The Mexican countryside is beginning to abandon the idea of resuming the roadblocks with which traffic in Mexico collapsed weeks ago. Claudia Sheinbaum’s government reached an agreement in the early hours of Thursday with farmers and hauliers to deal with threats of further road closures over the Christmas period. The Secretary of Agriculture, Julio Berdegué, announced, together with representatives of the countryside, the agreements to resolve crop prices, one of the great concerns of Mexican agriculture. Berdegué said “there is a commitment” to dispelling dark clouds regarding possible new road closures.
The Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela, highlighted a few hours later that the Executive had held meetings with representatives of the two sectors. Icela explained that in the coming days there will be technical tables with producers, which will include information and doubts about programs and aid to the sector. “Of course, there is still a lot to do,” the secretary acknowledged.
Asked if these agreements would guarantee freedom of transit at Christmas, Icela took a dig at the protesters: “They signed this. But this is the third time they have signed it.” The head of the agency once again called for dialogue to resolve the problem: “What we are saying is that a civil servant serves better and with more pleasure if there is no blockade. We are civil servants and by obligation we must serve. But our point is that the population is not affected.” Berdegué was more optimistic during his speech, assuring that the Executive hopes that citizens will be able to spend the holidays “in complete tranquility” and that there will be “total free movement throughout the Republic”.
These are not the only agreements reached with the Sheinbaum government. Representatives of the carriers and the Interior Ministry also eased tensions. Interior Undersecretary César Yañez summed it up in an early morning conference, during which he did not elaborate further: “Any threat of blockade is deactivated.” The undersecretary described the path they traveled during the meeting, which lasted about eight hours: “There will be no mobilization. The best of all is that the issues related to security are resolved, the issues of improving agricultural products, many coincidences between their requests and what the Secretariat and the Government have raised regarding agriculture.”.
It’s the latest chapter in a back-and-forth of tensions between Mexico’s countryside and the government, embroiled in discussion since late October, when they began blocking the country’s roads to demand answers to low crop prices and an attack on insecurity. But also to discuss the water law, a regulation which fueled the conflict. The center of this controversy was that with the regulation, water use concessions can no longer be transmitted between individuals, a change that would require returning to the State so that the National Water Commission (Conagua) can reallocate them.
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