By Monday, the prolonged temporada de lluvias (rainy season) that was still blessing his chayote field had given Nando Flores a near-permanent grin. Nando is a campesino whose livelihood depends to good extent on a variety of agricultural pursuits. Though the year’s hefty corn harvest was finished early in October, a number of farmers and ranchers had planted chayote, a late rainy season crop that thrives on, but recently has seldom received, late October moisture. Still, vine-climbing chayote demands a lot of work: an elementary short-posted two- or three-wire support, plus a lot of irrigating. And because of current low prices, many campo families were reluctant to plant chayote this year. But those who did got an unexpected late-season gift of nourishing rains.
Once again you are hearing the ancient saying: “Full milpas mean a big spoon.” For when chayote are plentiful they constitute a mainstay for all three daily meals in many homes. For Nando and his family — who belong to an extensive family, which the word “extended,” in its shrunken modern usage, is inadequate — the versatile green fruit/vegetable both fills empty stomachs and provides rich amounts of amino acids and Vitamin C.
For Nando and his wife Alma, and their eight kids, are not members of that portion of Mexicans suddenly being touted as cheerily enlarging the Republic’s middle class.
For one thing that term’s inexactitude makes it notoriously slippery. True particularly among folks who are not middle class, but aspire to that economic ranking, as well as those survey-takers constantly wrestling with that term. This has become true in the United State as well, as former members of this ranking have experienced steep falls.
In Mexico more than half of the population is traditionally accustomed to being termed “poor.” Many folks, especially in their own self-estimation, cluster at the edge dividing poor from middle class. Often this is a psychological divide, some of it defined by real economic indicators. In recent times it was fancifully defined by the year and make of the vehicle(s) a person or family “owned” — a vehicle that is slowly, sometimes unsuccessfully, being paid off. More recently, it has to do with a family’s children advancing to any kind of university. For the financial battle to do this can be awesome, for many. And there are millions of Mexican families that cannot afford to even begin that daunting encounter.
Nando and Alma’s oldest son, Neto, at 19 is a very bright young man, quick to learn, and a non-complaining worker. Thus, he is an excellent worker. He has the drive and smarts to move on to college. But his family cannot function without his income. Several people have offered to help send him to college, but the family cannot afford his missing salary. And university is more expensive than some of his wanna-be benefactors understand. So instead, Neto is being tutored in English (his school did not offer English until a year ago). Another North American is giving him free math lessons. Neto takes these classes three days a week after work.
Mexicans are enamored with middle class sub-classification: lower middle class, mid-middle class, and upper middle class. A Washington Post Mexican correspondent in September reported that “While the nation is steadily becoming more prosperous, competitive and middle class, about half of all Mexicans still live in poverty. And the slightest change — just a few pennies in the cost of tortillas, beans, cooking oil, gasoline, (electricity) and eggs — can send shudders through the population.” This summer’s bird flu epidemic wrecked the egg industry, and single-handedly drove up the national inflation rate. Once egg prices began rising, many other food prices — especially high-protein foods — went up also. As usual, the poor, now accustomed to this relatively cheap source of protein, was hurt most. Especially the urban poor, who once raised chickens in back yards, dirt streets, on house and apartment roofs, practices now prohibited, even in many relatively small pueblos.The Flores family knew a scientist (a friend of a distant cousin) in Guadalajara who agreed to have samples of their good-sized flock of chickens tested; luckily, no evidence of the flu was found. But some eleven million chickens were slaughtered and the price of eggs doubled. Eggs were a sign of being seen as affording a minor middle-class habit. Not long ago, most of the food the poor consumed came from their own fields or corrales (back yards). Certainly, they ate beans and tortillas in lieu of more expensive eggs, unless they raised chickens themselves, though even then both the eggs and eventually the chickens were primarily products which they sold.
The Flores family are farmers and ranchers, and they sell most of what they raise. They live amidst the many branched Hernandez Ruiz clan, among whom a great deal of trading takes place, as well as dong business at a near small pueblo. To such adamantly rural folk, despite an inclination “to be middle class” for status reasons, that term signifies people who cannot do basic life-demanding things for themselves. This is not a prejudice. Prejudices are most often born out of psychosis or simply errant and mindless judgement. Yet these folks see and admit that better educated people can do many things that baffle them. Many of these things are good, meaning useful, often even helpful to the less fortunate. But a great many they view as foolish, childish or dangerous.
They are people whose fundamental survival instincts are frugality and a mistrust of government officials at whatever level. They’ve seen even relatives fall into corrupt behavior once they become associated with official trickery and thievery. People existing on thin resources are by habit wary of government agencies — a product of decades of experience. Some time ago, such folks foresaw increases in inflation.
This past Tuesday, Agustin Carstens, director general of the nation’s central bank, Banco de Mexico, said that if inflation “does not cool ... (it) threatens future expectations for consumer prices.” Though different people seem to have different ideas about inflation, the government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) said that the annual inflation rate rose 4.77 percent in September, the highest in 30 months.
Underemployment, a staggering inequality in the distribution of wealth and resources, along with monopolies, oligopolies, and an economic policy with no social objective, will place 60 million Mexicans below the poverty line by the end of the year. So says economist Jose Luis de la Cruz. He is the director of the Center for Research for the Economy and Business at the Mexico State campus of Monterrey Tec. He explained that while Mexico’s macroeconomic figures are “positive,” they do not mean that growth has resulted in a reduction of poverty. From 2006 to 2010, he told Spain’s Agencia EFE, some 12.2 million people fell below the poverty line, while in the last two years another 2.5 million more Mexicans joined them. De la Cruz also reported that those living in extreme poverty grew 44.2 percent between 2006 and 2010. At the same time, prices for staple foods were slugged by high inflation in the past year. By July of this year, double-digit increases hit prices for corn,16.6 percent; rice,11.4 percent; beef, 16.2 percent; eggs,19.3 percent; tomatoes, 26 percent; and a Mexican basic — beans — were up an stunning 56 percent. “This means that more and more people no longer can acquire Mexico’s basic food basket,” which the Mexican government established as minimum needed for a healthy family diet.
While Mexico’s mythical jobless rate (there has been repeated example that no bureaucratic agency can accurately get hold of that number) remains fairly low; some 4.3 million workers are classified as underemployed, and 14.2 million work in the underground economy. Only 16.9 million workers have benefits such as health insurance, some 15 million don’t have an employment contract. Some 11 million work for themselves, some as street vendors.
Nando and Alma Flores and their offspring are free of many of these burdens, as are most of their extended Rancho Santa Cruz family. Since 1994’s “peso error,” an economic crash that tore the Mexican economy and thousands of families apart, the Santa Cruz folks have lived by the rule of “lessons learned.” Therefore, this extended family, together, has sought to retain as much autonomy as possible. December 19, 1994, the day of the crash, older leaders of the clan began pulling back from the larkish days of reckless credit fostered by both business and government, encouraging every Mexican who could be persuaded, to charge purchases to their easily obtained credit cards, to borrow from banks and every kind of agency that would lend money. It was a mindless country-wide catastrophe. Banks ended up taking possession of homes, businesses, vehicles, private planes, farms, ranches, litters of pigs, flocks of geese, herds of horses and cattle, tractors, plows. None of which they really knew what to do with.
The Hernandez Ruizes were hit badly, but managed to retain their sprawling mountain ranch and all their land. But they had to sell all their stock, chickens, geese; all their ranch and farm machinery. Friends eventually stepped in to help them recover. Yet for some time they lived a raw rural life, seldom using electricity, depending on what they were able to raise, and trying hard not to buy anything. Lessons from that time still mark the way they live. They are well-versed in caution; their family maxim, think before you act, is so simple that to some it doesn’t seem to cover their shattering descent into poverty and the hard road back — a journey that has become indelible, dramatically instructive family lore.