Water Dispossession at the Llano En Llamas: a Research Study by a Daughter of Mexican Farmworkers in the Land of Her Consciousness
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Copyright by Nancy Aurelia Preciado Rodríguez 2013 The Thesis Committee for Nancy Aurelia Preciado Rodríguez Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Water Dispossession at the Llano en Llamas: A Research Study by a Daughter of Mexican Farmworkers in the Land of Her Consciousness APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Rebecca M. Torres Martha Menchaca Water Dispossession at the Llano en Llamas: A Research Study by a Daughter of Mexican Farmworkers in the Land of Her Consciousness by Nancy Aurelia Preciado Rodríguez, B.A., B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2013 Dedication A los pueblos que viven en el Llano en Llamas y a sus futuras generaciones. Acknowledgements I do not have enough words to express the gratitude I feel toward the women, men, and children I came across at the Llano en Llamas. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to conduct this research, to listen to your stories and struggles and for allowing me to learn from you. Thank you Dr. Rebecca Torres for your support, motivation, patience, and feedback that helped me clarify my arguments. Thank you Dr. Martha Menchaca for all your support and insightful conversations that also helped me develop this thesis. I am also extremely grateful to Dr. Charles R. Hale for the encouragement and invaluable support. Thank you all for challenging me to think about ways to conduct academic scholarship grounded in commitments to social justice. I also would like to express my gratitude to the staff of LLILAS, especially to Steve Alvarez for all these years of support. Thank you Jessica Rosalyn Osorio, Angela Tapia, and Myrna Garcia for the informal and formal contributions, for the support and the encouragement. I would also like to acknowledge the indispensable contribution of Vanessa Martinez and Lindsey Carte in the editing phase of this thesis. Thanks to my family for challenging my notions about the Llano en Llamas, for making my research much more interesting and complex, and for walking along with me in this journey. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that any strengths reflected in this thesis are attributed to the exchanges, reflections and conversations with all the above mentioned; its limitations and defects are my exclusive responsibility. v Abstract Water Dispossession at the Llano en Llamas: A Research Study by a Daughter of Mexican Farmworkers in the Land of Her Consciousness Nancy Aurelia Preciado Rodríguez, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Rebecca M. Torres In 1953, Juan Rulfo, one of the most important Latin American writers of the 20th century presents, El Llano en Llamas (Burning Plain), a collection of realistic short stories about rural life in the land of his childhood in Jalisco, Mexico. About 60 years after El Llano en Llamas, this daughter of Mexican campesinos, has also decided to write about the land of her childhood: the same El Llano en Llamas. This thesis examines the water dispossession experienced by agricultural laborers living in the municipalities of Tonaya, and San Gabriel, which are symbolically part of the Llano en Llamas. By focusing on a corporate socially responsible agricultural company and a mining company in the state of Jalisco, Mexico I argue that both projects of development are dispossessing the communities of their water sources. I also intend to illustrate that currently, the processes of dispossession use modes and logics of power rooted in colonialism. vi Table of Contents List of Tables ......................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Burning Plain .....................................................1 Chapter 2: Methodology and Theoretical Perspectives ...........................................6 Methodology ..........................................................................................6 Summer 2011 ................................................................................7 Winter 2011-2012 .........................................................................9 Theoretical Perspectives ......................................................................10 Chapter 3: Background: A Brief History of the Llano en Llamas .........................14 A Description the Municipalities of Tonaya and San Gabriel .............14 Background on the Amula Province ....................................................19 The Dispossession of Resources ..........................................................20 An Embodied Dispossession.......................................................21 The Effects of the Dispossession: Emergence of a Labor Force 22 The Hacienda System ..........................................................................24 Land Reform in the Llano en Llamas: A Violent Process ...................26 Background on Neoliberal Reforms: Institutionalized Dispossession.27 Chapter 4: The Invernadero: Groundwater Dispossession ....................................30 Protected Agriculture ...........................................................................30 Migrant Jornaleros: A Profile ..............................................................35 Who are the Migrant Laborers in Bioparques de Occidente S.A. de C.V.? ..................................................................................36 Work and Wages .........................................................................38 Education in the Invernaderos ....................................................40 Education and Child Labor .........................................................43 Migrant Housing .........................................................................45 The Local Communities .......................................................................51 vii Quality Tomatoes in a “Barren Waste Land”? ...........................51 Groundwater Extraction: A Silent Dispossession .......................52 The Dispossession of Water in the Non-traditional Agriculture: Not an Isolated Case ...............................................................................61 Chapter 5: Mining Pollution and Dispossession in Tonaya ...................................64 A View of Dispossession: A Brief History of Mining in Mexico .......64 Dispossession through the Eyes of the Dispossessed .................68 The Mexican Revolution: A Battle for Power ............................70 The Tonaya Mine Case: The Actors ....................................................76 The Mining Company Minera Metalúrgica Tapalpa ..................76 Affected Communities ................................................................80 CODEA/ Río Vivo Tonaya A.C. ................................................82 The Accumulation: Who Benefits? .............................................83 The Process of Dispossession ..............................................................85 The Agreement: A Change in Land Use .....................................85 ‘Reserved Information’ ...............................................................87 Dispossession of the Communities ......................................................88 A Drop of Resistance ...........................................................................91 The Response .......................................................................................99 Chapter 6: Conclusion..........................................................................................102 Limitations and Future Research .......................................................105 References ............................................................................................................108 viii List of Tables Table 3.1. Haciendas in the Region of the Llano en Llamas, 1865-1900 ..............24 Table 4.1. Municipalities Located on the Autlán Aquifer .....................................53 Table 4.2. Public and Water Concessions on the Autlán Aquifer .........................60 Table 5.1. Financial Association of the Most Important Mexican Mines in 1978 and 2013...................................................................................................72 Table 5.2. Water Sources in the Municipality of Tonaya ......................................82 Table 5.3. Cost of Minera Metalúrgica Tapalpa ....................................................85 ix List of Figures Figure 1.1. The Llano en Llamas (The Burning Plain). ...........................................1 Figure 3.1. The municipalities of Tonaya and San Gabriel ...................................15 Figure 4.1. Protected Agriculture in Mexico .........................................................31 Figure 4.2. The Tomato Companies and Sites that were Observed and Visited by Author in the Region of El Llano en Llamas ....................................33 Figure 4.3. Migrant Housing at the Invernadero ....................................................46 Figure 4.4. Migrant Housing ..................................................................................47 Figure 4.5. Outline of the Autlán Aquifer..............................................................52 Figure 4.6. Paragraph from CONAGUA’s Response to a request of information.57 Figure