The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21st Century Dilemma

AFTERWORD:
The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21 st Century Dilemma
Globalization, Inequality, and Nature
Since the late 1990’s, an average of about one person per day has died in the
attempt to cross the southern border into the United States. This striking rise in death
rates has been caused by the increasing desperation of Mexican poor people, on the one
hand, and on the other hand, by the attempt of the United States to better control
immigration. Firmer control over illegal immigration in the crossing points in and near
cities has forced migrants into more dangerous routes across trackless deserts. Most who
perish die of thirst or exposure. Mexicans are angry about the rising toll taken on
migrants. On the U.S. side, some ranchers with border properties and others have
organized vigilante efforts to stop or discourage migrants.
The increasing concern over the issue of immigration in the U.S. is reflected in
similarly heightened tensions regarding immigration into Europe. Continuing and often
growing inequalities in the world economy fuel migration. The ongoing collapse of rural
livelihoods through the transformation of agriculture by technology and capital motivates
many of the migrants.
There is a particular irony as more people suffer and die trying to cross borders
just as world leaders have been engaged in an historic effort to integrate world economies
through “trade liberalization.” What is the meaning of such terms as “liberalization” for a
Mexican migrant forced to leave a home community only to risk dying of thirst in the
Arizona desert While “economic integration” makes it easier to ship a box of tomatoes

or a barrel of pesticides across borders than before, a human being in desperate need of a
job must face border crossings that are more difficult and risky. i
The strategy of the increasing economic integration of societies is not simply a
way of facilitating economic activities across borders—it always some very particular
way of negotiating, arranging, and fixing in place those arrangements that national
political authorities and business interests consider desirable. These arrangements cannot
be assumed to be fair, impartial, or benign to humans or nature.
In the first edition of The Death of Ramon Gonzalez, I wrote about “…the
modern agricultural dilemma that arises out of a tension found in almost all modern
nations. The highly localized adaptations needed for ecologically healthy agriculture and
healthy, stable rural communities are often in conflict with the apparent requirements of
rapidly industrializing nations and an expanding international economy.” Since that
writing, a greater disjuncture between what are understood by many to be important local
and regional needs, on one hand, and the opportunities and pressures of the international
market, on the other, has become perhaps the most widely discussed topic of cultural,
political, and economic life—namely, the problems of globalization. ii
Aside from changing technologies, the essential driving force of rapid
globalization has been the coupling of aggressive trade liberalization to policies of
government austerity, privatization, and de-regulation, which taken all together are
termed “neo-liberalism.” (The term, though coined by some of the program’s early
proponents, is commonly used by its critics in the U.S. But in the U.S., it is now seldom
used popularly nor in the media. In Latin America, the term is used nearly universally in
the media and in popular discussions. I will use it here.) Proponents of neo-liberal

globalization understand it as a relatively straightforward task with relatively few costs.
They make their case with the weight of many of the most powerful nations behind them,
and they have played a critical role in the creation of such new institutions as the World
Trade Organization. They have been faced with determined opposition. While many of
those critical of globalization recognize the inevitable and even desirable character of
much of the process, they do not want it coupled to the rest of the neo-liberal agenda and
they want to pursue a more cautious and discriminating approach. The critics have acted
through new and existing organizations in occasional alliance with some national
governments to urge consideration of alternative paths. iii
The conflict between the two main perspectives on the problem led to dramatic
street confrontations between police and protestors at meetings on international trade and
economic policy in Seattle in 1999, in meetings at Davos, and Genoa, and at an
international agricultural bioengineering trade show held in Sacramento in 2003. At the
meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Cancun, Mexico, in September,
2003, simmering tensions within the organization broke out into an open challenge to the
dominance of rich-country strategies, a challenge led by Brazil, India, and China. As the
official national delegates argued the issues inside the meeting hall, tens of thousands of
people from peasant and farmer organizations protested in the streets. One of the
protestors, a peasant farmer and veteran leader of farmer organizations in South Korea,
took his own life in the conviction that his sacrifice was a cost that needed to be paid to
bring more public attention to the problems of small farmers and peasants in the face of
the policies being pushed by the WTO. Challenged from within the hall and from the
streets, the WTO was forced to recognize the failure of the strategy the rich nations had

ought to Cancun. At this writing, the WTO and allied organizations are still back at the
drawing board trying to formulate a new foundation for a consensus on global economic
relationships. The program of the WTO, in whatever form it may be refashioned,
involves serious issues that affect not only agriculture but industry and finance; not only
rural life, but the life of those of us who live in cities; not only the economy, but politics,
culture, and nature.
As we re-examine the issues involved in the death of Ramon Gonzalez, we will
see that they are best understood as part of these overarching battles over the future of the
world economy and the shape of our lives. We will see again that developments in
agriculture and in rural life in Mexico make a very useful starting point for thinking about
these larger issues. Points in the brief summary here are developed below.
A Quick Summary
In almost all nations farm families have continued to leave their home
communities and the countryside. In Mexico, farm abandonment has accelerated
dramatically. In Mexico, and in most of the world including the United States, the
economic and social gap between rich and poor has widened significantly. iv The
connections between social inequalities and environmental damage are at least as strong
as they were at the original writing of The Death of Ramon Gonzalez. The
environmental damage done by chemical-based agricultural technologies has become
better understood and more widespread. We know much more about how seriously
pesticides harm people and nature. We also have better comprehension of the damage
done by pesticides and chemical fertilizers to regional ecosystems and the planetary
ecosystem.

The hold of a small number of corporations over the technologies to produce and
distribute food has become much tighter, and the influence of farm families and rural
communities over land and agriculture has correspondingly diminished. Some of this new
control comes from the further development of genetic engineering in agricultural crops.
While some scientists and corporations argue that genetic engineering offers a solution to
many of the problems of pesticides, many of us believe that the good done by genetic
engineering will be outweighed by its tendency to intensify the social and environmental
problems inherent in the modern agricultural dilemma.
The spread of formal democracy around the world and in Mexico offers some
hope in the sense that democratic societies might be expected to address and resolve
problems that threaten so many citizens. Unfortunately, formal democracy has not
translated very effectively into substantive improvements in the resolution of problems
discussed in The Death of Ramon Gonzalez. Mexico’s recent history, as we shall see, is
a troubling example of these disappointments.
Similarly, the worldwide growth in total material wealth and our greater
sophistication in science and technology might in principle offer opportunities to convert
our wealth and knowledge into creating healthier communities and healthier ecosystems.
There is certainly a myriad of examples of how our increasing wealth and knowledge has
been put to good use. However, far too much of our wealth is being converted into what
economist John Kenneth Galbraith long ago called “private affluence and public
squalor,” the term public squalor here including the doleful state of the natural
environment as part of public life and interests. Our increasing wealth and knowledge are
still being used more effectively to ruthlessly exploit nature than to restore and protect it.

This rather bleak assessment does not deny the importance of many countertrends
operating at every level of society. I will write about some of these hopeful trends
throughout this essay. However, it would be wrong and dangerous to conclude that we
have set society firmly on the right path to healthy communities and ecosystems. The first
step in solving serious problems is to recognize their nature and severity.
NAFTA, the Land, Pesticides, Migration, and Democracy
Rebellion, the land, the forests, and emigration
On January 1, 1994, two closely related events occurred that did much to define
the issues Mexico has struggled with over the last two decades. The North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, and an organization of mostly indigenous
people in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas took up arms to call attention to the
exploitation they had suffered for centuries. They called themselves Zapatistas in honor
of the Mexican revolutionary peasant leader, Emiliano Zapata, assassinated in 1919. The
rebels believed that NAFTA would make it even easier than before for others to rob them
of land and resources essential to their survival and intensify the problems caused by their
subjugation to corrupt politicians. They were concerned not only about their own future
but also about that of all poor Mexicans.
The Zapatistas briefly seized the highland city of San Cristobal de las Casas
(named after the Spanish priest who had fought against exploitation of indigenous people
four centuries before) and a few other sizable towns. After about a month, the Zapatistas
withdrew to defensible villages. There they have continued to build their organization.
For more than a decade now, they have insistently put forward their thesis that
fundamental political and economic change is necessary in Mexico as a whole in order to

address the dire situation of their communities. They have made extremely able use of the
media and of the Internet to ensure that this message was heard regionally, nationally,
and internationally. They have helped form national coalitions of indigenous and peasant
groups. The Zapatistas have initiated or inspired various official and unofficial forms of
national dialog on the plight of Mexican indigenous people in particular and on the
situation of the Mexican poor and of Mexican society in general. They have used many
highly creative means that vastly amplified the strength of their voice and avoided their
obliteration by the Mexican army and paramilitary groups. These included widely
supported and publicized marches to Mexico City coordinated with an unofficial national
referendum that made specific demands on the national government. v
Were the Zapatistas right about NAFTA Ten years after its implementation, it is
possible to see with some clarity the main effects, though sometimes it is difficult to sort
out the effects of other factors in an analysis of Mexican economic development. Here we
concentrate on those factors most relevant to rural people and agriculture.
NAFTA was designed to reduce or eliminate barriers to investment and trade
between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The key provisions of interest to those
in the U.S. who were most active in supporting NAFTA were more about investment than
trade. The main attraction of NAFTA for corporations and investors regarding Mexico
was the reduction of legal barriers to U.S. and Canadian firms who wanted to invest more
heavily in land, resources, banks, and other financial services. Such investment had
previously been restricted by nationalistic measures in such areas as patent law, land law,
banking regulations, and profit repatriation, measures meant to favor Mexican
entrepreneurs and protect Mexico from excessive control by foreign investors and their

governments. The big issues were about the control of money, real property, and
resources, not about trade per se. The results of NAFTA reflected this intention; between
1994 and 2002, U.S. Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico grew by 259%, while trade
growth attributable to NAFTA was quite modest, with the exception of such particular
areas as corn exports to Mexico. Prior to NAFTA, barriers to industrial trade in most
sectors were fairly low and were subject to a variety of exceptions, such as the maquila
program encouraging manufacturing enterprises in Mexico financed by foreigners. Much
of the debate over NAFTA was a bit hysterical in describing “the sucking sound of U.S.
jobs going south.” Some manufacturing firms did move operations to Mexico and some
manufacturing enterprises in the U.S. gained new markets in Mexico. The net effect on
industrial employment on both sides, however, has been small. vi
In agriculture, however, NAFTA brought some powerful changes that particularly
affected peasant farmers. NAFTA negotiators proposed an immediate elimination of
many agricultural tariffs, including the high tariffs on U.S. grains entering the Mexican
market. Some Mexican observers noted that this would mean that corn, or maize, grown
on the superb and vast prairie soils of the U.S. Midwest in highly mechanized operations
would flood Mexico with cheap corn and cause a collapse in small-scale Mexican corn
production. Further, under NAFTA’s terms, the Mexican government’s program to hold
up producer prices of corn while providing subsidized, cheaper prices to urban people
would have to be eliminated. Predictions of up to fifteen million people leaving the land
due to the effect of tariff reductions on corn imported into Mexico led to an agreement to
phase in the reductions over a fifteen-year period. In return, the United States government
promised to eliminate subsidies to U.S. farmers, which would have moderated the effect

on the Mexican rural economy as well making some Mexican agricultural commodities
more competitive in U.S. markets. Most of the tariff reductions have now been made.
However, in blatant disregard of the agreements made, the United States
subsequently passed the largest farm subsidy program in history, and the subsidies
largely go to grain farmers. In some areas of the Midwest, grain farmers receive more
than half, and in some counties up to eighty percent, of their income from government
subsidies. Iowa received $11.2 billion of federal crop subsidies from 1995 to 2003, most
of it going to corn farmers. (The distribution of subsidies—with about ten percent of the
largest farm operations receiving more than seventy percent of the subsidies—tends to
widen the gap between the rich and the poor and penalize small farmers within the United
States, as well as across borders.) vii
The combined results of the NAFTA agreement and the continued subsidization
of U.S. grain producers are now being felt, after a delay caused both by the phase-in
period and by the peso crisis of 1994 that for a time significantly raised the price of U.S.
imports to Mexico and made Mexican exports more attractive. By the end of the century,
U.S. corn exports to Mexico began to rise rapidly.
No firm numbers are available because it is difficult to isolate any single factor in
the multiple reasons that Mexicans continue to leave their land and communities, but it is
reasonable to believe that 1.3 million Mexican rural families have left the land due to the
effects of NAFTA and Article 27 reforms viii . As a result both of the increasing
desperation of more Mexicans to cross the border and tightened border security, the direct
toll on Mexican migrants has been severe. It has been harder to return to Mexico to

maintain a relationship with families and home communities because of the dangers of
crossing back over the border. And the casualty rate climbs.
Thousands of communities such as Ramon Gonzalez’s home village of San
Jeronimo Progreso were already sending most of the able-bodied men and many women
and children out on the migrant trail before NAFTA was contemplated. After the passage
of NAFTA, a more general abandonment of farms in Mixtec, Zapotec, and mestizo
villages has proceeded apace. While the farms are abandoned and village people seek
work along the migrant trail in Mexico and the United States, in some villages, including
San Jeronimo Progreso, there is a boom in the construction of new houses. Migrants pay
the relatively few stay-at-homes to build houses to which the migrants hope to return for
the annual fiesta and/or to which they dream of returning in old age. ix
In some villages, though not apparently in San Jeronimo Progreso, farms are not
only being abandoned but are being sold to others, including to Mexicans outside the
region and to foreigners. Prior to 1992, Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution prohibited
the sale of ejido and communal lands distributed by the government. This was part of the
land reform program started at the end of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20 th
century. Article 27 also made it difficult for foreigners to own land. In 1992, partly in
response to U.S. objections to Article 27 restrictions, the Mexican Congress and
President approved sweeping changes to Article 27. These changes made the U.S. more
enthusiastic about pursuing the NAFTA negotiations. The so-called “reform of the [land]
reform” made it possible for land reform recipients in ejidos and communes to sell their
land. Farmers could now mortgage their lands and thus have better access to credit.
(Government rural credit programs to those on ejidos had long been virtually eliminated

in the name of austerity.) The prospect of improved access to credit led many ejiditarios
to support the changes. However, when and if they were unable to meet their mortgage
payments, farmers might be forced to abandon the land. Foreigners could purchase land
under most conditions as easily as Mexicans, and foreigners could be mortgage holders.
In addition, special protections on the sale of timber or of forested land were
“liberalized,” making it easier for villagers to sell the trees or forestland.
It was through such “liberal” land laws, as discussed in the first edition of The
Death of Ramon Gonzalez, that millions of peasant farmers and villages lost their land
during the latter half of the 19 th century. The 1992 reforms bring the law back close to the
legal situation that prevailed under Porfirio Diaz prior to 1910. The dispossession of
peasants that resulted is widely thought to be one of the key factors that led to the
Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920.
The privatization of land carried out by the amendments to Article 27 is a prime
example of the approach taken by neo-liberal reforms around the world. These reforms
aim to break up community or public ownership and management of resources in favor of
private ownership. In the 1990’s and continuing into the 21 st century, the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. government, and many local governments have
moved to privatize land, forests, municipal water services, irrigation services, sewage and
garbage services, and a variety of other resources and services of enormous public and
environmental value. Privatization has often proved highly controversial—in Bolivia, for
example, the attempt to privatize water brought down a national government and led to a
longer-term crisis in governance of the nation.

In some areas of Mexico, the rapidity of change associated with Article 27
changes is nothing short of startling. Prior to 1992, Article 27 had made it impossible for
foreigners to be the direct owners of coastal property. The 1992 changes allow foreign
ownership, albeit with some complications, of coastal land. The result is evident up and
down the West Coast of Mexico, where fishing villages and ejidos are being pushed aside
in unprecedented numbers to make way for tourist and second-home developments
designed for the enjoyment of foreigners and usually owned by foreigners. Widespread
discontent among many of those who have lost homes and livelihoods along the coast is
palpable. Not surprisingly, there are those in displaced villages who did well from the
deals, often leading to the widening of pre-existing inequalities. In many other areas of
Mexico, change has been somewhat slower and more complex than anticipated. x
In the first edition, I discussed the power of ancient tradition in Mexican farming
with regard to agricultural methods and the organization of rural life. It is interesting that
rural tradition has also done a good deal to block or slow the impact of the Article 27
reforms. As part of the Article 27 changes, the Mexican government undertook in the
1990’s to survey land and validate land claims. This was a first step in making it possible
to mortgage and sell land. A surprising result of the survey was the discovery of how
often and how strongly land was being held, bought, and sold under traditional law that
made little or no reference to the supposed federal and state law governing landholding.
Villages and townspeople simply came to regard landholding in a variety of ways that
they were able to enforce with surprising frequency through local courts, in spite of
contradicting official law. Because of the strength of local traditions, the landholding
situation under the new Article 27 has changed somewhat more slowly than predicted by

some, including myself. People bought and sold land before 1992 in ways that had been
prohibited under Article 27, and, on the other hand, were able to restrict land sales in
ways that were officially permitted after the 1992 changes to Article 27, so that the
overall impact of the change was moderated. In addition, as noted in the first edition,
much of the ejido and communal land was of such poor quality originally or has
undergone such deterioration that there are few ready buyers. xi
Nonetheless, NAFTA and the Article 27 reforms taken together have had a
powerful effect in breaking up local communities in rural Mexico. Thousands of villages
like San Jeronimo Progreso are being emptied of most of their population. Income comes
mainly from emigration, and the majority of the members of the ejido or commune spend
most of their lives elsewhere in Mexico, and, primarily, in the United States.
The heightened tensions in the countryside that gave rise to armed and unarmed
resistance to NAFTA and Article 27 reforms also helped to drive people out of
countryside. After the Zapatista rebellion and the rise of other armed resistance groups in
Mexico’s poorest states, the Mexican and state governments carried out police and
military operations to discourage insurrection, especially in Chiapas, Guerrero, and
Oaxaca. The Zapatistas, along with indigenous groups throughout Mexico, called for the
autonomy of indigenous communities and regions. The government committed to
granting much greater autonomy, then reneged on the agreement altogether, then granted
a very limited version of what it had originally promised. Meanwhile, in response to the
Zapatistas and other newly militant rural movements, the government instituted new
repressive measures throughout most of southern and southwestern Mexico. Villages and
indigenous organizations continue to denounce waves of arrests, beatings, and

assassinations carried out by the government and by private armed gangs and
paramilitary forces. These actions are one more reason for people to emigrate. xii
As discussed in the first edition of The Death of Ramon Gonzalez,
anthropologists Kearney and Carole Nagengast had initiated what is now a rapidly
growing literature on “transnational communities” that are built across borders by
emigrants leaving the villages of Mexico. xiii Formally organized “home-town
associations” and “bi-national organizations” of Oaxacans work to ensure that some of
the income earned in the United States is returned to home villages. In San Jeronimo
Progreso, migrant income apparently is being spent largely on paving streets, but it is
going into other community improvements as well. In the face of acrid controversy, the
town council of San Jeronimo used such money to build a large and impressive archway
marking the turn-off to the town.
Bi-national organizations have worked politically to protect migrant rights and
contribute to strengthening communities on both sides of the border. They have been able
to win funds beyond those they collect from members. One large bi-national organization
has received more than US$160,000 from U.S.-based foundations to invest in Oaxacan
communities, including projects for water supply and experiments in sustainable
agriculture. The ability to benefit from remittances is strongly linked to the survival of
traditional forms and the invention of new kinds of community organization in the home
villages, as well as in the migrant networks. xiv
In San Jeronimo Progreso and many other villages, the communal organization is
enforcing a tax on emigrants from the community. If emigrants do not pay the levy, the
council sometimes padlocks their homes and/or sells their assets, including land. In San

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

een particularly intense in the very poor state of Guerrero. In one case, seventeen local
people were massacred by police and soldiers with machine guns as they were riding on
the back of a truck to attend a protest against logging operations by a U.S. firm. A video
taken of the event made it impossible to deny the sheer brutality of the act. Other smaller
massacres have followed, and assassinations of activists trying to protect forests have
become almost routine. Digna Ochoa, the most prominent of the lawyers for the Guerrero
communities fighting logging operations, was assassinated in her Mexico City office. In
Guerrero, the fight over forests has become a battle cry of an armed rebel group that
arose shortly after the implementation of NAFTA. Struggles over forests continue in
many areas of Mexico, including Chiapas, where the Zapatistas have consistently raised
the loss of community forests to logging firms as a key concern. xvi
In the state of Chihuahua, an international effort to oppose a large timber
operation resulted in communities stopping an exploitive scheme and initiating locally
controlled and more sustainable forest practices. xvii In Oaxaca, some communities have
initiated what they believe to be sustainable forest practices, including incorporation of
eco-tourist ventures, which are yielding substantial new income. Most communities,
however, find it hard to organize or sustain such efforts, and as more and more
community members leave for the migration trail, it is more difficult to mount organized
resistance to exploitation of community resources. xviii
While NAFTA’s most fateful effect on Mexican agriculture has been its effect on
corn producers and rural communities, its effect on the vegetable agro-export sector in
Culiacan has been less dramatic. Tariffs on vegetables entering the United States were at
five percent or below before NAFTA. Consumer prices were not greatly affected by tariff

eductions, and, in any case, the main advantage Culiacan vegetable growers have is not a
price advantage but their ability to produce crops in months when they cannot be grown
outdoors in most of the United States. Vegetable exports to the United States from
Mexico have continued to grow in volume and value but more from simple market
expansion than from NAFTA. However, the increasing pressure on rural communities
throughout Mexico and Central America has meant that Culiacan growers have not faced
any serious problems in continuing to acquire new, highly exploitable labor. (As
discussed below, other international trade liberalization agreements have encouraged
regions around the world to develop their own agro-export vegetable and fruit regions
resembling the Culiacan Valley.)
However, people from San Jeronimo Progreso and much of the rest of the Mixtec
and Zapotec territories travel in fewer numbers to Culiacan now. Mixtecs and Zapotecs
on both sides of the border have been more able to find their way to easier and better paid
work, much of it in urban occupations. While avoiding Culiacan when possible, Mixtecs
continue to make up a large share of the California and West Coast farm labor force in
the United States, and have even entered the East Coast and Upper Midwest migrant
streams in much greater numbers. In the early 1980’s, the Oaxacan indigenous presence
was just making itself felt on the U.S. West Coast; in recent years, without any searching,
I have encountered Mixtec and Zapotec groups in central Kansas, New York City,
Chicago, Denver, North Carolina, and Florida. xix
Ramon Gonzalez’s sisters, at last report, were settled in Tucson where they made
their living buying and selling in flea markets and engaging in other urban-based
activities. An intriguing new study, Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and

Globalization on the Tomato Trail, follows Oaxacan women migrants through Mexico,
the United States, and Canada. xx In Culiacan, a greater share of the labor force now
comes from Guerrero, Chiapas, and Central America, where rural crisis sends out a
stream of people who are more desperate and less-experienced in finding work and lesswell
supported by formal and informal migrant networks.
Continuing problems of pesticide abuse
As we will discuss in more detail below, some people had expected that NAFTA
would result in major changes in pesticide regulation and practice. Those opposed to
NAFTA argued that it would result in the lowering of regulatory standards in the United
States. Proponents of NAFTA maintained that the opposite would occur: NAFTA would
tend to bring Mexican regulatory standards closer to those of the United States. As I will
discuss later, the effect of NAFTA on pesticide regulation has been modest on both sides
of the border, though, as we will see, Canadians have cause for complaint that NAFTA
has dragged Canadian standards down to the laxity of U.S. standards.
The problems of pesticide use in Mexico documented in the first edition have
been shown to be a continuing and pervasive problem, before and after NAFTA. All
indications are that farmworkers in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America have
continued to face the kind of dangers from pesticides and other forms of abuse that they
did during the field studies undertaken for the first edition of Ramon Gonzalez. Douglas
Murray, a sociologist and occupational health specialist, published Cultivating Crisis:
The Human Cost of Pesticides in Latin America, that demonstrated the severity of
damage done to farmworkers by heavy, uncontrolled pesticide use. Working primarily in
Nicaragua, his study benefited from the ability to work under a Sandinista government

that was committed to improving the situation, before that government fell to U.S.-
financed military and civilian opposition. Murray concluded that the problem of abusive
pesticide use was generalized throughout much of Latin America and that excessive
reliance on pesticides constituted a fundamental flaw in the models of economic
development applied in the region. xxi Murray, Conroy and Rosset showed that the same
abusive use of pesticides as well as widening social inequalities could be found in U.S.-
financed programs supposedly meant to improve the economic situation and health of
small-scale producers throughout Central America. xxii Mexican researcher Jose Luis
Seefoo, now working at the Colegio de Michoacan, followed up on the fieldwork in The
Death of Ramon Gonzalez with impressively systematic studies in the Culiacan valley
lasting into the early 1990’s that confirmed and deepened the conclusions of my work. xxiii
Scores of articles collected from 1991—2000 from Mexican newspapers and journals
show that the problem of indiscriminate use and ineffective regulation of pesticides
remains a general and serious problem throughout the country. xxiv Though they were
proud of new regulations and training programs, Mexican regulatory officials privately
lamented to me, in 1995 and 2005, the lack of monitoring and enforcement effort that
would reliably and significantly reduce abusive practices in Culiacan.
Since the fieldwork for the first edition of this work was completed, shrimp
farming in coastal lagoons has become a major industry in Sinaloa. Many of these
lagoons receive agricultural drainage from the Culiacan and other Sinaloa agricultural
valleys. Researchers have documented expensive shrimp mortality and high levels of
contamination from pesticides that have contaminated the lagoons from the early 1990’s
through the early years of the new century. They have also found roughly the same mix

of organophosphates, carbamates and a variety of herbicides and fungicides as
documented in my work and that of Seefoo. While some researchers have argued that the
shrimp mortality is due largely to a disease organism, there may be a relationship
between vulnerability to the pathogen and pesticide contamination. In any case,
substantial agricultural pesticide contamination in the shrimp farms is firmly proven. xxv
One study in the Culiacan Valley, based on interviews with farmworkers, found
that two percent of the subjects reported that they had suffered from acute pesticide
poisoning; however, the workers demonstrated that they had a very low level of
understanding of the symptoms and dangers of pesticide exposure. More than one quarter
of those who knew they had been exposed to pesticides had used some kind of protective
gear, but it was not clear what kind, how consistently, or under what circumstances. xxvi
The Canadian anthropologist Elizabeth Guillette has done a remarkable study of
the probable effects of pesticide use on farmworkers in the Yaqui Valley, just north up
the coast from the Culiacan Valley. Guillette identified populations of children who lived
in the Yaqui Valley, where pesticide use rates are high, and similar populations of
children in the nearby mountains and foothills where pesticides are little used. She put the
children through a series of standard tests that have been designed by researchers and
pediatricians to diagnose nervous system dysfunction among children. The tests include,
among other things, the ability to catch a ball thrown to them and the ability to draw
simple line representations of familiar people or objects. The children of the foothills
were skillful ball catchers and artists who drew familiar-looking and competent figures
representing family members and friends. The children of the valley had great difficulty
catching balls and many could not draw any coherent or recognizable shapes. Guillette’s

study strongly suggests permanent nervous system damage done to children due to
pesticide exposure at sub-acute levels. Comparable studies done in Central America have
had similar results, with additional documentation of loss of reasoning and other mentalprocessing
skills in adults as well as children due to sub-acute levels of pesticide
poisoning. xxvii [here insert the line drawings from G.’s study]
These studies are most important because they demonstrate under actual field
conditions the fallacy of the view that acute exposure to organophosphate and carbamate
pesticides short of death would not lead to permanent or chronic health problems—if
recovery occurred, it would be complete, without further consequences. This was the
optimistic doctrine that reigned in pesticide toxicology when I did the original work for
The Death of Ramon Gonzalez. Subsequently, not only these field studies, but other
epidemiological, field, and laboratory studies have demonstrated a variety of permanent
and chronic health problems in humans and wildlife due to central nervous system
poisons widely used as pesticides. We will discuss this further below.
Frequent use of large quantities of highly toxic pesticides in ways that seriously
harm farmworker health has been documented recently in other Mexican regions. The
most thorough study comes from the coastal region just south of the state of Sinaloa, in
the states of Nayarit and Jalisco. This is tobacco country, with tobacco grown for
domestic and export markets under the supervision of transnational tobacco firms. xxviii
Most of the workers who cultivate and harvest the tobacco are Huichols, members
of one of the most remarkable ethnic groups in Mexicos. The Huichols, who mostly live
in the rugged mountains of western Jalisco and Nayarit, with some coastal settlements,
successfully resisted Spanish conquest. They also largely resisted outside control through

the 19 th century and, in some ways, to the present. They are noted for their excellent and
unique craft work, much of it based on the shamanic vision quest that lies at the heart of
their religion and forms the basis of their moral perspective. In recent decades, their
livelihood and independence have been severely eroded by timber companies that have
both legally and illegally cut much of their forests and by others who have seized parts of
their agricultural land. With increasing pressure on their resources, the Huichols have
seen their fields eroded and degraded and have resorted to the use of pesticides on their
own farms in an attempt to maintain or increase production. They also are subjected to
pesticide sprayings for control of malaria and dengue fever, and they themselves use
pesticides to control lice and other personal, livestock, and household pests. Their highest
level of exposure to pesticides comes, however, during the long season when they are
working away from home in the coastal tobacco fields.
A specialist in risk communication as well as an artist and photographer, Patricia
Diaz Romo, began to realize that Huichols were being exposed to outrageously abusive
use of pesticides in the tobacco fields. She made an artful and disturbing video entitled
Huichols and Pesticides. She went much further to organize and finance an
epidemiological study done by physicians, epidemiologists, and health workers over
several years to document the health effects of pesticide exposure on Huichols. Her study
shows that the Huichols suffer chronically reduced cholinesterase levels and can be
expected in the future to develop a variety of illnesses due to pesticide exposure. She also
documented various deaths and severe poisoning incidents due to pesticide exposure.
Mexican television stations have shown the video. Diaz Romo has produced translations
of the video into English and about a dozen indigenous languages of Mexico. She uses

the video and other materials to educate indigenous and other Mexican peasant and
farmworker groups to the dangers they may face in the fields of Mexico. xxix
The chemist, Dr. Lilia Albert, whose research was cited in my earlier work, has
gone on to produce other studies showing widespread pesticide contamination in various
regions of Mexico. In her angry and somewhat despairing article published as an
introduction to Diaz Romo’s study of Huichols, Dr. Albert concludes that the problem of
pesticide exposure and contamination is almost certainly very common and widespread
throughout Mexico, but that serious studies and, more important, action to remedy the
situation are few and far between. She complains mightily of the absurdly small budgets
and slight political support given to pesticide regulation and development of better pest
control techniques. xxx Overall, as we will see below, the environmental enforcement and
inspection budgets of the Mexican government have been cut severely since the
implementation of NAFTA.
Industrial accidents have also exposed communities in Mexico to serious levels of
pesticide contamination. Five months after the first publication of The Death of Ramon
Gonzalez, a pesticide factory in the state of Veracruz exploded and burned. The factory
was located near schools, churches, and a prison in a low-income neighborhood. Dr.
Jorge Arturo de Leon Rodriguez, a physician and Professor of Medicine at Mexico’s
national university wrote that “the explosion and fire at the Veracruz National
Agriculture Company, ANAVERSA, involved 19 thousand litres of methyl parathion, 8
thousand litres of paraquat, 3 thousand litres of 2,4-D, fifteen hundred litres of
pentachlorophenol and unknown quantities of malathion, benzene hexachloride, and
lindane. Very highly toxic dioxins and furans, which are a product of high temperature

urning of chlorinated chemicals, would also have been liberated.” There were no
immediate fatalities, and most of the 759 patients diagnosed as suffering from pesticide
poisoning were released from the hospital in less than twenty-four hours. Dr. de Leon and
his team of medical students, however, discovered that of twenty women in their first
trimester of pregnancy who were nearby at the time of the accident, four gave birth to
malformed babies and two of these died shortly after birth. The normal rate for the type
of malformation involved is one in ten thousand. xxxi
Residents began to question the larger situation in which they lived. Not only did
they live near ANAVERSA, but two other pesticide plants were within 500 meters of
ANAVERSA. The government clean-up effort, which included sweeping up large
quantities for disposal in the open municipal landfill and washing material down the
ordinary storm drains, was perfunctory at best. Community people formed an association
that launched formal protests that came to little, and public demonstrations, including the
stacking of coffins in front of the Municipal Palace. The highly politicized issue brought
charges and countercharges of exploitation or political gain on one hand, and repression
of data and protests on the other.
Dr. de Leon’s view gives a sense of the context into which the issue was put by
many in Mexico. After citing the anger of local residents and the failure of the
government to authorize sufficient resources to care for patients, he writes, “One can only
wonder if the government’s stubbornness is related to the fact that ANAVERSA has
strong economic ties with transnational companies, and that agreements the government
has made through the North American Free Trade Agreement are stronger than pressure
from one sector of the affected community of Cordoba, Veracruz.” Since the incident at

ANAVERSA, other industrial accidents involving pesticides and other toxic substances
in Mexico have usually led to similar frustrations and suspicions. xxxii
Dr. de Leon’s view of the ANAVERSA incident reflects a prevalent view in
Mexico that few problems of communities in Mexico can be understood properly outside
of the wider political context. Further, it reflects the very widely held conviction that
Mexican communities are being subjected to pressures from national and international
forces that are neither transparent nor accountable. Most Mexicans apparently favored
NAFTA because they thought that being “integrated” further into the U.S. economy
would bring substantial and positive economic and political change to Mexico. There is
now a general disappointment with NAFTA and a cynicism about the ability of the
government to honestly or efficiently provide even basic government services, much less
solve complicated and politically confrontational problems such as pesticide regulation.
Democratization, Violence, Growth, and Inequality
A pillar of the argument for globalization generally and neo-liberal trade and
economic reforms more specifically is that they will lead to increasing democratization
and accountability in society and government. This argument was made a major part of
the campaign for NAFTA in the United States. If NAFTA is to be the test case for the
argument, Mexico’s experience must be counted a disappointment at best and a neardisaster
at worst, though there have been some positive developments.
Nothing could better epitomize this than the extremely troubling conditions that prevail in such regions as
Culiacan. We saw in the first edition how drug production and trade was so strong in Culiacan in the
1980’s that it contaminated many other aspects of daily life with lawlessness, violence, and corruption. The
locally presumed involvement
i Excellent analyses of border issues and migration include: Joseph Nevins, 2002. Operation Gatekeeper:
The Rise of the Illegal Alien and the Remaking of the U.S. Mexico Boundary. London: Routledge; Peter
Andreas, 2001. Border Games: Policing the U.S.—Mexico Divide. Ithaca: Cornell.
ii Starting places for the huge literature on globalization and economic development as it applies here
include, Otto T. Solbrig, Robert Paarlberg, and Francesco di Castri, ed, 2001. Globalization and the Rural

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.