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In 1992, Mexican authorities and Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, (SNTE, National Education Workers Union) signed an agreement to decentralize the educational system called ANMEB (National Agreement on the Modernization of Basic Education), in which the Ministry of Education transferred basic education services to the 32 states of the country. Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP, the Federal Ministry of Education) still had the power to allocate money and enforce a national curriculum. SNTE, considered the largest and most powerful union in Latin America with 1.5 million affiliates, allowed the reform with the condition of keeping its status as national union.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the agribusinesses of corn production in Mexico is analyzed, taking into special consideration the policy of encouragement to small producers, productive restructuring and identification of positive and negative effects. Second, the evolution of the US–Mexican maize belts (1994–2017) is analyzed, establishing the economic and political impacts with respect to NAFTA.

The paper opted for a documentary meta-analysis study using data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the System of Agricultural and Fishery Information (SIAP) in Mexico. The data were completed with documentary analysis of research on maize productivity.

Provided is the information about the impacts of maize belts in the United States (US) and Mexico, where it was determined that the leading states maintained productive hegemony to a greater and lesser extent and that Mexico experienced a productive reorientation. The findings show that it is a myth that there are losers in the maize agroindustry of Mexico and the United States as it is suggested that after twenty-four years they have become complementary.

Summarized is the state of knowledge from 1994 to 2017, aligned to the databases of the United States and Mexico.

A need to study the relation between the productive evolution of maize production and NAFTA is identified.

Mobility implies initial and final distributions and a transition process linking the observations of these two distributions. An inequality index describes properties of the intitial or final distribution. A mobility index describes the transition. In most cases, mobility indices have been developed using properties of transition matrices independently of the concepts of inequality and equity that may also be used in the analysis. This paper presents a new tool – the Gini index of mobility – that provides an overall consistent framework for the analysis of mobility, inequality, and horizontal equity. The theoretical concepts are illustrated empirically using panel data from rural Mexico.

Based on documents (especially sharecropping contracts registered in 1930) and on interviews of informants, this article provides a reconstruction of Mexican sharecropping and land tenure immediately prior to the initiation of government sponsored land distribution to peasants. It does so for rural estates in the township of Allende located in the northeastern portion of the state of Guanajuato, central Mexico.

The E‐Rate program has been widely applauded for helping American schools achieve almost 100 percent internet connectivity, up from 14 percent in 1996. However, mismanagement and complex administration problems have tainted the program's fame, making it a target for criticism by many commentators, scholars and even governmental agencies. Previous research has suggested that the complex and multi‐stage application process may prevent some school districts from availing of E‐Rate funds due to lack of technical expertise and administrative support. The objective of this paper is to examine the patterns of distribution of E‐Rate funds, especially across the rich‐poor and rural‐urban divides, using nationwide data.

A total of eight states were selected, two each from four categories defined based on the degree of urbanization and per capita personal income: rural rich, rural poor, urban rich and urban poor. From these states, a total of 343 school districts were randomly chosen, roughly equally from the four groups. The E‐Rate funding data for 2006 were obtained from the Universal Service Administration Company (USAC) database and information on each school district from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).

The results indicate a mixed picture on how well the program has fulfilled its policy intent of supporting the most disadvantaged school districts. For example, the percentage of free/reduced lunch eligible students was not a significant predictor for the amount of E‐Rate funds, although this is a critical threshold for deciding the discount levels. While the poverty level of the district, revenue per student, and locations were not significant, only the percentage of minority students and ratio of total staff to total number of students in the district displayed positive and significant effects. Contrary to some of the previous results, this nationwide sample did not reveal any significant relationship between districts' locations and funding amounts. However, it is evident that there are clear differences between groups. Particularly, rural and poor states had less funding compared to other groups in 2006.

It has been suggested that the complex and multi‐stage application process may prevent some school districts from availing of E‐Rate funds due to lack of technical expertise and administrative support. With the data of one state, Pennsylvania, the findings partly supported the hypothesis by showing that rural and poor schools continue to get less funding compared to their urban and richer counterparts.

The paper extends the scope of previous empirical study to a nationwide sample, and analyzes the competing influences on the patterns of distribution of E‐Rate funds.

Recent qualitative social research about Mexican families and gender relations underlines the fact that changes in male involvement in domestic life have occurred and that significant changes in paternal responsibilities have been reported, especially among younger fathers with high educational levels and living in urban settings. Significant lags have also been detected in rural and indigenous communities regarding women’s status and the reduction of gender gaps.

On the basis of this, we analysed data from the 2014 National Time Use Survey of Mexico in order to determine whether there are significant differences in the time spent on child raising between rural and urban fathers. We also used a regression model to measure the effect of the place of residence and other socio-demographic characteristics on Mexican fathers’ level of involvement in raising their children.

Our results updated the indicators on the generational change in fathers’ collaboration in childcare and show that fathers living in urban settings are more involved – measured in time effectively spent in child raising than their rural counterparts. Furthermore, the occupations of fathers and especially that of mothers are of particular interest as factors that encourage or discourage greater male involvement in child raising.

The creation of small businesses in Mexico since 1990, largely the result of the diversification of activities in rural areas, is one of the most prominent strategies, both for the improvement of the quality of place and life and for value of localized resources. Although the rural context imposes barriers, social capital and networks constitute an advantage for rural entrepreneurship, since shared values and norms such as the local context allow the articulation of economic, productive, social, and cultural resources for production and sale of significant goods for the region. The cases analyzed show the value of the collective dimension for the start of productive projects, which have contributed to reconverting and sometimes reconfiguring old resources such as land, ecosystems, landscape, animals, and crafts, in assets to start a business.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for appropriate formal education for rural young people in order to sustain and enhance viable rural communities.

In reviewing the literature, it bridges the gap between thinking on education and development respectively, and links schooling with the concepts of livelihoods, human and social capital and life‐skills. By way of example, it summarises an empirical study of the content and delivery of tele‐education among indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico.

Developing and emerging economies and regions should prioritise effective and efficient rural education which incorporates practical and technical skills appropriate to the rural context in order to include young people in the agricultural development and agribusiness of rural areas. This means delivery of education that is rural, local and particular to the context, with appropriate technology, pedagogy and curriculum.

The concepts and argument are of wide significance. The case study findings should not be readily generalised but the implications will relevant to many remote and marginalised communities where the rural economy is weak, opportunities are few and education resources are scarce.

The paper links different literatures and, by also drawing on empirical evidence consistent with the literature, makes a case for a significant reorientation of rural education towards appropriate life‐skills in order to create viable rural livelihoods.

To summarize the shocks and stresses that peasants in Mexico have been subjected to since the 1940s and to examine the responses of sons of peasants working as semi-informal beach vendors in Cabo San Lucas as to what they define as the worst problems of the peasantry in their hometowns.

This chapter offers an analysis of the responses of 32 sons of peasants interviewed on Medano Beach in Cabo San Lucas in October of 2012 partially as concerns whether they would like to be peasants themselves and as to what they define as the worst problems of the peasantry in their hometowns.

Twenty-five of the thirty-two vendors interviewed would be happy to be peasants. According to all of the vendors, the overwhelming problems facing the peasantry were primarily droughts or floods (related to climate change) and lack of government aid (related to neoliberalization).

The peasantry in Mexico is being and has been marginalized both by a number of stresses and shocks, currently identified by some of those at risk as factors related to climate change and neoliberalization.