Vulnerabilidad en campesinos tradicionales y convencionales de Calakmul, Campeche, México. Secuelas del Huracán “Isidore”

Abstract

For the 2001-2002 agricultural cycle, we studied the responses of local peasants to the damages caused by hurricane Isidore on their main commercial crop (hot pepper Capsicum annum) and most important subsistence system (the milpa). Household vulnerability and responses depended on the type of household as defined by Gurri et al. (2002). Conventional households favoring commercial capitalist agriculture invested great amounts of energy in reducing the damage to their most important commercial crop and little if any on the subsistence crop. Their commercial loss forced them to use their savings as operating capital in order to re-start the agricultural cycle. Traditional households favoring a subsistence agricultural strategy allowed the hot pepper to go to waist and invested time and effort on their subsistence crop. To these households, the damages to the milpa were unfortunate but they did not represent any real loss. Their strategy is a redundant system designed to deal with an uncertain environment, so that losses are expected and their consumption needs were simply covered with the product of alternative productive activities. Results are followed by discussing the implications of the vulnerability of both systems on future of the Calakmul region.