Between peasants, workers and clothing merchants. The economic transformation of a municipality of Tlaxcala (Mexico) in the context of globalization

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze how the global economic restructuring of the 1970s transformed the economic activities of the inhabitants of the municipality of Mazatecochco, Tlaxcala (Mexico). They went from an agriculture of subsistence to the production and marketing of garments. In this study, three stages of the community change process are distinguished. In the first one, there is a gradual abandonment of the subsistence agricultural activities due to the scarcity of economic resources of the families. In the second, the textile industry is consolidated as the main source of economic income for the Tlaxcala inhabitants. In the third, the repercussion of the global economic crisis is experienced through the massive dismissal of workers specialized in the textile industry. This change in the economic and labor fields of the local collectivities meant the emergence of new social actors as a response to globalization: clothing merchants. This work is the result of an ethnographic research carried out between 2010-2014 in which the point of view of the social actors who were involved in this economic reorganization is rescued: the peasants, the workers and the clothing merchants.