Bulldozer development in Mexico

The Mexican government is in a developmentalist rush. It might end up hurting the places it’s trying to help.

The consequences of an unregulated market

Early in his tenure president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was criticised for celebrating the ancestral methods of mezcal production. Opponents claimed that it was this sort of backward attitude that was responsible for Mexico’s lagging economy. 

The president’s opponents seem to have got what they wanted. They perhaps should have been careful what they wished for.

Today the invisible hand of the free market has taken hold of the mezcal industry. The world is more awash with the stuff than ever, with the southern state of Oaxaca being responsible for between 75–93% of the country’s production. Gleaming mezcal factories line the road that cuts through the state’s central valleys. Once wild brushlands are now combed through with evermore rows of agave plantations. 

Industrial mezcal production satisfies a thirsty market at the cost of local biodiversity, including by threatening the local varieties of wild agave that indigenous communities have artisanally crafted into more complex mezcals for generations. 

If the boom gets out of hand locals worry that they’ll be losing more than their local agaves; monocropping can lead to degraded soil and mudslides, and Mexico is not unacquainted with aggressive land grabs from companies keen to cash in on boom times.

The State certainly has a role in mediating the market’s worst instincts, but so far the Mexican government’s track record in this regard has been mixed. One thing is to regulate the market, another is to try to ignore its influence all together.

Expediency and development are the Mexican government’s bywords these days—no matter how much it must steamroll over the environmental and social concerns of the very people it is trying to help.