Searching for Modern Mexico - book

The title of the book is "Searching for Modern Mexico: Dispatches from the front lines of the new global economy", written by Nathaniel Parish Flannery

Flannery gives a first hand account of three Mexican states Chiapas, Oaxaca and Michoacan which are marginalized in the globalized economy of the country. He has stayed in these states and observed the economies of coffee in Chiapas, mezcal in Oaxaca and avocados in Michoacan. 

The indigenous people, who account for over one fifth of the total population Mexico, continue to suffer from poverty, backwardness and inequality. This is the main problem in Chiapas and Oaxaca, which have the second and third largest indigenous population. 

One should, of course, give credit to the government’s conditional cash transfer programme “prospera” which provides real relief to many poor families. Mexico was, in fact, a pioneer in Latin America, with the conditional cash transfer program started in 1997, much before the famous Bolsa Familia scheme started by President Lula in 2003.

Tancitaro in Michoacan, is the avocado capital of the world, exporting a million dollars of avocado to US every day. Obviously, the cartels want a share of this revenue and attack the growers and the business owners. The Federal, state and municipal police have not been able to provide safety to the avocado growers or the citizens. So, the avocado growers have  organized their own militias who have managed to beat the cartels and keep them away. 

To protect themselves from the cartels, the Tancitaro militias have acquired arms which are as powerful as the military grade weapons of the cartels. The author has omitted to mention that these arms have been smuggled into Mexico from US where the gun shops in the border states do a roaring business of arms sales. The US, which publicizes the Mexican drug trafficking, does nothing to stop the trafficking of guns which kill more Mexicans than the drugs kill Americans.

Flannery has highlighted the following challenges for modernization: monopolies existing in different sectors (examples:Telecom, banking, beer, bread, and TV) keep prices high while at the same time preventing competition from new entrants into the business; the teachers union which is fighting a fierce battle to keep up its corrupt system of ghost teachers and poor teaching practices and evaluation; the cartels which hold the whole country to ransom by its brutal criminal violence.

The book is one more useful source to understand Mexico which is in the process of modernization, struggling against the traditional and new challenges. Instead of a macro approach, the author has chosen to tell the stories of people at the bottom selling tacos and beer and growing coffee and avocados. Flannery, an expert on Mexico and Latin America, has written many articles and books.