The social responsibility of tobacco production in Nayarit. Who pays the price?

Abstract

In Nayarit, Mexico, there is an Integrated System of Tobacco Production (SIPT) which operates mainly with the participation of campesino families. However, for some preparatory work and to guarantee the harvest, local jornaleros and indigenous migrant families from the mountainous regions of Nayarit, Jalisco, Durango, and Zacatecas are hired, manly on a temporarily basis. They live for several months in precarious conditions in the houses and yards of the growers and on the agricultural plots. Since the Marco’s Convention and the General Law on Tobacco Control, the companies that control the SIPT have adopted new narratives and strategies for managing and sustaining their businesses, mainly emphasizing the so-called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The objective of this article is to analyze the CSR actions of the tobacco companies from an approach of accumulation by dispossession, understanding CSR as a capitalist tool for the extraction of surplus value. With the support of a qualitative methodology, based on bibliographic and hemerographic review, direct observation, field diaries and interviews, also corporate actions comprised between 2018 and 2023 have also been documented. British American Tobacco and Tabacos del Pacífico Norte have "sponsored" the operation of the Florece centers and the Sustenta program in the tobacco fields of Nayarit, even though, in the tobacco reality of the tobacco industry the operation of such programs and their costs are assumed and absorbed by the growers, while the companies disseminate an image of sustainable business management.