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Mexico is losing its campesinos to climatic changes and industrialized agriculture. They are poor and without money to invest in machinery, seeds or fertilizers and pesticides for their crops. Many desert their land, ruined by chemicals, erosion or desertification, to seek a better life in the big cities of Mexico or the United States. |
This sad reality is played out daily in the Mixteca, an area in the
impoverished state of Oaxaca north of the capital city inhabited by
indigenous descendents of the ancient Mixteca culture. According to the
United Nations, this region has one of the highest rates of erosion in
the world, and 83 percent of its land is no longer arable.
“When a campesino leaves his plot to work at some other job, it is a
dramatic and terrible change,” said Jesús León Santos, a campesino
leader and environmentalist from Tilantongo, Oaxaca, who is working to
improve the land in the Mixteca using ancient indigenous techniques and
implementing a sustainable agriculture program with the families in the
area. “We are really worried because the whole tradition and knowledge
of the Mexican campo is being lost. Only old people are staying in the
campo, and there will be no heirs to this knowledge that has been
passed down through generations within the indigenous communities.”
León visited San Miguel de Allende to participate in the first workshop
on organic farming held August 8 at Rancho Vía Orgánica. Besides giving
a lecture at the workshop, León visited some rural communities in the
area to listen to farmers’ problems and share his experiences with
them. He was recently awarded the Goldman Environmental Award for his
efforts to protect the environment.
Pre-Hispanic ways to save the land
During the 1980s Guatemalan refugees fled to Oaxaca when social and
political conditions in their own country became unstable. A decade
earlier, Guatemalans had developed an agricultural production system
based on organic principles and local knowledge. “People who had
participated in these agricultural programs left Guatemala during the
crisis, and some of them came to our region and started training people
in their techniques. I was one of the people who received this
training,” said León. “We later created a whole movement founded by
farmers interested in protecting the environment and in sustainable
agriculture, and we started the Centro de Desarrollo Integral Campesino
de la Mixteca, CEDICAM (Campesino Integrated Development Center of the
Mixteca).”
According to León, CEDICAM’s main purpose is to rescue eroded land and
turn it into fertile and productive soil. “The area is very eroded, but
we are developing techniques based on channels that we call acequias de
laderas (slope channels) to retain water and avoid erosion of the
slopes,” said León. This is a very old system that was used for
irrigating crops during pre-Hispanic times. Knowledge of the system was
nearly lost, but now, said León, it is widely accepted in the area and
government institutions such as SEMARNAT (Secretaría del Medio Ambiente
y Recursos Naturales) are now promoting it. In the Mixteca area, almost
80 percent of the rainwater drained off without filtering into the
ground. It has been shown that five kilometers of slope channels can
capture 800,000 liters of water during a torrential rain. León and
CEDICAM have been working with local campesinos to build hundreds of
slope channels in the area.
Native seeds and old techniques
For León, it is of great importance that families in the campo have
enough to eat. To achieve this, they must work their own land and
produce their own food. “Beginning in the 1950s, a trend toward
developing modern agricultural production systems was adopted,” said
León. “Since traditional systems were not producing what they should,
the knowledge of the indigenous people and campesinos was replaced by
technology. This has caused a high dependency on fertilizers and
outside knowledge, which makes the rural communities more vulnerable.”
During the 1980s, in an attempt to improve their harvests Mixteca
campesinos began planting corn that required intensive use of
fertilizers and pesticides. After NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) went into effect, the price of corn fell, and the campesinos
could no longer afford agricultural chemicals. Faced with low yields
and degraded soil, thousands abandoned their lands.
León and CEDICAM are focusing on developing an integrated agricultural
system called the “milpa system.” “This is also an ancient system used
by our ancestors,” said León. “Today, it is almost forgotten since it
has been replaced by monoculture systems—only one crop in the field.”
León explained that the milpa system combines different crops, such as
corn, beans, squash and herbs, in the same field. “This system may not
produce the eight tons of corn that a monoculture field in Sinaloa
produces, with a large investment in machinery and chemicals, but it
will give the campesino 1,800 kilos of corn for his family and his
animals. It will also provide them with beans, squash or anything else
they plant on their land without a big investment, using only green
fertilizers and native seeds, and probably they will have a surplus to
sell.”
León said that “there is a trend against planting native seeds, even
though for centuries they have provided food and adapted themselves to
the local climate. Suddenly, we want to replace them with “improved,”
genetically modified seeds that we do not know enough about. This is a
concern not only for farmers and producers but also for consumers.
Consumers must demand the production and use of these native seeds.
Besides offering better flavor they help keep culture, tradition and
the ancient indigenous and campesino knowledge alive.”
It was not easy for León to convince people to use this system. “It is
complicated to change from a system based on chemicals to a natural
system. We cannot simply stop using fertilizers all at once. It has to
be done little by little, reducing chemical fertilizers and increasing
green fertilizers. This does not affect production drastically. People
live from their plots; if we force them to change drastically from one
system to another, they might have a severe decrease in production and
become discouraged. So the change has to be gradual.”
Currently, León works regularly with 12 rural communities in Oaxaca and
sporadically with another 30, helping about 700 families.
