The
decade of the 1980s, known as the "lost decade," brought profound
changes to Latin American countries. A severe debt crisis engulfed the region,
and Mexico was not an exception. As Mexico threatened to default on its
international debt, IMF stepped in to mandate economic restructuring of the
Mexican economy. These measures called for privatization of state-owned
industries, including Mexico's sugar mills, and market opening, for which NAFTA
became a key element. To meet the requirements of the first directive, 50 of
Mexico's 66 sugar mills were sold off to private investors, thus changing the
historically-constituted relationship between sugarcane growers and the state.
The enactment of NAFTA in 1994 created a context for the massive importation of
cheap sugar from the world market in the early 1990s, and subsequently the
substitution of Mexican cane sugar for imported high fructose corn syrup from
the U.S. Sugar mills in Mexico have not fared well under either of these
measures.
Privatization of
sugar mills did not always result in investment to modernize the antiquated
machinery of these factories. Evidence for continuation of the economic crisis
reveals itself in the outstanding debts of mill owners which the government is
restructuring and the retraction of credit traditionally extended to cane
growers for production costs. Moreover, mills are forced to lower their sugar
prices to compete with the lower-cost fructose that is used primarily in
Mexico's immense soft drink industry.
Insolvency
and market competition have forced six sugar mills to close since 1988. Among
these was Ingenio (sugar mill) Puruarán, Michoacán, whose corporate owner
closed its doors May 25, 1992. The Puruarán refinery directly supported 2,260
cane growers, 800 cane cutters, 244 truck and tractor drivers, and 530 mill
workers, and indirectly benefitted 36,050 inhabitants of the region. Puruarán's
economy had depended on cane and sugar production since the establishment of
its hacienda in 1772. Joaquin Oseguera bought the hacienda in the last years of
the revolution and owned it until 1924, when he sold it to José Gómez Ochoa.
Many campesinos recount the story of Timoteo Pérez, a campesino who had planted
a field of beans--with Gómez's permission--on hacienda lands. Gómez is cited by
campesinos for his cruelty toward campesinos in that era. Gómez ordered the
beanfield to be plowed up, and he was later killed while returning to Puruarán
on horseback. Many implicate Pérez in his death. Thus, the hacienda passed to a
series of other owners beginning in 1938. The last owners were Tomás D. Boyd,
from the United States, and his partner Alfonso Austin. After Boyd's death, the
mill went bankrupt under the management of Antonio Reynoso Obregón and his
partners, Federico Ibarra Gómez and Rafael Ambrosi Zetina. Through the
intervention of past-president Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, the National Ejidal
Credit Bank refinanced the mill and "Ingenio Ejidal Puruarán" was
given to the community in 1966.
Subsequently, the
mill was nationalized in 1971, then privatized in 1991. The new owner, Alberto
Santos de Hoyos, purchased a package of four sugar mills, including Ingenio
Puruarán and the nearby Pedernales mill, but determined to close the former, as
Puruarán workers did not agree to worker layoffs. The severance pay of ex-mill
workers was quickly depleted. Sugarcane growers were forced to deliver their
cane to the Pedernales mill, where most incurred debts. Hundreds of hectares of
cane were abandoned. The community suffered the consequences: unemployment,
extensive outmigration, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, loss of social benefits
such as medical insurance and retirement, school dropouts, family
disintegration, robberies, drug trafficking, and violence.
The
week of November 23, 1992, 700 cane growers, workers, and supporters marched 11
km. to the Pedernales mill to protest the closing of the Puruarán mill. They
blocked the entry and occupied the Pedernales mill, demanding the reopening of
Puruarán's refinery.
On December 7,
1992, cane growers, mill workers, and other community residents organized and
illegally seized the abandoned Puruarán sugar refinery. Led by Gregorio Alvarez
Vargas, leader of the local canegrowers' union, they entered the mill and
removed six guards placed there by the owner. The Comité Prodefensa para la
Conservación del Ingenio Puruarán formed after the seizure, and workers
volunteered their labor to repair the factory. Hired gunmen fired on three
workers: Pedro Alvarez Pérez, Leopoldo Torres Botello, & Alfonso Soto
Uribe. Cane growers and workers carried out a "miniharvest," from
March 5 through May 12, 1993. Unaided by engineers, chemists, and other
technicians, they processed 37,000 tons cane (almost one-fourth of the cane in
the zone) and produced 3,100 tons of sugar, valued at N$4,250,000 pesos. From
the sale of sugar, they covered salaries, advance payments, liquidations, and
credit for fertilizer and insecticides. At the end of the harvest, they had
N$700,000 pesos worth of sugar in the warehouse. The mill owner denied them the
right to sell the remaining sugar, which remained in the warehouse until
1998.
Community members
formed a vigil in front of the mill that was to last throughout the struggle.
Growers began a series of public demonstrations on May 11, 1993, when they
marched to the IMSS offices in Morelia (the state capital) to protest the
cutting off of medical benefits, for which cane growers had already paid
quotas. Benefits were suspended for all those who did not deliver cane to
Pedernales.
On Sunday, July
4, 1993, in the early hours of the morning, about 200 judicial police (reports
vary on the number) invaded the town. Seven members of the social movement were
arrested and incarcerated; the police showed no order for search and arrest. A
migrant to Veracruz, Leopoldo Torres Botello, returned to Puruarán to engage in
the struggle to reopen the mill. Suffering diabetes and heart disease, he died
subsequent to his arrest. Another of the detainees explained: "We did not
rob, we did not kill, we did not take anyone's property away from them. The
crime was to work. That was the crime. The crime was to work, that is why they
jailed us."
Preventative
police guarded the mill as the owner began to dismantle key pieces of machinery
for use at the Pedernales mill. The church bells tolled, calling people to
assemble to prohibit the police from removing additional mill equipment. The
plaza filled with people who demanded the departure of the police, who finally
were forced to abandon the mill. From 1993 to 1996, however, the preventative
police returned to guard the mill, and dismantled and destroyed machinery to
prevent further operation.
During this
period, Gregorio Alvarez led a struggle to petition the intervention of state
and federal officials on behalf of the community. Beginning in January 1993,
the Puruarán commission met numerous times with the Secretary of Agriculture,
sugar industry officials, Santos and his representatives, and the state
governor. They provided alternative demands: that the owner reopen the mill,
that he rent or sell the mill to the community, or that the mill be
expropriated and given to the community. They argued that in 1966, according to
the bronze plaque in the mill, that the government gave Ingenio Ejidal Puruarán
to the community, for its benefit, thus the government had no legal right to
sell it--it belonged to the community.
A series of
protests and demonstrations in Morelia and Mexico City failed to materialize in
positive results. On July 8, members of the movement seized the Legislative
Palace in Morelia and demonstrated in front of the Government Palace. While 250
police patrolled the town of Puruarán, a commission of cane growers deliberated
seven hours with the Secretary of Agriculture, with whom they signed a
five-point agreement. But that agreement was not honored by the state
government. Various marches and demonstrations continued throughout July until
negotiations shifted to the national level at the beginning of August.
Meanwhile, Alvarez contacted the Sociedad Cooperativa Trabajadores Pascual, a
cooperative that manufactures natural fruit drinks. They expressed interest in
helping to finance the Puruarán mill and local residents planned to form a
cooperative to operate the mill.
After a march in
Mexico City, the Puruarán commission met with Santos, the Secretary of
Agriculture, and Pascual representatives. The Puruarán delegation argued that
Clause 8 of the sale contract obligates the purchasers of sugar mills to
maintain their factories as sources of employment, to improve their productive
capacities, and to "foment modernization, rehabilitation, diversification,
integration, and agricultural development." In the course of three meetings
with Santos de Hoyos in August, 1993, he offered to sell both mills to the
community for the unrealistic price of N$100,000,000 pesos, whereas he had
acquired the Puruarán mill for N$4,620,000 and the Pedernales mill for
N$10,400,000, or N$15,020,000 total. The two mills were valued at N$60,000,000.
The Puruarán group, with support of the Secretary of Government of Michoacán
and FINASA, offered to purchased the two mills for N$19,000,000 and
negotiations continued until October, when Santos representatives failed to
present themselves at scheduled meetings. Santos ultimately refused to sell the
mills.
On November 17,
with the cane harvest now at risk, demonstrations resumed in Morelia. The night
of November 29, two members of the demonstration, Luciano Villegas López and
Nicanor Echeverría Sáenz were fired on as they returned to Puruarán. They were
forced off the highway and left abandoned without their vehicle, which was
never recovered. From June to September, 1994 the movement engaged in a letter-writing
campaign, appealing to state and national officials. Paid assassins made an
attempt on the life of Gregorio Alvarez on October 23, 1994. Four hundred cane
growers entered the zócalo in Mexico city on November 29 to request President
Zedillo's intervention. Gregorio Alvarez ultimately left Puruarán, taking with
him remaining funds from the miniharvest and contributions growers had made to
finance production.
On May 13, 1995,
the Committee for the Struggle to Reopen Ingenio Puruarán formed, under the
leadership of the community priest, Jesús DíazBarriga. This group engaged in a
three-year campaign for expropriation of the mill, appealing to the state
governor, state officials, national officials, and President Zedillo. In 1996,
the state government worked with the Committee to establish small factories as
alternate sources of employment, such as a factory to manufacture fertilizer
bags, a gas station, a plant to manufacture animal feed. None of these
materialized. Many began to criticize the Committee for "selling out"
to the government and for lack of interest in reopening the mill. A struggle
for control of the social movement split the community into opposing factions.
Those in the priest's committee tended to be affiliated with PRI, while those whose
sole interest was in reopening the mill were aligned with the opposition party,
the PRD. Members of both groups ran for local offices of their respective
political parties, thus further dividing the community along partisan lines.
Both Gregorio Alvarez (September 13, 1996) and his key opponent, comisariado
Reyes Morales, became victims of assassins bullets. Within a three-year period,
15 individuals were killed in conflicts related to the sugar mill.
On June 30, 1996,
at the signal of the church bells, cane growers and workers again took over the
Puruarán mill and forced the police guards to leave. Santos de Hoyos threatened
to close down the Pedernales mill. Nonetheless, the state government allowed
workers to guard the mill against further looting, which they did until 1998.
The meetings, letters, and negotiations dragged on, still without success. A
very tense assembly held on June 2, 1997 and attended by TV Azteca (whose
broadcast never appeared on television) and many journalists prefaced events to
come. The Committee, together with Juan Benito Coquet, representative of CIDEM,
presented Plan de Desarrollo Regional, the plan for alternative employment
projects. Not all were in agreement. The PRD-aligned faction coalesced in 1998
under the leadership of Jesús Silva García, a former mill accountant. Weary of
the inability of the PRI group to achieve results, Silva's group removed the
Committee's guards from the mill on April 20, 1998, and initiated a second
harvest carried out by community residents. While divisions in the community
remain, the common will to reopen the mill is expressed by all residents of
Puruarán. As a former mill-worker expressed:
"Well, there
were certain things about the priest's Committee that we did not like, but we
are in the same boat. Thus, if they get it opened, well fine. And if Jesús
achieves it, good, or another group, good. Here, if the virgin opens it, if the
Señor San José [the village patron saint] opens it, [what matters is] that it
gets opened."
The harvest was financed
with proceeds from the sale of sugar from the 1993 miniharvest. The mill had
been shut down for five years, thus production was negligible. Loyal growers
delivered 5,000 tons of cane and workers processed 20 tons of sugar. Since
then, the owner and state authorities have not intervened and have allowed
operations to continue. Nonetheless, growers who delivered cane to Puruarán
were denied further credit at Ingenio Pedernales and workers who helped repair
the mill were denied further work in the construction of irrigation canals in
the zone. Those who continue to deliver cane to Pedernales suffer enormous
debts due to extraordinary charges, pressure to continue delivering to
Pedernales, and intimidation on the part of mill officials.
After this
harvest, on May 5, 1998, cane growers and workers formed a cooperative,
Sociedad Cooperativa Trabajadores del Ingenio Puruarán S.C. de R.L. to operate
the mill. Pascual finances the mill through advances, which are then repaid
through sale of sugar to the Pascual cooperative. Having endured its own
struggle and repression in the 1950s, the Pascual coop is interested in
supporting workers at Puruarán and in having a guaranteed source for the sugar
used in its products. Given the quality of its products, it does not use high
fructose corn syrup, thus the Puruarán mill has a secure market for its
production. The sugar harvests of 1999 and 2000 returned employment
opportunities to the community. Wages and cane payments are still low, but
pride in having accomplished their goal of reopening the mill and satisfaction
with the restoration of work created new hope among citizens of Puruarán.
Workers are now repairing the mill for their fourth harvest (1998-2001); each
year the number of cane growers and the amount of sugar production increases.
Yet, damages to the factory during the years of neglect call for attention and
the cooperative seeks investors to improve the facilities of the refinery. The
lifeblood of the community rests on the ability of Ingenio Puruarán to ensure
the livelihood of its citizens. Their sacrifices have been great, but the will
to persevere prevails.