Victor Suárez Carrera

Víctor Suárez has developed a model of rural marketing enterprises that establishes an economically viable space for Mexican grain producers to compete in the global market.

Víctor Suárez has developed a rural marketing system in which Mexico's dispersed and disappearing campesinos or small farmers can compete within the highly competitive globalizing economy and maintain an economically viable agricultural life. He has organized 70,000 basic grain producers into rural marketing enterprises in half of Mexico's 32 states. Together they build the tools and the framework to challenge a monopoly of politically powerful buyers. The system develops conditions of efficiency and professional management and establishes new relationships among the producers, who participate democratically in the whole process of production, marketing and benefits.
In contrast to many critics of globalizing markets, Víctor has focused his efforts on accepting the reality of a global economy. He has done the work of creating specific mechanisms for small-scale farmers to accept the challenge and create a new economic space for themselves within a marketplace dominated by mass production. It is the only marketing option of its kind for grain producers in Mexico's peasant sector.

Current modes of international trade liberalization exclude Mexican small-scale producers of basic grains because they can't compete with big agribusiness, and their local markets are disappearing. The same phenomenon is occurring worldwide, especially in the developing countries. It is unlikely that those unprepared to face this new reality will survive as farmers.

The current structure of the global marketplace is pushing Mexican farmers to abandon the production of grains because it cannot compete with large-scale subsidized agribusiness in the United States, Canada and Europe (which, at least in the U.S. is depleting the water tables). This analysis mandates a system that depends on imports for national consumption requirements and promotes exports of other mass-produced crops such as fruits and vegetables. In consequence, domestic production of corn and other basic grains disintegrates and with it the agricultural system that sustains rural life in Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of farmers are being expelled from their lands and towns, which results in increasing unemployment, poverty and food insecurity for the majority of Mexicans. In the process of accommodation to nearly fifteen years of structural adjustment and the agricultural provisions of NAFTA, the government has made a priority of developing the export-oriented agribusiness sector and discontinued its policy of supporting rural agricultural employment through a land distribution system based on ejidos, or communal property rights, established in the 1910 revolution. As a result the ejidatarios and other members of the peasant sector have no access to marketing support, technical assistance or credit.

The Mexican government intervenes only marginally for the campesinos with transitory assistance mainly administered through the Solidarity Program, a populist program for civil projects. While rural citizens' organizations have voiced a deep criticism of the globalization model, they have been unable to develop new viable alternatives to save their vanishing livelihoods. Some have simply opted to wait for the economical and political atmosphere to change. Meanwhile, in 1996 Mexico imported 43 percent of its food; in 1992 the figure was twenty percent. Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1995, the domestic production of food has fallen by 29 percent while 2.2 million Mexicans have lost jobs.

In 1995 Víctor established a network he named the National Association of Rural Farmer's Marketing Enterprises, comprised of rural marketing enterprises in sixteen states of Mexico. There is a range of peasant producers: the communal landowners, ejidatarios, small private owners and settlers. He targeted a sector whose conditions gave them the best chances to survive, not the poorest: before globalization and NAFTA it did have access to markets. There are three major strategic emphases to his work. The Association develops technical and administrative support, which includes negotiation of prices and search for new markets. In addition, it strengthens producers' enterprises internally, through support for sustainable agriculture, product certification and management training to develop efficiency, profitability and competitiveness; the training is conducted in an egalitarian and participatory manner that also builds the farmers' citizenship skills. Finally Víctor has developed a powerful information and communication service for the rural marketing enterprises: he provides a weekly bulletin that includes market information on all basic grains and policy changes relevant to his constituency. His bulletin is now recognized as the most reliable and comprehensive resource in this arena and is being adopted by large private enterprises and government ministries.

With these complementary strategies Víctor is now consolidating the rural market enterprise model and the National Association of Rural Farmer's Marketing Enterprises as an institution that will include nearly 200 farmers by 1997 and by the year 2000 will be able to handle 60 percent of the rural marketing in Mexico through farmers' direct participation. He is having a quick social impact because he is offering an option that nobody else has offered to grain producers. He is training members of the Association to analyze government agricultural policies and lobby with constructive proposals; and he is building a long-term network that includes small farmers internationally.

As a child, Víctor developed a particular boldness and dared to take unconventional actions. For example, he changed from his elementary school into a new one without his parents' consent; and, rather than follow in the academic footsteps of his older brother, he obtained on his own a scholarship for a private boarding school for agricultural studies. There he became both the students' representative and a teachers' representative, because he became a philosophy teacher while he was still a student. He left his professional studies in order to found the University of Indian Communities of Oaxaca and Chiapas. He decided to enter the university himself and became a classmate of the Indians who attended it.

After working in Indian communities of Chiapas and other regions of the country where people live in conditions of extreme poverty, Víctor became committed to these groups and to the processes of agricultural production. He could identify the problems associated with marketing as obstacles for improving the producers' conditions. His commitment also comes from the support and solidarity he received from his friends and work companions through both good and difficult times.