U.S. EXPLOITATION IN MEXICO are eating away at their competitlve edge over the Floride growers. But ,given Mexico's rate of inflation, the workers' buylng power is actually lower now than in 1972. Hundreds of familias, unable to find work on the ranches, follow- the cotton trucks down the highway, gathering the flber that blows off the trucks and trying to sell it to middlemen. SINALQÀ TARGET These are the conditions that have produced the wave of land occupations. ln s·inaloa alone there have been 76 land invasions in the past jear, many of which remain unresolved. One recent target in Sinaloa was a small section of the 17,000-acre spread owned in partnership by Nogales, Ariz., distributor James K. Wilson and Mexican grower Benjamin Bustamante. According to the Mexican secretary of agrarian reform, the squatters themselves held long-standing rights under Mexican land reform law to this and two million other acres of Sinaloa land, nonetheless controlled 'by large land owners. One worker on the ranch explained the squatters' desperation after years of legal litigation: "What is the only road open to us? To take the land by force, work the land. If the gringos want to go home, let them go. They can't take the land, and that is what we want". The Yilson family's holdings date back to the 1920's when the first U.S. growers, including "Santiago" Wilson, began vegetable production in the area. Wilson quickly built a fiefdom centered around a traditional casa grande, packing shed and company town called Campo Wilson. ln Mexico, foreigners cannot own land within 50 kilometers of the coast and no one can legally own more than 247 acres. The Wilson got around the law by taking on a prestanombre ("name lender") for a partner, Benjamin Bustamante. A worker explained how Bustamante avoids the 247-acre limit: "Look, a young girl who works in the casa grande, at three months of age she finds herself owner of 190 acres of land. A young boy, son of don Fernando Felix, the general manager of 93
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