C H A P T E R 3 Targeting and Conditionalities in Mexico: The End of a Cash Transfer Model? P a b l o Y a n e s Mexico presents a noteworthy persistence in its conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. The federal government’s main program, Oportunidades , is a continuation from the Zedillo administration’s (1994–2000) Progresa, implemented in 1997. The Progresa replaced Solidaridad or Pronasol program from the Carlos Salinas´ government (1988–1994). History was made when Vicente Fox, a member of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), became president in 2000 (2000– 2006). He was the first president in 70 years who was not a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). It was during his term as president (2000–2006) that Oportunidades as Oportunidades/Progresa began. Thus there was continuity between the last PRI government and the first nonPRI government with respect to the main poverty-fighting pro- gram. During the government of Ernesto Zedillo, Progresa operated on a relatively small scale and exclusively in rural communities with high lev- els of poverty. The governments of Vicente Fox and his successor Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) greatly broadened the program but kept its con- ceptual body and fundamental orientation intact. During the administration of these two governments, the coverage provided by Oportunidades reached 5.8 million families with an annual budget of 4.8 billion dollars. On average, each household received a transfer equivalent to 65 dollars a month. The amount of the transfers varies greatly but the maximum that can be granted, when a household includes middle-school children with scholarships, is 203 dollars a month R. L. Vuolo (ed.), Citizen’s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America © Rubén Lo Vuolo 2013 68 PABLO YANES per household. Even if Oportunidades is a large program in absolute terms, it represents a small fraction of the federal government’s budget. Oportunidades is a typical conditional CCT, created to fight the inter- generational transfer of poverty and to promote the accumulation of “human capital” of children and youngsters, under the hypothesis that higher levels of education will create better employment and income in the future. Conditionality and targeting are two of the program’s main charac- teristics. The targeting applies only to households that meet the conditions of poverty defined by the program itself. The conditionality comes into play as the transfers hinge upon the fulfillment of so-called co-responsibilities ( corresponsabilidades ) by beneficiaries. These mainly include that children do not miss more than three days of school per month and that family members attend a medical clinic at least once a month for either checkups or talks on health care. Failure to comply with these conditions results in being dropped from the program and loss of the transfer. Oportunidades is frequently noted as an example of good practices by the multilateral credit organizations. It has been receiving several awards from these organizations and is being held as a model for the world to follow. With this program, Mexico has become, at least in Latin America, an exporter of “social technology.” However, in opposition to the essen- tially positive view of Oportunidades that is prevalent among multilateral credit organizations, international agencies, academic groups, and the program’s own evaluation structure (it is one of the most studied pro- grams in Mexican history), there have been various criticisms against the program. The main critiques focus on the rigid targeting and the low impact that the program has on reducing poverty. With respect to targeting, errors of inclusion and exclusion are high- lighted. Attention is also drawn to the social fragmentation that is produced in communities with very high poverty where there are ben- eficiaries and nonbeneficiaries with minimal differences between them. 1 The well known problems relating to the poverty trap are also noted. The debate around Oportunidades , however, has not included a broader reflection on the usefulness, sense, or implications of condi- tionality. Even so, a small window for broaching the subject opened up in Mexico due to the events of the Sierra Tarahumara in the state of Chihuahua in 2012, where starvation was declared at the beginning of the year amongst the Rarámuri people. Starvation in the SIERRA TARAHUMARA : Conditionality on Trial In 2011, several media outlets reported that 20 thousand indigenous people belonging to the Rarámuri people who had been fed with TARGETING AND CONDITIONALITIES IN MEXICO 69 emergency foodstuffs due to starvation, had earlier been dropped from the Oportunidades program for failing to comply with the conditions. During 2011, 20 percent of the Rarámuri population living in 11 thou- sand locations was dropped from the program. The program’s national coordinator, Salvador Escobedo, remarked in an article in the newspaper Milenio on Feburay 8, 2012 2 : “Yes, they have been dropped as they are not meeting their commitments to their co-responsibilities, because the nearest hospital is a 12 hour walk away and you can’t build a hospital for three families. They also need to walk 12 hours to pick up their food, for us it would take 36 hours to go up.” So, they lost the Oportunidades cash transfers, even though the situa- tion was so dire that they had to be sent food and emergency supplies to overcome starvation, because they could not fulfill the co-responsibilities. This measure was taken because there are no hospitals nearby, they live in scattered settlement patterns and thus, they can’t be provided with ser- vices. They can’t pick up the transfer because they have to walk 12 hours to do so and the institutions are not willing to invest 36 hours in getting it to them. It was precisely in the Sierra Tarahumara, in the town of Batopilas, the second poorest municipality in the country, where, in front of mem- bers of the Rarámuri people, President Felipe Calderón announced, on November 2011, the “bankarization” of the program. This event remains relevant because it means the delivery of a bank card for withdrawing the aid in a region where there are no banks and where according to the pro- gram’s own national coordinator, Rarámuri women (the titular holders of the transfer) must walk at least 12 hours to use the cards. 3 After this announcement, and faced with reality, the program was modified so that withdrawals could be made at Linconsa or Conasupo stores. The matter does not end there. The aforementioned article points out: “They also lack nearby schools (continues saying the National Coordinator). This is very complicated because you can’t change the rules. There is a lot of dispersion in the 17 municipalities where they live, there are almost 11 thousand locations [ . ] the conditions of remoteness in which they live makes it so that they don’t fulfill their co-responsibilities or so that they can’t go and pick up the support, and when they don’t do it for three bimesters, we have to drop them from the program, we’ll probably reinstate them in the coming months, and they won’t leave again.” The Rarámuri failed to comply with the co-responsibilities because the state does not provide the services needed to do so, but this is the Rarámuri’s problem and so they are dropped from the program. They are punished for living in an isolated and remote manner and for not using services that are usually nonexistent, remote, and culturally inappropriate. 70 PABLO YANES In this case, with the demand of co-responsibilites from the under- priviledged and indigenous people, the state seems to have turned the logic of the CCT programs on its head. In this case, the state, without fulfilling its responsibilities, demands that the people, especially poor people, fulfill obligations in exchange for a small cash transfer. Peoples and communities, in this case one of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, are those who must adapt to the institutions, policies, and programs, and not the other way around. This is so because it is assumed that the CCTs are, in addition to being instruments of social control, also tools for an authoritarian pedagogy, where the state instructs the poor to fulfill their obligations, sees to their best interests, teaches them to accumulate human capital, and punishes them for lack of compliance or disobedience. During the early decades of the twentieth century the “Mexican indi- genism” began; a theory stated that indigenous people should be inte- grated and assimilated into the so-called national culture. At that time the expression “headquarters civilizes the Indian” was common; today it seems that the CCT must “civilize the Indians,” giving them educa- tion and making them take care of their health so that, in the dominant vocabulary, they can accumulate human capital. This demonstrates that the official concept of the treatment of indigenous people by the state has barely changed in a century. An apt example of this is the nature of the press release by the government of the state of Chihuahua denying essentially false stories of suicides among the Rarámuri due to starvation. In it, the government states that these stories “are not aware of the idio- syncrasies of the Tarahumara race, ” using a nineteenth-century name for the Rarámuri people that is loaded with disdain. 4 This exposes the fact that the political powers see the recipients of Oportunidades not as right holders but as beneficiaries with obligations, punishable subjects that were not excluded from the program; they aban- doned it. This general characteristic of the program’s design is aggravated in the case of indigenous peoples, where poverty is more concentrated and population dispersed.