The Wellness stores were born with a dissatisfied people

The Wellness Stores have their origin not only in Conasupo, but also in the struggle of indigenous communities that protested because they could not buy basic products.

Mexico City, November 1 (However).- Sitting next to the newly stocked shelf, María Luisa Albores, General Director of Mexican Food Safetywelcomes: “this is our space, it is our store here in Mexico City.” Outside, a line of people is already beginning to grow waiting for the store to open. They will wait about an hour and then go in to empty the shelf of the Wellness products.

Barely one year has passed since the Government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, but The Wellbeing stores are heading to be one of its emblematic projects. The old stores of the National Popular Subsistence Company (Conasupo) are its antecedent. But there is something else: the peasant rebellions in the Sierra de Puebla in the 60s and 70s, movements that many years later would be linked to the life story of María Luisa Albores.

“When the President invites me it is extremely moving,” says the former Secretary of Welfare and former Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources in the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And upon arriving at the office of the General Directorate of Mexican Food Safety, her new workplace in the second Government of the Fourth Transformation, it was for her like a confirmation of the decision to join this administration.

The first thing he saw was an old black and white photograph hanging on the wall. It was from the Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative, which translated from Nahuatl means “United we will win”, founded after the movement that also led to the creation of the first Conasupo warehouse and the General Coordination of the National Plan for Depressed Areas and Marginalized Groups (Coplamar) in the 70s.

María Luisa Albores, before becoming a public official, was an advisor and member of the Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative. Photography returned her to that origin of hers and that of the stores. “For me it was like: I’m in the right place and I love what we’re doing.”

And part of what they are doing is to expand the store network. At the beginning of the six-year term, there were 24,511 and in one year they reached 25,300. They plan to close 2025 with 25,600 establishments and, at the end of this administration, in 2030, there will be 30,000. The Wellbeing stores, as the Conasupo stores did at the time, offer products from the basic basket.

However, in recent months, many people are looking for specific products in these stores: coffee, honey and table, powder and Well-Being chocolate, the Government brand that has quickly positioned itself. Especially among those who support the Fourth Transformation.

We want to buy sugar

“This program emerged in the 60s with the name Conasupo,” recalls María Luisa Albores. It was founded in 1961 by President Adolfo López Mateos to guarantee the supply of basic foods and regulate the prices of corn, beans, rice, milk and other grains.

In 64 years of history, the program has changed. In the López Obrador Government, Mexican Food Security (Segalmex) was modified. But the grocery store program “is still valid and alive, although they have wanted to do many things to it,” says María Luisa Albores.

The clientelist use and control of indigenous and rural communities by the PRI, as well as the opaque management and corruption even of Morena governments, has unfortunately been part of its history. And we will return to that, but first we must know that these stores “have endured,” as the official points out. And this is because, he says, “this program was not made on the desktop.”

It was done in the rebellion. “There is a very nice book, Tosepan Titataniske, by Armando Bartra, Rosario Cobos and Lorena Paz Paredes, which is on the Internet. There they tell this story that I am telling you.”

In the middle of the last century, the Nahua and Totonac families of the Northeastern Sierra of Puebla faced the shortage of sugar. In Cuetzalan and nearby communities, sugar was sold for up to 12 pesos per kilo in the stores of the chiefs, who hoarded that product. While in other towns the sweetener was sold for 2 pesos per kilo.

In addition to the high prices, the chiefs would not sell them sugar if they did not buy other products from their stores, which was known and permitted by the PRI governor. They lived under this injustice for many years.

In the 1960s, extension workers arrived in Cuetzalan, says Luisa María Albores. They were public servants, generally agronomists, who taught farmers and ranchers new techniques to increase their production. But what the communities wanted “was to buy the cheapest sugar.”

The complaints and proposals were collected by the extension workers. What they experienced in Cuetzalan happened in other places in the country, where intermediaries, “coyotes” or grocery store owners controlled the market for various basic products. Thus, in 1961 Conasupo was born and then the stores of this state company.

However, at least in Cuetzalan things did not change much. With accumulated hunger and need, in 1978, five communities in Cuetzalan organized to go to the government warehouses to buy sugar. “They did not ask to be sold cheaper, they did not ask to be delivered and then they paid. No, to be sold to them. And they did not want to sell to them because there was a compadrazgo between the governor in office and the chief of the town who owned the store,” says María Luisa Albores.

Then the protest began. “They did not leave there until they were sold the sugar and they were sold the sugar. There are some historical, beautiful photos, where people go with mecapal and they take their bag of sugar to take it, on foot, to their community.”

After that experience, the communities organized themselves to create their own supply stores. First they sold sugar, then they included corn, beans and other basic products.

“Taking as an example our three-year experience distributing sugar and basic products, in 1980 the first Conasupo-Coplamar warehouse was opened in the region, a supply program of the federal government that was later extended to the entire country,” states the book cited by María Luisa Albores.

In that same year, at the same time that the Conasupo stores were reaching more places in the country with the PRI logo, in Cuetzalan that network of community stores became the Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative, which means “United we will win”, which promotes production and fair trade in more than a hundred indigenous communities.

María Luisa Albores was part of that cooperative for several years. One of the projects he promoted there was Tosepan Pisilnekmej, to market honey products from Melipona bees.

To Consume the Segalmex

“Now we are the most important rural supply network in Latin America, with 25,300 stores, which we are going to increase to 30,000.” This has been achieved, as the official points out, despite many things.

Conasupo was used by the neoliberal governments of the PRI, such as that of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to maintain territorial control. The stores were often managed by local PRI leaders and were used to distribute subsidized products in exchange for electoral support.

And in the 1990s, with the greater openness to neoliberalism and incorporation of that economic model into the country’s public policies, the Conasupo system began to be dismantled. In 1999, Ernesto Zedillo extinguished it.

But the Distribuidora e Impulsora Comercial Conasupo (Diconsa) survived, to moderately guarantee basic foodstuffs at prices lower than those of the market. Conasupo Industrialized Milk (Liconsa) was also maintained, responsible for producing and distributing milk at low cost.

When President Andrés Manuel López Obrador arrived in 2018, his policy was to rescue that project. But this time it was not only about guaranteeing supply, but also food self-sufficiency and social justice in the countryside. In 2019, it created Mexican Food Security (Segalmex), which integrated Diconsa and Liconsa.

However, a fraud committed by managers, which exceeded 15 billion pesos. Although this is a “shameful” case, according to Albores, the food self-sufficiency policy was not altered.