Out, Damn Aurrera, Out: Organizing Against Corporate Stores in Puebla

The Puebla page of Sintesis is reporting that store owners in Atlixco, Puebla, are organizing an association of business owners to protect their town from the imminent arrival of stores like Coppel (the Sinaloa based mega-store - what ever happened to that Coppel super-community?) and Bodegas Aurrera (the Wal-Mart / Walmex owned store). The head of the association said that there was probably little they could do to stop the coming of the companies, but they might be able to create a plan to keep themselves in business. It noted that with so much migration and the slow collapse of Pueblan agriculture, local stores served as one of the few employers in the area.

Interstingly enough, the same page had a link to a story on San Pablo Ahauntempan and the effects of migration on that town where the streets are half empty, full of large houses that nobody lives in, and a general poverty of billetes verdes. E. Bradford Burns and the Poverty of Progress? It always surprises me when I have people tell me that book is "out of date."