Salinas' Failed War on Poverty

...Most of the state's more than three million people suffer dramatic inadequacies in their living conditions...

...model, does not equal real power...

...Neoliberal reforms were to redynamize the economy, so th on, the tasks of generating the co and social justice could be undertal These anti-poverty programs impact on the macro variables of p or relative prices-and, therefore, ments of redistribution...

...Between 1989 and 1992, yet another 400,000 joined the ranks of the extreme poor...

...work...

...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...

...Others limit the direct involvement of their "members" in work and activity...

...The escuela digna program is directed in almost all cases to the renovation of classrooms, and its committees are formed in almost all cases by teachers and parents of schoolchildren...

...Today, these definitions and perspectives of the "change in the relations between the state and the people" seem part of ancient history...

...Anti-poverty policies akin to Pronasol have been developed and promoted by important international organisms-particularly the World Bank-throughout Latin America over the past eight years...

...Since then, similar funds have been formed in at least ten countries in Latin America, among them, Pronasol in Mexico...

...The first program of this type was Bolivia's Social Emergency Fund (FSE), which was created at the beginning of the 1980s with the firm support of the World Bank...

...Salinas' plan became the National Solidarity Program (Pronasol...

...This is, however, ,nditions for equity only one side of the coin...

...At the same time, the gap between rich and poor was colossal...

...These committees correspond to the groups that have been receiving emergency aid in the areas terribly battered by the fall in international coffee prices and the disbanding of Imcaf6, the state coffee company...

...As in sandy soil, the waters of Pronasol were lost the moment that they were poured...

...Rather, they were holding actions, designed to make the bitter medicine of adjustment policies less painful...

...Without altering any of t conditions of adjustment or restru grams achieved-from the pe model-high social and political returns from the investment...

...Many resources were used to finance the construction of sumptuous public works...

...Applied simultaneously with the neoliberal policies of adjustment, they constitute an indispensible component of that process...

...The problem lies with the VOL XXVIII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1994 0 t9 n o 39REPORT ON MEXICO strategy itself...

...In Mexico, the reality of poverty is impressive...

...Right: A Zapatista guerrilla near Ocosingo, Chiapas...

...It was meant, in short, to transform Mexico's authoritarian state-society relations...

...They then became important instruments of long-term "structural change...

...Of the population over the age of 15, 30% is illiterate and 62% never completed primary school...

...Its logic is basic short-term ich was becoming assistance, and it operates within a clientelistic frameerous...

...The Solidarity program captured the imagination of many Mexican progressives because it was also meant to respect and encourage community initiative, participation and responsibility in the planning and administration of the program...

...In neither the short nor the long term were these programs intended to "eradicate poverty...

...Eighty percent of the employed population earns an income of less than two minimum wages-placing them below the official poverty line...

...The state of war that broke out on January 1 demonstrated that the Solidarity committees have very limited powers of social transformation...

...The real wages of white-collar workers in those same industries fell 22%, and the value of social services fell 23...

...They woul tered accumulation of capital-th force of the economy-at risk by vate riches...

...The program was not only incapable of improving the abysmal social situation of the least well-off, but it also proved unable to achieve its genuine-though never explicit-objective of neutralizing and containing the discontent generated by the application of structural-adjustment policies...

...the next poorest 10% would have to wait 33 years to satisfy their basic needs...

...They were designed, to begin with, to neutralize or compensate for the most detrimental social effects of the policies of economic adjustment-particularly the sharp declines in real wages...

...The regional forces that today are proposing policies of change and social, economic and political rehabilitation are none other than the insurgents of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and the peasant and popular organizations with their own independent bases of development...

...But the hardest hit lived in the countryside...

...The "critique of Chiapas" has forced us to rethink all the old categories...

...Many of these independent groups were at some point catalogued by Pronasol as enemies of the pro-salinista strategy of development, because they lacked "democratic methods," reproduced "corporatist vices," and refused to be incorporated into the PRI-dominated chain of command...

...Investment is a threatening any pri- drop at a time, with a generally low ceiling for each uated according to project...

...Using these indicators to construct an index of marginalization, Conapo ranks Chiapas the poorest state in Mexico, followed by five other states with "very high" indices of marginalization: Oaxaca, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Vera Cruz and Puebla...

...Pronasol moves clearly on the plane of social assistance, with resources-given the magnitude and extension of poverty in the area-that are quite limited...

...Other data show a process of growing impoverishment among the social sectors to which most Mexicans belong, within a framework of growing polarization...

...The transformation of statesociety relations was to have been carried out by Pronasol through the creation of 150,000 Solidarity committees officially registered in 1993 at the national level...

...This represents about one eighth of what the World Bank considers to be the line of absolute poverty in Mexico-about three new pesos (one dollar) a day-and about one seventieth of what the country's National Population Council (Conapo) considers necessary to satisfy the basic needs of a family...

...In Chiapas more than anywhere else, the management of Pronasol went out of its way to refrain from altering the socioeconomic relations of power...

...They were not evali their ability to eradicate poverty, assuage the growing misery wh unmanageable and politically dang The "design" or "format" of th grams was therefore fundamentall beginning...

...This distribution is clearly tied to an instrumental rather than a political-social logic...

...BY JULIO MOGUEL When Carlos Salinas de Gortari became president in 1988, he announced a plan for a new war on poverty, one that would reach out to the 48% of the Mexican population then classified as poor, and especially to the 19% classified as extremely poor, or indigent...

...The program has a clear political-clientelistic character...

...In contrast, the region's communally held property amounts to only 1.5 million acres...

...The poor and indigent are demanding a real dialogue...

...No clear correlation exists between the locations with the highest indices of marginality and the organizational effort made by the promoters of Pronasol, if this is measured by the number of committees constituted...

...These new programs are different from the older forms of state intervention...

...Neither does the "critique" question the lack of intelligence and insight brought to bear in this war on poverty...

...The decentralization of authority and the management of programs simply meant that economic and political power were given to the local political bossescaciques-and farm owners...

...If we divide the total investment in Pronasol into the official number of the Mexican poor (40.3 million people), it works out to $53 per year, or 15 cents per day, per person...

...Important resources like those directed to the growing of coffee could not compensate for the fall in international prices over the last several years, nor for the consequences of the withdrawal of other governmental support programs...

...The rural drama, even as reflected by official sources, is particularly eloquent, especially in the face of Salinas' inauguration pledge to "eradicate extreme poverty...

...The municipal funds are funnelled to bases of traditional political power-especially in Chiapas-among caciques, ranchers and PRI officials...

...eliminated any ele- On the whole and in its parts, the Mexican antid not put the unfet- poverty model represented by Pronasol reflects these ie neoliberal motor components of strategy and format...

...Pronasol's investments in Chiapas show a pronounced tendency toward the categories of "welfare" and "basic infrastructural support...

...Six years later, as Salinas prepares-he hopes-to transfer power to his designated successor, it is clear that the program has fallen far short of its goals...

...This makes it difficult to achieve any real but their ability to objectives of development...

...But such a huge figure simply corresponds to the sum total of the groups that received funding...

...The old discourse aged decades in the ten days that shook Mexico...

...Between 1982 and 1991, salaries paid to laborers in manufacturing industries lost 36% of their purchasing power...

...In many cases the government also decided to work with and through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the administration of the projects, Above: In the high sierra mountains, indigenous people appear skeptical as President Salinas promises that Pronasol will bring electricity to the area...

...At his inauguration, Salinas promised that Pronasol would confront poverty and eradicate it...

...Average real wages paid to agricultural workers fell 51% over that same period...

...In 1989, the Consultative Council of Pronasol calculated that without a program of income redistribution, a sustained 3% rate of economic growth would lift the poorest 10% of the population out of poverty in 64 years...

...Official statistics reveal that 40.3 million Mexicans (about half the population) can be classified as poor, and that 17.3 million of these live in indigency...

...Between 1984 and 1989, the number of indigents grew by 1.7 million...

...Two days later, the country's astonishment was replaced by the general conviction that in a few short hours, something truly significant had happened...

...While the program's budget grew from $547 million in 1989 to $2.54 billion in 1993, we are not speaking here of extraordinary amounts of money...

...The Chiapas insurrection was thus converted into an "armed critique" of the social programs of the Salinas AdminisA peasant family on the road in Altamirano, Chiapas...

...According to a recent survey conducted in Altos de Chiapas, most of the municipal funds are channelled into the construction of assembly halls, with no particular linkage to any type of educational or cultural agenda...

...Between 1984 and 1989, extreme poverty in urban areas grew in absolute numbers from 4.3 to 6.5 million people, and then declined to 4.8 million by 1992...

...rather, small investments which would ha impact...

...poverty line, Pronasol funds amount to 13 cents a day for each one of them...

...The formation of the committees mostly has to do with political-electoral necessities rather than any specific anti-poverty requirements...

...Many committees are so ephemeral or temporary that their life span is exactly as long as their funded project...

...The Chiapas "armed critique" of Salinas' social policy is not exclusively-nor even fundamentallyabout the amount of resources provided...

...Responsibility, in this ken...

...The central governtried to avoid any ment still exercises great political control over the olicy-like salaries anti-poverty programs...

...the following 10% would have to wait 21 years, and the next 10%, 10 years...

...implemented solely thus reducing costs even further, and giving greater hat-perhaps-later responsibility to local organizations...

...Of the remaining 7,595 Solidarity committees, the two biggest categories of investment are school improvement (the escuela digna program) and municipal funds...

...In 1990, just over 2% of the Mexican population received 78.55% of the national income...

...Resources were not works of reconstruction, or to pr economic rehabilitation...

...The amount spent between 1989 and 1991 was less than the amount spent between 1980 and 1982 in anti-poverty activity...

...In addition, resources were channelled according to local demand, thus reducing the heavy and clumsy planning bureaucracies, and lowering administrative costs...

...Pronasol did not modify the state-society relationship in the locations with the greatest incidence of poverty either, despite the fact that some of its architects considered this to be the program's greatest contribution to strategies of social reorganizaton and efforts to end poverty...

...The terrain on which this process of indigenous struggle had been cultivated over the past ten years was nothing more complex than poverty, or to be more precise, an extreme poverty which neoliberal policies were incapable of mitigating...

...Of the 8,824 registered Chia40 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON MEXICO pas Solidarity committees, 1,229 operate in the area of coffee production...

...The Chiapas insurrection is an "armed critique" of the government's social policy...

...On the first of January, 1994, Mexico awakened to the news that a group of heavily armed indigenous rebels in the state of Chiapas had assaulted and seized half a dozen district capitals, among them San Crist6bal de las Casas...

...tration, particularly Pronasol...

...And the problem is approaching disastrous dimensions...

...In sum, neoliberal policy applied during the cycle 1984-1992 38NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEXICO produced more than 2 million new poor people in the countryside...

...The peasant insurrection in the he macroeconomic jungle demonstrates that this may be the case, but in a icturing, these pro- different sense from that assumed from the statistics perspective of the and official declarations...

...In the area of the peasant insurrection, only 667 individuals own 817,400 acres, which means on the average each one holds about 12,251 acres...

...No such decline occurred in the Mexican countryside, where extreme poverty grew in absolute numbers before and after the existence of Pronasol...

...In the case of Chiapas-the poorest state in the republic-where around 70% of the population, or 2,247,347 chiapanecos fall below the official Julio Moguel is a member of the economics faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and is the coordinator of the supplement "La Jornada del Campo" of the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada...

...Of all the dwellings in the state, 43% have no indoor plumbing, 35% lack electricity, 50% have dirt floors, and 74% are classified as overcrowded...

...In a small corner of southeastern Mexico, all the certainties and values of a long phase of social peace and political stability crumbled...

...Other resources-when they arrived-were dropped in the extensive ocean of Chiapas poverty, proliferating in small works of limited impact...

...e anti-poverty proly defined from the hiapas is the state in which the largest number directed to major of Solidarity committees were registered, )jects of social and which ought to suggest that it is the state in they were used in which the greatest changes were made in the "stateve local or regional society" relationship...

...Chiapaneca society is not only the most backward in the country, it also has the highest levels of inequality and discrimination...