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Abstract
After decades of being one of the most loyal and reliable sources of PRI electoral votes, rural Mexico has become the arena of partisan political competition. The increasing political party rivalry in rural areas is not only related to a legal or formal institutional transformation at the national or sub-national level but to the ejido endogenous reconfiguration. Today local interest groups and supporters of opposition political parties are challenging the once hegemonic ejido authority, associated with the PRI regime, which since 1930 has ruled most Mexican rural villages. The ejido as a political institution is yielding many of its political functions to the empowered municipal government. As I will show in this paper, a major transition in rural Mexico is well under way, moving from agrarian toward municipal governance. The new political order challenges the ethnic and territory boundaries associated with the ejido rule forged in rural Mexico during the post-revolutionary era.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their pertinent and rigorous remarks and comments that have significantly enriched this text and help me to clarify my main argument. The financial support of CONACYT, CIESAS and the postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for US Mexican at the University of California, San Diego, is also gratefully acknowledged.
Notes
1 The ejido, the main theme of this paper, is both a unit of land allocated to a group of peasants as a community, a legal entity representing the ejido community and the urban settlements created within the land allocated ejido. To avoid confusion I'll use the term ‘ejido-villages’ when referring the settlement rather than the agrarian body. Ejidos were created in 1917 after the Mexican Revolution as a response to peasants' demands for land restitution and allocation. The land was granted to a group of not less than 20 peasants who received individual plots of land for farming, in addition to a communal parcel for livestock raising, and a small plot for families to build their houses. The sum of individual and communal plots formed the ejido, a civil organization with legal standing (Warman 2001). The Ejido institution spread all over México and in the year 2007, there were 31,514 ejidos and comunidades with 4,210,830 beneficiaries (IX Censo Ejidal, INEGI, 2007).
2 Founded in 1929 as the National Revolutionary Party, it adopted its present name, Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1946. PRI leaders controlled the federal government without interruption from the date of the party's creation through to 2000.
3 Even though the 1917 Federal Constitution recognized the municipality as the smallest unit of administrative and political government, the municipal government has had little autonomy and attributes in Mexico during most of the twentieth century. Decentralization and municipal empowerment only began in 1983 when President De la Madrid amended Article 115 of the Constitution. With this and further reforms in the 1990s, municipalities have received greater budgeting and spending autonomy; of particular importance is they were given control over property taxes which previously were collected and retained by state government.
4 In the mid 1990s, Latin America sociologists began identifying the sum of rural changes wrought by neoliberal globalization with the term ‘new rurality’. New rurality thinkers use this term to frame the growing importance of non-agricultural activities and some of their social and economic causes and consequences in the countryside (Arias 1992, Llambi 1994, Grammont 2004, Kay 2008, Rubio 2002, Teubal 2001).
5 While on one hand the confrontations of San Salvador Atenco in 2006 and the protests for the defense of water by Mazahua women in 2004 occurred in the State of Mexico, this area of study has not had any anti-establishment movements in the last three decades. In fact, the State of Mexico is one of the states that stands out for its political stability built upon the strong local structure of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in power for almost seven decades.
6 The State of Mexico occupies the twelfth place in percentage of indigenous population with 7.2 percent of the total population or 939,355 indigenous inhabitants. However, in absolute terms, it is one of the three Mexican states with more indigenous population (Informe sobre desarrollo humano de los pueblos indígenas 2006).
7 The Mazahua region is composed of 12 municipalities located in the States of Mexico and Michoacán. 60 percent of the Mazahua population is concentrated in three State of Mexico's municipalities.
8 Located in the northeast of the State of Mexico, San Felipe is a rural and indigenous municipality with 76.25 percent of its population living in villages smaller than 2500 inhabitants and 32.8 percent of its economically active population working in the primary sector in 2000. San Felipe stands out as the most densely Mazahua populated municipality in the State of Mexico.
9 ‘Portesgil’ is the name locally given to the ejido Cuadrilla primera and that which I use in this paper to refer to the ejido and village within it.
10 The project was financed by the National Council of Sciences and Technology (CONACYT) and coordinated by Kirsten Appendini, professor at El Colegio de México. For more results and information about this project see Appendini and Torres-Mazuera (2008).
11 This second project was sponsored by the Ford Foundation and has as its main objective to evaluate the performance of Mexican Federal Institute of Elections (IFE) in indigenous regions.
12 In agreement with Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, the ejido is a legal category defined in terms of a corporation that owns a portion of the land. This corporation is made up of ejidatarios with rights and obligations that usufruct the land and are organized in an ejido assembly based on the principle of direct democracy. Every three years, the ejido assembly elects an ejido board (comisaría ejidal) composed of 12 officers meant to function as a group: commissioner, secretary, treasurer and a three-man Council of Oversight with substitutes for all of these.
13 Even today, it is possible to see the gender gap the ejido has established. In 2007, on the national level, only 5 percent of the ejidatarios are women, usually widows who inherited the agrarian right from their deceased husbands. In San Felipe del Progreso, the figure is similar, where only 5.19 percent of all ejidatarios are female (IX Censo Ejidal 2007 INEGI).
14 We must keep in mind that from the outset, the ejidal allocation created a social division between the ejidatarios and non-ejidatarios at a national level and also in the same regions and villages where there was land distribution. The ejidatarios enjoyed a number of privileges, among which were access to land, tax exemption on ejido land, and more generally the right to decide about all ejido affairs that included not only the production sphere, but also others related to community life.
15 From 1934 on, the agrarian law allowed the hacienda laborers to receive ejido allocations. They abandoned the haciendas where they lived and established new villages within the ejidos they received. On the other hand, the Indian villages, which until 1917 were a political category, disappeared from the Constitution as a legal entity and were replaced by ejidos in those cases where they received an ejido allocation or by a comunidad when land restitution was possible (Azuela 2009).
16 It is important to note that despite the high percentage of Indian population, in the State of Mexico, unlike other states such as Oaxaca, there are only 169 comunidades in contrast with the 1,059 ejidos granted up to 1992 (Estadísticas Agrarias. Tendencias del campo mexicano. Procuraduría agraria 2001). The reason being that as happened in the rest of Mexico, the easiest and fastest way to receive land allocation was in the form of the ejido, and most of the claims made by Indian villages to receive land as comunidades were rejected due to lack of valid property titles.
17 For a detailed account of San Felipe inhabitants' economic activities see Appendini (2008).
18 A similar account is given by Zendejas (1999) for the Michoacán region, where ejidos have kept the space for local organization and the ejido assembly as the main form of political representation for rural migrants and inhabitants. According to this author, the ejido has maintained its social relevance despite the changing economic conditions and meanings people may attribute to it.
19 It is noteworthy that in San Felipe del Progreso where ethnic affiliation is not part of one's political identity, being Mazahua means to be marginal and poor. Those who identify themselves as Mazahuas are those without the option to identify themselves as mestizos, since they are unable to speak Spanish. It is therefore no coincidence that women and Mazahuas are the ones who continue to plant native corn, which is the most marginal economic ejido activity. For more information on this subject see Preibisch (2000) and Vizcarra (2001).
20 The posesionarios are usually ejidatario relatives who inherit a part of the plot, but didn't have title to the land until the new law. The avecindados are those who with the new law, were able to buy ejido land.
21 In a region where seasonal migration was so common, it was acceptable for a family member and even a hired worker substitute the ejidatario in his obligation to work the ejido parcel. It was only when an ejidatario and his family definitely left the village, something very rarely which happened, that the ejidatario was deprived of his agrarian rights.
22 The primary instrument of land reform in Mexico was the Program for Certification of Rights to Ejido Lands, called PROCEDE (1993–2006). PROCEDE had three main objectives a) surveying and certifying parcels, b) certifying rights to common use lands, and c) giving individual title for urban plots.
23 In accordance with the State of Mexico municipal law, a settlement with more than 750 inhabitants is allowed to have a ‘sub-delegate’.
24 Legally commissioned as a local ‘auxiliary’ without a salary or the right to speak and vote at the municipal council, the delegate is, nonetheless, in charge of conveying the village's needs to the municipal government.
25 Tungareo and Tepetitlán, are two small ranches or ‘neighborhoods’ as the villagers called them, created by ejidatarios' children with no urban plots that began building their homes on the ejido's agricultural lands.
26 While the resident assembly provides a new avenue of participation in village issues, its actual contribution in the decision-making about urbanization is minimal. According to information from San Felipe officials interviewed in 2005, as well as delegates from some villages in the municipality, the allocation of public works is not governed by the municipal development plan, nor by consensual requests transmitted through the municipal delegate, but by the mayor's political needs. The San Felipe del Progreso delegate has no access to the municipal council; his voice is not heard by the mayor who has even created a position that replaces the delegate's functions. Since 2004, the San Felipe ‘municipal go-between’ (enlace municipal) is responsible for informing the mayor about the needs of the villages as well as the political groups within them. This go-between is independent of the delegate, receives a salary, and is trusted by the mayor. For a similar account about this ambiguous political figure see López Caballero (2006). See also Fox (2007) for an excellent analysis about local rural democracy and village autonomy which explores the ‘forth level’ of sub-municipal governance in rural Mexico.
27 One ejido may have more than one ‘neighborhood’ which is independent from the delegate authority, but dependent on the same ejido authorities.
28 In Latin-American political science literature, the term corporatism is understood as a political system in which various groups (for instance, the military, labor, and peasants) are organized into official constituencies. The various constituencies influence government policy and are supported by government patronage.
29 In addition, ejidos excluded some social categories such as women who – until 1971 – were unable to receive the land as ejidatarios, with the exception of those who inherited the farmland plot from their husbands or fathers.
30 For more than four decades, the cornerstone of Mexican rural corporatism was the National Peasant Confederation (CNC). It was created in 1938 by President Lázaro Cardenas and became the strongest local PRI organization in the years to come. CNC affiliation was compulsory for ejidatarios who represented more than 98 percent of its total composition. The CNC offered closer association with the Federal government. In many cases, it gave access to positions in Congress, and depending on the time and place, it gave subsidies for agriculture (Chevalier 1966). Finally, the CNC played an important role of political control and restraint over autonomous peasant organization and activism.
31 Plan Maíz aimed at increasing corn growing areas with intensive investments and improved seeds. The program provided credit, technical input and assistance to small producers, mainly ejidatarios, to cultivate hybrid corn. The apex of the plan was the year 1972 when it covered 459616.05 acres, corresponding to more than 80 percent of the land across the state, and benefited 68,252 farmers (Mendoza Vargas 1979). Moreover, in 1975 DAGEM granted credits to build 537 farms with a capacity for 50 pigs, and that same year the plan ‘People's Granaries’ began. It consisted of corn and bean stores spread over 20 locations, one of which was established in San Felipe del Progreso. Its purpose was to assure the ejidos a guaranteed price, as well as conserve and manage local reserves. Years later, these stores would join the federal program Conasupo (Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares, S.A.) (Mendoza Varga 1979, Vizcarra 2001).
32 Ejido authorities grip on power was relatively independent from economic activity. In the 1970s the cultivated area in San Felipe was 23811 acres. By this time ejido authorities were still in absolute control of ejido governance. In the early 1990s corn production had more than tripled to 78480.6 acres and productivity had increased thanks to fertilizers and herbicides; however, by this time open resistance to ejido authority erupted in most of the San Felipe ejidos (Sección Presidencia Vol. 53 Año 1967–1973; Censo agropecuario, INEGI 1991).
33 In San Felipe del Progreso each rural development program, at the local level, is informally controlled by a leader who acts as broker between federal, state, or municipal government officials and the program beneficiaries. The base of this control is information. Local leaders create the impression they have the power to include or exclude people from the programs and in fact they may be able to do so because of the very frequent irregular practices of beneficiaries. In Portesgil, for instance, many ejidatarios have stopped growing maize or any other staple, the first prerequisite under the Procampo program, but they continue to receive the program cash. Procampo comptroller also helps ejidatarios relatives if a deceased ejidatario left no succession list. In that sense, the Procampo comptroller has gained power and control over the program. For more information about beneficiaries' perceptions of Procampo program see Maldonado (2010).
34 In Mazahua villages, as in many other Indian communities throughout Mexico, the Catholic religion is organized around an institution named mayordomía. Mayordomía is a hereditary system that has assured community unity and the maintenance of hierarchical order, in this case, associated to ejido governance. In Portesgil, the mayordomía was introduced in the twentieth century after the 1930s land reform. Before that, it was the hacienda priest who organized the catholic religion and festivities for the hacienda workers who later became ejidatarios. For an extended analysis of the role play by mayordomías and other rural fiestas in Mexico see (Brandes 1988).
35 Ejido extension was an agrarian procedure aimed at dividing and distributing common lands to new ejido generations.
36 Most ejidatarios belong to this group. In the State of México the ejidatario average age is 52. 57.6 percent are older than 50, and 25.5 percent are older than 65. This fact may contribute to explain their political preferences (Estadísticas Agrarias. Tendencias del campo mexicanos. Procuraduría agraria 2001).
37 Until the 1970s, there was only one elementary school in Portesgil that went to the third grade. People who wanted to continue studying needed to go to the municipal center, or to nearby cities.
38 According to the national census, one out of five people in Portesgil with an occupation is employed as a professional or technician (Microdatos, 2000 INEGI).
39 Competing slates are voted on by raising the hand in a public forum. .
40 This has been the case in Portesgil in the three last delegate elections, and according to municipal secretary and delegates interviewed from five villages is similar in other San Felipe del Progreso villages.
41 For a parallel account about ethnic differentiation and political rivalry between the municipal county seat and comunidades see Dehouve (2003). The author analyzes the historical conformation of geopolitical boundaries and ethnic identities in an Indigenous region in Guerrero from the Colonial era to our time.
42 Despite the poverty of the municipal treasury, the mestizo elite was interested in controlling the municipal government by being the intermediary between the state government and the municipality.
43 Even with a high percentage of Mazahua population (28 percent) and because of a previous Mazahua mobilization in the 1970s, political participation in San Felipe was not achieved on an ethnic basis but as a civil one. Two reasons may explain this preference. On one hand, in the Mazahua, as well as the Otomí region, ethnic claims had been worn away by the PRI's successful cultural policy toward, the Indigenous population in the region since the 1970s, which demagogically extolled Mazahua identity. Secondly, inter-ethnic relations were not as static as in more isolated regions such as Chiapas. Mazahua identity was abandoned by the generation born after the 1960s which was able to go to school and learn Spanish.
44 I draw from J. Fox (1994) the distinction between clientelism and semi-clientelism to underline the difference between a relationship where subordination of clients is reinforced by threat of coercion from a second type of relationship, where bargaining is needed in order to achieve societal approval and support. This second relationship emphasizes the continuum from clientelism to citizenship where a multiplicity of political relationships may exist. Semi-clentelism is thus a useful category for an exploration of the state–society relationship that falls in between authoritarian clientelism and pluralistic citizenship rights (Fox 1994, 157).
45 Article 115 amendments gave municipalities greater budgeting and spending autonomy; in particular they were given control over property taxes, collection and use, which previously were collected and retained by states. Local councils were given official responsibilities for basic municipal services, including water, sewage, street cleaning, and public lighting, garbage, urban transport, public markets, roads and highways, public security, parks, and slaughterhouses. In addition municipal councils were instructed to prepare budgets to submit to the state legislature for approval. Finally, the composition of the electoral councils would henceforth be determined by proportional representation (Grindle 2007, 29–30).
46 The budget received by municipal government each year as well as its distribution between villages is unknown information to San Felipe delegates who are only able to negotiate with municipal authorities in order to get resources for their villages.