U.S. EXPLOITATION IN MEXICO and the continued concentration of agricultural lands has actually left an increasing number of the rural population without lands of their own, forcing them into the wage,labor market. More than half of the Mexican labor force is still engaged in agricultural activities, and over half of those are landless laborers (24). Between 1940 and 1960, while the total agricultural labor force grew by 60%, the number of landless laborers increased by 74% (25). But the growth of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector has fallen far short of the growth of the agricultural work force. By the mid-60s, there were about two million permanently -unemployed farm workers, and another two or three million faclng seasonal unemployment (26). These men and women have become Mexico's reserve army of unemployed, thousands of them migrating to the cities ·in search of industrial employment. ln Mexico's northern Pacifie coast area, where 1/3 of ail the country's irrigated .lands are found and wage ,laborers represent nearly 2/3 of the agricultural workforce (27), the penetration of U.S. agribusiness has further aggravated unemployment. During World War 11,the vegetable growers of California and Arizona's lmperial Valley - the same who fought to establish the bracero program - moved into Mexico's northwest coast area to produce winter vegetables for the U.S. market. ln this area of high unemployment, the large U.S. companies have turned the vegetable industry into " one of the most mechanized of the area " with an "increasing trend " toward use of capital, even on the smaller farms (28). For Mexico as a whole, expenditures on farm machinery grew from 6% of the total cost of agricultural production in 1940 to 11% by 1960,while expenditures on wage labor dropped from 22% to only 1% ,(29). Clearly the unbalanced capitalist development of agriculture 24. Ibid. p. 245. 25. Ibid. 26. Moises T. de la Pena, El Pueblo y su tlerra, mito y realidad de la reforma agraria en Mexico, p. 721, Mexico, 1964; and Jorge Martlnez Rios, • Los campeslnos mexicanos: perspectivas en el proceso de la marginalizacion • in Jorge Basutro, et. al., El Perfil de Mexico en 1980, Vol. 3, p. 11; Mexico, 1972. 27. Stavenhagen, p. 245. 28. A. B. Conrad, in The Packer, Jan. 19, 1974, p. 6B. 29. Jorge Martinez ,Rios, op. cit. p. 11. 89
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