/august. Ginger Thompson, 2001. “Fighters for the Forest Are Released from Mexican Jail,” New York Times, nov.9. Websites keeping track of this issue are, www.sierraclub.org/humanrights and www.sjsocial.org/PRODH. xvii Richard Lowerre, 1994. “Update on World Bank Forestry Loan to Mexico.” Austin: Texas Center for Policy Studies. xviii Maldonado, David, 2001. “El Banco Mundial en los bosques de Oaxaca: un seguimento, desde la sociedad civil, a la ejecucion del Proyecto de Conservacion y Manejo Sustentable de Recursos Forestales, Procymaf, 1997-2000.” Oaxaca: Transparencia. xix For more systematic information, see Fox and Rivera-Salgado, Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the U.S. xx Deborah Barndt, 2002. Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. xxi Douglas Murray, 1994. Cultivating Crisis: The Human Cost of Pesticides in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press. xxii Michael E. Conroy, Douglas Murray, Peter M. Rosset, 1996. A Cautionary Tale: Failed U.S. Development Policy in Central America. Boulder: Lynne Reinner. xxiii Jose Luis See Foo, 1992. Del surco a la mesa: doble exposicion de los jornaleros a los plaguicidas. Tepoztlan, Morelos: Centro de Estudios Rurales de el Colegio de Michoacan. xxiv Patricia Diaz Romo, 2002 coordenadora, Plaguicidas en Mexico: Carpeta de Prensa. Tlaquepaque, Jalisco: Instituto Tecnologico ye de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), available through Pesticide Action Network North America, www.panna.org. xxv The large number of studies include: F. Gonzales-Farias et al. 2002. “Pesticides distribution in sediments of a tropical coastal lagoon adjacent to an irrigation district in Northwest Mexico.” F.P. Carvalho et al. 2002. “Distribution, fate, and effects of pesticides in tropical coastal lagoons of Northwest Mexico.” Both in Environmental Toxicology 23:11, 1247-1256 and 1257-1270 respectively. J.Galindo-Reyes, 2002. “Effect of some organophosphorous pesticides on oxygen consumption of shrimp, Litoenaeus vannamei.” Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Environmental Research SectionB 52: 2134-2136. F. Gonzales- Farias et al. “Environmental behaviour of crop protection chemicals: proceedings of an International Symposium on the Techniques for Studying the Environmental Behaviour of Crop Protection Chemicals, Vienna, Austria, 1-5 July 1996. Published, 1997, 289-299. For a general treatment of the wider topic see Milton D. Taylor, et al, ed., 2003. Pesticide residues in coastal tropical ecosystems: distribution, fate, and effects. London and New York: Taylor and Francis. xxvi L. Haro Garcia, et al. 2002. “Efectos de plaguicidas agroquimicas: Perfil epidemiologico-ocupacional de trabajadores expuestas.” Revista Medica del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social. 40: 1, 19-24. xxvii Elizabeth Guillette, et al. 1998. “An anthropological approach to the evaluation of preschool children exposed to pesticides in Mexico.” Environmental Health Perspectives 106(6): 347-353. Murray, Cultivating Crisis, p 69-71. xxviii Patricia Diaz Romo and Samuel Salinas Alvarez, 2002. Plaguicidas, tabaco, y salud: el caso de los jornaleros huicholes, jornaleros mestizos y ejiditarios en Nayarit, Mexico. Oaxaca: Proyecto Huicholes y Plaguicidas. xxix The video, Huichols and Pesticides, is available through the Pesticide Action Network North America at www.panna.org xxx in Diaz Romo, Plaguicidas, tabaco, y salud prologo, p.XXI-XL xxxi Jorge Arturo de Leon Rodriguez, 1994. “The Disaster at ANAVERSA,” The Global Pesticide Campaigner, Dec. See also, John Ross, 1997. “The ANAVERSA Disaster: Mexico’s Bhopal,” The Global Pesticide Campaigner, Dec. xxxii ibid. A long series of Spanish and English articles on ANAVERSA can be found in Diaz Romo, Plaguicidas en Mexico.
Page 1 and 2: AFTERWORD: The Death of Ramon Gonza
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Page 11 and 12: in the name of austerity.) The pros
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