Vinculando.org: Revista electrónica latinoamericana en Desarrollo Sustentable

At the end of the 1970 the first attempts began for the coordination of a national peasant movement, and from this decade onwards the peasant struggles, previously isolated by regions or levels of strength, became of national character. The fight for land and the formation of the big independent peasant centrals were generalized throughout the country. At that time the peasant movement was consolidated as a social phenomenon, constituted by the convergence of social and regional struggles (Martinez, 1991: 47; Rubio, 1996: 113).

This work considers the independent movement as the actor which, because of its political autonomy and its lack of privileged ties with the state, embodies claims and needs of the majority of the rural workers and the agricultural sector itself. Some peasant organisations from the autonomous movement are mentioned here, due to their current social and political relevance in the peasant and indigenous movement of rural Mexico.