Overview of the Program

“Capacity Building in Southern Mexico” is a project developed by Western Illinois University (WIU) in Macomb, Illinois, USA; Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro (UAQ) in Queretaro, Mexico; and Universidad Tecnológica de la Selva (UTS) in Chiapas, Mexico. Establishing rural prosperity for small-scale producers is a major challenge in Southern Mexico. The region has lost over one million agricultural jobs due to a number of factors including the restructuring of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the devaluation of the peso, and the impact of new production technologies that favor large farms. These changes have impoverished rural regions and forced many unemployed Mexicans to search for work in the U.S. as illegal aliens.