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Sweetness and Water Power: The SICAE Sugarcane Cooperative and Mayo Struggles for Water, 1944 to 1956
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2019
Abstract
Hundreds of indigenous Mayo ejidatarios became members of the SICAE (Sociedad de Interés Colectivo Agrícola Ejidal) sugarcane cooperative in North-West Mexico in the 1930s, gaining control of irrigated lands and marginalising non-members, called ‘individualists’, by the 1940s. This article focuses on how indigenous individualists of Los Goros and El Teroque ejidos navigated the SICAE's control of water and attempts to annex their lands. Mayo individualists’ resistance to corrupt ejidal leadership and the SICAE cooperative allowed them to influence local water development decisions. These individualist Mayo experiences exemplify how hydraulic social mobilisation became an indigenous people's strategy of survival in mid-twentieth-century Mexico.
Spanish abstract
Cientos de ejidatarios indígenas mayo se hicieron miembros de la cooperativa de caña de azúcar SICAE (Sociedad de Interés Colectivo Agrícola Ejidal) en el noroccidente de México en los años 1930, para tomar control de las tierras irrigadas y marginar a los no-miembros, llamados ‘individualistas’, en los años 1940. Este artículo se centra en cómo los individualistas indígenas de los ejidos de Los Goros y El Teroque hicieron frente al control del agua del SICAE y los intentos por anexar sus tierras. La resistencia individualista mayo a la dirigencia ejidal corrupta y a la cooperativa del SICAE les permitió influir en las decisiones sobre el desarrollo local del agua. Estas experiencias individualistas mayo ejemplifican cómo la movilización social hidráulica se volvió una estrategia indígena popular de sobrevivencia a mediados del siglo 20 en México.
Portuguese abstract
Centenas de indígenas Mayo Ejiditários - (membros dos ejidos - esquemas propriedade de terras comunais) tornaram-se membros da SICAE (Sociedade de Interesse Coletivo Agrícola Ejidal) uma cooperativa de cana de açúcar no noroeste do México nos anos 30, que ganhou controle de terras irrigadas e marginalizou os não-membros, chamados ‘individualistas’, até meados dos anos 40. Este artigo foca em como os individualistas indígenas dos ejidos de Los Goros e de El Teroque conseguiram burlar o controle que o SICAE exercia sobre a água local e as tentativas da mesma de anexar suas terras. A resistência que os individualistas Mayo demonstraram contra as lideranças corruptas ejidal e contra a cooperativa SICAE fez com eles conseguissem influenciar decisões locais de desenvolvimento de água. Estas experiências dos individualistas Mayo exemplificam como uma mobilização social hidráulica se tornou uma estratégia de sobrevivência para os povos indígenas do México da metade do século 20.
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References
1 Rufino López to the Agrarian Department, 8 April 1956, Archivo General Agraria (hereafter AGA), División, Fusión, y Permutas, expediente (hereafter ex.) 231.3/138, legajo (hereafter leg.) 2, Asunto Local, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
2 Other recent scholarship ties indigenous autonomy to water access, such as García, J. Édgar Mendoza, ‘El manantial La Taza de San Gabriel Chilac (Puebla) y los manantiales de Teotihuacán (Estado de México) ante la federalización: un análisis comparativo entre 1917 y 1960’, in Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar and Butler, Matthew (eds.), Mexico in Transition: New Perspectives on Mexican Agrarian History, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2013), pp. 225–58Google Scholar.
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4 Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution allowed peasants usufruct rights to ejidal land, subject to annexation if deemed fallow.
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7 A work that discusses other examples of this is Boyer, Political Landscapes.
8 The ability of the SICAE officials to set the discourse by assigning the term ‘individualist’ exhibited its power and highlights the obstacles Mayo non-members faced.
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14 Bernabé López, interviewed in Los Mochis, Ahome, 17 June 2014. All translations from Spanish, including oral histories, archival documents and secondary sources, were completed by the author.
15 Since Mayo villages became ejidos, this article uses ‘village’ and ‘ejido’ interchangeably.
16 Acta de Elección, 14 Oct. 1937, AGA, Ampliación, ex. 25/11427, leg. 8, Asunto Ejecución, Los Goros, Municipio Ahome; Ejidal Committee to Secretariat of Agriculture and Livestock, 10 June 1948, AGA, Dotación, ex. 23/89, leg. 1, Asunto Trabajos Técnicos, Los Goros, Municipio Ahome.
17 MX$6 was significantly higher than the MX$1 to MX$2 most labourers earned at that time. Charles Erasmus argues that nine fiestas disappeared in that time period. See Erasmus, Charles, Man Takes Control: Cultural Development and American Aid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 281Google Scholar.
18 Kinship networks existed in these Mayo villages and also played a role in separation between the two factions.
19 Collectivists in the Fuerte Valley had their own personal lots, in addition to sharing fields where they produced sugarcane.
20 This article refers to the SICAE as both a collective and cooperative. Eckstein, Salomón, El ejido colectivo en México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966), p. 1Google Scholar.
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25 Cárdenas did give cooperative members’ leaders at least partial control, yet the state heavily regulated operations. Eckstein, El ejido colectivo, p. 1.
26 Romero-Ibarra, María Eugenia, ‘La Reforma Agraria de Cárdenas y la agroindustria azucarera de México, 1930–1960’, Historia Agraria, 52 (Dec. 2010), p. 107Google Scholar.
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28 Gladys McCormick also discusses the connection between rural authoritarianism and the shift to industrialisation that started during the Cárdenas era. See McCormick, The Logic of Compromise. Recent scholarship on the subject argues that Cárdenas was much more of a capitalist reformer than a socialist.
29 Schobert, Historia de una gesta obrero campesina, p. 13.
30 Romero-Ibarra, ‘La Reforma Agraria de Cárdenas’, p. 109.
31 USCOS owned the local telephone and electric companies and exerted its political influence. María Eugenia Romero-Ibarra, ‘La sociedad colectivo agrícola industrial, emancipación proletaria, expropiación y cooperativismo en la industria azucarera de México, 1930–1960’, presented at the ninth Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Española de Historia Económica, 2008, pp. 4, 9, 12.
32 Schobert, Historia de una gesta obrero campesina, pp. 71–5.
33 Most Mayo villages did not have valid land grants, receiving title for the first time under the Mexican government, whose functionaries provided more resources to one faction over another, creating privileged ejidatarios.
34 Romero-Ibarra, ‘La Reforma Agraria de Cárdenas’, p. 116.
35 Ibid., p. 117.
36 Padilla, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata, p. 59.
37 Oral histories suggest that the majority of individualists preferred growing traditional subsistence crops. Yet, guaranteed wages and access to irrigation water, given to collectivist sugarcane farmers, would have been difficult to deny. Individualists would have at least preferred a choice.
38 Lázaro Cárdenas to the Agrarian Department, 11 Jan. 1939, Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Lázaro Cárdenas, ex. 404.1/1593. Cárdenas enacted Article 91 of the Agrarian Code to ensure that irrigation rights were included in the ejidal expropriation.
39 Act of census clearance, José Manuel Flores, Agrarian Department, 16 March 1945, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/35.
40 Ibid.
41 Ynocente Montiel to Manuel Ávila Camacho, 8 Nov. 1944, AGA, Dotación, ex. 23/89, leg. 3, Asunto Ejecución, Los Goros, Municipio Ahome.
42 Antonio Velásquez to Agrarian Department, 5 Jan. 1945, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/35, leg. 1, Asunto Toca, Los Goros, Municipio El Fuerte.
43 Ynocente Montiel to Manuel Ávila Camacho, 8 Nov. 1944, AGA, Dotación, ex. 23/89, leg. 3, Asunto Ejecución, Los Goros, Municipio Ahome.
44 Antonio Velásquez to Agrarian Department, 5 Jan. 1945, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/35, leg. 1, Asunto Toca, Los Goros, Municipio El Fuerte.
45 All documents referring to the 1944 meeting agree that the individualist sector passed this resolution by popular ejidal vote.
46 Collectivists sometimes annexed individualists’ lands even if they were not fallow, but agricultural production at least justified individualist land claims.
47 Certificate of Agrarian Rights, 14 April 1947, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/35, leg. 1, Asunto Toca, Los Goros, Municipio El Fuerte.
48 Alejandro Inzunza, interviewed in Los Goros, Municipio Ahome, Sinaloa, Mexico, 14 Feb. 2014.
49 Such patterns were also reported by individualists in other Mayo ejidos, such as Zapotillo.
50 San Miguel Zapotitlán continues to act as a regional Mayo ceremonial centre. Carlos Moroyoqui, interviewed in Los Goros Uno, Municipio Ahome, Sinaloa, Mexico, 10 April 2014.
51 Agrarian Department to Director of Agrarian Rights, 16 Oct. 1948, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/10717, leg. 7, Asunto Trabajos de Depuración Censal, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
52 National Peasant Confederation to Agricultural Department, 19 Sept. 1955, AGA, Dotación, ex. 23/3684, leg. 1, Asunto Ejecución, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
53 José López to Agrarian Department, 5 Nov. 1954, AGA, Dotación, ex. 23/3684, leg. 1, Asunto Ejecución, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
54 Unlike the case with other rivers, it did not matter that El Teroque was downriver. Several collectivist communities were located downriver from El Teroque but still received access, unlike individualist communities upriver.
55 Rufino López to Ejidal Agrarian Organisation, 14 Oct. 1955, AGA, División, Fusión, y Permutas, ex. 231.3/138, leg. 2, Asunto Local, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
56 The CRF was roughly modelled around the Tennessee Valley Authority. See Barkin, David and King, Timothy, Regional Economic Development: The River Basin Approach in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
57 Schobert, Historia de una gesta obrero campesina, p. 208.
58 Rufino López to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, 14 Oct. 1955, AGN, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, ex. 404.1/5375.
59 Buimena's parents were individualists. Felipe Buimena, interviewed in El Teroque Viejo, El Fuerte, 14 Feb. 2014.
60 Request to activate the division of the ejido, 8 Nov. 1958, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/10717, leg. 7, Asunto Trabajos de Depuración Censal, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
61 Rufino López to Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal, 31 Aug. 1955, AGA, Privación de Derechos Agrarios y Nuevas Adjudicaciones, ex. 271.71/10717, leg. 7, Asunto Trabajos de Depuración Censal, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
62 In the late 1950s, the cost of planting and harvesting a hectare of sugarcane was around MX$1,400, compared to the cost to grow a hectare of maize which was around MX$350. Economic Agricultural Study, 12 March 1958, AGA, División, Fusión, y Permutas, ex. 231.3/94, leg. 1, Asunto Ejecución, Camajoa, Municipio El Fuerte.
63 Arturo Luna Lugo to Agrarian Department, 19 Sept. 1955, AGA, Dotación, ex. 23/3684, leg. 1, Asunto Ejecución, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
64 Arturo Luna Lugo to the Agrarian Department, 3 Oct. 1955, AGA, División, Fusión, y Permutas, ex. 231.3/138, leg. 2, Asunto Local, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
65 Agrarian Department to Eliseo Galaviz Bernal, 14 June 1956, AGA, División, Fusión, y Permutas, ex. 231.3/138, leg. 2, Asunto Local, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
66 The inability to arrange a deal with the CRF was just one example of collectivists and the SICAE continually preventing individualists from securing irrigation agreements with third parties.
67 Agreement between the ejidatarios of El Teroque, 23 July 1956, AGA, División, Fusión, y Permutas, ex. 231.3/138, leg. 2, Asunto Local, El Teroque, Municipio El Fuerte.
68 Data available at https://en.mexico.pueblosamerica.com, last access 28 June 2019.