Gabriel Torres - The Force of Irony

General Editors: Bruce Kapferer, Professor of Anthropology, James Cook University and John Gledhill, Professor of Anthropology, Manchester University

This series addresses vital social, political and cultural issues confronting human populations throughout the world. The ultimate aim is to enhance understanding and, it is hoped, thereby dismantle hegemonic structures which perpetuate prejudice, violence, racism, religious persecution, sexual discrimination and domination, poverty, and many other social ills.

First published 1997 by Berg Publishers

Published 2020 by Routledge

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Gabriel Torres 1997

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ISBN 13: 978-1-8597-3936-5 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-8597-3941-9 (pbk)

I have to thank the many people who made this book possible. I start by mentioning my mother, who died when I was organizing my fieldwork material in Holland. Although she cannot accompany me any longer, I am sure that her spiritual presence pervades all my efforts and that she is there in my bones. There are many tomato workers the sisters Mily and Lety Lopez, the brothers Juan and Raul Nez and their father Don Manuel, Don Roberto and many more members of the Nez family; Alejandro Hernandez, Chimino Moya, Vicente Morn and Sandra Mata who trusted me or at least communicated with me throughout my fieldwork. They are not responsible for anything I say, but in so far as this book reflects workers everyday concerns, it began in the talks I had with them. Two tomato entrepreneurs (Eusebio Jimenez and Alfonso Archiga) tolerated my questions and accepted my presence in their companies and for that reason merit my acknowledgment. I am also indebted to the chemical engineer Victor Quintero, the group of student workers and the squad from Teutln.

There were also many friends who made me feel at home during fieldwork. Among them were Pedro Silva and Mily Figueroa, Gregorio Rivera, Nacho and Andrs Gmez Zepeda and Rosy Franco, Doa Chayo and Dr Andrs Gmez, the beekeepers of Ayuquila, the teachers Miguel Delgado, Augusto Surez and Ofelia Pea, Pedro and Miguel Len, the mill worker Roberto Vargas and Don Ernesto Medina Lima.

Thanks to the members of the Colegio de Jalisco-Wageningen University (WAU) project: Dorien Brunt, Elsa Guzman, Monique Nuijten, Magda Villarreal, Humberto Gonzalez, Pieter van der Zaag and Marlou, Gerard Verschoor and Margreit, and especially Alberto Arce, who introduced me to the team. I appreciate the discussions with Horacia Fajardo, Joel Cuevas and Gabriel Lpez, which played an important role, above all in . I thank the Ford foundation and the WAU for the financial support they provided to finish this book. At WAU I am especially indebted to Mr van der Heijst, Mr de Raniitz and Jan den Ouden of the Department of Rural Development Sociology. There is a long list of people from Wageningen that I will always remember: Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Jos Michel and Nanny van de Brink, Pieter de Vries, Kees Leuwis, Doortje Wartena, the Zimwesi prep team, the Osterkamp family, Mara Miele, Pieter Gerritsen, Paul Engel and Maria, Andre Bon, Maria and Dolores Fernandez and Rafael Cabrera.

Jane Hindley and Paul Wheeler were the Samaritans who offered hospitality to a strange Mexican in London for the first time. They put me in contact with David and Ann Marie Wheeler, who showed me the British way of life for a month. Elizabeth van Aller did a great job of teaching me not only English writing but also the Dutch way of life and universal human kindness.

A special acknowledgment is for my supervisor Norman Long and his wife Ann Long. I admire Normans ability to deal with a difficult subject and a difficult researcher, and above all his tenacity in searching for new ways of thinking. Ann went far beyond editing; she discussed this book with me bit by bit and made my peculiar Spanglish comprehensible.

Thanks to my father, brothers and sisters, who were very supportive when we came back to Mexico. I also say thanks to my colleagues at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologa Social, especially Guillermo de la Pea, Luisa Gabayet and Jorge Alonso. I have to express my special gratitude to John Gledhill and Kathryn Earle for their encouragement in preparing this book and to Paul Liffman for his editorial suggestions and enormous support. Thanks to Karl McCullough, Elena and Olivia Mulcahy and Carlos Heredia from Chicago.

My daughters Ana and Sara continue to be my main reasons for happiness and inspiration. I appreciate very much their love and many forms of solidarity. Last but not least, I would like to say muchas gracias to my partner Magda for her constant stimulation and contribution to my academic career.

Farmworkers have seldom attracted the interest of social scientists. Even those anthropologists and sociologists who have focused their attention on rural societies have tended to focus on peasant farming and its prospects for survival rather than on rural proletarians, substantial numbers of whom, it should be noted, are women and children. Although this bias reflects both the continuing legacy of the old debates on the agrarian question and more recent preoccupations with sustainable development, it is not easy to justify. A majority of peasant families cannot survive from the income generated by cultivating their own land under contemporary global conditions: the peasant farmer is frequently a part-time proletarian, and at least some of his (or her) children will almost certainly be working for capital, alongside the children of the many rural people who will lack access to land even in a country like Mexico which has experienced a significant land reform. Where this work will be performed within an increasingly globalized economy is, however, an even more interesting question today than in the past, given the footloose nature of modern capitalism as well as the pull of Northern metropolitan centres in the world labour market.

Gabriel Torress study is set in Autln-El Grullo, in the southern part of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, a region of the country which was already supplying migrant labour to the factories and farms of the United States in significant quantities before the Great Depression of 1929. The movement of labour to the North as well as to the cities has continued over the years, and, indeed, accelerated as first structural adjustment and then a peculiarly traumatic experience of neoliberal economic reform added to the woes of middle-class as well as working-class and peasant households. Yet transnational capital has moved in the converse direction, promoting new patterns of agribusiness development in the South. These are invariably justified by businessmen and governments alike in terms of their capacity to create new jobs for the rural poor, stemming the tide of abandonment of rural regions for the cities (which in the case of modern Jalisco may be US cities such as Los Angeles, Houston or Atlanta or even a small Mid-West town with a meat-packing plant, rather the regional metropolis of Guadalajara or the national capital). Yet, as is also sadly the case in Autln, dreams of local development premised on new products, technologies and relations with the global market may prove elusive, as mobile capital moves on to greener fields and even the worst of jobs in terms of pay and conditions becomes unobtainable.