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NEWS
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A Women's Co-op
Battles Globalization
by Betsy Bowman
of the Center for Global Justice
Many positive effects of neo-liberal globalization
are visible to us -- foreign restaurants, English-language newspapers,
shopping, even donuts. San Miguel is prosperous and cosmopolitan
-- if you have the money for such items. But for the negative
side of globalization see the de-industrialized towns of the
US Northeast, and in Mexico just go to the countryside.
On a visit to Cieneguilla, a community 1.5 hours
north and east of San Miguel by bus, participants in the Center
for Global Justice workshop "Another World is Necessary"
saw this other side. The town is full of old people, women,
and children; most working-age men have gone to the US to work.
Due to flooding of Mexico by NAFTA corn and other agricultural
products, even the small amounts of cash needed in village economies
by sale of such products are out of reach. A child's need for
glasses or a school uniform suffices to send a family member
-- usually a brother or father -- North to earn the required
cash. Proportionately, Guanajuato sends more men to the US than
any other state.
"Families want to stay together. Our men
do not go out of love for the US but out of need," explained
one of our hosts. Emigration -- migrating out of and away from
-- is even more of a problem in Mexico than immigration -- migrating
into -- is for the US (though no policy is being envisioned
for raising up the underclass thereby created). Neo-liberal
marketization imposes the need for cash on a village's largely
non-wage communal economy. At the same time, it pits village
products against world market commodities - a losing proposition.
Not incidentally, such policies allow big agri-business farms
to expand cheaply. But so far, rather than sell out to such
concerns, emigration to big cities or to the US is the painful
solution chosen by many individual families. This further weakens
the autonomy of village economies.
Yet there are some positive solutions that are
reinvigorating such economies and keeping families intact. Yolanda
Millan has helped organize a sellers' cooperative of 104 women
from different villages, mostly Northeast of San Miguel. She
seeks out groups of women who make sellable items: women and
children's clothing, nopal soap and shampoo, sweets, baskets
and the like. Sometimes she gets training or machines that allow
improvement of products. Sometimes she just provides space in
her store where they can be sold.
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A highlight of July's workshop,
at Cieneguilla we met a group of 17 women who make baskets
for sale at fairs and in the new Mujeres Productoras outlet
located at the Center for Global Justice, Calzada de la
Luz #42. Basket making has been practiced for generations
in Cieneguilla. Simone Bullen, a Center for Global Justice
intern who came to study under supervision of professors
from Berea College in Kentucky, spent a week of collaborative
field research in Cieneguilla. She demonstrated the art
of basket-making for us with other more expert women, revealing
the high skill involved. Yolanda has brought basket makers
from Oaxaca to teach the women new weaving patterns. The
women had just returned from a major fair in Acapulco where
they sold baskets. |
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In another malign turn of globalization, Chinese
baskets can now be made more cheaply than Mexican ones. The
campesino women of Mexico are competing with peasants in China!
Yolanda now plans to get training for the women to make furniture
from metal and reeds -- small tables and chests of drawers.
Soon they will be available for purchase at Mujeres Productoras'
outlet.
For more information or to make a reservation,
call the Center for Global Justice at 150-0025 or come by the
store at Calzada de la Luz #42
(near the corner of Loreto).
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