Self-management vs agrotoxins: migrants as bridges

In August 2023, we travelled through the southern region of the state of Jalisco in Mexico. There, between Autlán and El Grullo, two municipalities that are part rural, part urban, and share space with agro-industries that use large quantities of agrotoxins on their commercial crops, we encountered peasant communities who are critical of this kind of agricultural development – people willing to fight the poisoning of their school-age children.

By reporting it, and by taking concrete action to counteract this poisoning, people are willing to eradicate the use of agrotoxins and embark on a different form of agriculture, one akin to traditional farming, which counts its achievements from an agroecological perspective.

On our journey, we met with a group of mothers and fathers who grow healthy, agrochemical-free food on a plot of land at Venustiano Carranza school in the village of El Mentidero, right between the towns of El Grullo and Autlán. They are able to grow in this way thanks to the agricultural knowledge they have amassed, as migrants from La Montaña in Guerrero, or the Mixteca region of Oaxaca.

El Mentidero is home to many migrant families from various parts of the country, who come to harvest sugar cane for El Ingenio in Autlán. The meeting was a very emotional one. These parents finish their shifts in the cane fields after exhausting days of up to 12 hours, then, at 7 pm, they go to work their plots of land together, in order to provide agrotoxin-free food for their children. This work has proved essential: two thirds of the shared harvest go to the school canteens and the families keep the rest, which provides them with the healthy food that they could not otherwise afford on their meagre wages.

In 2019, several studies by the University of Guadalajara and CIESAS Occidente found up to 12 pesticides in the urine of children from this particular school, Venustiano Carranza in El Mentidero, Jalisco. The studies found "disproportionate increases in kidney failure in children and the presence of glyphosate, 2,4-D, Molinate and Picloram".

This finding was taken up by anti-pesticide groups internationally, with protests at an agroecological event in Cuba. The news spread throughout Latin America “in areas where there is criticism against the use and abuse of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, which have been challenged for many years by research, individuals, collectives, international organisations and above all by movements of people affected by crop spraying”.

Following these findings and the ensuing scandal, which coincided with the visit of Carlos Vicente (from GRAIN) and his partner Ingrid Kossman, who shared information and experience with pesticides from populations that have been subjected to crop spraying in Argentina, an agroecological movement began to gain momentum. This continued to develop across the region, culminating in an initial milestone on 14 April 2021, when El Limón declared itself an agroecological municipality at a town council meeting.

The lawyer Evangelina Robles (from Colectivo por la Autonomía) wonders what “legal and daily impact this declaration has on the life of the municipal area and its inhabitants”. The declaration, in addition to regulations, “clearly establishes and describes how concrete actions can be taken on a municipal level in response to urgent situations”, but in reality it puts forward an intention – and that is the most important thing.

It is an intention among people within the communities, in peasant and migrant groups (the authorities and the families who have been criticising local agricultural systems for years), to synergise their approach and, hopefully, their actions in order to establish the complex regulatory framework – and the complex political will – to start an agroecological municipality. A space that, sooner or later, can work thanks to each person’s commitment to healthy agriculture. Such work will allow people – and above all children – to eat without being poisoned.

Starting a conversation is key. The work being done today in this agroecological municipality in Jalisco, Mexico, is building bridges and resonating with a whole faction of communal land or ejido leaders looking to change the situation and defend their community and their people from the onslaught of what has come to be known in Jalisco as the “Agrifood Giant”. This is a corporate movement seeking to leverage new investment in the region to establish greenhouses and monoculture plantations of luxury crops – not food. They operate with a vast range of toxic chemicals, ruthlessly insecure working conditions, at times verging on slavery, and land and water grabbing. The situation is driving people to seek a non-confrontational way out. They are bypassing companies amid an increasing number of self-managed organisations made up of women and men, young people and children who can propose and achieve real transformation.

According to Robles, “Those living in the municipality have managed to pass on their environmental, food and health concerns to the local and regional population, and have worked together to implement each of the actions set out in the declaration – in schools, among the ejidos and delegations,[1] in the localities,**[2] community gardens, livestock and crop farms [...] Moreover, this local institutional drive, hand in hand with the people, has influenced and put forward a possible alternative for other municipalities and federal and state authorities. This is despite the serious damage caused by the promotion and enforcement of agribusiness and agro-industries in the region and across the country, with its many negative impacts on health, the environment, food and the climate crisis.”

While migration is the result of forced displacement and exile in order for corporations and cartels to grab the vacated land, it is also a strategy of human resistance against the paralysing conditions that people face.

The plot of land in the village of El Mentidero, and in many others that remain invisible – the spaces are small and the available time between sleep and the working day is short –, allow these migrant families to expand their spheres of empowerment. That is why, when we see day labourers joining forces with their children to grow non-toxic food on a plot of land managed collectively, even after an exhausting day’s work, we cannot help but reflect on the seismic change these peasant communities undergo when they are forced to migrate.

By virtue of travelling, they take on the role of bridges (as Pepe Godoy reminds us in an interview when talking about Jaime Torres Guillén's work on migrants). These migrants carry their knowledge and their seeds with them, making connections through their history and their local methods, and tackle life as survivors of the modern world. Here, in this small space, they get to decide what to sow and how. A crack or crevice, a space and time where these families shape different possibilities for life and offer us a glimpse into what food sovereignty might look like. What an important lesson that is.