The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration

Abstract

Contemporary indigenous Zapotec rural villages of the northern sierra region of Oaxaca state exhibit profound transformations in their agricultural strategies. Since the mid-twentieth century, its agricultural lands have suffered a gradual process of abandonment. As a consequence, forest transition is occurring around the villages, and the cultivar portfolio seems to be dominated by cash crops. This article examines these landscape transformations through a multicausal explanatory framework: these mountains have experienced intense outbound migratory processes since the 1980s; the communities have cash available to buy certain labor-intensive crops as a result of the remittances sent back by the migrants; and the area has been recently integrated to road-connected regional markets thanks to an intense development of its infrastructures. This article discusses some the changes experienced by the landscape of the village of Santiago Zoochila (Oaxaca), as a result of the interaction demographic and economic factors (migration, availability of remittances, and market integration).