The Transformation Of Mexican Agriculture

In spite of the most thorough agrarian reform in nonsocialist Latin America, Mexico cannot feed its population. Steven Sanderson attributes the problems of Mexican agriculture to an internationalization of the food system promoted by the Mexican state, the trade system, and agribusiness. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In spite of the most thorough agrarian reform in nonsocialist Latin America, Mexico cannot feed its population. Steven Sanderson attributes the problems of Mexican agriculture to an internationalization of the food system promoted by the Mexican state, the trade system, and agribusiness. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

`The conquerors wanted Indian labour, the crown Indian subjects, the friars Indian souls.' Thus the importance of the natives of Mexico to their Spanish conquerors has been described. In this book Andre Gunder Frank examines the dramatic impact of Spanish rule on Mexican society and agriculture, in terms of the demands of world capitalist development. Mr Frank traces the rapid transformation of the dominant institutions of Mexican labour organization which occurred after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521: from a form of slavery, which lasted until 1533, through various forms of forced labour (the encomienda and the catequil or mica), to the establishment, after 1575, of the hacienda, with large-scale latifundia lands worked by serf-like ganan labour.

Contributors to this anthology give us a close look at how Mexico's rural reforms of the early 1990s have operated, and how the approximately 25 million Mexicans still living in the countryside are responding to the ending of Mexico's 50-year experiment with communal land.