The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes by Anna Grichting Michele Zebich-Knos

Author:Anna Grichting,Michele Zebich-Knos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: National Book Network International

Three Mechanisms of Riparian Enclosure

This section draws on archival research conducted in Arizona and Sonora to present three brief vignettes that illustrate how the processes of privatization, expropriation and conservation are being deployed in the binational San Pedro River watershed to produce enclosures and spaces of exclusion in the riparian zone.

Privatization

The stark erosion of power of the agrarian reform sector began in earnest in the early 1980s, when the Mexican economy was marred by the 1982 financial crisis and the devaluation of the peso, followed by a phase of national debt restructuring programs and austerity measures. The subsequent retraction of state support for special programs, such as price guarantees for staple crops, marked a sharp decrease in the political power of the ejido sector. In 1986, President Miguel de la Madrid signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which led to a reduction in agricultural subsidies by 13 percent per year. BanRural bank slashed credit to ejidatarios, compounding the negative effects for small producers associated with the subsidy reductions. Beginning in 1988, President Carlos Salinas de Gotari’s sexenio (six-year term) marked the shift toward a neoliberal understanding of land and water as economic rather than public goods. Furthermore, Salinas reframed natural resources management through the neoliberal governance concepts of deregulation, liberalization and privatization.

In 1991, citing the low productivity of ejido and other communally managed lands, Salinas introduced plans to transform the agrarian structure in Mexico, effectively ending a 70-year period of interventionist, state-led agrarian reform. The 1992 introduction of the Programa de Certificacion de Derechos Ejidales (PROCEDE) indicated a major shift in land tenure law and marked the transition from the period of state-led agrarian reform beginning in 1917 to a period of market-led agrarian reform.29 PROCEDE ended the redistribution of land for the creation of new ejidos and fundamentally altered land tenure laws. Previously ejido land was considered usufruct property, meaning the right was only for the use of the land, not for full ownership. As such, ejido land was inalienable, signifying that the land could not be sold or rented (though scholarship points to widespread illegal renting of land and exchange of titles that occurred). PROCEDE formally initiated the process of legal certification and titling of parcels for privatization, transfer and sale. The year 1992 also ushered in the implementation of the Ley de Aguas Nacionales (National Water Law), which reformed the 1917 water law, significantly conferring the ability to rent, sell and transfer water right concessions, which was previously not allowed.

In the mid-1990s, the first stages of the PROCEDE process were carried out in the seven ranching ejido communities formed in 1959. On October 9, 1994, the first PROCEDE meeting, titled the Assembly of the Delimitation, Destiny, and Allocation of Ejido Lands, was held in the ejido community of Emiliano Zapata. In addition to the ejido ruling body, consisting of the president, secretary, treasurer and vigilance council, the meeting was attended by a visiting representative of the Agricultural Tribunal, a representative from the national census

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