Land Privatization In Mexico

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A Pueblo Divided tells the story of the violent privatization of communal land in Papantla, a Mexican Indian village transformed by the fast growth of vanilla production and exports in the late nineteenth century. The demise of communal landholding, long identified as one of the leading causes of the Revolution of 1910, is one of the grand motifs of Mexico's modern history. It is also, surprisingly, one of the least researched. This is the first study of the process of village land privatization in Mexico. It describes how a complex interplay of commercial, political, demographic, fiscal, and legal pressures led to social strife, rebellion, and finally parcelization. Disproving long-held assumptions that indigenous villagers were passive participants in the process, the author shows that they actually played a crucial role in the subdivision of communal property. Papantla's story is at odds with prevailing stereotypes of pueblo history, and thus points to the need for a broad reexamination of the causes, process, and consequences of rural social change in pre-revolutionary Mexico.

This book is a history of the conflict-ridden privatization of communal land in the pueblo of Papantla, a Mexican Indian village transformed by the fast growth of vanilla production and exports in the second half of the 19th century.

Who makes land use decisions, how are decisions made, and who influences whom, how and why? This working paper is part of a series based on research studying multilevel decision-making institutions and processes. The series is aimed at providing insight i

In shaping modern Mexico, few events have been more crucial than the division of public lands. Drawing on previously untapped sources, Holden offers the first systematic study of prerevolutionary Mexico's public land surveys. He examines the role of private survey companies hired by the governments of Manuel Gonzalez and Porfirio Diaz, demonstrating that the companies were both the agents and the beneficiaries of the greatest single movement of public property in Mexico's history. In a controversial process involving land holders, judges, lawyers, and politicians, survey companies reaped in compensation one-third of all the land they surveyed. Holden reports that in one decade, from 1883 to 1893 up to fifty private companies received 18.4 million hectares of land, approximately one-tenth the total area of Mexico. Basing his study on official archival records, Holden details the conflicts between private and public interests, challenging long-held impressions about the surveying companies. He shows how the state used private surveyors to insulate itself from the politically risky consequences of the surveys. Rejecting the view that the companies were the instruments of a land-hungry elite that worked along-side a corrupt government to plunder the peasantry, he concludes that the federal government generally respected land holders' claims in disputes with the surveyors. Arguing that the Mexican government acted more flexibly and autonomously than has been recognized, Holden explores the state's management of such conflicting interests as maintaining peace in the countryside and furnishing clear titles to property. He interprets government attempts to "recover" survey-company land grants after 1920 mainly as efforts to strengthen state authority in the countryside.

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico details the impact of neoliberal practice on the production and exchange of basic resources in working-class communities in Mexico. Using anthropological investigations and a market-driven approach, contributors explain how uneven policies have undermined constitutional protections and working-class interests since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Detailed ethnographic fieldwork shows how foreign investment, privatization, deregulation, and elimination of welfare benefits have devastated national industries and natural resources and threatened agriculture, driving the campesinos and working class deeper into poverty. Focusing on specific commodity chains and the changes to production and marketing under neoliberalism, the contributors highlight the detrimental impacts of policies by telling the stories of those most affected by these changes. They detail the complex interplay of local and global forces, from the politically mediated systems of demand found at the local level to the increasingly powerful municipal and state governments and the global trade and banking institutions. Sharing a common theoretical perspective and method throughout the chapters, Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico is a multi-sited ethnography that makes a significant contribution to studies of neoliberal ideology in practice.

This study chronicles recent political events in southern Mexico, up to and including the July 2000 election of Vincente Fox. the book focuses on the meaning that Emiliano Zapata, a symbol of land reform and human rights, has had and now has for rural Mexicans.

'Democracy in the Woods' examines the trajectories of forest and land rights in India, Tanzania, and Mexico to explain how societies negotiate the tensions between environmental protection and social justice. It shows that the social consequences of environmental protection depend, almost entirely, on political intermediation of competing claims to environmental resources.