8. Mexico

Photo: Maria Luisa Mendonça

In 1991, President Carlos Salinas announced that he would amend Article 27 of the 1917 revolutionary constitution of Mexico. Article 27 implemented agrarian reform: it guaranteed the right to land for all peasants, decreed the expropriation of large estates and the redistribution of land not as individual plots, but as communally held ejidos.1 The modification of article 27 had major effects on ejido and other communal land in that it implied the possibility of dividing the ejido into small private properties, and declared the end of further land redistribution.

Historical Overview

The struggle for land has always been a central goal of social movements throughout Mexican history. The key demands of the 1910 revolution were that land, forest and water resources be expropriated from the large landowners, to provide landless peasants with land to establish ejidos and agrarian colonies. The post revolutionary government conceived the creation of ejidos as a form of organization for production, as a body for the political representation of peasants, and as an instrument of political control.

Between 1915 and 1934, six presidential administrations redistributed 10 million hectares, while President Cardenas in just 6 years (1934-1940) gave away almost 19 million hectares to 729,000 ejidatarios.
Beginning in the Cardenas administration, a new Agrarian Code established the legal means by which landless hacienda workers (peones) could become landowners. Under Cardenas' rapid land distribution, the ejido finally became a permanent form of land tenure in the countryside.

Between 1940 and 1958 there was a period known as the contrareforma (counter-reform) that attempted to dismantle the agrarian legacy of Cardenas. Agrarian policies were modified so that the best lands were allocated to medium and large farmers, and the ceiling size for small farms was increased to 100 hectares of fertile land, or its equivalent in areas of poor quality land.

Since 1970, agricultural self-sufficiency based on traditional peasant production practices (use of native seeds, biological pest control, organic fertilizers, animal traction, and intercropping) has been steadily degraded by a truncated process of technological modernization initiated by the government organizations for research and extension in agriculture.

Under Presidents López Portillo (1976-1982) and De la Madrid (1982-1988), the government once again made changes similar to the contrareforma of the 40s and 50s, as it sought to replace agrarian reform with policies designed to increase productivity. Small farmers were set aside while large-scale agriculture and livestock operators received most of the subsidies, investment and financial assistance.
After the 1980s there was no longer any significant money made available for subsidies for the rural sector. Mexico began to invest in other parts of its economy in order to be globally competitive. The economy was transformed by structural adjustments that were accompanied by an emphasis on promoting foreign investment in agriculture. The Mexican government did not pursue a policy of food sovereignty, rather they saw small scale grain production as unprofitable and something that would not attract investment. As a reflection of this, from 1988 on, the source of credit to agriculture shifted from state development banks like Banrural to commercial banks.

After more than six decades of Mexico's agrarian reform, its principal results were that small farmers intensified their production and got access to markets, so they could maintain their incomes while cultivating fewer hectares; it kept people in rural areas who otherwise might have joined the masses of the unemployed in the cities; it deterred rural unrest while the economy developed; and it allowed its beneficiaries to become the major producers of staple foods in the country. However it failed in that some marginal lands that should have been conserved, restored, or preserved were put at risk; and the slow provision of titles and late and inadequate input supply, credit, and technical assistance left out many beneficiaries and thus the reform fell well short of its economic production potential. In addition, some large landlords were untouched by land reform because of political connections or subterfuge, giving an undercurrent of unfairness to the process; land delivery was used as a form of political patronage, often functioning to keep peasants politically repressed and "in their place; and many peasants never received land at all.

Neoliberalism in the Countryside

The elimination of subsidies and the privatization or complete disappearance of many public services and agencies that attended to the rural sector, affected access to credit, insurance, markets, modernizations, seeds, water, technical assistance and basic infrastructure, while greatly increasing the cost of inputs and remaining services.

The abandonment of the peasant sector by the rural financial system and the closing down of the National Crop and Livestock Insurance Agency were part of the dismantling of the rural sector. The total amount of credit available to agriculture was cut back drastically, and most of what was left was redirected to large farmers. The weakening and retreat of public sector institutions was not followed by the opening of private bank branches in rural communities. In addition, the public and private sectors both failed miserably by not providing any source of long-term investment capital in "competitive technologies."
In 1992, the amendment to Article 27 was approved by 388 votes in favor and 45 against. The stated objectives of the reform of the constitution were to slow down the growing phenomenon of minifundio (proliferation of very small farms) in the countryside, promoting investment to increase production, and was supposed to be consistent with Salina's promise to generate more employment and to create labor organizations for agricultural workers.

This amendment came as part of a package of neoliberal reforms that included the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States; the privatization of state enterprises; the deregulation of agricultural markets; and the privatization of irrigation water management.

Critics of the reform of Article 27 argue that the main consequences have been the breakdown of the rural social contract, the privatization of the ejido, the destruction of indigenous agrarian communities, the creation of new ways to concentrate land holdings, and the expulsion of millions of rural families from the countryside to the cities.

The most common forms of exchange of land in Mexico's countryside used to be leasing, renting, mortgaging, borrowing, and other form of land division such as sharecropping. According to various researchers, after the reform of Article 27 and with the subsequent creation of the Program to Certify Agrarian Rights and Land Titles (PROCEDE0, the land market has grown specifically in the categories of buying and selling, and renting land, among members of rural communities and with outsiders. They note that population increase and age distribution are related to the politization of land transactions, and to the increase of minifundio. The end of land redistribution closed off an essential way to access land, which is now only available by inheritance, purchase, renting, or borrowing. In the case of the poor, it is now only possible through inheritance. Where land markets now prevail, a local or foreign minority elite controls the best ejido land or privatizes communal land, while a growing number of campesinos are losing their access to land.

With the reform, the ejido sector suffered a swift decline in the technification of production - except with respect to the use of improved seed - as in the case of sorghum. The few new technological investments are destined to the large producers. As for the rural poor, "…the much touted globalization of the market has not obliterated rural culture, but it has had an impact. Mexico's rural poor have been left behind technologically, and their traditional agricultural practices, which sufficed in the past, have now been distorted and discredited by the new orthodoxy, resulting in an inevitable deterioration of the environment and a decline in the quality of rural life," said one critic.

In 1995, 73% of Mexico's population lived in urban areas. In recent decades as much as 60% of urban growth has occurred by means of the illegal alienation of ejido land. In 1995 the governmental program "100 Cities" announced the urbanization of 120 thousand hectares of ejido land for the expansion of the main cities. The ejido form of ownership affects far more than rural Mexico, and given that half of Mexico's communal land surrounds the nation's fastest growing cities, the reform allows communal landholders to associate themselves with private investors or to sell their land to builders for housing development, sometimes becoming the victims of urban growth that deprives the community of its land and identity.

Popular Mobilization

The introduction of free market policies and the withdrawal of lending from the rural sector provoked general discontent among farmers. In July of 1990, the Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos [the Movement of 400 Peoples] marched in Poza Rica, Veracruz, demanding the distribution of 80,000 hectares of land, credit and technical assistance; and in September 1990 some 10,000 peasants from the Northeast, the Bajio and the South marched to Mexico City demanding, among other things, the modification of agrarian policy. The main complaint from the countryside was that the proposal to amend article 27 came from the top. Behind the amendment were interests of the World Bank, the United States government, conservative Mexican business consortia, and the neoliberal technocracy in the Trade Ministry.

After the Mexican revolution, social movements were led by the poor campesinos of the ejido sector. At the beginning the main demand was for land, but at various moment production issues took the front seat. In the 1960s the student movement and the rise of liberation theology clearly influenced the peasant movements. Under President López Portillo (1976-1982), repression of land struggles became more common, movements began to see the need for unity at the regional and national level, and production-related demands seemed to offer a more viable basis for peasant mobilization.

In 1991, preceding the amendment of Article 27, intense discussions took place within the government between those in favor of privatization and those who were pro-ejido. Meanwhile in the peasant movement there were three main positions: one in favor of the modification, with minor changes to the official proposal, one strongly against the amendment, and an intermediary position.

The main peasant alternative to the amendment of Article 27 was the continuance of the social contract of 1917, and its renovation through a clear policy to stimulate agriculture, and to support rural production and food self-sufficiency, with guarantees to ensure peasant involvement in administrative and decision-making mechanisms, as well as strengthening and preserving the autonomy of peasant organizations.

The future of rural Mexico hangs in the balance today, more than ten years after the modification of Article 27 and after ten years of NAFTA. Over that time medium and small Mexican farmers have not been able to compete with subsidized producers in the United States, and Mexican Peasant organizations have organized themselves in a broader movement call El Campo No Aguanta Más ["The Countryside Can't Take Any More of This!"), which brings together a dozen national farmer and peasant organizations.

The peasant organizations are calling for an immediate moratorium on the agricultural chapter of NAFTA, the implementation of new social programs, a true financial reform in the rural sector, empowering of the Congress to make modifications in the rural sector budget, secure access to safe and healthy food of good quality for all Mexicans - produced by Mexican farmers, and the full recognition of the culture and rights of indigenous peoples.

Text based on TANAKA, Laura Saldívar - Mexico´s land reform: from ejido to privatization

9. South Africa

10. Thailand

11. Zimbabwe

12. Positions of Via Campesina

13. Bibliography

14. Table of Contents