establishment of geopolitical relations linked to food production, and the pauperization of all producers located outside the agribusiness scheme.
Since then, within government policies a differential understanding of what the
‘‘Mexican Countryside’’ means can be observed. On the one hand it is understood
that there are regions and producers with the technological, financial, organizational, productive, and market capacity to generate substantial economic returns in
order to increase the Gross Domestic Product; and set apart from these regions and
producers, there is a Mexican countryside characterized by marginalization,
poverty, backwardness, inconsistent production, and environmental deterioration.
This differentiated understanding created two strategic trends in the agricultural
sector; one was the establishment of incentives for investment of private capital in
the production of food and raw materials for industry; possibilities were opened for
agribusinessmen to obtain credit, advisory services, and other support in order to
improve production quality and establish better positioning than that of the
competition in the national and international markets.
The other trend created in the agricultural sector was the creation of the policy
of the fight against poverty, combining various elements essential to the reduction
of the regional inequality in which millions of Mexicans live daily. For this
strategy, several central issues were defined, based on which it was intended to
achieve a balance among the conditions of economic inequality, inequality of
access to and use of natural resources, and differential access to social welfare
services.
In this sense, we believe that it is necessary to devote attention to what we call the
semantic relationships surrounding modernity and development. These relationships build ideas that identify, standardize, and hierarchize various interpretations
made by society. For example, the word poverty is used by government economic
policy as a stigma in order to define the conditions and capabilities of certain
populations as compared to the rest of society. The word poverty today brings to
mind faces, settings, and discourses; we imagine people from the countryside or
from the outlying parts of the cities, who, paradoxically, have abundant natural
resources but are not able to exploit them or to see how others are progressively
destroying them.
In the 6-year presidential term of 2000–2006, programs were implemented in
order to eradicate poverty. This was one of the guiding strategies for the activation
of and support for the development of impoverished populations. It was used in
such a way that the definition of poverty created an enormous debate; its political,
factual, social, and descriptive use generated an enormous ambiguity as to the
social group that it represented. Scholars such as Boltvinic and Hernández (2000)
have reported that poverty as a metaphor encapsulates diverse possibilities and
circumstances for use, in addition to having a strong semantic charge and
prescribing treatment based on power relationships.
Today we can say that this metaphor is used to describe those groups in society
that are in atypical situations regarding the political and economic logic that the
contemporary nation state promotes and that the market makes possible. The word
‘‘poverty,’’ then, has supported the attempt to objectify and define that which is
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A. Vázquez-Estrada and A. Terven-Salinas
Since then, within government policies a differential understanding of what the
‘‘Mexican Countryside’’ means can be observed. On the one hand it is understood
that there are regions and producers with the technological, financial, organizational, productive, and market capacity to generate substantial economic returns in
order to increase the Gross Domestic Product; and set apart from these regions and
producers, there is a Mexican countryside characterized by marginalization,
poverty, backwardness, inconsistent production, and environmental deterioration.
This differentiated understanding created two strategic trends in the agricultural
sector; one was the establishment of incentives for investment of private capital in
the production of food and raw materials for industry; possibilities were opened for
agribusinessmen to obtain credit, advisory services, and other support in order to
improve production quality and establish better positioning than that of the
competition in the national and international markets.
The other trend created in the agricultural sector was the creation of the policy
of the fight against poverty, combining various elements essential to the reduction
of the regional inequality in which millions of Mexicans live daily. For this
strategy, several central issues were defined, based on which it was intended to
achieve a balance among the conditions of economic inequality, inequality of
access to and use of natural resources, and differential access to social welfare
services.
In this sense, we believe that it is necessary to devote attention to what we call the
semantic relationships surrounding modernity and development. These relationships build ideas that identify, standardize, and hierarchize various interpretations
made by society. For example, the word poverty is used by government economic
policy as a stigma in order to define the conditions and capabilities of certain
populations as compared to the rest of society. The word poverty today brings to
mind faces, settings, and discourses; we imagine people from the countryside or
from the outlying parts of the cities, who, paradoxically, have abundant natural
resources but are not able to exploit them or to see how others are progressively
destroying them.
In the 6-year presidential term of 2000–2006, programs were implemented in
order to eradicate poverty. This was one of the guiding strategies for the activation
of and support for the development of impoverished populations. It was used in
such a way that the definition of poverty created an enormous debate; its political,
factual, social, and descriptive use generated an enormous ambiguity as to the
social group that it represented. Scholars such as Boltvinic and Hernández (2000)
have reported that poverty as a metaphor encapsulates diverse possibilities and
circumstances for use, in addition to having a strong semantic charge and
prescribing treatment based on power relationships.
Today we can say that this metaphor is used to describe those groups in society
that are in atypical situations regarding the political and economic logic that the
contemporary nation state promotes and that the market makes possible. The word
‘‘poverty,’’ then, has supported the attempt to objectify and define that which is
466
A. Vázquez-Estrada and A. Terven-Salinas