On December 8, the umpteenth massacre on Mexican soil left 14 bodies in the town of Texcaltitlán, 125 kilometers from the capital, in a confrontation between farmers and hitmen. From the horror recorded on video emerged the dark problem that agricultural activity is going through throughout its production chain due to the extortion of the cartels. It is no longer just poppy blood that waters crop fields. Corn and coconut, sorghum, avocados, lemon, mango and Jamaica flower, the entire rural world succumbs to mafia charges for land use, production, harvests and sales. Organized crime has put a price on the land and the sky, the harsh habitat in which farmers live. Added to the unavoidable consequences of climate change, the lack of government aid and the aging of the farming population in Mexico is this violent circumstance that has left four million hectares of crops abandoned in the last three years, according to data from the National Union of Agricultural Workers, UNTA. Young people migrate. With the poetic language of those who grow up in nature, the ejidataria Zenaida Correa Juárez expresses it best. “People no longer grow up in the guajiro dream.”
Mexico's rural area is 191.7 million hectares, of which 21.6 million are planted. Just over a quarter is irrigated and the rest is seasonal, that is, at the mercy of the weather, which this year has not been generous in water. That message was what the farmers of Texcaltitlán brought to the members of the Familia Michoacana, the criminal cartel that on December 8 came to ask them to collect the flat (extortion) at a rate of one peso per square meter: that they could not cope. to those payments that deplete their profits. In addition to the plea, they carried machetes, weapons and sticks and the shooting broke out. This time the drug traffickers made up the majority of the victims, as the farmers were fed up with the centuries-old extortions that plunged them into poverty. If in a distant time it was the colonialist chiefs, now it is organized crime who wants to keep the fruit of the land without having worked it.
Guilt is slippery in Mexico. “Criminals do not come from outside, they are born here, they are also children of the lack of opportunities, poverty, hunger and ignorance,” says Marco Antonio Reyes, state leader of the UNTA in Guerrero, one of the most fertile and violent in the country. Eight regions of different biodiversity give it first place in the production of mango, coconut and Jamaica flower, and second in mamey. But agricultural activity does not leave good results in a place “with 60 years of backwardness in the methods of production”, where beasts are still used to plow the land in a good part of the directions and where there are tractors it is at the expense of the economic effort of The farmers. The boys are no longer satisfied with the slavery of the countryside that is inherited for generations. “I have seen in a single town 10 buses with young people leave for migration,” says Reyes. “When the pinch comes [cosecha] There is no labor for corn,” he laments. In Guerrero the equation is obvious: poverty and violence are abandoning the farms. 70% of the rural population here is over 50 years old, and in other places even more, according to UNTA.
75 years with all its seasons are reflected in the face of Eudosio Martínez Fausta, an ejidatario from Chapa de Mota, in the State of Mexico, who has been fighting for years to return the lands that were taken from them with administrative tricks at night. in the morning, something common in Mexico. They provided the viceregal edict that granted them the property and a clever chief shuffled the papers until they were in his favor. In 2015 the police and machines entered to demolish their houses. “From then on I was like a feather in the air,” says Eudosio, not knowing where to stay or what to do with his life. Today they are settled on the ejido in cubicles made of cement blocks that do not protect them from the cold or the heat, from where they do daily to ensure that they do not come to dispossess them of their land or their crops. In that breeding ground some of the massacres in Mexico ferment and explode. Some chiefs died by hanging, but the farmers always bore the brunt. More than 40 years ago, Álvaro López founded the agrarian organization UNTA, of which he is its national leader. In that time, especially the first two decades, 1,362 fellow camp activists lost their lives, he says. López himself takes very good care of his car trips, he does not want criminal ambushes and these come from crime as well as from the agrarian chiefs, both of whom so often collude with local politics.
Eudosio said: “When my father had the land, he did not know what to do with it, because he did not have a team to till it.” Now he inherited them, but there are no tractors. Pushing the plow behind the horse, opening furrows towards the horizon and back again, again to the horizon and back again, is one of the most tiring tasks in the field. That is the fight against the earth inch by inch. And Zenaida Correa Juárez also complains about that: “We need tractors, the team is no longer performing. And fertilizer, costs have gone up a lot.” Her two sons went on to other jobs, which is why she maintains that the guajiro dream no longer assaults the thoughts of young people.
Unharvested cornfields flank the highway on the way to Chapa de Mota, in the State of Mexico. “The harvest is lost,” says the president of UNTA, Álvaro López. He gets out of the car and jumps over the ditch, removing the leaves from a ruined ear where the destruction of the last rains can be seen on the grains. The water arrived at the wrong time and there is no way to collect anything for now, let's see if the weather dries up. This Wednesday the sun wanted to welcome one of Morena's pre-candidates for the municipality. Under a precarious tarpaulin, the floor also covered with tarps to cover the mud, about thirty ejidatarios receive him with carnitas and hot punch. They are taking the floor: let him fix the road, let him bring electricity and water service, so that when he reaches the presidential seat he will not ignore them. That's what they call it. And then they eat the tacos, the rice and the green mole. The chickens peck outside.
The teacher, as they call López, agrarian president, has also been invited to the political gathering. The UNTA has given its support to the Morenista presidential candidate for the June elections, but they do not spare criticism. “All countries subsidize their agriculture, but this government, in order to combat corruption, has taken drastic measures and the rural support programs achieved long ago have been eliminated. The absence of development policies is the main cause of land abandonment. And yes, there was corruption and mismanagement of resources, which sometimes arrived incomplete or did not arrive, under the protection of policies typical of past regimes. Agricultural organizations and complicit officials did some business and others turned a blind eye, but these programs are needed,” says López. “In this six-year term, the child has been killed with everything and the bathtub,” he exemplifies.
70% of the fertilizers came from Ukraine and Russia so everything has now become significantly more expensive due to the war. With its own data collected by the organization in 30 States in which it has a presence, López assures that there are no more than 14 million hectares under cultivation and maintains that at least 30% of the Mexican rainfed area has been left idle. In 1993 the harvest set a record because prices were set and people worked hard with that incentive, says the agrarian, formerly a deputy for the former PRD. After that date, everything has gotten worse, he regrets.
Five years ago, mafia bosses began to impose their quotas on farmers in some States, first based on the harvest, now per square meter. They suffer it in Guerrero, in Sinaloa, in Durango and Guanajuato, everywhere. “In the greenhouses [los criminales] They charge one peso per square meter per month, and if it is corn, they have to sell it to collectors, also criminals, who pay you however they want. Everything: the beans, the fruits, everything passes through their hands. They also buy breeding livestock from producers and butchers, then they are obliged to buy it from them. “They have taken over all the links in the chain,” explains Marco Antonio Reyes by phone from Guerrero. He remembers that about three months ago they burned the central market of Acapulco. And a few more ago they killed several polleros in Chilpancingo, the state capital.
They criticize “the welfare system” implemented by this Government, which helps against the difficulties that are weakening the rural world, but does not encourage production, they say. “We must invest in production and innovation and create a solid financing system that injects resources, not only for farmers who cultivate one hectare for self-consumption,” requests Reyes. “The credits are being given by the coyotes and at very high interest. It is the same thing that happened in colonial times, the chiefs lent to plant and then demanded part of the harvest.” “We need,” Reyes adds, “a productive agricultural infrastructure, that is, warehouses, silos, machinery to process mangoes and coconuts, but with a high-impact vision, not just a local one.”
López says goodbye to the ejidatarios of Chapa de Mota, the sun is still high. He carries in his hands some free-range eggs that have been given to him and gets into the car. Next to the dirt road and the dry cornfields, a young woman and her son suck on a candy stick and say goodbye. “We are approaching a stage of more violence due to hunger,” predicts the agrarian leader. “This country has no longer gone bankrupt thanks to the remittances that come from the United States,” he says.
The spiral continues its course. Those who leave the countryside and cross the border will send money with which their families will survive without more resources to start production. There are towns where there are hardly any women, children and elderly left, the rest have already gone “to the gringo” to work the fields that are not theirs.
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