Campesinos

Laveaga really wants to show how the campesinos had agency, that by having the expertise to locate the barbasco they could gain power. However, her examples seem to be exceptions. Her work does the best job so far of really telling us what it was like to be a "picker" down to the dirt and the fear of snakes, the difficult long days necessary to turn in the root before it starts to rot. But she goes on to explain that even Echeverria's attempts to "eliminate the vices of paternalism" (148) excluded many of the campesinos. To participate in the SRA meetings representatives had to be "ejidatarios" or landed campesinos. And the poorest of the poor were excluded because their communities were too remote and inaccessible.