Peripheralization, Ejidos and Agricultural Livelihoods in Intermediate Mexican Cities: The Importance of Collective Agency to Reduce Vulnerabilities

Urban Farm DB summary

A paper examining the interactions between peripheralization, vulnerabilities of agricultural livelihoods, and local collective agency in creating new capabilities in intermediate Mexican cities, based on a study in Tarímbaro municipality, part of the intermediate city of Morelia. The unit of analysis was the ejido, a form of social land tenure granted to landless peasants in 1917 after the Mexican Revolution and one of the most important forms of social organization in rural Mexico; about half of Mexican territory comprises more than 30,000 community-based land tenures, mainly ejidos, and a high proportion of land now occupied by urban centres was formerly ejido land. The study used the example of 15 ejidos notably affected by the expansion of Morelia, conducting semi-structured interviews with each ejido's president in 2015, followed by a survey of 61 individuals from 11 of the 15 ejidos. The peripheralization of Morelia was found to have produced inequalities in the adjacent municipality of Tarímbaro, with differential vulnerabilities in peri-urban agricultural livelihoods found among the participating ejidos; not all ejidos succeeded in addressing vulnerabilities linked to the urbanization of agricultural land, but those that achieved some success shared characteristics that reinforced common values and motivations toward shared goals for sustaining local livelihoods. The paper highlights the importance of functional rural organizations in regulating access to, and distribution of, resources in the peripheries of intermediate cities.