Neoliberal Ideology and Rural Changes in Mexico

This Book shows some of the ways in which neoliberal ideology has been used in Mexico to change their rural economy. The author employed different methodologies to examine how these changes in the rural Mexican economy have occurred by focusing on neoliberalism: philosophically, politically, and in practice. The author argues that Milton Friedman influenced Mexico philosophically due to the timing of his impact over economic thought. Friedman¿s power coincided with economically foreign trained technocratic elite that began to wield power over the Mexican economy in the early 1980s. The technocratic elite worked side by side with international lending organizations like the World Bank to put into practice some of the prescriptions neoliberal ideology proposed for changing the rural Mexican economy. One of these changes highlighted in this thesis is the ending of the Mexican stateowned enterprise, National Company of Popular Subsistence (La Compania Nacional de Subsistencias Populares, CONASUPO). Finally, the author presents his own research on two cooperatives in Mexico who may hold the key to empowering rural farmers the ability to subsist in the context of a changed rural Mexican