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Here's my newest rant about my mexico reading class. It's my weekly journal for that class. Happy Birthday, Mom. Also, today it was really funny when Min called and said "are you watching the Sea Car game?" That was pretty great.
Once again, my weekly journal will be rife with complaints. I literally spent my time audibly laughing while reading this selection. Although I find the ethnographic sections of the piece to be interesting and insightful, I cannot say the same for the long whiny narrative sections of the work.
I will focus the bulk of my attention on the ‘Agricultural and Rural Development’ chapter which opens our reading assignment. In short, this chapter “argues” the merits of commercial agrarianism versus rural, ejido agriculture. (Quick note, I put “argues” in quotes to ironically rebuff Hellman for her repeated application of quotation marks around terms like ‘most efficient’ and ‘modernizers’). More about quotations, I find it interesting that she directly quotes her friend Eduardo that “’The history of rural development policy in Mexico has always boiled down to a conflict between two sets of competing objectives’” but then moves on to paraphrase the referent, or the meat of his argument. Why would I want to here his setup quote, but not hear what he really had to say about it. If you are going to introduce a quoted source, wouldn’t it be logical to pick a quote with some sort of sustenance and paraphrase its set-up, not visa versa. But that’s another argument all together.
I would like to take a look at her thinly veiled attack on modern, commercial agriculture in Mexico. To begin her siege on modernity she suggests that “[r]esearchers like Eduardo have figures that show that given the same inputs, the small peasant and the large landowner can produce with equal efficiency.” However, she never cites a source of such study, but instead goes on to say that “virtually every empirical study ever carried out shows” this. I guess she just expects us to believe her because we are hopefully so impressed by her. Okay, that, in itself is forgivable, however irresponsible. Nevertheless, later, in the very same paragraph, her claim morphs drastically to say that small peasant farmers “do more with the few resources at their disposal than do the large landowners.” Where did this come from? Who else shares this view? Anyone? Probably not.
Even setting aside this gaping hole, we find countless more leaps in logic. For example, on page 119, speaking of the Green Revolution which yielded new techniques which “dramatically raised” productivity, she inserts that “such increases were produced only with the heavy use of chemical inputs, mechanized equipment, and well-irrigated land - precisely the things that peasants lacked.” Well thank you Judy for that amazing insight. Yes, I can tell you the reason that peasants lack these resources because THEY ARE PEASANTS! That’s like saying “Factory safety reform in America drastically increased the life expectancy - but did nothing for the unemployed.” Unbelievable.
Even then, I might be a little nitpicky, I tend to be that way, and can appreciate a more overarching viewpoint. But how much can she really whine? The answer seems to be a little more at least. On page 121, she notes, with as little optimism as possible, that agricultural production rose. Nonetheless, she doesn’t even put this tremendous fact in an independent clause, she tucks it inside a subordinate clause, making it sound barely of a side point to the purpose of the sentence, the claim that “the program also accelerated the impoverishment and marginalization of the poorest peasants.” Whereas, (next sentence) “The better-off peasants managed to accumulate a modest amount of capital, for the program gave them access to relatively inexpensive government credit.” I really would like to know what kind of amazing legislature was implemented that could single-out the “better-off” peasant group from the worse-off peasant group. I wish that our legislators could pinpoint their target groups with such precision.
And then, I think Hellman’s crowning achievement of irrationality comes on page 131. After abusing the idea of modernizing agriculture and progress and absolute efficiency, she still has the audacity to write of a rural farming success story as follows: “Most important, the profits he cleared in marigolds permitted him to take the leap that would make all the difference in his prospects in the years to come. He bought himself a small tractor and a second-hand pickup truck.” I don’t even know what else to say about that. So I won’t even try. Rediculous.
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