Programme de bourses "Echanges Universitaires"

Rural exodus and agroecology
The challenges of rural youth’s exodus and sustainable indigenous peasant agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico

The Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico has two features that are quite impressive. Since the XVIth century, the erosion of 5 meters of top soil has been detected by a United Nation’s study. Besides, the Mixteca Alta has one of the highest rates of migration in the country. Agriculture on such an eroded land with ever less people on the fields is a challenge in itself.
Youth migration from rural areas into cities is a world-wide phenomenon. The personal experiences told by the mixtec youth reflect the complex causes and motivations of the will to migrate. Subsistence agriculture in the region is characterized by traditional indigenous agricultural techniques and the use of simple instruments, animal force and community work and, in some villages, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid seeds. A different dynamics is promoted in the region though, by a peasant organization called CEDICAM. Agroecological methods are promoted but the term agroecology are consciously not used among the peasants. Why does agroecology seem to be contradictory in the rural villages of the Mixteca Alta? How does CEDICAM contribute to the rebirth of a “sustainable peasant indigenous” agriculture? What are the strategies which CEDICAM follows in its work with the mixtec youth?
The research is based on a field study, applying surveys and making interviews with the promoters of CEDICAM. Its aim is to discover the links between youth migration tendencies, sustainable agricultural methods, and the role of CEDICAM in this context. As a part of the Campesino a Campesino Movement (Farmer to farmers Movement), CEDICAM has a well elaborated method and pedagogy based more on practice than theory.
The participatory observation during the research led me to propose a possible interpretation of the work which CEDICAM accomplishes, that is, an analysis of the “peasant indigenous consciousness” and the wish of its reconstruction. Why does the process of reconstruction of the “peasant indigenous consciousness” occur in the Mixteca Alta and how does it occur? What are the characteristics of this consciousness?
The results are thus opening the field for a wide range of questions rather than setting fixed answers. The research does not claim to solve any of the above mentioned questions, but intends to indicate some possible ways of approaching them.

Contact:

Fülöp Ádám
IHEID, Master en études de développement
Lejt? utca 29., 1126
Budapest, Hongrie
Email: canica375@gmail.com

Partenaires

Professor Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff
Voie-Creuse 16 CV305
Genève, Suisse
Email : Isabelle.SchulteTenckhoff@graduateinstitute.ch

Sud:

Jesús León Santos
CEDICAM – Centro de Desarrollo Integral del Campesino de la Mixteca
Asunción Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, Méxique
Email: jls_jesus@yahoo.com