ABSTRACT
The introduction of neoliberal policies in Mexico has heightened social and economic inequality as their impacts have been greater in less developed agricultural regions that suffer the consequences of greater distances from markets, reduced availability of capital, and weak infrastructure. The development of these contradictions has brought with it different forms of resistance. In this chapter, we offer an analysis of the consequences that the implementation of Neoliberalism have engendered in Mexico and the manner in which local groups have resisted the penetration of forms of intensive industrial agriculture. The analysis centers on the case of a region in the state of Chiapas in Southern Mexico that is characterized by a poor and poorly diversified economy, peasant agriculture, maize production, and also the presence of recent processes of transnationalization of agri-food production. Highlighted are the ways in which subordinate actors create margins of action and establish daily initiatives to survive and deal with different scales and sites of power. These forms of opposition include the principles and practices of agroecology, conservation of agrodiversity, and the recovery of the food model. The limitations of these different forms of resistance are also examined.
