Some Aspects on the Failure of Agrarian Reforms in Mexico and other Latin American Countries

Abstract

This essay seeks to give a broad view of what the agrarian reform policies represented for Latin America from an institutional point of view, with special emphasis on Mexico. Using a combination of primary and secondary sources, it seeks to answer questions such as: What did the agrarian reforms mean for the Latin American countryside? What was the effect they had on the development of Latin American economies? What were the institutional effects of having implemented these reform programmes? It can be concluded that agrarian reform policies in Latin America, which were originally planned to distribute and return lands to various communities, as well as to restore communal rights over the ownership of those lands, were not successful in the medium and long term, with some exceptions in the short term. The sort and quality of lands distributed to the beneficiaries of the programmes, the lack of effective support by governments through specific policies, and the internal organization of ejidos, are some of the causes of the failure of agrarian reform programmes prior to the emergence of neoliberalism in the region.

Keywords:

• agrarian reforms
• land redistribution
• peasants
• capitalist farmers
• Mexico
• Latin America

Notes

1 By institutional we mean the implementation of agrarian reform policies from formal government institutions (formal institutions) and the practice and reception of these policies by communities and social groups, which implies behaviors and attitudes and, therefore, has more to do with the informal institutional part (informal institutions).

2 Article 27th of the Political Constitution of the Mexican United States.

3 Ejido is defined as an area of communal land used for agriculture, in which community members individually farm designated parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings.

4 It is important to clarify the issue of agricultural productivity. Increases in yields does not always mean improvements in rural areas. There can be increasing yields without agricultural surplus, which is linked to the labour productivity of agriculture; e.g. providing a surplus from agriculture for investment in the industrial sector.

5 Proyecciones de la oferta y la demanda de productos agropecuarios en México a 1970 y 1975 (1966), by the Oficina de Estudios sobre Proyecciones Agrícolas of Banco de México.

6 Echeverría even created a new ministry, the Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria, specifically to address issues associated with the implementation of the agrarian reform. However, many unproductive lands were distributed and sometimes the same lands were given more than once, as a way to show how ‘great’ the reform was and to disguise the real situation of rural areas.

7 Between 1994 and 2014 the volume of fruits and vegetables production doubled and its value grew at real annual average rates of 2.1 per cent and 1.9 per cent, while the total value of domestic agricultural production grew at an annual average real rate of 0.9 per cent. In 2013, global fruits and vegetables production was estimated at 1.8 million tonnes. Mexico ranked seventh with a share of 1.7 per cent in global supply, after China (40.4 per cent), India (11.2 per cent), United States (3.4 per cent), Brazil (2.7 per cent), Turkey (2.4 per cent) and Iran (2.0 per cent). The five most important fruit trees contribute 11.7 per cent of the value of national agricultural production: avocado (5.0 per cent), lemon (2.2 per cent), orange (1.6 per cent), banana (1.5 per cent) and walnut (1.5 per cent); The five main vegetables contribute 11.6 per cent: green and dry chili (4.3 per cent), red tomato (3.7 per cent), asparagus (1.4 per cent), onion (1.4 per cent) and cucumber (0.9 per cent). Gaucín, 2015a. Likewise, Mexico ranks fifth in the world according to the value of fruit and vegetable exports, with a share of 4.4 per cent. It precedes United States (10.7 per cent), China (9.1 per cent), Spain (8.3 per cent) and the Netherlands (7.8 per cent). Gaucín, 2015b. Some states producing fruits and vegetables in Mexico that stand out are: Sinaloa, Michoacán, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Sonora, Veracruz and San Luis Potosí.

8 For a more detailed study see Berry and Cline (1979).

9 A general characteristic of the economic elite in Latin American countries is that the agricultural elite is not much different from the industrial elite. If they are not exactly the same members, both elites are linked by a series of formal and informal relationships that allow them to support themselves in situations of risk. This has severe implications to implement real structrual reforms in agriculture and for improvements of peasants’ land tenure and support for their production conditions. This is even worse when the political elite coincides with the economic elite, which also happens regularly in Latin America. The agreements and businesses that both groups (politicians and entrepreneurs) make together are part of what is defined as crony capitalism. See: Galindo, 2013; 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

José Galindo

José Galindo is a Professor at Universidad Veracruzana and General Secretary at the Asociación Mexicana de Historia Económica; was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at UC Berkeley in 2014; completed his PhD in History from UNAM in 2009; obtained his MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford in 2002; and is an economist from ITAM, who graduated in 2000.