New Rural Poverty: The Tangled Web of Environmental Protection and Economic Aid in Southern Mexico

Abstract

SUMMARY Scholars, especially those located in Latin America, argue for a new rurality, one that entails changed rural-urban relations and decreasing reliance by rural residents on small-scale farming. Based on an examination of the impacts of three subsidy programs aimed at residents living near Mexico's Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, I suggest these changes reinforce a continued rural poverty. The programs include a series of “conservation-development” initiatives whose architects hoped would decrease the pressure slash-and-burn farmers placed on area forests. In addition, residents of this area participated in agricultural and school subsidies. I compare the relative impact of all these programs on household incomes and consider both the opportunities for social capital these programs represented and their role in the purported “new rurality.”