Alan Knight Haciendas

Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States
Land and Society in Revolutionary Mexico: The Destruction of the Great Haciendas Author(s): Alan Knight Source: Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter, 1991), pp. 73-104 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States and the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1052028 . Accessed: 28/11/2013 13:52
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Land and Society in Revolutionary Mexico: The Destruction of the Great Haciendas
Alan Knight
University of Texas, Austin
Este ensayo trata de analizar el caracter y significado de la reforma agraria que surgi6 de la Revoluci6n Mexicana, tomando en cuenta algunos estudios recientes. Sostiene que la reforma si represent6 una ruptura socioecon6mica de gran importancia que cambi6 de manera radical la sociedad rural mexicana, aunque este cambio asumi6 formas que no siempre se demuestran en las estadisticas y, como cualquier transformaci6n de tal magnitud, involucr6 bastante violencia, ambiciones y desviaciones.
In a classic pioneering study, Francois Chevalier analyzed the creation of the great haciendas in colonial New Spain: a process which indelibly marked Mexican society for centuries to come. No synthetic study of the destruction of the great hacienda has been attempted,2 but, as articles, monographs and case studies accumulate, it may be possible to review the field and consider the implications of recent research. This paper begins with a consideration of two important revisionist works which set out to correct statistical misconceptions concerning the Porfirian hacienda; it then broadens the argument to take in the process of agrarian reform which began with the Revolution of 1910, and which has also been the subject of ample revisionist writing. The focus is primarily sociopolitical, but the
1. Francois Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Haciendas (Berkeley, 1963). 2. John Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico. Social Bases of Agrarian Violence 1750-1940 (Princeton, 1986) is a valuable synthesis, but it is much stronger on the colonial and early national periods than the Porfiriato and Revolution.
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 7(1), Winter 1991. ? 1991 Regents of the University of California.
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final section briefly addresses the question of the economic fate of the great hacienda in the post-1910 period. Based on a range of secondary sources (and a smattering of primary data) the article contends that the Revolution brought about a severe weakeningin some cases the outright destruction-of the old agrarian order, within which the hacienda and the village formed antagonistic counterpoints; and that this transformation was central to the broader process of change which radically affected Mexico in the years after 1910. According to the old leyenda negra of the Porfirian haciendaas propagated by Molina Enriquez, Wistano Luis Orozco, Frank Tannenbaum and others-the hacienda was a sprawling, seigneurial institution which swallowed up village lands, which retarded social and whose basic rationale was pre- or noncapitalist development, in the sense that it spurned profit and risk taking in favor (above all, of nonmonetary gratification). As Molina Enriquez is often quoted: la hacienda no es negocio. 3 Such a view, of course, carries important implications for analyses of the Revolution. An oppressive, exhacienda implies a popular agrarian revolution; a pansionist "feudal" hacienda also presupposes an ultimately bourgeois revolution. At the same time, a benign hacienda suggests a different kind of revolution (one that is more careerist, narrowly political, ideoa capitalist hacienda implies a socialist logical and "top-down"); revolution manque, or a revolution lacking any real significance in terms of class hegemony. In recent years the old Molina Enriquez/Tannenbaum stereotype has come in for sustained criticism, some of it justified, some of it not. Sometimes, critics have caricatured Molina Enriquez's or Tannenbaum's views, setting up straw men for demolition. Sometimes, however, they have leveled valid criticisms. On the one hand, they have correctly pointed that haciendas were profit-seeking enterprises which frequently changed hands (they were not entailed heirlooms, nor were they run chiefly to gratify the landlord's libido dominandi). On the other hand, recent critics have also de-emphasised the role and importance of the hacienda, stressing, instead, the significance of other rural groups, such as rancheros (who, they say, figured little in the old stereotype); and, by the same token, they have played down the degree of hacienda expansion and oppression, pointing out (a) that village holdings had by no means been eliminated on the eve of the Revolution and (b) that many peasants (broadly defined)
3. Andres Molina Enriquez, Los grandesproblemas first ed., 1909), p. 162. nacionales (Mexico, 1978,
Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas
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were tied to the hacienda by voluntaristic ties, social, economic and ideological. Thus, they argue, the Revolution cannot be seen as a quintessentially popular agrarian movement, mounted by an aggrieved peasantry and directed against the hacienda. The first point-the profit-seeking rationale of the haciendais well-taken, but is of limited (and diminishing) utility. As studies of colonial and national period haciendas have overwhelmingly shown, profit-seeking was the norm over centuries (it was no Porfirian innovation). True, profitability increased with the export boom and more general agrarian commercialization of the Porfiriato: in this respect the Porfiriato witnessed important changes. But the Porfiriato did not witness the birth of an entirely new acquisitive ethic. Rather, it witnessed the growth of material conditions unusually favorable to an existing acquisitive ethic. Furthermore, assessments of the hacienda's external balance sheet, though valuable, represent only part of the picture. They ignore the internal relations of production and all that these entail in terms of labor recruitment and control, coercion as against voluntary methods, tenancy arrangements, and forms of remuneration (cash, kind, labor service). These factors are of obvious theoretical importance since, unless one adheres to a simple Frankian definition of capitalism, the fact that haciendas sought profits fails to resolve the old question of the hacienda's theoretical status (feudal, capitalist, colonial, seigneurial or whatever: you pay your money and take your choice). And the Frankian definition seems to be both historically stultifying and theoretically questionable. Since the pursuit of profit is to be found wherever the historian looks, theorists-Marx, Weber, Kula-refuse to equate profit-seeking with capitalism. A neat conclusion, adequate for some historical inquiries even if theoretically heterodox, might be to denote the hacienda as "capitalist" with regard to its external relations of exchange and "non-" or "precapitalist" with regard to its internal relations of production. More specificallyand more boldly-one might attempt a more positive typology (1. "feudal"; 2. "slave"; 3. "capitalist"), depending on whether, for example, the internal relations of production were based upon 1. labor service tenancy, "traditional" peonage, and, perhaps, share cropping; 2. slavery or "coercive" peonage; or 3. free wage labor. Irrespective of the theoretical arguments for or against this kind of "productionist" analysis, there are also important empirical problems which historians encounter if and when they attempt it. It is hard enough to research the hacienda's external balance sheet; it is harder still to plumb the hacienda's internal relations of production. What was the balance of these relations (since, invariably,
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haciendas combined a variety of labor practices)? Was labor recruitment voluntary or coercive (e.g., was debt used as a perk or a bond?). Were cash payments largely illusory, in that cash was recycled for goods either produced on the hacienda (foodstuffs) or imported and sold at a big markup, such that formal cash wages masked ("feudal?") payment in kind? As recent research has shown, it is not easy to answer these questions even at the level of the individual enterprise, let alone the entire agrarian economy.4 Nevertheless, it is clear from some studies that the Porfirian hacienda, for all its externally "capitalist" (i.e., profit-maximizing) appearance, often depended on forms of labor exploitation that were far removed from free wage labor and that, instead, relied on combinations of coercion, corporal and political of land, "paternalism," monopoly punishment, "extra-economic" of an entire in on other words, barrage backup: mechanisms.5 Finally, the neat formula of external capitalism and internal noncapitalism raises important questions concerning the macroeconomic system within which the hacienda operated. Indeed, it is very necessary to raise these questions, since the significance of the entire debate cannot be fully appreciated except at that macroeconomic level. To put it another way, it is of limited use to debate the "feudal" or "capitalist" status of an individual enterprise, of a specific case study; it can, indeed, smack of a rather sterile formalism, inviting the empiricist's cheap shot: what difference does it make anyway? It does make a difference if, on the basis of several cases, some general trends can be discerned, and if these in turn can suggest links between the hacienda's character and that of society as a whole. If, for example, the internal regime of the hacienda relied for society at large, heavily on coercion, this had consequences which had to support a coercive labor system and a powerful appaworkers reor not-hacienda ratus of social control. If-coerced ceived payments in kind rather than cash, the implications for the domestic market were significant. If, by virtue of coercion or landed free monopoly, haciendas could assure themselves of cheap-even reduced and were to innovate the -labor, technologically pressures the incentives to invest in land (rather than industry) were enhanced. Here, of course, we enter the old theoretical landscape of
4. I have briefly addressed some of these problems in Alan Knight, "Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?," Journal of Latin American Studies, 18 (1986), pp. 41-74. 5. John Gledhill, Casi Nada: A Case Study of Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo (publication forthcoming) ch. 3 describes the Hacienda Guaracha in these terms.
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"paths": Junker, farmer, and English.6 Whatever that landscape offers-whether pointless safaris or lucrative treasure hunts-it does at least point up the potential significance of the whole inquiry: the evolution of the hacienda has major implications for the evolutionor revolution-of agrarian societies; and the implications will be greater or less depending on the degree of hacienda hegemony which is assumed to exist. Furthermore, this is not a one-dimensional economic landscape. The choice of the Junker path carries important political consequences, as Lenin stressed. Barrington Moore, operating within a different if related paradigm, also stresses the implications of a "labor-repressive" agrarian system (i.e., of his version of the "Junker" path).7 The Junker path echoes to the sound of jackboots; the farmer path-at least in Latin America-is trodden by wearers, first, of simple huaraches then of stout, factory-made footwear. The corpus of revisionist criticism of the leyenda negra has received two recent and important contributions. Jean Meyer has pointed out certain statistical fallacies in the work of Tannenbaum and others.8 He argues that the Porfirian hacienda was less dominant, less monopolistic, than previously imagined; conversely, landholding (sic) villages and smallholders were more numerous. Much of Meyer's argument is persuasive (how novel it is is another question).9 But how conclusive is it-meaning by that, how powerful are the conclusions which it draws? Complex statistical debates do not always yield conclusions proportionate to their complexity: consider, for example, the long debates concerning the preconquest population of Middle America; or the recent highly sophisticated wrangles over race mixture during the colony. To what extent do the resulting hard-won conclusions dramatically affect our understanding of either preconquest or colonial Mexico? Meyer certainly refutes Tannenbaum's sweeping assertions concerning the hacienda's monopoly of land and labor, thus he corrects the many historians (including himself, he generously admits) who have been influenced
6. Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 106-8. 7. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Moder World (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 433-6. 8. Jean Meyer, "Haciendas y ranchos, peones y campesinos en el Porfiriato. Algunas falacias estadisticas," Historia Mexicana, 35/3 (1986), pp. 477-509. 9. Moises Gonzalez Navarro, "Falacias, calumnias y el descubrimiento del mediterraneo," Historia Mexicana, 36/2 (1986), pp. 363-7. In fact, Tannenbaum's use of census data was questioned-from a different standpoint-many years ago: Eyler B. Simpson, The Ejido Mexico's Way Out (Chapel Hill, 1937), pp. 36-7.
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by those assertions.'? But the inferences to be drawn from this refutation are another matter. Two deserve particular mention. First, as regards the social implications of the revised figures, it is necessary to distinguish between landowning and landholding. Meyer shows that land was often thought. But terms of landholding-than more dispersed-in and form of took the often sharecropping, and tenancy dispersal here we enter a much murkier, nonquantifiable realm. Jean Meyer's sharecroppers are a pretty happy crew: secure, prosperous, upwardly mobile. Land dispersal is therefore a genuine index of welleven to the being; it attests to the limits of hacienda power-maybe the hacienda itself. of the Furthermore, upward sodisintegration cial mobility which it allows offers a telling comment on late Porfirian society, suggesting that things weren't so bad, and that the revolution was, perhaps, the product not of popular immiseration but rather of rising expectations.12 Indeed, upward mobility is a key recurrent element in recent revisionist views of the Porfiriato and of Other descriptions of Porfirian sharecropping, Revolution.'3 different a course, present picture: they depict sharecropping very or tenancy as old and trusted hacienda strategies, designed to enhance profits and offload risks, hence by no means conducive either to hacienda disintegration or to sharecropper prosperity.'4 By the same token, upwardly mobile sharecroppers must be seen as an untypical minority. It follows that widespread sharecropping was not necessarily indicative of hacienda decline or peasant well-being, and contribution of sharecropping was more that the "revolutionary"
10. Meyer, "Haciendas," p. 485. I, too, plead guilty to repeating the familiar statistic that around half the rural population was resident on haciendas in1910; however, I did not parrot the other one, namely that 97 percent of rural families lacked access to land: Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution (2 vols., Cambridge, 1986), I, pp. 96-7. Cf. John Hart, Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley, 1987), p. 162. 11. Meyer, "Haciendas," p. 482; cf. D. A. Brading, Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajio: Le6n 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 205-6. 12. Jean Meyer, La revolution mexicaine 1910-1940 (Paris, 1973), p. 23. 13. Ram6n E. Ruiz, The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905-1924 (New York, 1980) pp. 6, 9, 26, 75-6; Paul Vanderwood, "Explaining the Mexican Revolution," paper given at the Sixth Annual Mexico/Chicano Symposium, "LaRevoluci6n Mexicana/The Mexican Revolution," University of California at Irvine, 29-30 April 1988. Again, this is not wholly new: see Simpson, The Ejido, pp. 44-5. 14. Barbara Luise Margolies, Princes of the Earth: Subcultural Diversity in a Mexican Municipality (Washington, 1975), p. 34; Arturo Warman, Y venimos a contradecir: los campesinos de Morelosy el estado nacional (Mexico, 1976), pp. 80-4. Gledhill, Casi Nada, ch. 3 also depicts Guaracha's sharecroppers as miserable and indebted.
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likely immiseration than rising expectations. Of course, this is a very broadbrush comparison; differences by individual cases or regions must be taken into consideration (a good deal of Meyer's evidence is drawn from center-west Mexico, which, of course, was less "revolutionary" than central or even parts of northern Mexico). At the aggregate level, however, the point remains: land "dispersal" via sharecropping-or other tenancy agreements-does not constitute proof of either a languishing or a generous hacienda. It may qualify the traditional picture of monolithic haciendas populated by a mass of toiling peons; as such, however, it is precisely a qualification rather than a refutation of the traditional picture of widespreadand in some senses exploitative-hacienda hegemony in the Porfirian period. A second point is no less important. Even if Jean Meyer's revised figures are a substantial improvement over the old figures, as they very likely are, then, so what? As simple quantitative indicators of prerevolutionary agrarian conditions they cannot refute the notion of a popular agrarian revolution, since they contain no clear causational or subjective implications; that is, they do not purport to explain why the Revolution happened or what its protagonists sought to achieve. They may suggest that, if rural property was more widely distributed than generally supposed, then, perhaps, the notion of a popular agrarian revolution is open to question; but what we have here are a suggestion and a question, not a coherent argument. In fact, Meyer's central argument-that the hacienda did not dominate rural society to the overwhelming extent Tannenbaum supposed-is quite compatible with (and, one might even say, supportive of) the notion of a popular agrarian revolution. For if, as Tannenbaum wrongly supposed, the hacienda was so pervasive and hegemonic, and if free landed villages were so few and feeble, whence came the forces which propelled the popular (sic), agrarian (sic) revolution? Not, most authorities agree, from thepeonaje. Nor -I would argue-from an upwardly mobile middle class, rural or urban.'5 If Jean Meyer's figures expand the free peasant populationmeaning by that villagers, sharecroppers and smallholders who were not resident hacienda workers-then so much the better for the agrarian/popular thesis. Tannenbaum's evocative image of the Revolution may remain valid, even if his statistical apparatus is shown to be deficient.
15. Cf. Ruiz, Great Rebellion ch. 14; Romana Falc6n, "Los origines populares de la revoluci6n de 1910: El caso de San Luis Potosi," Historia Mexicana, 29 (1979), pp. 197-240.
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Jean Meyer's argument is partly derived from Fran4ois-Xavier Guerra's massive reevaluation of the Porfirian old regime-in particular, Guerra's acute dissection of census data and nomenclature.16 But Guerra's work-two big volumes as against Meyer's single, concise article-goes much further. It is both more ambitious and more tendentious. Unlike Meyer, Guerra goes beyond the statistics, beyond the compendious prosopographical data he has assembled, and presents a strongly interpretative analysis of the old regime, including the place of the hacienda within it. In this respect, Guerra's is perhaps the most thoughtful, thorough and radical piece of revisionism yet attempted. Though it focuses on the old regime rather than the revolution (the book stops in 1911, hence only the precursor movement and the Maderista revolution are discussed) it plainly offers a commentary on the Revolution, both explicitly and implicitly. And, to the extent that the old regime is rehabilitated, the revolution is damned; at times, it seems, Guerra writes as a reincarnation of the aristocratic and antirevolutionary Augustin Cochin, venting his spleen against Mexico's perverse liberals, radicals and freemasons.17 It is strong stuff, and has excited some strong reactions.18 For Guerra, the hacienda is an archetype of the old regime: traditional, paternalist, "holistic." Hacienda communities are incommunities, based on face-to-face tegral organic, gemeinschaftlich personal relations (as compared to the cerebral ties of "modern" associations: political clubs, parties, masonic lodges).19 Despite some degree of hacienda-village conflict, the social profile of the two is substantially similar; hacienda and village alike belong to "old" Mexico and are both challenged by the new forces of modernityintellectuals, reformers, radicals, party politicians. Furthermore, conflict is kept within bounds by the judicious, quasi-Hapsburg paternalism of Diaz, at least until the 1890s. Diaz and Zapata are bound in a pact of mutual respect and support, which is emblematic of broader state-peasant relations. Dfaz conciliates the peasantry as he does the Church. Indeed, the Porfirian regime is built less on oppression than consensus. From the 1890s, however, with the rise of
16. Francois-Xavier Guerra, Le Mexique De l'ancien regime a la revolution (2 vols., Paris, 1985), II, annexe V. 17. Francois Furet, "Augustin Cochin: the theory ofJacobinism" in Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 164-204. 18. Moises Gonzalez Navarro, "La guerra y la paz, o un nuevo refuerzo frances a la derecha mexicana," Secuencia Revista Americana de Ciencias Sociales, 7 (1987), pp. 57-69. I have briefly summarized what I see as the pro's and cons of Guerra's magnum opus: Hispanic American Historical Review, 68 (1988), pp. 139-143. 19. Guerra, Le Mexique, I, pp. 119-24, 157.
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the Cientificos (Guerra is a political rather than an economic determinist), Porfirian paternalism weakens, the social pact is broken, and village landholdings come under threat. Now, Guerra perceives a new sort of hacendado coming to the fore: rootless, absenteeist, profit-seeking, who sees the land "not so much as an essential element of social rank as a resource from which an economic return is expected."20 Previously, it would seem, Mexico's landlords were here Guerra and feckless, feudal and folksy. Nevertheless-and Meyer link up-the dispossession of the villages remained limited.2' Writing an ambitious national study, Guerra perforce generalizes. Behind his generalizations lie theoretical assumptions-based on the old tradition/modernity are often vague, dichotomy-which circular and inappropriately Eurocentric. His arguments thus tend to be more evocative than lucid. For our purposes, however, Guerra's chief contentions would seem to be: that the hacienda was a benign, legitimate, paternalist institution, a keystone of old "holistic" Mexico; that Mexico's villages had more in common with haciendas than either did with the meddlesome modernizing elites who sought to revolutionize both such "traditional" institutions; that, after 1890, the rise of new "modern" landlords, "modern" political elites and a "modern" political project, brought a degree of peasant dispossession and the erosion of some (much?) of the old Porfirian consensus; and that the Revolution was not a class revolution (class is largely banished from Guerra's scheme), but rather a political movement, led by elites, characterized by a "modern" political discourse, and triggered by a political succession crisis; a movement which-in ways that are not fully explained-took advantage of social grievances in order to win recruits and to topple an already moribund regime. "Local notables" (a nice French import) provide the leadership and inspiration; the common people "often find that the only resort which allows them to survive is to join the revolutionaries and live on pay or some eventual booty."22 Needless to say, Guerra's theoretical stance, with its acknowland social theory (Cochin, edged debt to French historiography Furet, Chaunu, Dumont) and Mexican conservatism (Bulnes, Vera debt to modernization Estafiol), and its unacknowledged theory, rules out any engagement with Marxist debates: there are no Junker or farmer paths winding their way through Guerra's prosopographical jungle. Guerra therefore offers no sense of the dynamics and
20. Ibid., pp. 124-5, 212, 256-8. 21. Ibid., pp. 211, 329-31 and II, annexe V. 22. Ibid., pp. 284-5, 289, 297.
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of Porfirian agrarian society: was it stuck in a rut, vigorously proceeding down a Junker road, or even edging towards a farmer road? Guerra rightly stresses the continued landholdings of the village (in this, Meyer follows Guerra and the preceding comments apropos of Meyer remain relevant), but his explanation of village dispossession remains heavily political, dependent on the failing will of Diaz and the rising coterie of the Cientificos. How such dispossession helped determine the revolutionary process is not the onset of the revolution is discussed-and, while explained-only popular participation and agrarian grievances are mentioned, they are buried within an analysis which clearly places its emphases elsewhere. Basically, Guerra's revolution is-ab initio23-the work of ambitious modernizing elites, bent on a task of political restructuring. The implications of revisionist scholarship carry over into interpretations of both the armed revolution and its institutional aftermath. If the hacienda was a more benign-and less expansionistenterprise than traditionally believed, it becomes much more plausible to see the agrarian reform as a manipulative project, enacted by the new revolutionary elite in order to win support, undercut their enemies, and enhance the power of the revolutionary state. It is the latter's rise which counts; the Revolution is again apolitical event/process; it represents a continuation of Porfirian state building. The appeal of such a view is enhanced by the fact not only that it is, in Mexican terms, revisionist and iconoclastic, but also that it is congruent with currently fashionable analyses of the French Revolution and, indeed, of revolutions in general.24 On the other hand, if the hacienda was oppressive and expansionist, the agrarian reform responded more closely to popular demands, even to considerations of social justice. Of course, these are broad and extreme formulations. One thing we all know and agree upon is that the Revolution was a diverse phenomenon, that there were many revolutions, and probably many agrarian reforms. It is not difficult to find examples
23. The qualification is important since to argue that thefinal outcome of the Revolution (the Carrancista triumph) involved an "ambitious modernizing elite, bent on a task of political restructuring," would be a more true, less contentious, though somewhat partial view. Here, however, it is the 1910-14 period which is at issue and here (I believe) Guerra overstates the role of politically-motivated elites, at the expense of socially-motivated nonelites (with apologies for another couple of crude dichotomies). 24. Furet, "The Revolutionary Catechism," in Interpeting the French Revolution, pp. 81-131; Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, 1980).
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at either end of the spectrum. But can we go beyond the trading of individual examples? Can this fundamental debate be-if not resolved-at least meaningfully tackled and advanced? Like most historical debates, this one hinges upon questions of degree: how oppressive, expansionist, illegitimate was the hacienda; how cynical, manipulative, "top-down" was the agrarian reform? To such questions of degree a quantitative answer would be most appropriate. But there are two obvious problems here. First, there is the basic problem of reliable data. Jean Meyer shows how far and how long historians were misled by Tannenbaum's erroneous figures concerning Porfirian land concentration. Francois Chevalier has expressed a justified scepticism concerning the agrarian reform figures.25Similarly, figures of rural real wages, important for any discussion of pre- and postrevolutionary living standards, are open to question; as are figures of agrarian production, which are in turn crucial for debates concerning the viability/success of the agrarian reform.26 So we are left trying to answer quantitative questions on the basis of doubtful quantitative data. But there is a second, more serious problem. Even if valid statistical series existed, they would not answer many of the questions posed. For example, suppose the conventional figures for the preCardenista agrarian reform were correct: 7.6m hectares granted in definitive distribution to some 750,000 campesinos up to December 1933; ejidos comprising 6.3 percent of total farm properties by area and 9.4 percent by value in 1930.27 Does this imply a picture of minimal change, modest change, significant change, dramatic change? Eyler Simpson-who spent eight years researching the subject-considered this the "outstanding achievement" of the Revolution.28 Recent authors, in contrast, have tended to play down the pre-1934 agrarian reform, stressing continuity rather than rupture.29 Trading land distribution figures to and fro, however, is unlikely to
25. FranSois Chevalier, "The Ejido and Political Stability in Mexico," in Claudio Veliz, ed., The Politics of Conformity in Latin America (Oxford, 1967), pp. 15961. Note also Simpson, The Ejido, p. 172. 26. John H. Coatsworth, "Anotaciones sobre la producci6n de alimentos durante el Porfiriato," Historia Mexicana, 26 (1976), pp. 167-87; Simpson, The Ejido, pp. 498-509. 27. Simpson, The Ejido, pp. 613, 626-627. 28. Ibid., pp. 43, 77. 29. Cf. Lorenzo Meyer, Historia de la revoluci6n mexicana. 1928-34. El conflicto socialy los gobiernos del maximato (Mexico, 1978), pp. 174-175; Armando Barta, Los herederos de Zapata: Movimientos campesinos posrevolucionarios en Mexico (Mexico, 1985) p. 24.
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resolve the debate (I assume there is an implicit debate). How long is a piece of string? Statistics only become meaningful in the light of interpretation. We would need to know more not only about the quality of the land transferred, but also about the social, economic, political and psychological impact of the transferal.30 For example, we are familiar with bogus agrarian reform figures-indices of apparent upheaval-which disguise continuity of ownership and But alternative biases are also possible: statistical exploitation. continuities may conceal social upheaval, or at least significant social change. An hacienda's loss of only a fraction of its land may form part of a broader, nonquantifiable process which grievously affects hacienda operations: it may, for example, accompany (and accelerate) diminished control of labor, rising wage costs, rural unionization and political mobilization, loss of business confidence, disinvestment. Furthermore, bald statistics cannot reflect changes in mentalite. A land grant could bolster campesino self-confidence, just as it could erode hacendado faith in the future; a grant in favor of one community could have a demonstration effect elsewhere; a grant today presaged further grants tomorrow. Land reform in one state or region could have a spill-over effect in neighboring states/ regions.31 Such considerations lead me to suggest that the ostensibly statistically modest land grants of the 1920s had a disproportionate impact, economically, socially, politically, and psychologically. They represented a loss to the landlord class of more than a few superfluous hectares. They laid the groundwork for the more sweepwe return to our ing reform of 1935-40. By the same token-if could a from induce shift, perhaps "Junker" to "paths"-they "farmer" paths, perhaps even from no path (a directionless stagnation) to a more purposive capitalist development within agriculture. If aggregate statistical measurements are difficult and inconclusive, the only viable alternative is the comparison of case studies-of which we have an increasing number-and the elaboration of trends and typologies. We may not be able to say, with any precision, that such and such a case is typical of the whole; but we may at least be
30. As Marte R. G6mez expressed it to President Cardenas, when discussing a celebrated case of reform in Tamaulipas: "the question at El Mante was not a simple one of theodolites, tapes, and measurements. It was a question of talking with the campesinos, taking note of their opinion, unraveling why they insisted on asking for certain lands, and working to persuade the resident peons to join in the (ejidal) censuses": G6mez to Cardenas, 18 Nov. 1939, Archivo General de la Naci6n, Mexico, Presidentes (Cardenas), 562.11/222. 31. Ann L. Craig, The First Agraristas: An Oral History of a Mexican Agrarian Reform Movement (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 82-83.
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able to discern recurrent patterns and categories of greater or lesser importance. It has been reasonably demonstrated, I think, that the agrarian revolts of the Porfiriato and, a fortiori, the Revolution, mobilized villagers rather than resident peons. Indeed, it may be that a rough correlation can be shown between revolutionary participation and campesino autonomy. Thus, if we take the Baraona/Kay model and employ the concept of internal and external peasantry, asedio interno and asedio externo, the propensity for organization, protest and armed revolt would seem to grow as we move along the
continuum.32 Internal Peasantry External Peasantry resident peons - day laborers - tenants, sharecroppers - free villagers
For example, we know that in Morelos the hacienda peons lagged behind the villagers. In San Luis, the smallholding Cedillos initially recruited sharecroppers-and later peons. In Chihuahua, and possibly the Laguna too, peasant communities (Namiquipa, Bachiniva, Cuencame) provided the focal points for rebellions which recruited more widely amongst the diverse population of the north. In Tlaxcala, it was the southern part of the state, where peasant villages defied the power of the hacienda, that the revolution took off, while the hacienda-dominated north remained more quiescent; likewise, in Yucatan, rebellion was more marked in the inland zones where
the big henequen plantation did not exercise such marked control, and where free peasants were more numerous.33 The grievances of the free peasants who, while enjoying some social and political autonomy, faced the threat of economic dispossession, have been amply discussed. But what of the hacienda peons -or, more generally, of campesinos closer to the lefthand, "dependent" end of the continuum? Was their passivity the result of tight social control (indicative of an oppressive but efficient hacienda)? Or of relative contentment (indicative of the continued legitimacy
32. Crist6bal Kay, "The development of the Chilean hacienda system, 18501973," in Kenneth Duncan and Ian Rutledge, eds., Land and Labour in Latin America (Cambridge, 1977) pp. 103-105. 33. The case of Tlaxcala is particularly illuminating in this respect: see Raymond Th. J. Buve, "Peasant Movements, Caudillos and Land Reform during the Revolution (1910-17) in Tlaxcala, Mexico," Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 18 (1975), pp. 112-152, and MargaritaMenegus Bornemann andJuan Felipe Leal, "Los trabajadores de las haciendas de Mazaquiahuac y El Rosario, Tlaxcala, en los albores de la revoluci6n agraria, 1910-1914," in Heriberto Moreno Garcia, Despues de los latifundios (La disintegracidn de la gran propiedad agraria en Mexico) (Zamora, 1982) pp. 143-165.
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and paternalism of the hacienda)? The question is obviously important, and central to the revisionist/traditional debate over the character of the Porfirian hacienda. We will address it in a moment, as we consider the process of agrarian reform. Revisionist historians have made much of the manipulative, topdown (and, we should add, "center-out") character of the postrevolutionary agrarian reform.34It was, they argue, less a popular cause than a political strategem. Its supposed beneficiaries feared the central government, even when it brought gifts. For the gifts had strings attached: ejidatarios became clients of the regime, lacking freehold title to their plots, compelled to vote, mobilize, even fight at the behest of their revolutionary benefactors. All this was necessary because, according to the revisionist argument, Porfirian agrariansociety had not been racked by class tensions, nor had the Revolution displayed a primary popular and agrarian charcter. The hacienda retained legitimacy and thus had to be forcibly dismantled by the new revolutionary elite, who were above all concerned, not to impart social justice or to satisfy peasant demands (which were not so pressing anyway), but rather to solidify the state, to cement national loyalties, and to break down centers of countervailing provincial, landlord and clerical power. As with many of the revisionists' arguments, there is a measure of truth in all this. The agrarian reform was certainly a political instrument (I will return to that point in a moment). Furthermore, there was popular resistance-and/or indifference-to the reform. The lamentations and exhortations of the revolutionaries make this clear. Carrillo Puerto had to work hard to get his message across to Yucatan's peons; the pioneer agrarians of Jalisco, too, took upon themselves a formidable labor de conscientizacion; in Michoacan, reformers were frustrated by those peasants who "out of fanaticism or poverty or the intrigues of landlords did not want to accept the ejido."35 Very likely, many recipients would have preferred freehold plots to community-owned ejidos (the notion that the Mexican peasantry in general clove to communal land tenure, derivative, perhaps, of the Aztec calpullali, seems to me much exaggerated).36
34. By "center-out" I mean reform directed by the "center" in order to foster political centralization and to break down provincial autonomy. 35. G. M. Joseph, Revolution From Without: Yucatdn, Mexico, and the United States, 1880-1924 (Cambridge, 1982), ch. 8; Craig, The First Agraristas, p. 96; Victoriano Anguiano Equihua, Ldzaro Cdrdenas: Su feudo y la politica nacional (Mexico, 1951), p. 48. 36. Hart, Revolutionary Mexico, stresses the continuities of peasant protest, from Precolumbian times to the Revolution, and makes a good deal of peasant communalism: e.g., pp. 28, 33-4, 238, 364.
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The degree of resistance/indifference, however, must be related to the Baraona/Kay continuum given above. Just as the armed revolution mobilized the external peasantry, so, too, the agrarian reform won their support rather than that of the internal peasantry. In part this was the direct consequence of agrarian policy. For some twenty years resident peons were largely debarred from petitioning for land (it is important to stress "largely," and to note cases in which "liberated" peons might become beneficiaries of land distribution).37 In the main, peones acasillados had good reason to stick with the hacienda. First, out of fear: the repressive capacity of the hacienda, now backed in some instances by "revolutionary" collaborators, was not entirely spent; the penalties of protest were often severe and, of course, hardly indicative of benign hacienda paternalism.38 But peon economic self-interest also counted. It is clear that some haciendas cultivated the support of their peons by offering perks and benefits, which might be particularly attractive in time of social and economic upheaval. Apart from overt paternalism-acts of charity, fiestas, relations of compadrazgo-the hacienda offered access to land, seed, animals, and credit. The secure dependence of the resident peon was often perceived as preferable to the precarious independence of the day laborer-the Yucatan "half-timer" or the migrant and temporary worker of central Mexico.39 If the resident peon was offered the choice, not between peonage and smallholding, but rather between peonage and day laboring, it is not surprising that many opted for peonage. Stripped of their secure but dependent status, as they were in Morelos, they became the "orphans of the hacienda," cast adrift in a hostile universe.40 Not surprisingly, many peons resisted an agrarian reform which threatened their livelihood to the benefit of outsiders (external peasants-and sometimes not even peasants) and, in some cases, peons proved to be loyal clients of the landlord, even when the landlord fell upon hard times. Nor
37. In practice, matters were not quite so simple. Simpson, The Ejido, p. 83, points out that hacienda communities could achieve the necessary political status to petition for land; furthermore, abandoned haciendas were vulnerable. Luis Aboites, La revoluci6n en Espita Yucatdn (1910-1940) (Merida, 1985), pp. 72-80, 101-106, shows how liberated peons occupied land and successfully petitioned for ejidal grants. Note also Ernest Gruening, Mexico and its Heritage (London, 1928), pp. 153-4. 38. There is an abundant literature: see, for example, Heather Fowler Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, 1920-1938 (Lincoln, 1978), pp. 37, 41; Craig, The First Agraristas, pp. 77-78, 92; Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (Chicago, 1977). 39. Knight, "Mexican Peonage," pp. 64-5; Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, pp. 67-73. 40. Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, p. 124.
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were resident peons the sole victims. Sharecroppers, too, were displaced when external peasants successfully petitioned for hacienda land.41 The agrarian reform was therefore bound to divide the peasantry and to generate intrapeasant conflicts. Over and above the simple peon-agrarian conflict the reform also pitted agrarian against ranchero, village against village, father against son. We know that the early victims of the reform were often "rancheros" rather than latifundistas. This did not mean, necessarily, the dispossession of stout yeomen by conniving agrarians. "Rancheros"-lesser landfor often been over responsible lords/caciques-had taking village landholding during the Porfiriato; in some regions they, rather than big hacendados, were the chief agents of agrarian commercialization and accumulation.42 It is wrong, therefore, to see the dispossession of "rancheros" as an inherent betrayal or perversion of the agrarian reform.43 But, in addition, the reform both engendered new intercommunal conflicts (e.g., Zacualpan vs Temoac, Mor.) and an extra resource in old feuds (Soyaltepec vs Amilpas, provided it also stimulated sectoral disputes (ejidatarios against truck Oax.); and within of which more in a mocommunities, farmers) splits ment.44 No doubt some of this conflict was deliberately stirred up for political reasons, not least by hacendados. But, I suggest, a large measure of conflict was inevitable in such a prolonged and sweeping redistribution of property, enacted in a country where rural conflicts (hacienda versus village, village versus village) were endemic anyway. Even if the official protagonists of the agrarian reform had wanted a neat, clean, orderly, bureaucratic reform it is difficult to see how they could have accomplished it. In reviewing the course of the reform it is useful to note continuities and ruptures. In some states and regions, revolutionary mobilization in 1910-20 laid the groundwork for-relatively-swift institutional reform during the 1920s. Again, Morelos was the classic case; but it was not unique. Elsewhere, too, pioneer agrarian protest achieved results: in Tlaxcala and other central plateau states; in western Chihuahua; with Cedillo in San Luis; in the case of those
41. Simpson, The Ejido, p. 105. 42. Knight, Mexican Revolution, I, pp. 99-101, 112-114. 43. Sometimes, the targeted "rancheros" were petty landlords-cum-caciques (or gamonales): e.g., Carlos Garcia Mora, "Tierra y movimiento agrarista en la Sierra Purepecha," inJornadas de Occidente: Movimientos populares en el occidente de Mexico, siglos XIX y XX (iquilpan, 1981), pp. 67-68. 44. Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, 152-3; Philip A. Dennis, Conflictospor tierras en el valle de Oaxaca (Mexico, 1976), pp. 106-107.
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Michoacan communities which bucked the local trend and displayed a tenacious agrarianism. In a good many instances, therefore, the institutional agrarian reform correlated with-and in some clear sense responded to-prior revolutionary mobilization. We may regard these as cases of "primary" agrarian reform. In other instances continuity was less evident; hence the presumption of top-down, center-out, manipulative reform must be greater. Yucatan experienced relatively radical reform in the early 1920s-Carrillo Puerto's delivery of the goods previously promised by Alvarado. Alvaradista or Carrillista, this reform had a top-down quality: it required state organization and exhortation; it encountered not only predictable landlord opposition but also a degree of popular apathy (or caution); and it proved-in places-to be fragile and reversible. Yucatan may thus be taken as an exemplar of "secondary" reform. Again, we should see these contrasting forms as ends of a continuum rather than discrete boxes. We should also be cautious of following the practice, conventional and sometimes unavoidable, of generalizing at the level of states, and thus of collapsing together regions or localities which might better be disaggregated.45 However, for the purpose of general analysis, let us say that Morelos and Yucatan represent approximate extremes of "primary" and "secondary" reform, with many other cases lying in between. Among these intermediate cases would be Veracruz or Michoacan, states in which the institutional reform of the 1920s was built upon shaky-but existing-foundations, laid by the incipient popular agrarianism of the revolution. Fowler and Falc6n, able analysts of Veracruz agrarianism, tend to see the state's agrarian reform as springing, fully formed, from the head of Tejedismo; its pioneers are often urban intellectuals, politicos and labor leaders.46 Yet Veracruz produced a rich crop of agrarian movements during the nineteenth century, and its contribution during the armed revolution was by no means negligible either.47 Likewise Michoacan: as governors, Mfigica and Cardenas gave decisive "top-down" support for agrarianism;but they also encountered ready support from below, support which attested to the
45. Morelos-which, of course, possesses its own internal contrasts-appears a more unanimously agrarian state than any other partly because it is small, hence it can more easily attain unanimity; larger states possessed pockets of agrarianism which, in terms of area, exceeded Morelos and, in terms of population, came close. 46. Fowler, Agrarian Radicalism; Romana Falc6n, El agrarismo en Veracruz: La etapa radical (1928-1935) (Mexico, 1977) and, with Soledad Garcia, La semilla en el surco: Adalberto Tejeda y el radicalismo en Veracruz, 1883-1960 (Mexico, 1986). 47. Knight, Mexican Revolution, II, pp. 54-55.
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prior popular mobilization of the armed revolution, which had distinctly agrarian connotations.48 Michoacan's revolution did not measure up to Morelos's in terms of agrarian intensity; but it was more dynamic than that of many states. Indeed, an extreme "top-down" interpretation of the reformone which stresses above all its elitist and manipulative characterbegs an important question. If popular support and mobilization were lacking-if the ejido was a blatant imposition on a reluctant was in it for the elite manipulators? Manipulation impeople-what unequal trade-off, to be sure-but plies some form of trade-off-an a trade-off nonetheless. If in fact the peasant "beneficiaries" of the reform perceived few or no concrete benefits, then their presumed "manipulators" played the role not of deft puppeteers, but rather of naive social engineers, espousing a policy which did not win friends and which influenced people only in a negative sense. This perspective may apply, in good measure, to revolutionary anticlericalism, more-to the socialist education program of the 1930s. or-even Both were doctrinaire ideological projects; both were vote-losers rather than vote-winners. The agrarian reform was a different proposition. True, it encountered a range of reactions, as we have recognised; but for "manipulation" to work, there had to be a substantial ground swell of support for the policy. Furthermore, if such support existed, making "manipulation" possible, we should perhaps be careful of using terms (like "manipulation") which imply a heavily one-sided relationship. Of course agrarian caudillos enjoyed more power than peasant communities. But if there was a perceived common interest, and if peasant support was freely given,49 we might better refer to trade-offs and reciprocal bargains rather than "manipulation." After all, when similar political relationships transpire elsefor example, FDR and the New Dealers forged an where-when,
48. Garcia Mora, "Tierra y movimiento agrarista en la Sierra Purepecha," pp. 59-89; Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village. 49. A Sartrean disquisition on "freedom" might be appropriate at this point. Of course, economically and politically subordinate peasants did not enjoy a wide range of options from which they could choose in leisurely reflective fashion. But there were options, debates and decisions. Maybe this was a form of political "freedom" analogous to the economic "freedom" of the market: on the one hand, it was constrained by a harsh reality (the abstract economic freedom to starve was paralleled, we may say, by the abstract political freedom to go it alone and eschew politics); on the other hand, it did imply "freedom" from a given and ineluctable political monopoly (the political counterpart of serfdom or slavery). Peasants did possess some scope for maneuver between the competing authorities of landlord, cleric, bureaucrat and caudillo. I suspect, too, that there was greater scope during the turbulent postrevolutionary period (1920-40) than there has been since 1940.
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alliance with organized labor during the 1930s-we do not usually assume that this is a simple case of top-down manipulation. And in the case of Mexican agrarianism it is clear that peasant activists acquired a sophisticated knowledge of the "revolutionary" system and worked it to the best of their advantage. They operated from a position of subordination (subordination, of course, is diagnostic of "peasantries," according to most theories), but that did not make them mere puppets. The point is well made by Craig, whose study focusses on a "conservative" region within a "conservative" state, where peasant agrarianism had been traditionally weak. Yet, she notes, agrarian mobilization did evoke a positive response, which cannot be understood in simple "manipulative" terms; even if the Lagos agrarians depended heavily on external and superordinate allies, "there is no evidence to suggest that they were alliances forced upon the Laguenses or into which they entered naively."50 Fowler Salamini, too, in discussing the Tejedista peasant alliance in Veracruz, talks of a combination of "symbiosis" and "clientelism."51 This leads logically to the next point. It may be objected, reasonably, that, although "top-down" reform may have required a supportive (manipulable) constituency, that constituency may have comprised only a small minority within a given region/community. Of course, that minority still had to be large or influential enough to merit "manipulation." If it was not, devious "manipulation" looks like pretty dumb politics. The point which reemerges is that the agrarian reform was inherently divisive and conflictual. It elicited both support and opposition; hence the business of buying political capital with agrarian currency was especially difficult and complex. Land grants were not like across-the-board tax cuts. Since land tenure was a zero-sum game, each grant implied a corresponding loss and beneficiaries were-to varying degrees-offset by victims. Morelos, again, was something of a special case, given the sheer extent of Zapatismo and the widespread elimination of the sugar plantations during the Revolution. Here, the reparto of the early 1920s appears to have enjoyed unusually broad support, which perhaps contributed to the bucolic atmosphere witnessed by Redfield.52 Elsewhere, the reform divided rural society much more profoundly. The basic divide involved (external) peasants and landlords and was manifested in the running battles-political, ideological and even
50. Craig, The First Agraristas, p. 10. 51. Fowler Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism, p. 67. 52. Peter Coy, "A Watershed in Mexican Rural History: Some Thoughts on the Reconciliation of Conflicting Interpretations," Journal of Latin American Studies, 3 (1978), pp. 39-57.
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literal--which stretched through the 1920s: Primo Tapia and the Naranja agrarians against the Noriegas; Francisco Rojas and his Bolsheviki against the ill-fated Rosalie Evans in Puebla; Mateo Sanchez and his "Indian" crew against the Hacienda Providencia north of Toluca.53 In such conflicts, the hacendado did not fight alone, nor did he/ she rely solely on the strong-arm support of the army, white guards, or, in the case of Rosalie Evans, her pack of slavering hounds. Force was important, but it was not the hacendado's sole weapon. Revisionist scholarship notwithstanding, there is plenty of evidence of clerical support for the hacendado in his battle with agrarianism.54 More important, for our purposes, the hacendado could also count on popular support (freely given, with the same caveat as before). Resident peons, as well as tenants and sharecroppers, often resisted agrarianism; the conflict thus posed "internal" against "external" peasantries. At Providencia, the majority of the peons spurned Mateo Sanchez's incipient agrarianism: "their loyalties remained with the hacendado and they sided with the hacendado," the estate manager recalled.55 In Veracruz and San Luis, likewise, resident peons often spurned agrarianism until well into the 1930s-until, that is, the demise of the hacienda was imminent.56 The rough division evident during the armed revolution was thus repeated during the postrevolutionary reform. If agrarian leaders "manipulated" their followers, so, too, embattled landlords "manipulated" their peons; or, to put it differently, the rival causes enlisted rival constituencies, bound together by sentiments of self-interest as well as common ideological perceptions. On the agrarian side, it should be added, the assembled constituency included more than just peasants and their caudillo leaders (Tejeda, Migica, Cedillo, Zuno and others). Areas of secondary mobilization were also distinguished by an important admixture of (loosely) urban allies: city radicals, teachers, labor leaders, middle53. Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt; Rosalie Evans, The Rosalie Evans Lettersfrom Mexico (Indianapolis, 1926), p. 136; Margolies, Princes of the Earth, pp. 39-40. 54. Craig, The First Agraristas, pp. 70-1; Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, pp. 48, 120; Luis Gonzalez, Pueblo en vilo: Microhistoria de San Jose de Gracia (Mexico, 1972), pp. 173-174; Beatriz Rojas, La destruccidn de la hacienda en Aguascalientes, 1910-1931 (Zamora, 1981), p. 69. Cf. the case of Morelos, where-given the sweeping and "primary" character of the agrarian reform-clerical opposition was absent: Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, p. 174. 55. Margolies, Princes of the Earth, p. 39. 56. Fowler, Agrarian Radicalism, p. 40; Jan Bazant, Cinco haciendas mexicanas: Tres siglos de vida rural en San Luis Potosi (Mexico, 1975), p. 185.
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class intellectuals, even the occasional military officer (not all the revolutionary military were repressive cossacks).57 Again, we should hesitate to denote these as mere manipulators. For one thing, even the quintessential peasant movements of the armed revolution displayed a mixed leadership, which included nonpeasants.58 It would be narrowly formalistic to deny a movement "peasant" status simply because its leaders were not wholly "peasant" in origin. As regards the institutional reformers of post-1920s, they responded to a variety of motives. The CROMleadership may have sought peasant recruitment in somewhat cynical fashion, but not all CROMistamobilization was ipso facto cynical and manipulative. Other groups, too, were active: Communists in Veracruz and the Laguna; radical artisans (Mexico's equivalents of the pioneers of Andalusian anarchism, it would seem) in Jalisco. Some, like Macedonio Ayala of Lagos, were genuine idealists, who paid for their idealism with their lives.59 We should also mention that important but indeterminate groups, peasant migrants, especially the growing number of nortenos.60 Such brokers helped impart a new consciousness and, perhaps more important, helped build a new organization. Their extracommunity contacts enabled them to advance supracommunity mobilization: via peasant leagues, unions, and links with state and national parties. Agrarian mobilization, however, faced formidable obstacles, which in turn contributed to the halting, violent and conflictual character of the agrarian reform. Reform was slow, risky and expensive. It could take a community years of petitioning and politicking; it could incur heavy costs, financial and others; and it meant charting an uncertain course through an ever-changing sea of agrarian legislation. Its protagonists faced not only violent reprisals, but also economic sanctions, such as the loss of jobs and credit; they might even suffer social ostracism.61 Landlords could stymie reform in a variety of ways: by direct violence, by political alliances, by tactical preemptive reform (successfully attempted by William Jenkins and others; unsuccessfully tried by the Laguna planters in the early 1930s).62 They could string out the process of litigation, resorting
57. Craig,TheFirst Agraristas, pp. 45, 100. 58. Warman,Y venimos a contradecir, p. 133, lists Zapatistaleaders.
59. Craig, The First Agraristas, pp. 118-120. 60. Craig, The First Agraristas, pp. 91-94, 178-180; Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, pp. 69-70. 61. Gledhill, Casi Nada, p. 85. 62. David Ronfeldt, Atencingo: The Politics of Agrarian Struggle in a Mexi-
can Ejido (Stanford,1973).
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to the agrarian amparo; they could also employ dirty tricks (for example, intercepting their opponents' mail).63 Ultimately, as expropriation loomed, they even sabotaged their properties.64 Landlord resistance was the more effective in that the agrarians' ultimate goal-the not an unmitiacquisition of ejidal land-was This is to boon. not that were gated say ejidos regularly foisted on a reluctant peasantry by a conniving state. The state's role was highly ambivalent, at least until 1935, and ejidal grants were rarely forthcoming without prior local mobilization. And there are few if any cases of ejidatarios handing back their lands in disgust.65 The point, rather, is to see the ejido in perspective, as it was seen by necessarily cautious campesinos. In practical terms, ejidal lands were of varying quality; their access to water supplies was often a problem; and, especially prior to the 1930s, their recipients lacked any institutional backup. Ejidatarios got access to land, but that was of little use without credit, seeds, fertilizer, animals. These, formerly supplied to peons, sharecroppers or tenants by the hacendado, were rarely forthcoming under the new dispensation. The campesinos of Morelos did not want for land in the 1920s, but there was an acute shortage of oxen, just as there were conflicts over access to water supplies.66 Even during the Cardenas years, when governmental efforts were much greater, plenty of newly created ejidos languished for want of adequate seeds, tools and credit.67 effect: on We must suppose, therefore, a counterdemonstration the one hand, agrarian agitation might prove contagious, but, on the other, awareness of the problems which ejidatarios faced could instill a measure of diffidence and caution. Rural workers perceived that, in some (many?) instances, "the reparto would give them more and would not guarantee them an immediate imresponsibilities
63. The politics of the agrarian amparo during this period are complex and not easy to unravel: see Simpson, The Ejido, pp. 119-120. The dirty tricks are recounted in Craig, The First Agraristas, p. 86. 64. G6mez to Cardenas (n. 30 above). 65. As Luis Gonzalez puts it, Pueblo en vilo, p. 193: although ejidatarios may live in poverty, seeking some amelioration through petitions for new land distributions, nevertheless, "none aspires to return to his earlier status as peon or sharecropper. Perhaps they are as poor as before, but they are more free and human." The nonmaterial benefits of the reform were similarly noted by Simpson, The Ejido, p. 108. 66. Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, p. 179. 67. Several examples are to be found in the Francisco Migica archive, Centro de Estudios de la Revoluci6n Mexicana "LazaroCardenas," Jiquilpan, Michoacan: e.g., Mugica to Cardenas, 2 Feb. 1937, vol. 179 p. 27, describing how "almost all the agrarian communities of Zamora" lacked credit, oxen and tools.
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provement."68 Diffidence and caution were also justified by the ejido's novel form. It seems clear that many recipients would have preferred outright grants of freehold land: "parcellization"--in effect, a return to the old Law of Ejidal Patrimony-became a recurrent demand in the later 1930s, after the sweeping Cardenista reforms.69 The conditionality of the ejidal grant offended peasantslike those of Namiquipa-who, while they were dogged agrarians, did not relish receiving their lands at the hands of the revolutionary state.70 Given the prevalence of dotacion over restituci6n, we may assume that such an attitude was not confined to Namiquipa. The conditionality of the grant created other misgivings. How secure was the ejido? With the benefit of hindsight we see it as a keystone of postrevolutionary rural society. During the 1920s and '30s it was a novel experiment, the subject of widespread opposition and criticism (e.g., in the press and among the veteranos).71 Who would predict its longevity? Some campesinos, even in Morelos, feared the return of the hacendado and hesitated to compromise themselves as agrarians.72 And how legitimate was it? Opponents of the reform, clerical and lay, made a good deal of the illegitimate character of the ejido: it was a bastard form of property, born of thievery.73 Agrarianism thus aroused strong misgivings and outright opposition, as well as fierce loyalties. It was bound to polarize rural society and produce endemic conflict; in a sense, it was the continuation of the revolution by other means. There is a tendency to cite the violence, conflict and corruption of the reform as evidence of its phony, contrived, controlled character. A "proper" reform, as it were, would have been peaceful, decorous and uncontentious, conducted by saintly social engineers, twentieth-century equivalents of
68. The quote refers to sugar mill workers in Veracruz (a special case, to be sure): Juana Martinez Alarc6n, San Crist6bal: Un ingenio y sus trabajadores (Xalapa, 1986), p. 142. 69. A demand even embraced by the Communists: see Thomas Louis Benjamin, Passages to Leviathan: Chiapas and the Mexican State, 1891-1947 (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1981), p. 254. 70. Daniel Nugent, Land, Labor and Politics in a Serrano Society (publication forthcoming). Note also Jean Meyer, La Cristiada (Mexico, 3 vols., 1985) III, p. 74. 71. E.g., El Universal, 19 March 1922, urges the government to rescue a declining agricultural sector by giving "complete guarantees ... as to property and also . .. capital and labor invested ... [thus] creating confidence and holding legitimate property rights to be inviolate." Avila Camacho complied twenty years later. On the "veterans": Simpson, The Ejido, pp. 439-440. 72. Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, p. 159. 73. Simpson, The Ejido, p. 106; Gruening, Mexico and its Heritage, pp. 216-218.
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the millenarian Franciscans of the conquest. This seems unrealistic. The reform involved big material stakes and bitter class and factional struggles. In the course of some thirty years it ended the regime of the great estate and reconstituted the Mexican peasantry. An ancient institution was killed off and secular trends were reversed. Such a process was bound to be messy and violent. Its peasant protagonists -like the "Princes" of Naranja portrayed by Paul Friedrich-were bound to be Machiavellian figures, children of poverty and struggle who combined individual ruthlessness with some genuine regard for the common good (the latter defined in terms of the agrarian community).74 Thus, the Naranja ejido, born amid bloodshed and sacrifice and sustained through endemic strife, did represent a genuine reordering of power and property in the region. If it was ruled by (agrarian) caciques, this did not nullify its significance in terms of agrarian change, even revolution. Caciquismo was a natural, perhaps inevitable, mode of leadership, given historical and social preconditions. It occurred everywhere: in regions of primary reform like Morelos or of secondary reform like Yucatan.75 Conversely, "demoon the lines of (say) Scandinavian cratic" agrarian reform-reform social democracy-was absent from the agenda; so, too, was reform mediated through a militant vanguard party such as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party); however, that too would very likely have embodied a good deal of party bossism-vanguard caciquismo. The of and individual brokers fixers, versed in politprevalence power ical skills and familiar with violence, was an inevitable consequence of the Revolution, and of Mexico's inherited political culture; agrarian reform would be caciquista (to some degree), or it would be no reform at all. Ejidatarios were known to lament the disappearance of the old boss: the creation of new revolutionary bosses was in part a response to this vacuum.76 What mattered, over time, was the character of the emerging ejidal caciquismo. Caciques came in many and unpopular, responsible and tyrannical. Over guises-popular as the reform was consolidated, as pioneer struggles time, however, to routine gave way politics, and, above all, as the revolutionary
74. Paul Friedrich, The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method (Austin, 1986). 75. Warman, Y venimos a contradecir, p. 167-8, 181, where the author stresses that the Morelense caciques were "men of the people" and "convinced agrarians;" compared to the old landlord elite, they were "rustic, combative, shrewd and cruel, they were compadres, nephews and neighbours ... their power was not remote but down-to-earth (concreto)." On Yucatan, see Joseph, Revolution From Without, pp. 117-119, 207-209 and Aboites, La revoluci6n mexicana en Espita, pp. 86-7, 109. 76. Simpson, The Ejido, p. 379.
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state of the 1920s and '30s gave way to the new institutional regime of the 1940s, so ejidal bossism tended to lose its earlier demotic and quasi-representative character.77 This, the "political" dimension of the agrarian reform, deserves closer analysis. The notion that the agrarian reform was a highly politicized process, shot through with intrigue and factionalism, is no new discovery.78 The point, therefore, is not to trumpet this (obvious) fact, but to try to analyze its significance. I have suggested that the "top-down" model should be replaced by a dialectical model which sees "manipulation" (or, we might better say, reciprocal political bargaining) as proceeding both ways, top-down and bottom-up. But the perspective can be yet further broadened. Agrarianism may be seen as a new political resource, brought into being by the Revolution. Like it or not, agrarianism could not be wished away. All sociopolitical actors therefore had to reckon with it. Some espoused it enthusiastically, some more cautiously; some opposed it vigorously, whether in the press, in politics, or in armed conflict; some sought to evade and deflect it. Few could ignore it. Thus, groups other than those initially involved in agrarian conflict soon began to take up positions: the agrarian arena expanded, encompassing urban-dwellers, sindicatos, politicians, intellectuals and, most importantly, campesinos who had played no role in the revolution (who had been untouched by the initial phase of primary mobilization and reform). The decision to take sides was not necessarily careful, logical and reflective, but very often hasty, expedient and, in some senses, ineluctable. In regions or communities lacking a revolutionary record-those of "secondary" mobilization-reactions to agrarianism were less historically predetermined, but reactions could not be avoided. Neutrality was a difficult stance to maintain. Agrarianism thus figured, like anticlericalism or indigenismo, as a new fact of revolutionary life which had to be reckoned with. Some communities, tranquil during the revolution, rapidly espoused the agrarian cause: we may conclude that their previous passivity derived less from bucolic contentment than from effective social control.79 Others eschewed agrarianism, either because land
77. See the interesting analysis in Susana Glantz, El ejido colectivo de Nueva Italia (Mexico, 1974) pp. 133-141. 78. "The parcelling out still goes on and will doubtless continue indefinitely, gifts of land being apparently used as bribes by the political party in power to consolidate its position:" "Notes on the Agrarian Problem in Mexico" by US consulgeneral Alexander Weddell, Mexico City, 19 July 1927, in Department of State Records, Internal Affairs of Mexico, 812.52/1459. See also Simpson, The Ejido, p. 348. 79. Aboites, La revoluci6n mexicana en Espita, makes the point that the revo-
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distribution seemed superfluous and disruptive (e.g., San Jose de all its political and economic Gracia), or because the hacienda-for both control and problems-retained legitimacy (e.g., San Diego de Rio Verde).80 A very common outcome, however, was neither unanimous support nor unanimous opposition, but, rather, internal division and polarization, which landlords might choose to foster.81 This could follow class lines: poor peasants favored land distribution, kulaks-or, alternatively, campesinos closely and clientelistilinked to the local hacienda-opposed it.82 But it was not cally as as that. simple always Agrarianism, penetrating regions of "seccame as a message and a resource. As a mesondary" mobilization, it the emanated from loose radical agrarian constituency and sage, from the state itself; at any rate, it came from outside, (sometimes) as a ray of hope or an alien blight. As a resource, it offered external aid and comfort. To become an agrarian was to throw in one's lot with a regional caudillo, a reforming governor, an emergent peasant Local autonomy might be comproleague, a labor confederation. local be advanced. Those causes might but causes also mised, might be disinterested and highminded, or self-serving and personalist (often they combined the two), but the fact remained that agrarianism-like anticlericalism or indigenismo-represented a new factor in local equations of power. The decision to endorse or oppose thus depended not just on class alignments, important though these were, but also on questions of age,83 of historical predisposition, and of tactical maneuvering. Consider historical disposition. For some ardent provincials, the agrarian reform was suspect because it emanated from without, from state or national capital; it was a "center-out" imposition. For reform was repugnant not beCatholics-Jean Meyer argues-the cause Catholics opposed reform per se, but because it came at the instigation of an authoritarian, anticlerical state (the obverse of this
lution could have a powerful and profound effect even on communities which had appeared passive during the armed upheaval: "the fact that there had been no armed struggle against the Porfirian regime in Espita and its environs did not mean that the social contradictions which had generated and impelled that struggle elsewhere did not exist there [too]." 80. Gonzalez, Pueblo en vilo, p. 174; Marijose Amerlinck de Bontempo, "La reforma agrariaen la hacienda de San Diego de Rio Verde," in Garcia Moreno, Despues de los latifundios, pp. 183-198. 81. Simpson, The Ejido, p. 349. 82. Ibid., p. 358. The Naranja agrarian movement began as one of Indian villagers opposed to landlords and their mestizo peones; but, with time, many of the latter switched sides: Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, pp. 112-113. 83. Gledhill, Casi Nada, p. 89.
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equation was that die-hard agrariansbecame anticlericals, sometimes rather spurious anticlericals).84 Traditionally liberal pueblos, on the other hand were more receptive: they had identified with previous progressive causes; they-or, we should say, elements within them -were ready for a new historic compromise with the (new revolutionary) state. It was the political provenance as well as the social content of the reform which mattered. Agrarianism also appeared as a political resource, to be used tactically. It offered tangible benefits-and threats. We are familiar with the opportunist agrarians-caciques, landlords, governors-who espoused a phony agrarianism in the hope of advantage: the Pisaflores bosses, William Jenkins, a host of pseudo-Cardenista converts of the later 1930s.85 Such characters populate revisionist studies, they are living proof-revisionists argue-of the reform's shallow cynicism. Yet the fact that cynics and opportunists turned agrarian is itself significant: they bowed to pressures that were compelling.86 Nor can it be assumed that opportunistic agrarianism invariably lacked real consequence. Controlled mobilizations have a habit of getting out of control (foreign observers, for example, compared Cardenas to Dr. Frankenstein).87 More important, the notion of agrarianism as a tactical weapon should not be confined to analyses of narrow elites. Broad groups within civil society perceived its importance and utility. In some communities, it seems, agrarianism was espoused by particular families/factions, in opposition to rivals. The division did not necessarily follow class lines. Rather, agrarianism offered a new way to fight old feuds-and, of course, the old feuds did not cease with the ejidal grant.88 The same would apply to conflicts between neighboring communities: ostensibly "progressive" pueblos, embracing the agrarian cause, could steal a march on their "conservative" rivals.89 Either way, agrarian mobilization assumed a political and instrumental
84. Meyer, La Cristiada, III, pp. 74-90; Friedrich, Princes ofNaranja, p. 175. 85. Frans J. Schryer, The Rancheros of Pisaflores: The History of a Peasant Bourgeoisie in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Toronto, 1980); Ronfeldt, Atencingo; Tomas Martinez Saldafia and Leticia Gandara Mendoza, Politica y sociedad en Mexico: el caso de los Altos deJalisco (Mexico, 1976), pp. 69-70; Martinez Alarc6n, San Crist6bal, p. 142. 86. Note the case of Ruben C. Carrizosa analyzed by Raymond Buve, "State Governors and Peasant Mobilization in Tlaxcala," in Brading, ed., Caudillo and Peasant, p. 241. 87. Murray, Mexico City, to Foreign Office, 15 Feb. 1935, F0371/18705,A2058. 88. For examples of continued feuding: Friedrich, Princes ofNaranja; Anguiano Equihua, Ldzaro Cdrdenas, pp. 40-1, 44; Ronfeldt, Atencingo, especially ch. 7. 89. Dennis, Conflictos por tierras, p. 120
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guise, but it did not therefore lack significance; on the contrary, it could penetrate deep into rural society, far beyond the purview of mere factional elites. Such a process was neither stable nor easily controllable. It could defy elite manipulation: landlords who sponsored cosmetic reform sometimes suffered outright amputation soon afterwards (e.g., the Laguna in the 1930s). Likewise, state governors and even presidents (including Calles and Cardenas) found it difficult to maintain control over processes of mobilization they had-often In consequence, the agrarian reform opportunistically-encouraged. was not invariably a force for unilateral state centralization, as often suggested. True, it often served that purpose: blatantly so in the ouster of revolutionary caudillos like Cedillo. But it could also serve as Cedillo's, prior to to bolster local particularist interests-such of well as those other as 1938, agrarian governors (Zuno inJalisco, Tejeda in Veracruz, Enriquez in Chiapas). Lower in the political hierarchy, too, local factions espoused agrarianism in order to preserve or enhance their local power, to placate the state and to keep it at arm's length. The rich crop of agrarian caciques sown by the revolution did not wholly nourish political centralization; on the contrary, caciques were often adept at forging useful alliances with the "center," while at the same time preserving a real measure of local autonomy.90 If "top-down" manipulation was a two-way process, so too was "center-out" manipulation: the periphery could manipulate the center as well as vice versa. Thus, again, agrarianism was incorporated into ancient conflicts. It became another pair of arms in the old tug-of-war between state and province. One final and important aspect of the reform deserves mention. So far, I have focussed on social and political aspects. The decline of the hacienda responded to social pressures and political imperatives. But there was an obvious-if sometimes neglected-economic dimension. Taxes, wages, and markets all deserve consideration. As regards taxes and wages, the armed revolution marked a deterioration in the hacienda's previously privileged position. It seems clear I know of no aggregate studies-that the hacienda's tax -though burden rose. "Today," a Michoacan rancher complained in 1922, "a farm owner pays in two months what he paid before in a year."91
90. Friedrich, Princes ofNaranja, p. 174 notes how the cacique "Scarface" systematically "excluded, manipulated, or in some way controlled the participation of the ... legal and military power in the state [Michoacan] and nation"-at least until the late 1950s. 91. El Universal, 1 Aug. 1922. Note also Craig, The FirstAgraristas, p. 48. On real wages: Simpson, The Ejido, p. 302; Aboites, La revoluci6n mexicana en Espita, pp. 77-8.
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In Chiapas and Oaxaca, too, both tax rates and cadastral valuations rose significantly during the 1920s.92 Real wages also inched up: less because of formal legislation (Article 123 and the rest), than because the labor supply had contracted, coerced labor had greatly diminished in importance, and incipient unionization had begun. Landlords in the Laguna fondly remembered the old times, "before the days of the sindicato," when wages had been significantly lower and the ability to hire and fire appreciably greater.93 These factors, coupled with the economic ravages of the revolution, undermined hacienda profitability in many areas. During the revolution, many landlords quit the big house for the town and some never returned; some went bust and sold up, some chose to diversify into urban businesses, some divided up their lands among family members.94 In general, rural real estate represented a less secure investment than it had during the belle epoque of the Porfiriato. Consequently, some landlords faced the emergent challenge of agrarianism with an air of resignation. The hacienda, they complained, no longer guaranteed income as it had in the past. Lamentations came thick and fast, well before the agrarian reform reached its 1930s crescendo: landlords felt desilusionados y decepcionados (the worthlessness of the government's agrarian bonds compounded their feeling), "the hacienda was in decadence," one observed, "the agrarian movement was on top of us; the hacienda wasn't functioning as in the old days."95 As regards markets, the picture was rosier. Producers of staple crops may have suffered from low profits during the 1920s, but commercial crops, especially export crops, remained buoyant, at least until the late 1920s. Zones of export agriculture such as Soconusco (Chiapas) and the Yaqui Valley (Sonora) prospered during the 1920s (significantly, both were zones
92. Thomas Benjamin, A Rich Land A Poor People: Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas, (Albuquerque, 1989), p. 165. 93. T. Fairbairn to R. Benson, 14 Aug. 1936, Mexican Cotton Estates of Tlahualilo Papers, Kleinwort Benson Archive, Speen, Berks., UK. The contraction of the labor supply in turn related to falls and shifts in the population brought about by the Revolution: the depopulation of certain rural areas-notably hacienda communities-was considerable. 94. E.g., Bazant, Cinco haciendas, p. 181; Margolies, Princes of the Earth, pp. 39-40; Craig, The First Agraristas, p. 38; Martinez Saldaria and Gandara Mendoza, Politica y sociedad en Mexico, p. 195-6 (dealing with the 1920s, in a Cristero region). The list could easily be extended. 95. Simpson, The Ejido, pp. 106-107; Margolies, Princes of the Earth, p. 39. "Men are now doing what a few years ago they would have been incapable of," Rosalie Evans complained; "all my Mexican neighbours," she went on, "who do not belong to the party in power are losing their places. They would not stay behind and defend them": Letters, pp. 63, 154.
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of high foreign investment). The national government, keen for reconstruction and exports, protected commercial farmers and exporters, such that the chief victims of land distribution were to be found in the "traditional" sector, especially in central Mexico.96 A combination of factors thus made smaller, nonexporting enterprises more vulnerable: in Yucatan, for example, the big henequen plantain 1915-20, tions survived-and, smaller haprospered-while ciendas bore the brunt of the reform.97 This pattern was reproduced elsewhere and was further reinforced by the fact that agrarianism was most vigorous in central Mexico, where "traditional" haciendas and cerealMexican-owned, (low-wage, domestically-oriented were more common. production) By the late 1920s, however, the economic climate changed for the worst. Cash crop prices and production fell. The sugar market was glutted; cotton production tumbled.98 For landlord and government alike, the opportunity costs of agrarian reform diminished. Since, at the same time, both peasant mobilization and mass unemployment increased, the pressure for land distribution grew. Some landlords again sought to preempt the situation by sponsoring controlled reforms, with varying degrees of success.99 The scene was set for a revived agrarianism and a phase of sweeping reform, which destroyed the great estate, leaving in its place either reconstituted latter, in peasant communities or smaller capitalist enterprises-the contrast to their predecessors, depending on free wage labor and innovation rather than on coercion, precapitalist technological tenancies, and landed monopoly.100 The radical reforms of the
96. Benjamin, Passages to Leviathan, pp. 207-208; report of W. D. Maxwell, US vice-consul, Guaymas, 7 Nov. 1925, SD 812.61/33. Simpson, The Ejido, p. 627, shows that, as of 1930, the nine states where ejidal holdings exceeded 15 percent of land by value were (in descending order): Morelos, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Aguascalientes, Hidalgo, Mexico, San Luis, Puebla, Yucatan. 97. Aboites, La revoluci6n mexicana en Espita, pp. 100, 129-130; Joseph, Revolution From Without, pp. 237-250. 98. Martinez Alarc6n, San Crist6bal, pp. 57-67; Simpson, The Ejido, p. 682. 99. Ronfeldt, Atencingo, pp. 24-32 recounts William Jenkins' successful ploy; Clarence Senior, Land Reform and Democracy (Gainesville, 1958), pp. 63-5 deals with the Laguna, where, to the bitter end, planters sought a similar outcome, but to no avail. Martinez Alarc6n, San Crist6bal, p. 142, offers another example. 100. This distinction is not, of course, absolute, nor is it uncontentious. Its validity cannot be argued here. For a neat example, take the Hacienda de Bledos, San Luis: profitable in the past, it stagnated in the 1920s; rising wages encouraged a further extension of sharecropping and an attempt at fruit-canning failed. After 1927, livestock production (which had been more buoyant) also slumped and further attempts at manufacturing (mezcal and wine) proved abortive. Wheat provided the only bright spot, and here the rising wage bill encouraged a shift to direct cultivation, made
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1930s, however, would not have been possible but for the cumulative reforms and pressures of the preceding fifteen years, followed by the marked economic downswing of post-1927. The first process "nibbled" at the hacienda, seriously weakening it in some zones, particularly where staple crops were farmed, and creating a sizeable, if heterogeneous, agrarian constituency; the second undercut the (hitherto protected) commercial hacienda, to the extent that some landlords readily succumbed to the Cardenista coup de grace. "Owning a large agricultural property in Mexico is becoming a liability instead of an asset," a Laguna entrepreneur ruefully concluded (August 1936); it would be best to cut one's losses and accept "almost any
plan of liquidation . . . before we lose the little working capital we
have in operation."'10 By then, the struggle naught availed; the traditional hacienda was headed for the dustheap of history. The significance of this process should not be underestimated. By Latin American standards the Mexican agrarian reform was early, sweeping and radical. Unlike other reforms, the Mexican was conceived amid popular rural revolution, it challenged a still vigorous "traditional" landlord class, and it attacked powerful, integrated units of production.102 Over a twenty-five year period the hacienda -the "great estate" of Chevalier, an institution three centuries old and still the keystone of rural production in 1910-was destroyed. Its destruction, the work of both "top-down" and "bottom-up" processes, marked the end of the landlord class's political as well as socioeconomic hegemony and it made possible a transition to new political and socioeconomic forms. Capital accumulation and state building could now proceed on new firmer foundations; foundations which the Porfirian regime was arguably incapable of laying down.103 This is a story of revolutionary rupture, not conservative
possible by the acquisition of 15 tractors. Ultimately, politics (Cardenas's confrontation with Cedillo) brought expropriation, but not before Bledos had moved appreciably in the direction of capitalist farming. See Bazant, Cinco Haciendas, pp. 183-188. 101. T. Fairbairn to R. Benson, 13 Aug. 1938, Tlahualilo Papers. 102. Compare later reforms, such as the Bolivian, which in terms of scale was second only to the Mexican. In Bolivia, however, hacienda production was relatively less important (there were no major export crops; food was imported); haciendas consisted chiefly of (internal) peasant plots and demesne cultivation was proportionately less than in Mexico; and the landlord class was challenged by powerful rivals-miners, military, nascent political parties. The Bolivian reform thus incurred less political or economic costs and, in terms of production, implied the liberation of de facto cultivators from "feudal" burdens (labor service andponqueaje): it was a case, therefore, of-not very violent-asedio interno rather than the violent asedio externo which, in Mexico, pitted organized villagers against powerful hacendados. 103. Marco Bellingeri and Enrique Montalvo, 'Lenin en Mexico: la via junker y las contradicciones del porfiriato', Historicas, I (1982), pp. 15-29.
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continuity, and it is a story which defies simple statistical evaluation. Calculating the superficie of hacienda or ejido is, we may say, way too superficial. Finally, the fact that the reform was riven with conflict, factionalism and corruption was inevitable, given the huge stakes and the historical context. It in no sense invalidates the historical importance of the reform, which was the central formative experience of Mexico in the first half of this century. Benign, consensual social transformations exist only in the minds of political and academic Pollyannas.

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Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

can Ejido (Stanford,1973).

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Knight: Destruction of the Haciendas

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

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