The conflict between Claudia Sheinbaum’s government and Mexican agriculture remains tense and still without stable agreements. Leaders of the National Front to Save the Mexican Countryside have resumed their push for their demands for fair prices to be met. Images of blocked roads, checkpoints, customs and international bridges at strategic points across the country, which collapsed mobility for weeks and caused multimillion-dollar losses in protest against the new water law approved by Congress, are about to be reborn. Rural leaders are threatening to resume the day of mobilization this Thursday if Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez does not show signs of political will to guarantee fair prices for the harvests of a handful of rural products, including corn, beans, chili peppers, tomatoes, onions, chickpeas, melons, pineapples, lemons and avocados, protesters said.
While farmers have once again stretched the cable of dialogue with the government, the government is downplaying the protest. President Sheinbaum argued this Wednesday that these are groups that do not represent the majority. “Well, just like the peasants, the peasants… They are organizations,” replied the president during her morning conference, when asked about the new threat from the leaders of the front which gives voice to organizations from 25 of the 32 states of the country. The producers’ requests also received an early response from the president. “We support the campaigns as much as we can, with what we can and whatever is necessary that is in our hands,” he said a few hours before the meeting scheduled for this Wednesday evening between Segob and the leaders of the campaigns.
Union leaders accused the government of lacking the political will to agree to the creation of a national food reserve comprising commodities such as corn, beans, wheat, sorghum and soybeans, worth an estimated 100 billion pesos. The proposal aims for the government to purchase crops at fair prices through processes involving private initiative, with the aim of reducing Mexican agriculture’s dependence on public subsidies. “The food reserve is the only resource we have left; that the government begins to collect all the products to have closer control of the market, to have an assessment of how much food is actually there, where it is, who owns it, how it can be distributed, what its value is and how it can arrive at the consumer’s table in the best conditions,” said Eraclio Rodríguez, a corn producer from Chihuahua and former federal representative of the Labor Party, an ally of the ruling Morena party.
The truce agreed upon since their last mobilization was brief. Only a few weeks have passed since the last day of protest that collapsed a good part of the country’s states and relations between agricultural organizations and the Sheinbaum government threaten to reach a boiling point again in the coming hours under a series of demands that they consider inalienable. The demands of “If they do not accept (the food reservation) and do not give us another alternative, we have no choice but to reactivate the protest, closing the roads and borders,” Rodríguez said. According to their plans, they could reactivate the blockages from the early hours of this Thursday, knowing that it is a pressure formula that has given them results. Thanks to this, they managed to have part of their demands included in the discussion and approval of the water law last month. “We have already made our approach, they stayed yesterday (Tuesday) to analyze it to give us a resolution this afternoon and we are waiting; it is they who must resolve, not us,” launched the producer from Chihuahua.
The president did not give much hope to rural leaders, but at the same time admitted that crop prices were falling. “The Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development and Food for Welfare have worked intensively to support the current situation where the price of cereals is low,” he said during his conference on Wednesday. Sheinbaum nonetheless downplayed the lawsuits. “The windows have already been opened for many people so that they can receive the additional support that will be provided in different states: corn, wheat and some other seeds. There will be a table. But there are really very few people who raise this subject; most have been heard”, he defended.
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