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Accepted Paper:
Hass avocado growers and the struggle for a fair price. Class, value and the commons.
Denisse Román-Burgos
(University of Aberdeen)
This paper will equire if a common political ground can be built in a region where access to land is differentiated, and the Hass avocado trees, which are imagined as the commons, exist nowdays only in private property
Paper long abstract:
In 2016 Hass avocado growers from the Mexican state of Michoacan mobilised to demand export companies a fair price for their produce. For two weeks they stopped harvesting fruit in an attempt of intervening the supply and therefore to rise its prices. This came to be known as the Hass avocado grower’s movement.
Whilst identifying themselves as a movement of equals against a common enemy brought together a large number of people, class differences and historical inequalities complicate the narrative. By using ethnographic material that will show how class shapes different types of Hass avocado growers and therefore production value varies from one grower to the other, this paper will discuss these how material conditions of reproduction shaped the movement and other political strategies promoted by its leaders.
The Mexican state of Michoacan is the world’s largest Hass avocado growing region. This industry dates from the 1960s, but was propelled by the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. The core of its production lays on lands that were collectively held during most of the twentieth century, however this regime was dismantled and transformed into private property by state reforms in the 1990s. This paper will equire if a common political ground can be built in a region where access to land is differentiated, and the Hass avocado trees, which are imagined as the commons, exist nowdays only in private property.