PEASANTS AND FLORICULTURE IN RAFAEL DELGADO, VERACRUZ. A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT

This article focuses on floriculture in a small town called Rafael Delgado, Veracruz, Mexico. It describes the beginning, the boom, and the decline of this activity. In order to analyze the transition of peasants to flower farming, I describe the social organization of labor. Also, I emphasize the essential contribution of women to domestic labor in everyday life. In addition, I attempt to understand the adaptation of peasants into changing conditions of flower production until today. I conclude that there is a transition to the third sector. Furthermore, this perspective considers that the generation of local peasantry was a social process with contradictions and contrasts. To support this argument, I recovered oral tradition as an essential source in the history of the present. In this sense, the telling of this story is a narrative that supports the continuous development in time until today. This is the reason why direct observation is considered as a complementary skill.