ABSTRACT
The political economy approach is one of the major perspectives that anthropologists are using to analyze forces that generate and condition social change. This chapter examines the transformation of a regional society and economy -- the Mexicali Valley located in Northern Mexico. It focuses on the state as it takes control of agricultural production and marketing. The chapter explores the processes occurring at different levels that led to changes in control over means of production and systems of exchange. The agricultural development of the Mexicali Valley was forged by foreign entrepreneur’s intent upon exporting produce to the expanding American markets. The end of the 1930s brought the beginning of the end of foreign capital hegemony in the Mexicali region. A series of changes that had their origins outside of the Valley brought about a profound crisis for people of the Mexicali Valley.
