Organizing the Peasants: Participation, Organization and the Politics of Development in a Mexican Government Program

Abstract

This article discusses some problems with partici patory approaches in development thinking. It is argued that external interventions are always embedded within wider fields of power (force fields) and that discourses of participa tion and cannot change these estab lished power relations. A study is presented of a Mexican gov ernment program that used a bottom-up approach in order to stimulate ejidos to formulate their own internal ejido rules. It is shown that this program?in which program for the ejido sector. The implementation of this program?in which ejidos were stimulated to for mulate their own internal ejido rules?shows what may happen when organizing capacities are made central to government programs imposed from above. Much development literature gives a central role to local organization for improving the situation of the poor. In these works, approaches and grassroots initiatives have become very popular. How ever, these approaches tend to ignore the ways in which forms of organizing and external interventions are always embedded within wider fields of power. This explains why many so-called participatory bot tom-up projects often turn into top-down impositions bearing little relation to the organizing priorities of the target groups. The implementation of the Mexican government program of the Internal Ejido Rules (EIR) is followed in detail in the period between 1993 and 1994 in the region of Autlan, Western Mexico. This program aimed to improve the organization of the ejido at the local level by introducing legalistic and formalistic organization models. It is shown how the implementation of the pro gram was influenced by the strained relationship between ejidatarios and the Mexican state and how it was appropriated in different and unexpected ways by various people. In this article, first a short overview is presented of the role of organization and participation in the develop ment debate. Then, an analysis is presented of local organization in the Mexican ejido based on a case study of the ejido La Canoa in the valley of Autlan. It is demonstrated that much so-called informal organizing at the local level has, over time, turned into firmly estab lished practices with their own logic. In this context, an