Mexico's "Green Revolution," 1940-1980: Towards an Environmental History

Author(s): David A. Sonnenfeld

Source: Environmental History Review , Winter, 1992, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp.
28-52
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Forest History Society and
American Society for Environmental History

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3984948

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Mexico's "Green Revolution,"
1940-1980: Towards an
Environmental History

David A. Sonnenfeld
University of California, Santa Cruz

In agriculture, Mexico was the birthplace of the modem "Green

Revolution."1 From 1940 to 1965, agricultural output in Mexico
increased fourfold.' During this period, Mexico went from importing
food to more than meeting its domestic food requirements. Its stunning
agricultural accomplishments were widely heralded. Mexican
agriculture was used as a model by the Rockefeller Foundation, the
U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), the World Bank,
and other agencies, to promote Green Revolution technology packages
around the world.
By the end of the 1970s, however, something was amiss with
Mexico's "miracle in agriculture." After a decade of sluggish growth
in agricultural productivity, coupled with rapid population growth,
Mexico began importing large quantities of basic food grains. Barkin
proclaimed "the end of food self-sufficiency" in Mexico;3 others termed
it "Mexico's agricultural dilemma";4 and Mexico's "food crisis."5

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 A = = A M I~CHIHAHUA Jt0M G
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eprinted PA
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30 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

Economic and social policy dimensions of Mexico's

agricultural crisis have been widely discussed in English-language
literature. There also are hints of an environmental dimension of this
crisis: anecdotal accounts tell of severe water salinization,
desertification, deforestation, and pesticide abuse. Such accounts
point to the need for a systematic environmental history of agricultural
development in Mexico. This paper takes first, modest steps towards
the development of such a history, by outlining a framework for
analysis, assembling empirical data from the English-language
literature, and formulating provisional conclusions.6

Agricultural Development

Mexico has a long, rich history of agricultural development. This

paper focuses on environmental dynamics of the period from about
1940 to 1980 known as the "Green Revolution." Before reviewing the
environmental impacts of the Green Revolution, it is useful to
understand its historical context, including factors contributing to its
decline in the 1970s and 1980s. This part of the paper describes a very
few important, long-term dynamics of Mexican agricultural
development; discusses features and social impacts of the Green
Revolution; and examines the rise of the "new international division
of labor" in North American agriculture, which continues to exert
momentous influence on Mexico through the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Over the last 500 years, agricultural development in what
today is Mexico has been affected heavily by the region's relationship
with the world system. There have been several cycles of agrarian
development, social conflict, and ecological destruction. Two
important general trends may be discerned in the long-term
environmental history of Mexico. Its economy, agriculture, and
environment have undergone a process of "internationalization" over
several hundred years. This includes periods of Spanish colonialism;
U.S. invasion, occupation, and seizure of land; French colonialism;
and massive investment by U.S. interests during the presidency of
Porfirio Diaz, 1877-1910.7
A second trend has been the destruction of the "natural,"
local economies of indigenous peoples, including the famous irrigated
agriculture in the Valley of Mexico, communal rain-fed subsistence
farming in the north and northeast of Mexico, and slash and burn
agriculture in the Mexican tropics. This destruction began soon after

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 31

the arrival of the Spanish, but co

century.8
During the Porfirian era, large agricultural landholdings were
consolidated, many people were driven off the land, others left their
land and haciendas for jobs in the cities' booming export economy, and
thousands of miles of railroads were built to move agricultural
products from U.S. and Mexican-owned land in northern Mexico to
the U.S.9 By 1910, "90% of the rural population of Mexico was landless,
and only 15 percent of the indigenous communities retained possession
of their traditional communal lands."'l1
Guaranteed by the 1917 Mexican Constitution, some land
reform took place between 1917 and 1934. However, more took place
during the populist presidency of General Lazaro Cardenas."l When
Cardenas ended his term of office in 1940, he left more than 11,00
ejidos, endowed with more than 20,000,000 hectares of land."2 One
effect of reform was to increase the amount of land in cultivation. The
amount of rain-fed, arable land in Mexico increased by almost 2.5
million acres between 1930 and 1940.1' This helped boost Mexico's
agricultural production in the coming decades.
By the end of the CArdenas presidency, agricultural policy
began to change from supporting both commercial and collective
farming to favoring agribusiness only.'4 This was accomplished
through "a massive program of capital-intensive agricultural
development. The primary emphasis of this program was on extendin
the agricultural frontier through irrigation projects and the diffusio
of biochemical (land-saving) technologies."'5
During the 1940s, Mexico had an opportunity to "seize the
chance" to initiate national development during a contraction in the
world market.'6 Mexican development in this period was characterized
by an import substitution industrialization (ISI) strategy,'7 led by a
"triple alliance" of the Mexican state, domestic, and foreign capital.18
Mexican agricultural policy continued its shift from the dual agrarian
orientation of the Cardenas years to one favoring large-scale
commercial landholders. Mexican industrial capitalists allied with
large landholders against the peasantry and rural smallholders.19
In control of the Mexican state, industrialists were able to
finance industrialization through the transfer of resources from the
agrarian sector to industry. They did this by manipulating foreign
exchange rates, terms of trade, and domestic agricultural prices.
Centralized management of export transactions was used to provide
subsidized access to foreign exchange, for the purchase of the capital
goods necessary to build Mexico's industrial base.20 During the

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32 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

period of ISI, Mexican agriculture, rural enviro

provided the cheap food, abundant labor, raw materials, and capital
crucial to the development of industry." Mexico's new agrarian
policy was a conscious, integral part of its overall development
strategy. An important part of this agrarian policy was what becam
known as the "Green Revolution."
The "Green Revolution" in Mexican agriculture began in the
early 1940s, initiated, financed, and supervised by the Rockefeller
Foundation. It promulgated fertilizer-responsive, hybrid seed varieties,
developed in laboratories in the U.S. and Mexico, and integrated with
farm management practices based on biocides and modern farm
machinery. These technology "packages" were designed for use on
large-scale, irrigated, landholdings.2?
Initially under the Green Revolution, Mexican agricultural
development was extensive, bringing new lands into cultivation through
land reform, the expansion of rain-fed agriculture, and extensive
irrigation.23 Between 1947 and 1964, through the River Basin
Development Program, the Mexican government spent 3.3 billion
pesos building dams, electrical-generation facilities, roads and other
rural infrastructure.24 Four river basins were developed during this
period, in part to provide water for irrigation. The amount of irrigated
land in Mexico increased almost 50% in Mexico, from more than 28
million acres in 1930 to more than 41 million acres in 1960.25 The
government allocated about half of the new water resources to the
more concentrated commercial agricultural sector, the other half, at
least formally,26 to the ejidal sector.27
The amount not only of irrigated but also of rain-fed arable
land also increased between 1940 and 1950. This is attributed to the
Mexican government setting high price controls on basic foods, giving
both commercial and peasant farmers an incentive to increase
production.
In the late 1950s, the 1960s, and 1970s, agricultural
development was more intensive. In this period, Mexican agricu
produced more than ever before.28 (See Figure 1.)

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1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 33

Figure 1 Mexicai Agricultural Productio

M 16
14

12

08
1 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1940
n 1985
6_

0
2E

Beans Sorgum wVeat Corn

With significant annual variation, the increase in agricultural

production was dramatic.29 Com production increased from 1.6 million
tons in 1940 to 14.1 million tons in 1985. The production of beans
increased from nearly 97,000 tons in 1940 to a peak of nearly 1.5
million tons in 1981.3? Wheat became one of the largest crops, with
production growing from 464,000 tons in 1940 to over 5.2 million tons
in 1985.3' Sorghum production increased from 200,000 tons in 1950 to
2.7 million tons in 1970.32 Through most of the 1970s, Mexico produced
sufficient food for its own people, even while exporting agricultural
products.
How was this accomplished? Not only through the great
expansion of rural infrastructure described above, but also through
the rapid industrialization of agriculture. Tractor usage in Mexico
increased six-fold-from 17,000 in 1947 to 125,000 in 1981.33 "Mexico
became one of the countries with the highest concentration of
agricultural mechanization in Latin America."3 Even more explosive
was the growth in consumption of petrochemical-derived fertilizers
in Mexico, from 2.8 thousand metric tons in 1940 to 1,067 thousand
metric tons in 1978/79-an increase of over 350 times. (See Figure 2. )

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34 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

The mneans of the Green Revolution's accomplishm

important from both social and environmental stan

Figure 2 Relative Increase of Selected Mexican Agricultural Irout

1200 -

1000 I

U 800l
r, ~~~~~~~~~~1 1940
1 600 .
t L 1981
400 _

200 _

0 m
Irrigated Land Tractors Fertilizer

The benefits of this spectacular development did not accrue

equally to all segments of the population. The agricultural
development strategies embodied in and carried out through the
Grwen Revolution and River Basin Development projects increased
social inequality in Mexico. The beneficiaries of Mexican agricultur
development were the urban industrial capitalists, who benefitted
from unequal terms of trade between agriculture and industry, a
large, commercial, agricultural landholders, who benefitted to th
detriment of private and ejidal smallholders and agricultural labor
Control and ownership of land in Mexico were concentrate
as a result of the Green Revolution. Hewitt de Alcaintara argues th
"land was the ultimate resource transferred from smaller to larg
farmers during the course of the technification of the Mexican
countryside."35 Large landholders, those with easy access to loans
and materials, were better able to take advantage of these new

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 35

agricultural inputs.`6 In addition to unequal access to loans and

materials, and the absence of economies of scale, many of the ejidal
grants of the 1930s had been on remote and marginal land; ejiditarios
were unable to effectively utilize the new technologies.
Paid less than living wages, rural workers in the capitalist
agricultural sector were forced to supplement their income. They did
this through engaging in subsistence farming, by having their children
work for wages in the fields and by having unmarried family members
go to other regions of Mexico and to the U.S. and send money home.37
Having larger families was part of this survival strategy-more family
members meant more people to contribute to the food basket.M
Families in Mexico's ejidal sector also had to do such things to surv
as they were increasingly subsumed into a cash economy.
This agrarian structure-part capitalist, part smallholding-
is what de Janvry has termed functional dualism.39 Functional dualism
has meant sustained profits for agricultural and industrial capitalists
and increased poverty and social dislocation for smallholders and
agricultural workers. "As late as 1960, 83 percent of all the farmers of
the country could maintain their families only at a subsistence or
infra-subsistence level."4' Functional dualism had other consequences
for Mexico's rural environment.

The New International Division of Labor

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico's ISI strategy faltered due to the high
cost of imported capital goods necessary for industrialization, a slow-
down in the rate of increase of productivity in domestic production,
and an increase in both domestic and foreign demand. Mexico's
industrialization strategy became export-led.41 Mexican agriculture
became more integrated with the North-American agro-food complex,
resulting in a trend known as a "new international division of labor"
in agriculture.
This new international division of labor (NIDL) involved
aspects of production, consumption, distribution, and supply.42
Production for export of luxury fruits and vegetables greatly increased.
The livestock and livestock-feed sectors of Mexican agriculture also
expanded. However, production of basic food grains failed to keep
up with demand, forcing Mexico to import corn, beans, and wheat
from the U.S. Large-scale, commercial agriculture in Mexico benefitted
from NIDL.4 However, these changes also resulted in a further increase
in poverty and inequality in both the countryside and the cities" and

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36 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

in the abandonment of millions of hectares45 of rai

lands.*
During the late 1960s and the 1970s, transnational agro-
industry increasingly donmnated Mexican agriculture. The investme
of U.S.-based corporations in the Mexican food processing industry
increased "steadily," from $107 million in 1966 to $229 million in
1978.47 Cockcroft notes that:

Between 1965 and 1975, about 10 percent of U.S. manufacturing

investment in Mexico went into the food industry, while profits
doubled.... Some twenty-five TNCs, eighteen of which were
U.S.-owned, monopolized the largely intermediate- and upper-
class internal market and, for occasional foods like
strawberries, frozen vegetables, and certain fresh vegetab
the external market as well."

Not coincidentally, during this same period a major shift

occurred in the importance of different Mexican crops. With an
expanding U.S. market and advances in refrigeration and
transportation systems, the production of luxury fruits and veg
in northern Mexico became highly profitable. Transnational
corporations produced for export commodities such as strawberr
asparagus, and broccoli.
Transnational agro-industry also reshaped Mexican
agricultural production through helping change the food tastes and
consumption patterns of millions of Mexicans, especially the rapidly
expanding middle class of the 1960s and 1970s. Mexicans consumed
more flour tortillas, baked goods, and other wheat products than ever
before. Wheat became more widely cultivated. Mexicans also
consumed more meat, resulting not only in the raising of more
livestock, but also in increased production of animal feed-grains such
as sorghum, soybeans, and oil seeds.
Many of the new crops were Green Revolution crops,
scientifically designed for responsiveness to chemical inputs, ease of
mechanical harvesting and industrial processing. In production both
of luxury foods for exports and new grains for domestic consumption,
transnational corporations tightly controlled agricultural practices
through strict contractual agreements with growers.49
At the same time, less and less land went into growing of
corn and beans, as government "cheap food" policy kept prices for
these crops low, making them less profitable for agriculturalists than
feed-grains, whose prices were unregulated.50

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 37

The "Livestocking" of Mexican Agriculture

The livestock industry grew rapidly in Mexico during the 1950s, 1960s
and 1970s. This was facilitated by a variety of factors, including
privileges cattle-raisers obtained from the Mexican state, price-control
disincentives for basic food crops, the profitability of cattle-raising
and pork and chicken production, and changing consumer tastes in
Mexico and the U.S.
Cattle-raisers have had strong ties to the Mexican
government.51 Cattle-raising was largely exempted from land reform.
"Since 1937 a presidential decree.. .protected between six and nine
million hectares of cattle land from the land-reform programme."52
Cattle-raising in Mexico is highly profitable. Ranchers have been able
to turn great profits within a few short years, in part by "mining"
agricultural land and tropical moist forests of their nutritive value.
Similarly, agro-industry has found pork and chicken production
increasingly profitable.53
Meat consumption in Mexico increased considerably during
the 1960s and 1970s with the growth of Mexico's middle classes and
the changing of food tastes. Most of the meat produced in Mexico is
consumed domestically. The consumption of red meat in Mexico
grew from an estimated 12 kg per person in 1960 to 17.6 kg in 1978.
White meat grew from 6.6 kg per person to 11.5 kg per person during
the same time period.-"
The export of livestock also grew rapidly during this period.
Calves were bred and raised in Mexico and shipped across the border
to the U.S. for "finishing." Boxed meat was also shipped to the U.S.,
especially to fast-food and institutional buyers.' "Since the initial
exports [in 19641, the number of head [of cattle] exported live for
fattening with cheap grain in American feed lots rose rapidly so that
by 1978 it had reached 850,000 head of young cattle in addition to
more than 65 million dollars in processed meat."'T
The amount of land directly and indirectly devoted to livestock
in Mexico increased dramatically from 1940 to 1980.57 This occurred
through the "take-over" of prime agricultural land in the north as
well as tropical moist forests in the south. Barkin suggests that,
together, these various dynamics have resulted in the "ganaderizacion
of Mexican agriculture.59
The production of basic food crops by peasants through rain-
fed agriculture on ejidal and private plots was neglected by government
policy makers in the 1970s. Not only were government agricultural
loans less available to smallholders, but price supports for basic food

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 38 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

grains were kept low in favor of urban workers to the detriment of

rural producers, especially smallholders. The rain-fed, peasant
agricultural sector, which had been one of the sources of expansion of
agricultural production in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and a significan
contributor to Mexico's food self-sufficiency, faced crisis.
With a rapidly increasing population,60 a decrease per capita in
the amount of food produced and a surfeit of petro-dollars from the
oil boom of the late 1970s, Mexico imported large quantities of basic
foods for domestic consumption in the 1970s and 1980s. Although
amounts varied annually, import levels of corn, beans, wheat, and
rice were unprecedented in the 1970s and 1980s. Peak imports included
4.6 million tons of corn in 1983, 490,000 tons of beans in 1981, 170,000
tons of rice in 1984, and 1.2 million tons of wheat in 1979.61
In the early 1980s, in the final years of the L6pez Portillo
presidency, Mexico attempted to re-establish food self-sufficiency
through the Mexican Food System (SAM) project.62 This program
also was financed with earnings from Mexico's domestic oil profits
and cheap petro-dollar loans. Also to boost agricultural production,
in 1981 the Mexican government legalized the sale of eidal lands for
the first time since land reform in the 1930s. With the shock of the
second oil crash of 1983 and facing a $90 billion foreign debt, the
Mexican government soon ended the SAM project, and declared an
end to land reform.
Under the leadership of President Salinas de Gortari, Mexico
has been moving quickly to become even more integrated with the
world economy. At the time of this writing, the Mexican government
has completed a preliminary North American Free Trade Agreement.
It has also been pursuing similar accords with other Latin American
countries, and has been attempting to attract Japanese investment.63

Environmental Impacts

Not only the rural poor suffered as a result of modem agricultural

development in Mexico, so too did the rural environment. The
processes of environmental degradation as a result of Mexico's Green
Revolution were both direct and indirect. They ranged from overuse
of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, to overuse of subsistence plots,
and rural outmigration."4 This part of the paper assembles evidence
from the English-language literature, and analyzes it with regard to
three different agro-ecosystem types-irrigated, rain-fed, and tropical-
humid-each with distinct social and ecological dynamics. Also

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 39

included in this part of the paper is a review of indirect social and

environmental effects of agricultural development in Mexico.
Development in Mexico's capitalist agricultural sector has
affected the environment in ways similar to that of modern agriculture
elsewhere, such as in the western U.S. Generalized technological,
chemical, and mechanical inputs have been imposed on variegated
micro-ecologies for short-term gain, in disregard of long-term social
and environmental impacts. The rural environment has been greatly
altered by a new rural infrastructure, overuse and contamination of
water supplies, new agricultural technologies, and misuse of
agricultural chemicals.
Great new dams, irrigation works, roads, and electrical power-
generating facilities were constructed throughout Mexico. The greatly
increased agricultural production was only possible "within the
framework of a federal investment programme which poured billions
of pesos into irrigation works, roads, storage facilities, electricity,
[and] railroads...the 'green revolution'... was thus bought with public
funds at a very high price."' Tens of thousands of people were
displaced, including many indigenous peoples using centuries-old,
traditional, sustainable agricultural techniques. Forests also were
destroyed."
Where irrigation has depended upon groundwater supplies,
water availability has also become a significant issue. "In Hermosillo,
the large private farming sector... [drew] up such quantities of water
from underground sources... that the region is now threatened with
the total exhaustion of its water supply.. .this is what some observers
would call a 'mining' mentality."67 In the U.S.-Mexico border area,
agriculture competes with both industrial and residential demands
on water. A combination of chemical contamination and groundwater
depletion has seriously threatened all water availability in some
locations. The El Paso/Ciudad Juarez area "is projected to run out of
groundwater by the year 2000.""
Over time, intensive irrigation with improper drainage of
formerly arid or semi-arid soils leaches out salts and heavy metals,
leading to problems of water salinizatioh and contamination.69 In the
U.S.-Mexico border region, for example, "if agriculture is to continue
as an economically viable industry.. .then, short of interbasin water
transfers of previously unimagined scales, the sociology and
technology of agriculture must undergo substantial change."70
Irrigation systems can be important vectors of public health
problems: "No effective measures have been taken in the face of the
recognition of the mortal danger of waste from hog raising to the

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40 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

whole population because of cysticercos invading f

through irrigation systems."" In the Mexicali area
affected by agricultural waste compounded with pollution from
industrial and human sources. "The New River drains a major
agricultural valley in Mexico and already contains high concentrations
of salts and pesticides before reaching the Mexican border town of
Mexicali. At Mexicali, industrial chemicals, slaughterhouse wastes,
and municipal sewage are dumped into the river ... the highly polluted
river poses a severe health hazard....""
Once established, irrigated agricultural systems used
increasingly "modern" agricultural inputs: hybrid seed varieties,
fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and farm machinery. The intense
use of these new technologies led to severe social and environmental
problems, while traditional, more socially and environmentally
sustainable, agricultural technologies were ignored, at least until
recently.73
While Mexican agriculture has become increasingly
mechanized, soil conditions are not always appropriate for use of
tractors. Mechanical plowing and intensive irrigation has led to top-
soil loss in areas with fragile soils. In turn, this has required greater
use of chemical fertilizers.
Wright exhaustively documents the problem of pesticide abuse
in Mexican agriculture.74 The mono-cropping promoted by Green
Revolution technology is particularly vulnerable to insect infestations.
With repeated application of pesticides, pests develop resistance,
leading to the use of increased amounts, concentrations, and toxicities
of pesticides.75
One significant aspect of chemical agriculture in Mexico which
Wright and others document is the significance of Mexican parastatal76
industrial corporations, particularly Fertimex, in promulgating
chemical fertilizer and pesticide use. Fertimex is the largest producer
of chemical fertilizers in Mexico.
Through subsidies, the Mexican government maintains "a
major commitment of the Mexican state to pesticide dependent
agriculture and to the growers, domestic firms, and transnational
corporations that profit from pesticide use."1 To government officials,
"reduction of pesticide application dangers and costs is not as
important as maximizing revenues." The Mexican government has
only recently shown interest in promoting sustainable agro-ecological
systems at agricultural universities such as Chapingo.78
Not only the Mexican government, but also transnational
agribusiness is involved in promoting use of agricultural chemicals.

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 41

Transnational corporations increasingly control both what is produced

and how it is produced. Contracts often specify what brands of seeds
and chemicals are to be used and with what strength and frequency
chemicals are to be applied.79
Pesticide use in the export sector of Mexican agriculture is
strongly linked with international dynamics, in particular to the
consumer tastes, scientific perspectives, and government regulation
of the U.S. When the U.S. banned imports of fruits and vegetables
sprayed with DDT, agriculturalists in Mexico began using other
pesticides which have shorter half-lives (and thus allow the produce
to pass border inspections), but are more acutely toxic for agricultural
workers and their families who conm into immediate contact with
them.80 Wright documents numerous deaths in Mexico attributed to
the new pesticides, most notably of young, pregnant Indian women.8"
Not all of Mexico's rain-fed agricultural lands are best suited
for agricultural purposes. Many marginal lands were brought under
cultivation through land reform. This process was frequently
implemented by opening up "unused" lands, including those
deforested to accommodate agriculture, rather than redistributing
existing agricultural lands. In semi-arid, temperate, and tropical zones,
rain-fed agricultural land has been hit hard by problems of overuse
and abandonment, desertification, and deforestation.
The fertility and ecology of smallholdings in Mexico's rain-
fed agricultural sector are further squeezed through overuse. Peasants
intensified production on their smallholdings due to their increasing
integration into the cash economy, growing numbers, and increasing
poverty. Crops were grown for sale and subsistence. Landholdings
were subdivided as families grew, further intensifying land use. This
led to new problems:

Traditional farming technologies such as crop rotation and

fallow periods gave way to intensive and repetitive use of the
land for single crops, a process that leached and depleted the
soil, adding up to increasingly poor harvests and low quality
crops. This in turn necessitated greater inputs of fertilizers
and improved seeds, the purchase of which led to more
indebtedness ....82

Chemicals may be applied in inappropriate conditions or

quantities, even lowering crop yields.83 Government and industry
advisors recommend intense applications of fertilizer even where not
environmentally prudent.m Non-chemical and traditional methods of

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42 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

maintaining or restoring soil fertility (intercroppi

letting the land lie fallow) may not be used and m
Some or all family members may be forced to migrate as
smallholdings fail to sustain families." The environment suffers from
neglect as this rural out-nigration occursY7 By 1960,15 million hectares
of eiido land had been abandoned.Tm While it is true that some marginal
lands should never have been cultivated in the first place, abandonment
of any land after cultivation has resulted in severe erosion of remaining
topsoils (see below). "Traditional" land managers9 are no longer
there to take care of the land, to sustain and protect its fertility.
The Garcia-Barrioses observed endemic soil erosion and
desertification in their study in the San Andres Lagunas, Oaxaca,
area: "most unfertile or distant lands have not been productively
occupied, not evenrby goat herders, and are now completely eroded."90
The effects of this soil erosion spilled over, seriously affecting fertile
land in the valleys below:91

Forty six percent of the most humid lands with the longest
growth periods of the valleys are now silted with sands of
scarce fertility coming from intense erosion in hillsides. This
has meant a great reduction in land productivity. In 1985,
plots in not silted humid environments yielded in average
873 kg/ha ... while silted humid lands yielded around 480
kg/ha. Also, a large proportion of flooded lands are suffering
from salinization.92

Redclift links desertification in the highlands with

deforestation: "'desertification' is becoming a reality as forests ar
destroyed in Durango and Chihuahua, soils are eroded and even
greater pressure put on the carrying capacity of semi-arid regions....
In Mexico as a whole, it has been calculated that 225,000 hectares of
land are lost each year as desertification spreads."93
In Mexico "15 percent of the agricultural land has been totally
lost to erosion, 26 percent is highly advanced in this process of
destruction, and another 24 percent is in the initial stages of
deterioration."94 "Three million square kilometers" of dry-lands in
Mexico are "under severe threat of desertification."95
Not only tropical moist forests, but also other forests in Mexico
have been hit hard by deforestation. Forests play an important role
maintaining water supply and quality, controlling runoff, and
preserving soils.' Mexico lost 530,000 acres of forest in 1980 alone.97

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 43

First "colonization" and then cattle-raising have contributed

to the widespread deforestation of Mexico's humid tropics. As
Mexico's rural population increased, there were continuing demands
for "opening up" new lands. The last great areas for land reform in
Mexico were the tropical moist forests. Tropical-humid areas did not
prove to be conducive to settled agriculture. As a result, despite
considerable expenditures, land reform was not successful there."
Land reform in tropical-humid areas was an effective
forerunner for the cattle-industry." With the growth of livestock
raising, Mexico's tropical moist forests have become a resource to
exploit for short-term gain. Livestock have taken a heavy toll on the
forest.-?0
"The number of head of cattle and acreage for grazing in
Chiapas. . .doubled between 1967 and 1976, leading to eighty-six major
peasant protests by communal Indians deprived of their lands...."101
"In Chiapas the forests are literally being 'mined'.... The tropical
'Lacandona' forest, once one of the richest ecosystems in the New
World, will not exist by the year 2010, if present trends continue."102
Four-fifths of the Mexican forest has been destroyed in the last twenty
years "for the meat religion," according to Esteva.'0
Agricultural development in Mexico has had important
indirect social and environmental effects as well as direct impacts.
These include catastrophic environmental conditions in Mexico's
rapidly growing cities and changes in social relations.
Mexico's environment has also been destroyed by rapid,
unmanaged urbanization, the flip side of rural out-migration. Peop
were intentionally driven out of the countryside and into the cities as
part of Mexico's agricultural modernization strategy."?4 Initially, this
was functional for Mexican industrialization, providing an ample
supply of labor and a growing cash-based domestic market. However,
Mexico's industry has not grown fast enough to absorb a rapidly
growing population.
In rapidly growing urban areas, residences and industry have
taken over prime agricultural land. In the Valley of Mexico, for
example, "Government seizure of ejidal land for urban construction
...over the last two decades has claimed 8,926 hectares...in the Federal
District and 16,600 hectares... in the State of Mexico."10
Rapid urban growth has also critically affected people and
the environment through pollution. Mexico City and cities on the
U.S.-Mexico border have grown so quickly that tens of millions of
people live in areas without sewage systems. A confidential study
conducted by a United Nations task force in the late 1980s calculated

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44 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

that "600 tons of solid human waste are dump

air daily... the 'number of colonies of micro-org
[are] uncountable.""'* The source of this waste material is "the
deposited wastes of about six million people and two million dogs"
on the outskirts of Mexico City.-` The waste comes into Mexico City
in the form of dust which is blown into the city, especially in the
months of February, March, and April, at a rate of 20 tons per square
kilometer per month.'08
Nezahualc6yotl, an incorporated suburb of three million
people on the outskirts of Mexico City, sometimes called"the third or
fourth largest 'city' in Mexico," has never had "drainage, nor sewers,
nor running water, nor electricity.... Ninety percent of the population
suffered from chronic hunger, malnutrition, and parasitic infections.""'0
"Of 220 existing sewage treatment plants, half are inoperative
and another quarter operate at suboptimal levels for lack of
maintenance."110 Mexicali has grown "1300% in the last thirty-five
years," from 40,000 in 1950 to 780,000 in 1984.111 Tijuana, with a
population of over one million, "has nearly tripled" in population
since 1970, after having "doubled or tripled every decade between
1930 and 1970."'12 Other Mexican border cities with sewage treatment
problems include Nuevo Loredo and Naco, Sonora."13
The disposal of solid, chemical, and toxic wastes is a problem
throughout Mexico. "At least twenty per cent of Mexico's chemical
and radio-active waste is dumped illegally.""' "Parastatal industries
... (PEMEX, AZUCAR, S.A., FERTIMEX, and the Comision Federal de
Electricidad) are the largest sources of industrial pollution in
Mexico.""15 "Mexico's water supply today is severely polluted; 95
percent of Mexican cities discharge untreated industrial and organic
wastes, causing four-fifth of all watersheds to be highly
contaminated."'"16
In Mexico City, "at least 12,000 tons of garbage are produced
daily, most of it left open to the skies. Solid and liquid toxic wastes of
industrial and biomedical origin amount to an estimated 2,500 tons a
day.""117 The industrial development area in Mexico City, once well
outside the city, is now in the middle of the urban zone. According to
Leonard, 'Today, thousands of poor urban residents live very close to
industrial facilities. Many people's yards or temporary dwellings
even share back walls with heavy chemical plants.""' Leonard
continues:

In all of Mexico, there are apparently only two facilities

adequate for incinerating toxic wastes.. .many of Mexico City's

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 45

disposal firms probably dump toxic wastes directly into

Mexico City's sewer system... much of Mexico City's
wastewater is pumped untreated to agricultural areas for
irrigation.... The fear that toxic waste drums are being
wantonly dumped is supported by the appearance of many
empty drums in Mexico City's squatter settlements, where
people without indoor plumbing cut them in half for use as
water barrels."19

The forests in the mountains surrounding the valley of Mexico

have been dying due at least in part to the severe air pollution caused
by 3,000,000 cars and trucks and 25,000 industrial plants in Mexico
City.'20 Each year, five million tons of chemicals and suspended
particles are dumped into the air in Mexico City.'2' According to
"government-approved figures" this includes "3,720,000 tons of carbon
monoxide, 525,000 tons of hydrocarbons, 411,600 tons of sulphur
dioxide, 153,800 tons of suspended particles, 132,0000 tons of nitrogen
oxides and 18,250 tons of lead.""' The blood level of lead of the
average person in Mexico City is four times that in Tokyo, twice that
of persons in Baltimore, Stockholm, Lima, and Zagreb.'23 Sternberg
reports successive winters in which birds dropped dead out of the
air.'24
Changes in Mexico's environment have also affected social
relations. Poor working conditions in Mexican agriculture have led to
increased labor migration to the U.S.'12 Agrochemical poisoning has
led to strikes by agricultural workers for improved living and working
conditions.'26 Increasing salinization and pest control problems have
led to a growing interest in agro-ecological methods in Mexico's
agricultural research institutions.127 Peasants have combined deman
for continued land reform with a return to traditional, sustainable,
agricultural techniques.'28
Generalized ecological deterioration in Mexico has given
impetus to a growing environmental movement, based largely amon
the urban middle class, and to government environmental public
relations campaigns.'29 Indeed, Cuauhtemoc Cairdenas, son of former
President Lazaro Cirdenas, came close to winning the 1988 Mexican
presidential elections, with a campaign based in part on demands for
stronger environmental controls.'30

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46 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

Conclusion

The above compendium of evidence of environmental destruction

related to agricultural development in contemporary Mexico can only
be the roughest of beginnings towards an environmental history of
Mexico's Green Revolution. Clearly much more research, drawing on
Spanish-language sources, on the new 1990 Mexican agricultural
census, and on direct field observation, is required to validate the
nature of generalizations formed from anecdotal information in the
English-language literature and to correct its analytical bias towards
U.S.-Mexico borderlands and the export-sector of Mexican agriculture.
Nevertheless, the evidence is ample enough to raise serious
concerns, particularly in the context of continuing deliberations on
the increasing economic integration of North America, and North
American agriculture, through the vehicle of the NAFTA. There are
no easy answers, no clear separation between "right" and "wrong."
But the livelihood of millions of rural Mexicans, and the integrity of
Mexico's rural environment are at stake.
In the irrigated sector of Mexican agriculture, accumulation
has been sustained (directly) by heavy chemical inputs, and (indirectly)
by overuse of agricultural smallholdings for extra-wage cash cropping
and subsistence farming. Corporate and private farmers have raised
grain for animal feed on highly-subsidized, prime agricultural land,
rather than food for domestic human consumption, which then had to
be imported. Workers in the irrigated sector and their famnilies have
not been sustained; they have been paid less than a living wage,
forced to put young children to work,'31 exposed to chemicals, pushed
off their own smallholdings. The irrigated environment has not been
sustained; it has been damaged by salinization, heavy metals, overuse
of agrochemicals, and erosion.
In the rain-fed sector, cattle-raising has been a primary focus
of capital accumulation. This form of accumulation has been sustained
through the underutilization of extensive landholdings. Livestock
have damaged trees and fragile soils. This in turn has led to
deforestation and desertification. The new agricultural technologies
have not been developed for rain-fed agriculture in Mexico.
Smallholders in the rain-fed sector have not been sustained.
They have had to nmgrate to survive. As rural poverty increased, the
land was overused: crops rotated too quickly; too much fertilizer and
other chemicals were applied. Soils have declined in fertility and
productivity and then have been abandoned. With rural out-migration
and the abandonment of remote and marginal lands, traditional rural

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 47

land managers have migrated away,

micro-ecosystems and collections of diverse, locally-adapted seed
stock. With the abandonment of rain-fed rural lands have come
down-stream soil erosion problems.
In the tropical-humid sector, accumulation has been sustained
by short-term "mining" of rainforest nutrients, obtained through
burning while clearing the forest for intensive agriculture or cattle-
raising. Workers have not been sustained as colonization efforts fail.
The tropical environment has not been sustained, as tropical moist
forests have been destroyed faster than they can regenerate or are
replanted. Cattle have destroyed vegetation and soils. Rain has
washed away soils.
For all of its success, Mexican agricultural development seems
to have been achieved at the expense of nillions of rural and urban
poor and of Mexico's physical environment.'32 This social and
environmental degradation has been not circumstantial, not just an
"unintended consequence" of agricultural development, but rather
an intentional and integral part of the structure of accumulation in
Mexican agriculture."3 As a result, social and environmental conditions
of productionl today may constrain further development or even the
maintenance of agricultural productivity in Mexico.
Continuing research, debate, and practice are necessary to
validate these theses and to answer such important questions as:
What is the possibility of the Mexican environment recovering from
destruction? Of conversion to non-destructive practices? Of rebuilding
sustainability? Perhaps the fundamental question is whether Mexico's
agricultural development strategy is reformable or if agriculture there
must be reestablished on an entirely new basis.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks John Borrego, Olga Celle de Bowman, Joseph Collins, Jan
Flora, William Friedland, Stephen Gliessman, Walter Goldfrank, Alba
Gonzalez Jacome, Dazid Goodman, Paul Lubeck, Sandra Meucci, James
O'Connor, Francisco Rosado-May, Alan Rudy, Joseph Sonnenfeld, Andrew
Szasz, and Margaret Villanueva for their. encouragement and assistance on
this paper. Thanks are due also to Hal Rothman and two anonymous
reviewers of the Environmental History Review for helpful comments on
the manuscript. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the XXXth
World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, Kobe, Japan,
August 5-9, 1991; and at the 55th annual meeting of the Rural Sociological
Society, University Park, Pennsylvania, August 16-19, 1992.

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 48 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

1 The "Green Revolution" was based on large-scale, irrigated, mechaniz

techniques, using hybrid seed-stock specially developed for responsiveness to petrochemical
fertilizers. Based on mono-cropping, Green Revolution technologies were heavily dependent upon
chemical pesticides, as well. See Angus Wright, The Death of Ram6n Gonzdles: The Modern Agriult
Dilemma (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1990), 171 ff.
2 P. Lamartine Yates, Mexico's Agricultural Dilemma (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981), 3.
3 David Barkin, "The End of Food Self-Sufficiency in Mexico," Latin American Perspectives,
54 (Summer).
4 Yates, op. cit.
5 Steven E. Sanderson, The Transformation of Mexican Agriculture: International Structure and the
Politics of Rural Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 8.
6 The English-language literature on Mexican agriculture, though vast, is not definitive with regard
to environmental problems: it relies too heavily on anecdotal and particularized information, and
draws insufficiently from the Mexican literature. It does, nevertheless, indicate the existence of
severe environmental problems. An important next step, beyond the scope of this paper, is a
review of the related Spanish-language literature.
7 See Merilee Grindle, State and Countryside: Development Policy and Agrarian Politics in Latin America
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1986), 37; Eric R. Wolf, Pasant Wars of the Twentieth
Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 38-39; Steven R Sanderson, Agrarian Populism and the
Mexican State: The Struggle for Land in Sonora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
8 Cf. Ibid.; Michael Redclift, Sustainable Development. Exploring the Contradictions (London and New
York. Methuen, 1987a).
9 Sanderson, op cit.
10 Grindle, op cit., 38.
11 Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1981), 206; see also Sergio de la PefIa, 'Proletarian Power and State
Monopoly Capitalism in Mexico," latin American Perspectives, 9 (1982), 26.
12 Gustavo Esteva, ed., The Struggle for Rural Mexico (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey
Publishers, Inc., 1983), 266. Much of this land was expropriated latifundios (large landed estates)
and marginal rural areas. According to Esteva (Ibid., 61), land controlled by U.S. interests was
minimally impacted by land reform.
13 Yates, op. cit., 48.
14 Gerardo Otero, 'The New Agrarian Movement: Self-Managed, Democratic Production," latin
American Perspectives, 16 (1989), 33. See also de Janvry, op cit., 123; Grindle op cit., 62-63; Cynthia
Hewitt de Alcantara, Modernizing Mexican Agriculture: Socioeconomic Implications of Technological
Change 1940-1970 (Geneva: UN Research Institute for Social Development, 1976), 305.
15 De Janvry, op cit., 217.
16 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy: Essays (New York. Cambridge University
Press, 1979), 76.
17 In ISI, the Mexican state "increased protective tariffs for its manufactures" qames Cockcroft,
Mexico: Class Formation, Capital Accumulation, and the State [New York: Monthly Review Press,
1983], 151); large scale industry imported foreign technology and madhinery, and produced "for
high-income groups and for export" (Nora Hamilton, 'Issues and Actors in the Mexican Economic
Crisis," in Nora Hamilton and Timothy F. Harding, eds., Modern Mexico, State, Economy, and Social
Conflict [Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 19861,150); and 'labor-intensive small and medium-sized
firms, often inefficient, [produced] for the local market" (Ibid.).
18 Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1982). Ironically, part of the "fuel" for this development was U.S. capital. According
to Cockcroft (op dt., 151), 'The U.S.... advanced large credits for Mexico's industrialization program,
and a number of private investors, fleeing U.S. wartime price regulations and high taxes invested in
Mexico as well."
19 Hewitt de Alcantara, op cit.; see also Grindle op cit., 62.
20 Celso Cartas Contreras, 'The Agricultural Sector's Contributions to the Import-Substituting
Industrialization Process in Mexico," in Bruce F. Johnston, et al. eds., U.S. Mexico Relations: Agriculture
and Rural Development (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 117; de Janvry, op cit., 124.
21 Grindle, op cit., 48, 99. See also Esteva op cit., 81-82; de Janvry, op cit., 24; and Cartas Contreras,
op cit.
22 Esteva, op cit., 64. See also Barkin, op cit., 279. Cooperative eqidos, formed in the 1920s and '30s,
attempted to participate in this agrarian modernization program. However, according to Gerardo

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 49

Otero (op. cit., 34-37), they were actively d

and agricultural distribution agencies.
23 See Reed Hertford, Sources of Change
Agricultural Economic Report, No. 73
States Department of Agriculture, 1971), 26
24 David Barkin and Timothy King, Regi
Mexico (London and New York. Cambrid
25 Yates, op cit., 48.
26 Grindle (op cit., 102) and de Janvry (op
received the benefit of such resource alloc
owned and held by eidos, were leased ou
interests. More recently, ejidal land has
industry.
27 Grindle, op cit., 64. Development of irr
early 1980s. According to David Barkin
[Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 199
irrigated, "the highest percentage ... of
suggests that between 70 and 99.2 perce
1940 and 1979 went into irrigation infrast
land was decreased cultivation of rain-fed
28 See Hertford, op cit.; Hewitt de Alcanta
29 Aida Mostkoff and Enrique C. Ochoa
distribution of agricultural products in
increased greatly during the Green Revo
products. Distributional inequities wer
population growth. ("Complexities of Me
Sufficiency of Basic Grains, 1925-86," i
Statistical Abstract of Latin America Su
of California, Los Angeles Latin American
30 Ibid., 122-128.
31 Hewitt de Alcantara (op cit., 309) rem
wheat was only possible "within the fram
billions of pesos into irrigation works, r
agricultural credit, and ultimately, [by]
national subsidy to wheat farmers of so
wheat was thus bought with public funds
32 Esteva, op cit., 58.
33 Grindle, op cit., 84-85.
34 Grindle, op cit., 99.
35 Hewitt de Alcantara, op cit., 313.
36 De Janvry, op cit., 125, 215; Grindle, op
37 Merilee Grindle, Searching for Rural
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
38 De Janvry, op cit.
39 De Janvry, op cit.
40 Hewitt de Alcantara, op cit., 310.
41 The U.S.-Mexico border industrialization
of export-oriented industrialization in Mex
79.
42 Steven R. Sanderson, ed., 7he Americas in the New International Division of Labor (New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1985); Ruth Rama, "Some Effects of Intemationalization of Agriculture on the
Mexican Agricultural Crisis," in Sanderson (1985).
43 Rama, op ct.; Johnston, et al., op cit.
44 Cf. Barkin, op cit. (1990); Wright, op cit.; Grindle, op cit. (1986); Sanderson, op cit. (1985).
45 1 hectare = 2471 acres.
46 Hertford, op cit.
47 Christopher Scott, cted by Grindle, op cit. (1986), 103.
48 Cockcroft, op cit., 174.
49 Grindle, op cit. (1986), 103. See also Cockcroft, op cit.; Barkin, op cit. (1980), 20.
50 Rama, op cit.; see also Barkin, op cit. (1990).

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 50 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

51 Cockcroft, op cit.
52 Redclift, op cit., 77; see also Esteva, op cit., 185; Grindle, op cit
53 See Victor Toledo, Julia Carabias, Cristina Mapes, and Carlos
Alimentaria (Mexico, D.F.: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1985).
54 Toledo, et al., op cit., 33.
55 See Sanderson, op cit. (1985).
56 David Barkdn, "Mexican Agriculture and the Internationali
Research Reports, 68 (Irvine: School of Social Sciences, Universit
6.
57 See Barkin, op cit. (1990), 27.
58 Literally: "livestocking."
59 Barkin, op cit. (1990).
60 Mexico's population increased from nearly 20 million in 1940 to almost 80 million by 1985
(Femando Ortiz Monasterio, et al., Tierra Profanada: Historia Ambiental de M&xico [Mexico, D.F.:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologfa e Historia, 19871, 305; Mostkoff and Ochoa, op cit.).
61 Ibid., 122-128. Contrary to assertions made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, production of basic
food grains continued to grow during this period, although not as fast as Mexico's population
(bid.). Norton suggests that these increased imports were encouraged by the low rate of productivity
increase in Mexican grain and livestock sub-sectors relative to demand, as well as by the overvaluation
of the peso relative to the US dollar (Roger D. Norton, 'Policy Choices in Agricultural Trade
Between Mexico and the United States," in Johnston, et al., op cit., 244).
62 Cf. Cassio Luiselli Fernandez, "The Route to Food Self-Sufficiency in Mexico: Interactions with
the U.S. Food System." Monograph Series, 17 (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies,
University of California, San Diego, 1985).
63 Cf. Larry Rohter, "Free-Trade Talks with U.S. Set Off Debate in Mexico," New York Times, Al,
March 29, 1990; Larry Rohter, "Stop the World, Mexico Is Getting On," New York Times, Fl, June 3,
1990; Katherine Ellison, "Mexico Plans To Expand Its Trade with Cuba," San Jose Mercury Nmws,
January25, 1991).
64 The latter is predicted to increase as a result of the NAFTA (San Jose Mercury News, August 6,
1992).
65 Hewitt de Alcantara op cit., 309.
66 Barkin and King, op cit. See also Gene C.Wilken, Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource
Management in Mexico and Central America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
67 Hewitt de Alcantara, op cit., 309.
68 Sindair op cit., 92-93. See also Albert E Utton, "Shared Water Resources in the United States-
Mexico Border Region: Past Successes and Future Problems," in Stanley RF Ross, ed., Ecology and
Derdopment of the Border Region, Second Symposium of Mexican and United States Universities on
Border Studies (Mexico, D.F.: Anuies/Profmex, 1983), 168.
69 Sinclair, op cit., 97.
70 Jack D. Johnson, "Natural Resources: The Potential for Development in Border Regions of
Mexico and the U.S.," in Ross, op cit., 22. See also Jerry R Landman,"Commentary," in Ross, op cit.;
Sinclair, op cit., 98; and Utton, op cit.
71 David Barkin, "Environmental Degradation and Productive Transfornation in Mexico: The
Contradictions of Crisis Management" (Paper presented at the XIV International Congress of the
Latin American Studies Association, New Orleans, La., March 17-19, 1988), 11.
72 Mark Sindair, 'The Environmental Cooperation Agreement Between Mexico and the United
States: A Response to the Pollution Problems of the Borderlands," Cornell International Law Journal,
19(1986), 98.
73 Wright, op dt.
74 Wright, op ct.
75 See also Hewitt de Alcantara op cit., 309; Barkin, op cit. (1988), 7.
76 State-owned businesses managed as private enterprises.
77 Angus Wrigt 'Reffiinking The Circle of Poison: The Politics of Pestcide Poisoning Among
Mexican Farm Workers," Latin American Perspecties, 13 (1986), 26-28,54.
78 See Francisco Rosado-May, 'Mexico Considers Agroecology," The Cultivar [newsletter of the
University of California, Santa Cruz, agroecology program), 8 (1990), 6.
79 Sanderson, op cit. (1985); Wright, op cit. (1986); Cockcroft, op ct.
80 Wright, op cit. (1986, 1990). See also Hertford, op cit., 21.
81 Wright, op cit. (1990).
82 Grindle, op cit. (1986), 124.

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 1992 DAVID A. SONNENFELD 51

83 Grindle, op cit
84 De Janvry, op cit., 248.
85 Raul Garcia-Barrios and Luis Garcia-B
Peasant Agriculture: A Consequence of
Mexico, Procientec, 1989); Redclift, op cit
86 The Garda-Barrioses (op ct., 2) report
households are subsistence or infrasubsiste
with off-farm activities.' They also cit
million peasants [of subsistence or inf rasu
Mexico: 5 million hectares.'
87 Garcia-Barrios and Garcia-Barrios, op cit. In San Andres Lagunas, Oaxaca, the "383 year old
community" that the Garcla-Barrioses studied, "Trom a population of more than 5000 people in the
1950's, only 900 live today in town; most families have migrated permanently to the cities of Mexico
or Puebla" (Ibid., 2).
88 Hertford, op cit., 26.
89 Redclift, op cit.
90 Garcia-Barrios and Garcia-Barrios, op cit., 21.
91 The Garcia-Barrioses (op cit., 18-19) assert that this is not the first time rural Mexico has been left
to the ravages of nature. They suggest that after the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish, and the
rapid depopulation of the countryside from disease, the Aztecs' terracing and other rural conservation
measures fell into great disrepair.
92 Garcia-Barrios and Garcda-Barrios, op cit., 22.
93 Michael Redclift, "Mexico's Green Movement," The Ecologist, 17 (1987b), 44.
94 De Janvry, op cit., 87, citing Erik Eckholm, Losing Ground: Environmental Stress and World Food
Prospects (New York. W.W. Norton & Co., 1976).
95 Michael Redclift, "The Environmental Consequences of Latin America's Agricultural
Development: Some Thoughts on the Bnndtland Commission Report," World Development, 17
(1989), 371; citing J.A. Mabbutt, "A New Global Assessment of the Status and Trends of
Desertification," Environmental Conservation, 11 (1984),103-113.
96 Cf. Benjaniin A. Micallef, The Forest Policy of Mexico (Master's Thesis, University of California,
Berkeley, 1955), 35, 87-89.
97 Redclift, op cit. (1989), 371; citing United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
statistics. Again a caveat regarding interpretation of single-year data: other sources report substantial
reforestation efforts in rain-fed parts of Mexico. I have not been able to locate definitive data on
forest loss and reforestation in Mexico.
98 Barkin and King, op cit.; Crocker op cit., 140-141.
99 Michael Redclift, Development and the Environmental Crisis: Red or Green Alternatives. (London
and New York: Methuen, 1984), 98.
100 See Micallef, op cit, 29-30; Crocker, op cit., 139.
101 Cockcroft, op cit., 176.
102 Redclift, op cit. (1987b), 44. See also Reddift, op cit. (1984), 97-98.
103 Gustavo Esteva, "Beyond the Illusion of Development." Lecture, University of California,
Santa Cruz, May 8,1990. See also Esteva, op cit. (1983), 187-188; Barkin, op cit. (1988), 7-9.
104 Grindle, op cit. (1986); Cockcroft, op cit.; Esteva, op cit. (1983); and Rachel Stemnberg, "Mexico
City: The Politics of Pollution," In These Times, 11 (Oct 7-13, 1987), 12-13.
105 Judith Adler Hellman, Mexico in Crisis. Second Edition (New York and London: Holmes &
Meier Publishers, 1983), 117.
106 Larry Rohter, "Mexico City's Filthy Air, World's Worst, Worsens," New York Times, April 12,
1989, A4.
107 Rohter, op cit.
108 Sternberg, op cit., 13. See also Matt Moffett, "Mexico Driving Ban Puts a Dent in Smog," Wall
Street Journal, A15, March 12,1990.
109 Helman, op ct., 120.
110 Andrew Reding, "Mexico at a Crossroads: The 1988 Election and Beyond," World Policy Journal,
2 (1988), 633.
111 Sinclair, op dt., 98.
112 Utton, op dt., 178. See also John B. Conway, "'Potential Health Risks Associated with Wastewater
in the San Diego-Tijuana Region," in Juan Alvarez and and Victor M. Castillo, eds., Ecology and the
Borderlands (Tijuana: Universidad Aut6noma de Baja California, 1986.
113 Sinclair, op cit., 96 fn. See also Utton, op cit.; Alvarez and Castillo, op cit.

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 52 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY REVIEW WINTER

114 Redclift, op cit. (1987b), 45. See also H. Jeffrey Leonard

Rapidly Industrializing Countries: Myths, Pitfalls, and Opp
(1985), 779-816.
115 Stephen P. Mumme, C. Richard Bath, and Valerie J.
Environmental Policy in Mexico," Latin America Research Revi
116 Reding, op ct., 633.
117 Stemnberg, op cit., 13.
118 Leonard, op cit., 791.
119 Leonard, op cit., 799.
120 David Cibran Tovar, "Air Pollution and Forest Declin
Monitoring and Assessment, 12 (1989), 49-58.
121 Stemnberg, op cit., 13.
122 Stemnberg, op ct. See also Hellnan, op cit., 117.
123 Rohter, op cit. (1989), Al.
124 Stemnberg, op ct., 12.
125 Grindle, op cit. (1988); Wright, op cit. (1990).
126 Wright, op ct. (1986, 1990).
127 Rosado-May, op ct.
128 Esteva, op cit. (1990).
129 Cf. Munmme et al., op cit.; Barkin, op cit. (1990); New Yor
World Environment Day, A5, May 30, 1990; San Jose Merc
Forests," May 15,1990.
130 Otero, op ct.; Reding op it.
131 Jon Silver, 'Food for Export: A Dirty Business," docum
1990.
132 See de Janvry, op cit.; and Redclift, op cit. (1987a).
133 De Janvry, op ct.
134 See James CYConnor, "A Theoretical Introduction to Capitalism, Nature, Socialism," Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism, 1 (1988).

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