Taking Note
FR
The Fate of the Ejido Raul Palma Matamoros, a robust man in his late 40s, walks me around his recently planted ejido fields in Vicencio, about an hour's drive from the city of Puebla, in...
...It's late March, and some of the fields have been planted with corn and beans, while others have just been tilled and are awaiting seeding...
...The 42 families who now farm the ejido share one tractor...
...Now social ownership of the land is no longer inalienable as land is being privatized...
...In the early 1970s, Palma-with the support of one of Mexico's radical peasant groups, the Independent Organization of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (CIOAC)-led a group of about 70 campesino families in an armed takeover of these uncultivated lands...
...As the ejido faces the revolutionary force of Mexico's neoliberal agenda, however, land-grants to peasants may soon become a thing of the past...
...At Vicencio, about half the ejido's 245 hectares (605 acres) is cultivated...
...Mexico, since the Revolution of 1910-17, may be the only country in the world where the government regularly recognizes armed peasant takeovers of land...
...Over time, the banks' ability to foreclose on individual parcels of land, will spell the end of the ejido system and the return of the latifundio--this time in the form of agribusiness...
...Community-held land, which has been the center of peasant struggles for years, is being eliminated...
...However, with corn flooding the market, prices have fallen, and ejidatarios-who negotiate for credit as a group-can no longer get credit from the bank...
...Traditionally, ejido land could not be sold as individual parcels...
...It was passed down from generation to generation, or if no family member was available to work it, it reverted back to the community itself...
...As the price of farm output falls, campesinos are caught in the same credit bind that beset U.S...
...And they face the same fate: removal from the land and entry into an increasingly global and casual labor market...
...Finally, on October 19, 1973, a date wellremembered by the ejidatarios, the government granted them the land...
...The land is fertile, and recent harvests have been good...
...They wonder why the banks and the government complain about their low productivity while denying them the resources to improve...
...Without credit, they cannot buy the equipment and provisions necessary for more efficient production...
...This is causing the ruin of small producers and ejidatarios," he says...
...alma and I visit Ram6n Danz6s Palomino in the CIOAC offices in Mexico City...
...What particularly rouses his ire is the constitutional reform pushed through by President Salinas that allows individual ejidatarios to sell their own land...
...Redistribution accelerated in the 1930s under President Ldizaro Cirdenas, but slowed down thereafter, except when the peasants themselves took matters into their own hands...
...For a few years, while going through legal negotiations with the government in Mexico City, they fended off pistoleros-hired toughs-belonging to the hacendado who had owned the land, and had a tense relationship with state and national police...
...The Fate of the Ejido Raul Palma Matamoros, a robust man in his late 40s, walks me around his recently planted ejido fields in Vicencio, about an hour's drive from the city of Puebla, in central Mexico...
...It is a system in which parcels of land are held by individual families while the community of peasants collectively owns the land...
...The question of land distribution," says Danz6s, "has been a central and deep-rooted one in Mexican history...
...The ejido is up for sale and being written out of Mexican law...
...Historical memories are long in Mexico...
...Danz6s is one of the founders of CIOAC, and a leader of the left wing of the peasant movement in Mexico...
...Twenty years ago, these fields were part of the hacienda that borders the ejido...
...While Palma likes to talk about the ejidos of the ancient Tlaxcaltecos and Huejotzingos, the key figure in his narrative is the revolutionary general Emiliano Zapata...
...Saying "the land belongs to those who work it," Zapata recreated the ejido in the 1910s by beginning the redistribution of latifundio land to the peasants...
...The rest is used for grazing (some of the ejidatarios have sheep and fowl, and there are a few cows and burros), some fish farming, and living space...
...Companies with easy access to credit and capital stand poised to buy up the Mexican countryside...
...Peasants who can't pay their debts are losing their property, and with it, their traditional style of life...
...He discusses the insufficiency of credit for campesinos, the constantly rising costs of production, and the low guaranteed prices for farm output...
...Peasants have been imprisoned and killed in the struggle for such communal land...
...farmers in the 1980s...
...The ejido, a uniquely Mexican model of agrarian cooperation, was the landtenure system in effect when Cortez conquered the Aztecs...
...And the situation is aggravated because large quantities of grains, oils, meat, eggs and milk are being imported into the country at very low prices and under no specific restrictions...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
