Small farming community successfully struggles to preserve its way of life against the powerful forces of neo-liberalism.

• Author: Kennis, Andrew C.
• Position: Thinking Economically - San Salvador Atenco, Mexico

San Salvador Atenco, Mexico. Not more than a year ago, the town of San Salvador Atenco could be described as a small quiet farming community with an aging population. Streetside cockfights and grilled corn-on-the-cob were staples in the pueblo (community) that brandished no more than one restaurant, scores of unfinished homes and narrow allies that often lead to vacant lots.

Atenco is encircled by farming land that has head-high fields of corn and copper-colored beans. This is what residents found themselves fighting to preserve immediately after an announcement was made by the federal government that their land would be expropriated to make way for a multibillion dollar project to build a new airport to service nearby Mexico City (just 18 miles south of Atenco). And this is what transformed the small faming community of Atenco into something more profound than a mere unknown and quiet rural town on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Soft-spoken and modest corn famers became political spokesmen who were in demand by the national Mexican press and machetes that had in prior times had only been used for the demands of farming became an important symbol in marches. Lives were put on the line in battles to defend the right to protest where demands were voiced to preserve land that in some cases, was inherited for three generations, dating back to the land reforms won after the Mexican revolution.

After a number of hospitalizations, over a dozen arrests, a hostage crisis, an occupation of a major highway, many rallies and a mass march in Mexico City and even after suffering a fatality, the residents of Atenco finally were assured that they would not have their land taken away from them after an official government announcement canceling the plans to expropriate their land.

A virtual rebellion

Mexico City's current airport, the 91 year-old Benito Juarez International Airport, is running at full capacity, as it only has one runway for incoming and outgoing flights. As a result, President Vicente Fox's government had approved plans to build a six-runway, $2.3 billion airport that would gobble up much of San Salvador Atenco's and other surrounding communities' farming land. In October 2001, a federal expropriation ruling offered villagers about 60 cents a square yard, roughly $2,600 an acre.

Following the announcement of the plans and the subsequent ruling, immediate protests and marches were organized. Atenco campesinos marched with rusty machetes during impassioned rallies and marches.

"We are right, and that's why we will win in the court of public opinion," said Pedro Virato, who owns a butcher shop that he said he would never sell and is located smack dab in the middle of the area where the...