THE PERSISTENCE AND EXPANSION OF THE TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURE SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF HUAMIL, IN THE MEXICAN BAJIO

Abstract

The traditional (indigenous and prehispanic) agriculture, as a set of specific knowledge, practices, tools and crop varieties, constitutes a major element of the rural Mexican landscape, despite the 500 years of external interferences and especially of the current effect of the scientific “modernization” of agriculture. Its persistence does not represent an exotic and marginal survival restricted to certain regions and populations from Mexico. It is a common practice and carries out a vital role within the economic and social context of the Mexican agriculture. Among other aspects the “indigenous” agriculture allows the economic exploitation of “marginal” lands that, otherwise, would remain as uncultivated and waste land. It also allows the utilization of labour surplus that otherwise would be leisured and provides a wide range and amount of essential products for the rural population food and subsistence. The traditional agriculture also generates genuine articles that are avidly consumed by the national population and at the same time provide considerable economic profits to their producers. We have divided this paper into two parts in order to document and examine the aforementioned in detail. Firstly, based on the anthropological production, we offer an inventory and description of the main Mexican indigenous agricultural systems emphasizing, on the one hand, their adaptation to the local conditions and sustainability and, on the other hand, their persistence and distribution. Secondly, based on ethnographical research carried out in Valle de Santiago, Guanajuato, we draw attention to the system of "huamil" ("coa-milpa"), introduced in recent times into a region dominated by the so called "green revolution". The coexistence of two agricultural systems (traditional and modern) recently introduced into the same rural area allows the study of their complementarity and interdependence. The persistence of the traditional component is not seen, therefore, as a peculiar historial remainder doomed to disappear as soon as the modern component takes root.