MEXICO Crisis, restructuring and urban poverty in Mexico Agustín Escobar Latapí and Mercedes González de la Rocha SUMMARY: This paper describes the scale and nature of ur- ban poverty in Mexico and how it changed during the 1980s and early 1990s. The authors draw on their own research in Guadala- jara and on other studies in Mexico and in other Latin American countries to consider how men and women within households responded to rising prices, falling incomes and other economic and social problems. The paper also includes a review of how poverty and inequality have changed in Mexico, over the last few decades. Both authors work at CIESAS- I. INTRODUCTION Occidente (Centro de Investi- gaciones y Estudios Super- iores en Antropologia Social IN THIS PAPER, we seek to explore and explain not only the de Occidente) in Mexico. extent and level of poverty in Mexico during the period of crisis Among their recent publica- and restructuring of the 1980s, but also the social institutions tions in English are Social and the actions of people who must struggle for survival daily. Responses to Mexico’s Econ- While the main changes in the Mexican political economy ex- omic Crisis of the 1980s that plain the changes in employment and wage levels, we believe they co-edited (Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies, University of the social meaning of poverty needs to be approached in terms California at San Diego, La of people’s actions and opportunity structures. The two funda- Jolla). Mercedes de la Rocha mental areas in this regard are work and the household, as has also recently published both are spheres of significant, if limited, agency for the poor. The Resources of Poverty: Both are subject to greater structural imperatives, but both Women and Survival in a depend on the visions, organizational capacity and creativity of Mexican City, Basil Blackwell, the people dealing with them. One of the toughest lessons the Oxford. poor must learn in order to survive, and one which social scien- Address: CIESAS Occidente, tists must appreciate in order to understand them, is that pov- Calle de España No. 1359, erty does not turn neighbours into friends, relatives into con- Colonia Moderna, Guadalajara, tacts, or a very light purse into a meal. They must learn to deal Jalisco, CP 44190, Mexico. with new social situations and to turn strangers into friends with hardly any significant resources to draw on. This requires an intentional, positive, creative approach in one’s own actions which then needs to be understood as part of a strategy of sur- vival. Failure to acquire the relevant know-how to do this re- sults in the failure to constitute a family, to school one’s chil- dren, or even to survive. In this paper we seek to articulate both the macro-social and the micro-social to better understand the nature of poverty within Mexican society in the early 1990s. Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 7, No. 1, April 1995 57 MEXICO 1. Benería, Lourdes (1992), “The The theses and findings in this paper were put forward ini- Mexican debt crisis: restructuring tially on the basis of our work in Guadalajara, a city of 3.5 mil- the economy and the household”, lion inhabitants in 1990. We have subsequently discovered that in Benería, Lourdes and Shelley Feldman (editors), Unequal most of these were applicable to other cities and countries in Burden: Economic Crises, Per- Latin America. Thus, although Guadalajara is a recurrent theme sistent Poverty, and Women’s in this article, we also make generalizations where appropriate Work, Westview Press, Boulder; and provide information regarding other urban contexts. Chant, Sylvia (1991), Women The 1980s crisis provided a basis for evaluating the social and Survival in Mexican Cities: mechanisms which urban popular sectors use on a daily basis Perspectives on Gender, Labour in order to cope with low wages and very little state support. Markets and Low Income House- holds, Manchester University Restructuring took place not only in the files of economists and Press, Manchester; Selby, Henry, politicians but also, and most importantly, at the household Arthur Murphy and Stephen level and in the work place, with decreasing real wages and Lorenzen (1990), The Mexican increasing unemployment. Our analyses fill an existing gap in Urban Household; Organizing for the field of longitudinal systematic analysis vis-à-vis economic Self-Defense, University of Texas and social change. Our studies produced substantial evidence Press, Austin; Murphy, Arthur to show the actual changes which took place at the level of the (1991), “City in crisis: introduction and overview”, Urban Anthro- household and in the labour market. Other studies support pology, Special Issue, Vol.20, our findings and provide an important analysis that points in No.1, pages 1-13; Murphy, Arthur the same direction.(1) We depend, therefore, on information from (1992), “Crisis and change in a a few, highly relevant studies conducted in several Mexican cit- regional city: the case of Oaxaca, ies. The changes described here are part of a general pattern Mexico”, paper prepared for the that has been analyzed from different perspectives, by different conference “Socio-Demographic scholars, in diverse urban contexts. It is interesting too that Effects of the 1980s Economic Crisis in Mexico”, Institute of Latin the Mexican case is not unique with regard to the impacts which American Studies, University of the neoliberal economic model has had on the way in which Texas at Austin, Austin, April 23- people reacted to increasing poverty and the lack of subsidies, 25. price rises and the difficulties of making ends meet in their al- ready weak domestic economies. There are many studies con- 2. See for instance: Ortega, ducted in other Latin American cities which shed light on the Eugenio and Ernesto Tironi social responses which the economic crisis has produced in other (1988), Pobreza en Chile, Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo, cities of the region. The changes implemented at the household Santiago de Chile; Duarte, Isis level in Guadalajara, can easily find support in the evidence (1988), “Crisis, familia y provided by other Latin American scholars.(2) participación laboral de la mujer Economic restructuring implied economic and social costs. en la República Dominicana”, The overall deterioration of economic conditions which charac- paper presented at the 37th terized the 1980s, produced a series of changes that, at the Annual Latin American Confer- level of households, had to be implemented in order to cushion ence Demography of Inequality in Contemporary Latin America, the impact of the economic crisis. Households had to be re- University of Florida, Gainsville, structured too, and most of the social responses to austerity Florida, February 22; Schkolnik, and economic policies took place within the household. This is Mariana and Berta Teitelboim what Benería(3) and González de la Rocha(4) have independently (1988), Pobreza y Desempleo en called “the privatization of the crisis”. Poblaciones: La Otra Cara del Modelo Neoliberal, Programa Economía del Trabajo, Colección Temas Sociales, 2, Santiago; II. SOCIAL CHANGE AND POVERTY DURING Singer, Paul (1985), Reparticao IMPORT SUBSTITUTION INDUSTRIALIZATION da Renda: Pobres y Ricos o Regime Militar, Jorge Sahar, Río DURING IMPORT SUBSTITUTION industrialization, which is de Janeiro, second edition; generally understood to comprise the four decades starting in McFarren, Wendy (1992), “The politics of Bolivia’s economic 1940, Mexico’s economy grew at an average of 6 per cent per crisis: survival strategies of year and succeeded in creating two new social classes: the ur- displaced tin-mining households” ban middle-class and the new working-class.(5) The latter was a and Safa, Helen and Peggy part of “the urban popular sector”, since its members changed 58 Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 7, No. 1, April 1995 MEXICO Antrobus (1992), “Women and firms, sectors and occupations frequently and its families had the economic crisis in the Carib- workers in different work positions and types of organization. bean” in Benería, Lourdes and Its members also intermarried within it, lived within it and shared Shelley Feldman (editors), Unequal Burden: Economic many of its challenges for survival in new, under-equipped ur- (6) Crises, Persistent Poverty and ban environments. Women’s Work, Westview Press, It was nonetheless distinctive. By 1978, at least half of the Boulder; Hardy, Clarissa (1989), new Mexican working-class engaged in manufacturing had La Ciudad Escindida (los proble- reached, or surpassed, wage levels whereby one worker was mas nacionales y la Región able to support a family(7) and had achieved basic social secu- Metropolitana), Sociedad Editora rity provisions for health care and retirement. e Impresora Alborada, S.A., Santiago; and Fortuna and The urban middle-class expanded even more rapidly, and Prates (1989), “Informal sector benefited even more from that model of development. The versus informalized labor number of white collar positions increased far more rapidly than relations in Uruguay” in A. Portes, the number of direct manufacturing positions. This occurred M. Castells and L. Benton not only in public administration, social services, finance, com- (editors), The Informal Economy: merce and other modern services, but also in the manufactur- Studies in Advanced and Less ing sector whose modernization meant growth in the number of Advanced Economies, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. non-manual occupations and the emergence