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Abstract
This article connects the land reform process in eastern Chiapas to the Zapatista uprising. It argues that land reform was one of the main avenues of State formation during the twentieth century and had far-reaching social and political implications that are crucial to our understanding of the political project developed by the Zapatistas. More particularly, it examines how the historical experience of land reform has fed into the Zapatista political imagery and practices of social organization, concerning the way the State is problematized and challenged, and also the way the capacity of indigenous communities to govern themselves is asserted.
Notes
1 Indeed, the agrarian dimension of the movement received central attention in many scholarly works on the background to the uprising and its first years. See especially the works by Collier Citation1994, Harvey Citation1998 and Stephen [Citation2002].
2 I speak of the Zapatista ‘political project’ in order to move the discussion away from an emphasis on the uprising of January 1994 to the way that the movement has developed and the ideas and projects that have taken shape subsequently.
3 See, for example, Reyes Ramos Citation1992.
4 It has been argued that in the case of coffee plantations in the Soconusco region ejidos were created on the peripheral lands of the properties, and the core area remained in private hands, which allowed landowners to retain control over commercialization [Reyes Ramos, Citation1992; Wasserstrom, Citation1983; Benjamin, Citation1995. However, this is not the only pattern that occurred.
5 On this, see Gómez Hernández and Ruz Citation1992 and Ruz Citation1992.
6 See Van der Haar [Citation2001: 46, Table 2.2].
7 For a more general discussion on the advent of land reform in Chiapas, see Wasserstrom Citation1983 and Benjamin Citation1995.
8 Ejido endowments involved complex and lengthy procedures and even without complications the period between petition and transfer took four years.
9 Of the total land passed onto peasants in this region, almost 13,000 hectares or about 20% was national property; the rest had been privately owned. Endowments on the basis of national lands started in the 1950s. All figures can be found in Van der Haar [Citation2001: Chapter 2].
10 This happened during the 1980s, and implied a shift from the private property regime to that of social property, which includes ejidos and communal lands.
11 Under the rubric of pequeña propiedad (small property) the land reform law permitted the retention of a maximum of 100 hectares for irrigated land, and its productive equivalent for different types of land of lesser quality.
12 On this problem, and how it strengthened the Unión de Uniones in the Cañadas region, see Legorreta Citation1998.
13 To this should be added that Chiapas was one of the states with the highest number of unresolved land claims and disputes, the so-called ‘agrarian backlog’ (or rezago agrario).
14 These developments are summarized in Van der Haar [Citation2004].
15 See Van der Haar [Citation2001: Chapter 6], and also Van der Haar Citation1998.
16 Initially, 40,000 hectares were acquired through a programme of direct subsidies (‘vía subsidiaria’) but the scheme was substantially revised under the Agrarian Accords (see also Harvey Citation1998: 211–17]). Technical details can be found in Villafuerte et al. Citation1999: 140–2].
17 A number of conditions applied: five hectares per claimant, and the maximum land price payable to landowners was set at 4,000 pesos per hectare.
18 Personal communication from Martha Díaz, Representative of the Ministry of Land Reform in Chiapas.
19 Martha Díaz, personal communication.
20 For details about this scheme see Villafuerte et al. Citation1999: 144–6].
21 On the all-important history of peasant/state relations in Latin America generally, see Petras and Veltmeyer [Citation2002].
22 As in the concept of ‘cultural repertoire’, the notion of ‘repertoire’ is used here to refer to an array of historically structured ways in which social actors organize life and respond to challenges.
23 This is not limited simply to agrarian matters, but may also hold for other juridical issues, such as homicides.
24 The CNC, or Confederación Nacional Campesina, was linked to the PRI, and generally considered an important instrument of state control over the peasantry.
25 Note that municipal governments at the time were rather weak and remote. However, the issue of electoral support for the PRI during the decades from 1940 to 1970, and the way it tied the land reform beneficiaries to the state, deserves further exploration.
26 These were known as los Norteños, members of the Maoist groups Unión de Pueblo and Política Popular which later formed the Línea Proletaría [Legorreta, Citation1998.
27 To give an example, in 1974, Martínez Lavín found only 15 teachers in the whole Tojolab'al region, whereas the number of catechists of the San Cristóbal Diocese amounted to 150 [Martínez Lavin, Citation1974a.
28 Not an agrarian authority but a representative of the municipality at the local level. The precise attribution of functions and division of labour between the authorities varies between communities.
29 Descriptions of the functions of the asamblea can also be found in Leyva and Ascencio [1996], and also Rivera [Citation2003].
30 PROCEDE is the programme for certification and titling of the ejidos, introduced in 1992. On this, see Nuijten [Citation2004].
31 The term ‘organizing practices' is taken from Nuijten [Citation1998].
32 A preparatory document for the 1974 Indigenous Congress, organized by the San Cristóbal Diocese, mentioned similar problems [Martínez Lavín, Citation1974b.
33 A Spanish version of the statement can be found in Morales [1991].
34 Other problems mentioned in the Tojolab'al statement on land were the poor quality of their holdings, conflicts with private landowners, and internal divisions within the community.
35 For example, Andulio Gálvez, a lawyer who was the legal adviser to the CIOAC on land matters in the region of Las Margaritas, was murdered in 1985.
36 Cited in Núñez [Citation1999].
37 The details of the conflict are provided in Van der Haar [Citation2001: 156–64]. It should be noted that the expulsion of dissident factions has been quite common in the Tojolab'al region, and that such expulsions have not always led to state intervention.