N.A.C.L.A. the company, is also a land owner.• Daughters of foremen, girls studying in high school are the owners of land. There's an agreement signed that each of these people owes so much money to the company-their land is 'morgaged' to the company". Today the James K. Wilson Co.· ins one. of the largest distributors of Mexican produce, shipping over 12 million pounds of vegetables with sales of more than SS million annually. "The impact of the invasions so far has been more psychological than real", Wilson says, adding that he believes the government will eventually be forced to resolve the conflict. "The vegetable deal is just tao important to the economy", he says. GOVERNMENT MOVES ·! Faced with the prospect of a thousand small rebellions breaking out in the countryside, the Mexican government attempted to cairn the angry squatters last year by distributing some land it expropriated from one of the large Sonora growers. But in December 1975, the landowners of ·sonora and Sinaloa organized an industry-wide work stoppage to rprotest· the expropriations. Three thousand growers suddenly rnoved hundreds of tractors from the fields -onto the highways and streets. "How much longer can we put up with this?" asked one .Sonora grower. "Many people are ready to put their finger to the trigger". James K. Wilson explained: "They (the owners) aren't going to have their lands taken away without making a stand. If they're going to drown, they're going down screaming". Mexica·n President Luis Echeverria has now guaranteed the growers that their holdings will be respected and that 110legal modifications will be made regarding land tenure-desplte the secretary of agrarian reform's declaration that peasants had rights to much of the disputed land. Over 60,000 petitions for lands have piled up at the Agrarian Reform office,· waiting for the bureaucracy to act. · · "We are tired of promises, leaders and labor bureaucrats", declared the leader of one land occupation in Sonora. "The politicians we only see during the campaign, and later we only know they exist from their photographs... From here we will only be removed to the cemetary". 94
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