The terrain on which the indigenous struggle has been cultivated is nothing more complex than the extreme poverty which Salinas' National Solidarity Program has been incapable of mitigating. The Chiapas insurrection is an "armed critique" of the government's social policy. BY JULIO MOGUEL When Carlos Salinas de Gortari became presi- dent in 1988, he announced a plan for a new war on poverty, one that would reach out to the 48% of the Mexican population then classified as poor, and especially to the 19% classified as extremely poor, or indigent. Salinas' plan became the National Solidarity Program (Pronasol). The Solidarity program captured the imagination of many Mexican progres- sives because it was also meant to respect and encour- age community initiative, participation and responsi- bility in the planning and administration of the program. It was meant, in short, to transform Mexico's authoritarian state-society relations. Six years later, as Salinas prepares-he hopes-to transfer power to his designated successor, it is clear that the program has fallen far short of its goals. At his inauguration, Salinas promised that Pronasol would confront poverty and eradicate it. While the program's budget grew from $547 million in 1989 to $2.54 billion in 1993, we are not speaking here of extraordinary amounts of money. The amount spent between 1989 and 1991 was less than the amount spent between 1980 and 1982 in anti-poverty activity. If we divide the total investment in Pronasol into the official number of the Mexican poor (40.3 million people), it works out to $53 per year, or 15 cents per day, per person. In the case of Chiapas-the poorest state in the republic-where around 70% of the popu- lation, or 2,247,347 chiapanecos fall below the official Julio Moguel is a member of the economics faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and is the coordinator of the supplement "La Jornada del Campo" of the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA. poverty line, Pronasol funds amount to 13 cents a day for each one of them. This represents about one eighth of what the World Bank considers to be the line of absolute poverty in Mexico-about three new pesos (one dollar) a day-and about one seventieth of what the country's National Population Council (Conapo) considers necessary to satisfy the basic needs of a family. In Mexico, the reality of poverty is impressive. Official statistics reveal that 40.3 million Mexicans (about half the population) can be classified as poor, and that 17.3 million of these live in indigency. And the problem is approaching disastrous dimensions. In 1989, the Consultative Council of Pronasol calculated that without a program of income redistribution, a sustained 3% rate of economic growth would lift the poorest 10% of the population out of poverty in 64 years; the next poorest 10% would have to wait 33 years to satisfy their basic needs; the following 10% would have to wait 21 years, and the next 10%, 10 years. The rural drama, even as reflected by official sources, is particularly eloquent, especially in the face of Salinas' inauguration pledge to "eradicate extreme poverty." Between 1984 and 1989, extreme poverty in urban areas grew in absolute numbers from 4.3 to 6.5 million people, and then declined to 4.8 million by 1992. No such decline occurred in the Mexican coun- tryside, where extreme poverty grew in absolute num- bers before and after the existence of Pronasol. Between 1984 and 1989, the number of indigents grew by 1.7 million. Between 1989 and 1992, yet another 400,000 joined the ranks of the extreme poor. In sum, neoliberal policy applied during the cycle 1984-1992 38NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEXICO produced more than 2 million new poor people in the countryside. Other data show a process of growing impoverish- ment among the social sectors to which most Mexi- cans belong, within a framework of growing polariza- tion. Between 1982 and 1991, salaries paid to laborers in manufacturing industries lost 36% of their purchas- ing power. The real wages of white-collar workers in those same industries fell 22%, and the value of social services fell 23%. But the hardest hit lived in the countryside. Average real wages paid to agricultural workers fell 51% over that same period. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor was colossal. In 1990, just over 2% of the Mexican population received 78.55% of the national income. On the first of January, 1994, Mexico awakened to the news that a group of heavily armed indigenous rebels in the state of Chiapas had assaulted and seized half a dozen district capitals, among them San Crist6bal de las Casas. Two days later, the country's astonishment was replaced by the general conviction that in a few short hours, some- thing truly significant had happened. In a small corner of southeastern Mexico, all the certainties and values of a long phase of social peace and political stability crumbled. The terrain on which this process of indigenous struggle had been cultivated over the past ten years was nothing more complex than poverty, or to be more precise, an extreme poverty which neoliberal policies were incapable of mitigating. The Chiapas insurrection was thus converted into an "armed cri- tique" of the social programs of the Salinas Adminis- A peasant family on the road in Altamirano, Chiapas. tration, particularly Pronasol. The program was not only incapable of improving the abysmal social situa- tion of the least well-off, but it also proved unable to achieve its genuine-though never explicit-objective of neutralizing and containing the discontent generat- ed by the application of structural-adjustment policies. Most of the state's more than three million people suffer dramatic inadequacies in their living conditions. Of all the dwellings in the state, 43% have no indoor plumbing, 35% lack electricity, 50% have dirt floors, and 74% are classified as overcrowded. Eighty percent of the employed population earns an income of less than two minimum wages-placing them below the official poverty line. Of the population over the age of 15, 30% is illiterate and 62% never completed primary school. Using these indicators to construct an index of marginalization, Conapo ranks Chiapas the poorest state in Mexico, followed by five other states with "very high" indices of marginalization: Oaxaca, Guer- rero, Hidalgo, Vera Cruz and Puebla. Chiapaneca society is not only the most backward in the country, it also has the highest levels of inequal- ity and discrimination. In the area of the peasant insur- rection, only 667 individuals own 817,400 acres, which means on the average each one holds about 12,251 acres. In contrast, the region's communally held property amounts to only 1.5 million acres. The Chiapas "armed critique" of Salinas' social policy is not exclusively-nor even fundamentally- about the amount of resources provided. As in sandy soil, the waters of Pronasol were lost the moment that they were poured. Neither does the "critique" ques- tion the lack of intelligence and insight brought to bear in this war on poverty. The problem lies with the VOL XXVIII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1994 0 t9 n o 39REPORT ON MEXICO strategy itself. Anti-poverty policies akin to Pronasol have been developed and promoted by important international organisms-particularly the World Bank-throughout Latin America over the past eight years. Applied simultaneously with the neoliberal policies of adjustment, they constitute an indispensi- ble component of that process. The first program of this type was Bolivia's Social Emergency Fund (FSE), which was created at the beginning of the 1980s with the firm support of the World Bank. Since then, similar funds have been formed in at least ten coun- tries in Latin America, among them, Pronasol in Mexico. These new programs are differ- ent from the older forms of state intervention. They were de- signed, to begin with, to neutral- ize or compensate for the most detrimental social effects of the policies of economic adjust- ment-particularly the sharp declines in real wages. They then became important instruments of long-term "structural change." In neither the short nor the long term were these programs intend- ed to "eradicate poverty." Rather, they were holding actions, designed to make the bitter medi- cine of adjustment policies less painful. Neoliberal reforms were to redynamize the economy, so th on, the tasks of generating the co and social justice could be undertal These anti-poverty programs impact on the macro variables of p or relative prices-and, therefore, ments of redistribution. They woul tered accumulation of capital-th force of the economy-at risk by vate riches. They were not evali their ability to eradicate poverty, assuage the growing misery wh unmanageable and politically dang The "design" or "format" of th grams was therefore fundamentall beginning. Resources were not works of reconstruction, or to pr economic rehabilitation; rather, small investments which would ha impact. Without altering any of t conditions of adjustment or restru grams achieved-from the pe model-high social and political returns from the investment. In addition, resources were channelled according to local demand, thus reducing the heavy and clumsy planning bureaucracies, and lowering administrative costs. In many cases the government also decided to work with and through non-governmental organiza- tions (NGOs) in the administration of the projects, Above: In the high sierra mountains, indigenous people appear skeptical as President Sali- nas promises that Pronasol will bring electricity to the area. Right: A Zapatista guerrilla near Ocosingo, Chiapas. implemented solely thus reducing costs even further, and giving greater hat-perhaps-later responsibility to local organizations. This is, however, ,nditions for equity only one side of the coin. Responsibility, in this ken. model, does not equal real power. The central govern- tried to avoid any ment still exercises great political control over the olicy-like salaries anti-poverty programs. eliminated any ele- On the whole and in its parts, the Mexican anti- d not put the unfet- poverty model represented by Pronasol reflects these ie neoliberal motor components of strategy and format. Investment is a threatening any pri- drop at a time, with a generally low ceiling for each uated according to project. This makes it difficult to achieve any real but their ability to objectives of development. Its logic is basic short-term ich was becoming assistance, and it operates within a clientelistic frame- erous. work. e anti-poverty pro- ly defined from the hiapas is the state in which the largest number directed to major of Solidarity committees were registered, )jects of social and which ought to suggest that it is the state in they were used in which the greatest changes were made in the "state- ve local or regional society" relationship. The peasant insurrection in the he macroeconomic jungle demonstrates that this may be the case, but in a icturing, these pro- different sense from that assumed from the statistics perspective of the and official declarations. Of the 8,824 registered Chia- 40 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON MEXICO pas Solidarity committees, 1,229 operate in the area of coffee production. These committees correspond to the groups that have been receiving emergency aid in the areas terribly battered by the fall in international coffee prices and the disbanding of Imcaf6, the state coffee company. Of the remaining 7,595 Solidarity committees, the two biggest categories of investment are school improvement (the escuela digna program) and munic- ipal funds. This distribution is clearly tied to an instru- mental rather than a political-social logic. The escuela digna program is directed in almost all cases to the renovation of classrooms, and its committees are formed in almost all cases by teachers and parents of schoolchildren. The municipal funds are funnelled to bases of traditional political power-especially in Chi- apas-among caciques, ranchers and PRI officials. According to a recent survey conducted in Altos de Chiapas, most of the municipal funds are channelled into the construction of assembly halls, with no partic- ular linkage to any type of educational or cultural agenda. Pronasol's investments in Chiapas show a pronounced tendency toward the categories of "wel- fare" and "basic infrastructural support." Pronasol moves clearly on the plane of social assistance, with resources-given the magnitude and extension of poverty in the area-that are quite limited. The pro- gram has a clear political-clientelistic character. In Chiapas more than anywhere else, the manage- ment of Pronasol went out of its way to refrain from altering the socioeconomic relations of power. The decentralization of authority and the management of programs simply meant that economic and political power were given to the local political bosses- caciques-and farm owners. Many resources were used to finance the construction of sumptuous public works. Other resources-when they arrived-were dropped in the extensive ocean of Chiapas poverty, proliferating in small works of limited impact. Impor- tant resources like those directed to the growing of coffee could not compensate for the fall in internation- al prices over the last several years, nor for the conse- quences of the withdrawal of other governmental sup- port programs. Pronasol did not modify the state-society relation- ship in the locations with the greatest incidence of poverty either, despite the fact that some of its archi- tects considered this to be the program's greatest con- tribution to strategies of social reorganizaton and efforts to end poverty. The transformation of state- society relations was to have been carried out by Pronasol through the creation of 150,000 Solidarity committees officially registered in 1993 at the national level. But such a huge figure simply corresponds to the sum total of the groups that received funding. Many committees are so ephemeral or temporary that their life span is exactly as long as their funded project. Others limit the direct involvement of their "members" in work and activity. The formation of the committees mostly has to do with political-electoral necessities rather than any specific anti-poverty requirements. No clear correlation exists between the locations with the highest indices of marginality and the organizational effort made by the promoters of Pronasol, if this is measured by the number of com- mittees constituted. The state of war that broke out on January 1 demon- strated that the Solidarity committees have very limit- ed powers of social transformation. The regional forces that today are proposing policies of change and social, economic and political rehabilitation are none other than the insurgents of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and the peasant and popular organizations with their own independent bases of development. Many of these independent groups were at some point catalogued by Pronasol as enemies of the pro-salinista strategy of development, because they lacked "democratic methods," reproduced "cor- poratist vices," and refused to be incorporated into the PRI-dominated chain of command. Today, these defi- nitions and perspectives of the "change in the relations between the state and the people" seem part of ancient history. The "critique of Chiapas" has forced us to rethink all the old categories. The poor and indigent are demanding a real dialogue. The old discourse aged decades in the ten days that shook Mexico.
