The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration

Contemporary indigenous Zapotec rural villages of the northern sierra region of Oaxaca state exhibit profound transformations in their agricultural strategies. Since the mid-twentieth century, its agricultural lands have suffered a gradual process of abandonment. As a consequence, forest transition is occurring around the villages, and the cultivar portfolio seems to be dominated by cash crops. This article examines these landscape transformations through a multicausal explanatory framework: these mountains have experienced intense outbound migratory processes since the 1980s; the communities have cash available to buy certain labor-intensive crops as a result of the remittances sent back by the migrants; and the area has been recently integrated to road-connected regional markets thanks to an intense development of its infrastructures. This article discusses some the changes experienced by the landscape of the village of Santiago Zoochila (Oaxaca), as a result of the interaction demographic and economic factors (migration, availability of remittances, and market integration).