ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how political economy is intimately intertwined in people's lives, assisting the functioning of a system based on inequalities, racism and exclusion and sustained by a rhetoric of 'development' and 'progress'. It presents a brief historical context of the local setting and conditions, framed in a broader framework of political and economic changes that have fostered a readjustment of Mezcalenses' labour and social dynamics since the 1950s. The chapter describes the panorama of a local—global construction of unequal economic, political, social and cultural structures by focusing on the workings of the political economy. In the region, neoliberal policies meant, in this way, the relocation of people, the devaluation of agriculture, the deforestation and contamination of the zone and the reification of natural resources. Migrants are creating support networks, and have also become highly politicised, opening spaces in US and Mexican politics, advancing in the use of social capital as a survival strategy and scheme for change.
