[Culture and durability]. / Culture et durabilite.

PIP: The concept of sustainability is usually defined according to specific socioeconomic contexts and is vague in application, but nevertheless essential for defining longterm objectives. This work seeks to demonstrate that the place of sustainability in a development model depends on the cultural values behind abstract ideas and on the perceptions and interests of different social and political groups regarding the environment more than it does on the biophysical exchanges between societies and the natural environment. The idea of sustainable development reflects a new political will to continue to live on earth in the same fashion as at present, but new forms on international organization, government, and commerce more conducive to sustainable development have not yet clearly emerged. Other concepts used in social and anthropological analysis, such as social reproduction, appear relevant in considering sustainability. Sustainable development should be analyzed and applied at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. Demographic growth is a determining factor in use of natural resources in today's world, but its dysfunctionality at the macro level contrasts with its continuing functionality at the family level in many poor rural communities. An exploratory analysis of the living conditions of the natives of the tropical forest of southeast Mexico, the Lacandon, suggests how different populations understand the concept of sustainability and manage their vital resources accordingly. The Lacandon tropical forest of 1.4 million hectares had lost only 6% of its original cover through the early 1960s. But beginning in 1963, the Mexican government, as part of the Alliance for Progress program, began a colonization project that eventually led to disorganized migration and uncontrolled harvesting of tropical woods in the forests of Chiapas. A settlement program begun in the area nearest the Guatemalan border to control the movements of Guatemalan refugees and guerillas in the area led to massive deforestation. Although deforestation in the Lacandon forest has been prohibited, it continues to occur as new arrivals hoping for quick profits harvest anything of value they find. The major groups involved in the preservation or destruction of the Lacandon forest were the Indian and mestizo inhabitants, the opportunists in search of quick wealth, cattle ranchers, functionaires, and the urban populations of nearby Palenque. Although all groups believed that the forest had been created by a God, they differed as to its purpose. Some felt it existed to be exploited by humans in whatever fashion they desired, others felt a responsibility to protect the forest and its life. The natives appeared to have a more "sustainable" ideal of ecological protection, but in fact their rapid population growth represented an acute threat to the forest's resources.^ieng

The Bellagio Declaration: overcoming hunger in the 1990's.

PIP: In November 1989, 23 leading hunger experts met in Bellagio, Italy, issues a document called the "Bellagio Declaration: Overcoming Hunger in the 1990s." The report lists 4 achievable goals: eliminate famine deaths; end hunger in half of the world's poorest households; reduce by half malnutrition of mothers and small children; and eradicate iodine and vitamin A deficiencies. Famine deaths can be eliminated by setting up early-warning systems and longer-term relief objectives. The only remaining obstacle is how to prevent warring nations from blocking food deliveries and destroying food. Hunger can be eliminated in half the world's poor households by giving the poor access to resources and credit, rehabilitating degraded ecosystems, using sustainable farming, and using existing markets to distribute food equitably. Malnutrition can be halved by sustained breastfeeding, and supplementation of food and micronutrients. Iodine and vitamin A deficiencies can be eliminated by giving iodized oil injections, vitamin A capsules and iodized salt. Ways of dealing with obstacles such as population, deforestation, soil and water shortages, pollution, global warming and capital deficits in the South are discussed. There is hope that these goals can be attained because of the outbreak of peace and democracy, freeing up substantial portions of the 1 trillion US dollars spent on defense; abatement of feat of worldwide economic collapse; and evolution of a worldwide logistic system to provide emergency food aid.^ieng

[Peasant women and agrarian life in Latin America]. / Les femmes paysannes et la crise agraire en Amerique Latine.

PIP: The great agrarian transformation in favor of capitalist agriculture that has occurred over the past few decades in the dependent countries of Latin America has modified the traditional production of foodstuffs, the mode of work, and the social reproduction of peasant women belonging to the social groups with the lowest levels of income. Policies of centralized industrialization which have excluded agricultural manpower have affected Latin American women, accounting for their greater tendency to migrate to cities. Migrant peasant women participate in 3 principal characteristics of the dependent development of Latin America: the rural exodus, the burgeoning of the tertiary sector, and marginality. The consequences of unequal capitalist agrarian development in the formation of a female rural proletariat have not been well studies, resulting in a tendency to disregard the heterogeneity of situations in which peasant women find themselves and to confuse 3 aspects of their condition as members of rural families, as workers, and as women. As family members, peasant women find family income declining, leading to increases in their unpaid labor time and declining standards of nutrition and health. The agrarian economies of Latin America and the Caribbean show a certain homogeneity in the sexual division of labor. Their historical development after their insertion as colonial regions in the world economy produced 3 well-defined forms of agricultural economy: haciendas, plantations, and peasant communities, each with its own forms of family and kinship relationships which reflected adjustments between sexual division of labor and production or manpower needs. Concerning the participation of women, there are curerntly 3 specific types of agricultural production characteristic of Latin America and the Caribbean: peasant family units usually belonging to communities in which women primarily perform the tasks of "reproduction", rural family units which rely on the external labor market for a large part of their consumption, and family units or independent women who rely entirely on the labor market for survival. Recent studies have shown that the subordination of women antedates capitalism, even in situations such as indigenous communities where women have more favorable positions than in fully capitalist societies. In all cases, women are responsible for the unpaid work, but their participation in production activities depends on the patterns of manpower recruitment and the social position of the household. Women replace men when shortages of male workers occur, but men never replace women when shortages of female workers occur. Census figures demonstrate that there is no linear and homogeneous process of proletarianization of displaced peasant women. The most usual forms are working as agricultural laborers, seasonsl or temporaty migration for agricultural work, irregular or temporary salaried work, or petty commerce.^ieng

Women and development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lessons from the seventies and hopes for the future.

PIP: The early implicit assumptions that industrialization or, generally, modernization should automatically improve the condition of women have been challenged more and more by research and statistical data. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the theory which held that the cultural assimilation of ethnic groups of Indian and African descent into the national Hispanic or Portuguese cultures implied an improvement in the condition of women has been challenged through ethnographic and historical research. Women in closed corporate communities may have higher status, greater participation in authority, and more support from their children than those in open mestizo communities, where excessive alcohol consumption and abusive sexual relations form an integral part of the psychosocial complex of "machismo." New research has dealt with the forced integration of black women and Indian women, as concubines of the dominant white men, as a mechanism of "mestizaje," i.e., mixing of the population, against which women had no legal or "de facto" defense. Such abuse of women, masked by racial and cultural prejudice, continues in many backward rural areas in Latin America. In discussions of the peasantry and of rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean, women had been largely ignored because agriculture was conceptualized as an exclusively male activity. This androcentric view is reflected in census categories that make the component of women's labor in agriculture invisible or unimportant. Consequently, the statistical percentages have always been unrealistically low in most countries. Detailed observations and surveys conducted during the last decade have shown, to the contrary, that peasant women work longer hours than men and are more liable to increase their time and work load to offset pauperization. The research of Deere and Leon (Colombia) as well as that of other women in different countries of the region confirms that women's subordination precedes capitalism and is further used by this system of production for its only ends. Priorities in the Western feminist movements in the 1970s have been equal pay for equal work and sexual and psychological autonomy. In the 3rd world the priorities have been the right to adequate employment and to primary services such as schools, drinking water, housing, and medical services. The main strategy for women in Latin America and the Caribbean has been to participate alongside men in political movements seeking to attain national sovereignty or to challenge economic inequalities, both internally and internationally, as a precondition to the setting up of women's demands as a gender group. The research makes it clear that dependent capitalist development brings an added burden of poverty and subordination to women. Strategies to advance women must be assessed within their particular context.^ieng

The rural exodus in Mexico and Mexican migration to the United States.

"During the 1950s, labor conditions in the United States attracted Mexican migrants, mostly from rural areas, in sharply fluctuating patterns of active recruitment, laissez-faire or repatriation. Because [the rural exodus and migration to the United States] have varied simultaneously and because they are interrelated, it has been assumed that the rural exodus in Mexico generally explains the flow of migrants across the border to the United States. This article argues that they must be analyzed instead as two distinct movements. Data presented show that most of the migrants created by the prevailing conditions in Mexican rural villages settle within Mexico and that only specific types of migrants are attracted over the border."