Unintended Developments: Gender, Environment, and Collective Governance in a Mexican Ejido

Abstract

This article examines the unintended outcomes of a neoliberal program designed to privatize Mexico's communal lands. Although postrevolutionary agrarian law excluded women from official landholding and leadership positions, steps toward land privatization inadvertently increased women's access to land, government resources, and political power. Using ethnographic and survey data collected in a Veracruz ejido, I demonstrate how Mexico's agrarian counterreforms triggered novel subjectivities and practices. While men acted as self-imagined private property owners and decreased participation in traditional governance institutions, women became registered land managers and leaders for the first time in the ejido's history. These interlocking processes stopped the land-titling program in its tracks and reinvigorated collective governance. Even state actors charged with carrying out ejido privatization were implicated in the empowerment of rural women and failure to fully privatize land. This research contributes to nature–society debates by arguing neoliberalism does not always end economic self-determination and communal governance in agrarian contexts. Rather, I demonstrate the ways in which processual policy, subjectivity, authority formation, objects, and environmental narratives combine to produce new political trajectories with positive implications for rural women and the environment.

本文检视用来私有化墨西哥集体所有土地的新自由主义计画所导致的非预期性结果。儘管革命结束后的农业法律, 将女性排除于正式的土地持有和领导地位之外, 但迈向土地私有化的进程, 却无意中增加了女性获得土地、政府资源和政治权力的管道。我运用在墨西哥韦拉克鲁斯 (Veracruz) 中的一座合作农场所搜集的民族志与调查研究数据, 显示墨西哥的反农业改革, 如何触发了崭新的主体性与实践。当男性自我想像为私有产权的所有者、并减少参与传统的治理制度时, 女性则在合作农场的历史中, 首次成为注册的管理者和领导者。这些相互连结的过程, 阻止了进行中的土地产权授予计画, 并重振了集体治理。即便推动合作农场私有化的国家行动者, 亦与农村女性培力和无法完全将土地私有化有关。本研究主张, 在农村的脉络中, 新自由主义并不总是终结经济自我决定和集体治理, 并以此对自然—社会关係的辩论做出贡献。反之, 我将展现程序性政策、主体性、权威形成、目标以及环境叙事的结合, 生产对农村女性与环境有正面意涵的崭新政治轨道之方式。

Este artículo examina los resultados inesperados de un programa neoliberal diseñado para privatizar las tierras comunales de México. Aunque la ley agraria posrevolucionaria excluyó a las mujeres de las posiciones oficiales de tenencia de tierra y liderazgo, los pasos dados hacia la privatización de la tierra incrementaron involuntariamente el acceso a la tierra, a los recursos gubernamentales y al poder político. Utilizando datos etnográficos y de estudio de campo obtenidos en un ejido de Veracruz, demuestro cómo la contrarreforma agraria de México desencadenó subjetividades y prácticas novedosas. Mientras por propia imaginación los hombres siguieron creyendo como obvia su condición de dueños de propiedad privada y redujeron su participación en las tradicionales instituciones de gobernanza, las mujeres se convirtieron en administradoras registradas de la tierra y líderes por primera vez en la historia del ejido. Estos procesos entrelazados pararon el programa de titulación de tierras en mismo punto de arranque y dieron nuevo aliento a la gobernanza colectiva. Incluso los actores estatales encargados de ejecutar la privatización del ejido se vieron implicados en el empoderamiento de las mujeres rurales y el fracaso de la intención de una tierra completamente privatizada. Esta investigación contribuye a los debates sobre naturaleza-sociedad con el argumento de que el neoliberalismo no siempre termina la autodeterminación económica y la gobernanza comunal en los contextos agrarios. Más que eso, pongo de manifiesto las maneras como las políticas de proceso, subjetividad, formación de autoridad, objetos y narrativas ambientales se combinan para producir nuevas trayectorias políticas con implicaciones positivas para las mujeres del campo y para el medio ambiente.

Key Words:

• environment
• gender
• governance
• Mexico
• neoliberalism

关键词:

• 环境
• 性别
• 治理
• 墨西哥
• 新自由主义

Palabras clave:

• medio ambiente
• género
• gobernanza
• México
• neoliberalismo

Notes

All names of people and communities are pseudonyms to protect informant identity.

National Agrarian Registry.

Article 27 of Mexico's 1917 Constitution defined three principal land tenure forms: pequeña propiedad (small private property), ejidos (communally managed systems), and comunidades (communities, often indigenous).

In 1990, most ejidos had between 20 and 100 members (INEGI 1990).

Leadership positions are divided between Comisariado Ejidal (Executive Committee) and Consejo de Vigilancia (Vigilance Committee). The Executive Committee carries out decisions made by the general assembly. The Vigilance Committee enforces internal rules and agrarian by-laws.

Program for Certification of Rights to Ejido Lands.

Ejidatarios have long referred to individually managed usufruct plots as parcelas (parcels). Policymakers perhaps intentionally incorporated the word in PROCEDE to build on ejidatarios’ use of the word.

National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

Seven interviews were conducted in 2006 during predissertation field work; seventeen were carried out in 2008 for my doctoral research. Interview counts reflect the number of enrolled participants; follow-up interviews were conducted with most informants.

In 1992, Veracruz ranked thirtieth among Mexico's thirty-one states for migration to the United States (Navarro 2004). By 2002, it jumped to fourth place. This period correlates with the international coffee crisis and a time of economic uncertainty for coffee farmers. La Grullita did not send many international migrants, however. Of individuals surveyed, only four had family members in the United States.

The fines vary according to infraction, but average 200 pesos (∼US$20).

CONAFOR claims to track canopy cover with high-resolution IKONOS satellite imagery.