ABSTRACT
The product is a portrait of peasant adaptations to the crises in just one of the "many Mexicos" that nevertheless serves to ground national agricultural policy with regard to the ejidal sector and to provide a basis for assessing the implications. The implications of recent government strategies for recapitalizing agriculture are of central concern in evaluating alternative routes out of the crises. The complexity of contemporary transformations of traditional peasantries, it is important to distinguish between depeasantization— the gradual erosion of exclusive reliance on the land for subsistence—and proletarianization, whereby wage labor becomes the primary basis of household support. This exercise is essentially a forum in which peasants, development agents, and other concerned individuals criticize the agricultural system, evaluate the toll taken by the crises, assess the current transformations, and express their hopes, doubts, and expectations about the future. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
