More on Procampo

Macario Schettino says the scandal isn't so much a product of corrupt application as defective design: 

El Universal has emphasized the awful distribution of Procampo, which winds up in the hands of those with the most hectares. OK, well that's how it was designed from the beginning, and that's how it works. It's not that it has become distorted with time, nor that it has been used by officials today or yesterday to benefit their friends, as the PRD says. No, it's a program made, from the beginning, for this. Initially money was given per hectare planted with corn, wheat, beans, and some other grains. Later, for anything that was planted with something. Even later, if anything was planted at some point. The fact is that money was given to those who have land. 

This might sound good, but it's wrong. Once we give money to a campesino who has a hectare, or less, what we are doing is chaining him to a scrap of land that will never allow him to, we can't even say well, but simply survive. In this way, what this program achieves, as is the case with the rest of the rural programs we have, is maintaining those that live there in their previous situation: if they were poor, they will continue to be so. If they were not, they will continue as they were. The big ranches, the expanses with irrigation, the corporate growers, will keep being successful; the miserable will continue being miserable. And that costs all of us.

El Universal is correct to divulge this information, already well known by those who work in this field. It was years ago that John Scott, a researcher with CIDE, demonstrated with all clarity that the vast majority of social programs in Mexico not only don't reduce poverty, but they also deepen it. That is the case with all, all, all of the programs for rural Mexico, with the majority of the educational subsidies (notoriously with the public higher education, which deepens poverty instead of reducing it), with pension systems (in this last income and expense survey from INEGI, the reason for which inequality grew is precisely because of pensions). 

Mauricio Merino says that there is a lot we don't know about the scandal, but that the basic facts are indisputably scandalous: 

But the undeniable thing is that Procampo hasn't produced greater equality; it hasn't helped the poorest campesinos out of their condition of offensive marginalization; nor has it served to guaranteer greater competitiveness between the biggest farmers in Mexico and the wealthiest and better equipped farmers of the United States; and it hasn't reinforced the capacity of rural Mexico, for its part, to increase and distribute income. Which indicates that it is impossible to say that Procampo has been a successful program. It's not correct and it would be unjust, even undignified even, to not correct the errant path. Otherwise, instead of producing food we will continue, as always, producing misery.