Pequeñas Localidades Rurales: Reapropiación territorial en Argentina y México

At a time when the urbanization process is accelerating worldwide, and when the urban population is rapidly approaching 80% of the total, one can expect that most of the jobs in the areas of Geography, History and environment will be orient precisely to the study of problems in urban areas. In this logic, it is perhaps surprising then that a work like the one developed by Pedro Urquijo is published, which aims to analyze the fate of small rural towns, from the local perspective, in two Latin American countries. Although the population in urban centers is dominant, it is concentrated in relatively few entities, while the rural population occupies tens of thousands of geographic spaces, forming places in the truest sense of the term. Place is, for many geographers, an object of study that gives full meaning to Geography. And it is precisely the notion of place that is used as the axis in this work and allows unleashing a wide-ranging geographic investigation, with a parallel look at a case in the Husteca potosina and another in the Argentine Pampas. The text reveals the efforts of the people to survive, but also to claim effectively a right, the right to remain, to direct their own destiny: the right to roots.