Autor/es
Descripción
ver mas
Colaborador
Cittadini, Roberto
Materias
Spatial Coverage
Temporal Coverage
1991-2013
Idioma
spa
Extent
239 p.
Derechos
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Formato
application/pdf
Identificador
Cobertura
1001434
Misiones (province)
1991-2013
Abstract
This essay continuous the study based on the Master’s Thesis (UNaM, 2000). At that time we stressed the impact caused by deregulation on regional socio-economic configuration, structured around the crop, industrialization and trade of Yerba Mate. We, particularly, analyzed public policy proposals tested by the government of Misiones to mitigate the deterioration in the living conditions of thousands of small farmers and rural workers and their families, suddenly impoverished by the fall in raw material prices generated by the deregulation. The social protest reached its peak in 2001, urging the Provincial Government and national legislators from Misiones to promote the re-creation of a new regulatory body: The National Institute of Yerba Mate (INYM, for its Spanish acronym). The INYM thus became the public space of political / economic dispute between the sector actors and the soundboard of those issues that the neoliberal model confined in the ten years prior to "neutral" space of free encounter of supply and demand. We now analyze that new scenario which has its anchorage in the regional culture of three generations farmers and rural workers who developed their life projects in the organized productive/institutional context around the Regulatory Committee of Yerba Mate (1936/91). And in which the “pioneers” of this story were the European immigrants who during the first decades of the last century were encouraged by the state to colonize the Federal Territory of Misiones with the obligation to grow Yerba Mate in the allocated plots, thus turning this crop in the farming settlement of the region.
We decided to investigate to what extent public policy, for the case the INYM, managed to help the economy of yerba mate turned into a factor of territorial human development: the limitations and achievements that the INYM had about it and the positioning of the actors in front of those results. Considering the INYM as the institutional space where the state and social actors with competing interests articulate and dispute decisions that regulate the activity, thereby shaping the dynamics of economic field structured around the market of raw materials, the distribution of income that dynamics determines and the impact on the standard of living of about 15 thousands of small producers and many other laborers that the result of this distribution generates.
In chapter I we propose to fit the study inside the general framework of analysis of regional economies characterized by structural constraints that hinder the appropriation of profits / surplus of virtuous sectorial public policies and the productive expansion by the most disadvantaged links of the value chain. Framing this situation in the productive circuits typical of the units of family agriculture, historically subordinated to the logic of capitalist accumulation of companies that oligopolize the industrial processing. They, in turn, find themselves in a relation of relative inferiority and dependence to the economic power of the six hypermarket chains that concentrate the retail selling of food in the last 20 years. Considering the Yerba Mate sector as an economic field in which different actors dispute the income distribution that the productive activity generates, with degrees of freedom for transformative action, but in which the empirical evidence shows a sustained trend towards economic concentration. And the resulting challenges to the sector - to the extent that seeks a social, economic and environmentally sustainable projection of the regional Yerba Mate activity: Strategic Plan- to consider alternative and emancipated forms of socioeconomic organization. That is, Social Economy devices accompanied by the state, recovering the rich cooperative experience associated with the historical development of Yerba Mate economy. Finally pondering about the social and political feasibility of such an alternative in the context of a dependent capitalism in which antagonistic projects compete for hegemony -in its national and international dimension-without getting imposed.
In Chapter II we analyze history, production process and trade geography of Yerba Mate, and the context in which the creation of INYM occurs. In Chapter III we evaluate the performance of the INYM and its impact on the regional economy: improvement in prices of raw materials and greater democratization in sectorial income distribution. We also make a brief reference to the particular dynamics acquired by the Yerba Mate rural labor market in the period, showing a strong trend toward hiring intermediation harvest in the figure of the contractor. In Chapter IV we consider the proposal of a strategic Plan for Yerba Mate (PEYM, for its Spanish acronym), as a sectorial milestone that shows a cycle closure after 10 years of operation of the INYM. And from which the various actors in the production chain could express unsolved issues as well as sectorial policy options to overcome them. Although it was not reflected in the institutional documents of PEYM, we also tried to show that the good performance achieved in the context of INYM for the whole activity, was also functional to the process of economic concentration that was simultaneously addressed.
In Chapter V we make a historical overview of the working conditions of the labor used in the Yerba Mate production. From its origins as commercial mining activity 400 years ago in the framework of the Spanish commend, to its characterization as slave labor due to job precariousness in which it is developed nowadays.
We decided to investigate to what extent public policy, for the case the INYM, managed to help the economy of yerba mate turned into a factor of territorial human development: the limitations and achievements that the INYM had about it and the positioning of the actors in front of those results. Considering the INYM as the institutional space where the state and social actors with competing interests articulate and dispute decisions that regulate the activity, thereby shaping the dynamics of economic field structured around the market of raw materials, the distribution of income that dynamics determines and the impact on the standard of living of about 15 thousands of small producers and many other laborers that the result of this distribution generates.
In chapter I we propose to fit the study inside the general framework of analysis of regional economies characterized by structural constraints that hinder the appropriation of profits / surplus of virtuous sectorial public policies and the productive expansion by the most disadvantaged links of the value chain. Framing this situation in the productive circuits typical of the units of family agriculture, historically subordinated to the logic of capitalist accumulation of companies that oligopolize the industrial processing. They, in turn, find themselves in a relation of relative inferiority and dependence to the economic power of the six hypermarket chains that concentrate the retail selling of food in the last 20 years. Considering the Yerba Mate sector as an economic field in which different actors dispute the income distribution that the productive activity generates, with degrees of freedom for transformative action, but in which the empirical evidence shows a sustained trend towards economic concentration. And the resulting challenges to the sector - to the extent that seeks a social, economic and environmentally sustainable projection of the regional Yerba Mate activity: Strategic Plan- to consider alternative and emancipated forms of socioeconomic organization. That is, Social Economy devices accompanied by the state, recovering the rich cooperative experience associated with the historical development of Yerba Mate economy. Finally pondering about the social and political feasibility of such an alternative in the context of a dependent capitalism in which antagonistic projects compete for hegemony -in its national and international dimension-without getting imposed.
In Chapter II we analyze history, production process and trade geography of Yerba Mate, and the context in which the creation of INYM occurs. In Chapter III we evaluate the performance of the INYM and its impact on the regional economy: improvement in prices of raw materials and greater democratization in sectorial income distribution. We also make a brief reference to the particular dynamics acquired by the Yerba Mate rural labor market in the period, showing a strong trend toward hiring intermediation harvest in the figure of the contractor. In Chapter IV we consider the proposal of a strategic Plan for Yerba Mate (PEYM, for its Spanish acronym), as a sectorial milestone that shows a cycle closure after 10 years of operation of the INYM. And from which the various actors in the production chain could express unsolved issues as well as sectorial policy options to overcome them. Although it was not reflected in the institutional documents of PEYM, we also tried to show that the good performance achieved in the context of INYM for the whole activity, was also functional to the process of economic concentration that was simultaneously addressed.
In Chapter V we make a historical overview of the working conditions of the labor used in the Yerba Mate production. From its origins as commercial mining activity 400 years ago in the framework of the Spanish commend, to its characterization as slave labor due to job precariousness in which it is developed nowadays.
Título obtenido
Doctor de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Ciencias Sociales
Institución otorgante
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales