Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Von der hinteren Coverseite

""The Agrarian Dispute" will force scholars to reconsider U.S.-Mexican relations during the Cardenas years. John J. Dwyer shows how powerful domestic and international events were affected by the actions of 'subalterns' and how Mexico, a relatively weak power, deftly bested the United States with creative diplomatic tactics. He also makes a convincing case that the U.S. response to Mexico's oil expropriation in 1938 was largely determined by the earlier controversy over the land confiscations."--Timothy J. Henderson, author of "The Worm in the Wheat: Rosalie Evans and Agrarian Struggle in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of Mexico, 1906-1927"

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

THE AGRARIAN DISPUTE

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Illustrations......................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments............................................................................................................................xiIntroduction: The Interplay between Domestic Affairs and Foreign Relations.................................................................11. The Roots of the Agrarian Dispute.......................................................................................................172. El asalto a las tierras y la huelga de los sentados: How Local Agency Shaped Agrarian Reform in the Mexicali Valley.....................443. The Expropriation of American-Owned Land in Baja California: Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural Factors..........................774. Domestic Politics and the Expropriation of American-Owned Land in the Yaqui Valley......................................................1035. The Sonoran Reparto: Where Domestic and International Forces Meet.......................................................................1386. The End of U.S. Intervention in Mexico: The Roosevelt Administration Accommodates Mexico City...........................................1597. Diplomatic Weapons of the Weak: Crdenas's Administration Outmaneuvers Washington.......................................................1948. The 1941 Global Settlement: The End of the Agrarian Dispute and the Start of a New Era in U.S.-Mexican Relations........................232Conclusion: Moving away from Balkanized History............................................................................................267Notes......................................................................................................................................285Bibliography...............................................................................................................................343Index......................................................................................................................................371

Chapter One

The Richardson Construction Company is primarily a land and water company. Broadly stated, the purpose of the company is to place its lands under irrigation, to sell the lands but retain the water rights, and supply water at an annual rental to the lands sold; furthermore, it will enter into the general development of the entire Yaqui Valley. DAVIS RICHARDSON, PRESIDENT OF THE RICHARDSON CONSTRUCTION CO., MAY 20, 1907 Foreigners cannot own real estate under any conditions. MEXICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES MANUEL TLLEZ, 1926 The person and the property of a citizen are part of the general domain of the nation, even when abroad, and there is a distinct and binding obligation on the part of self-respecting governments to afford protection to the persons and property of their citizens, wherever they may be. PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE, 1927

Landownership has been a dominant issue in Mexico since the colonial period. From independence until today, Mexican officials have repeatedly used agrarian laws as an economic tool to alter landholding patterns and develop the national economy, as well as a political weapon to undermine opponents, support allies, and build broad-based popular coalitions. In other words, Mexican leaders have often used agrarian legislation as a state-building tool to increase their power and advance the nation's economy, as reflected by the era in which they governed, including periods as distinct as La Reforma, the Porfiriato, and the revolution.

After Porfirio Daz overthrew Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada's government in 1876, he imposed a number of agrarian laws designed to promote capital accumulation in rural Mexico, empower regional allies, and chip away at communal Indian villages. The goal of Daz's Cientfico advisers was to modernize the still-semifeudal countryside and promote migration to underdeveloped areas. They assumed that agricultural production and government revenue would increase with more land under cultivation-no matter the size of the holding or the nationality of its owners. By developing rural Mexico, the Porfirians hoped to transform the economy from an agriculturally based semisubsistence one to a surplus industrial one built on the nation's natural resources.

To initiate this multifaceted process and make rural Mexico attractive to both domestic and foreign investors, Daz's administration promoted railroad construction, which would facilitate migration and trade. Also, under the agrarian law of December 1883, Daz had all of Mexico's vacant public lands surveyed so as to begin the process of their enclosure. The survey companies, which were instrumental in privatizing and capitalizing Mexican agriculture, were entitled to keep one-third of the areas surveyed in lieu of payment. The remaining terrenos baldos (vacant and untilled lands) were auctioned o in vast tracts at low prices to the survey companies themselves and Daz's associates, as well as foreign and domestic speculators. His government also granted generous land and water concessions, along with tax incentives, to U.S. and Mexican land development companies in exchange for their agreement to improve the holdings that they usually acquired on the cheap. In 1890, Daz reinstated some Liberal-era laws to hasten the redistribution of communal lands among residents of indigenous villages. The results were generally the same as before. Few Indians could afford to become growers, and local hacienda owners either cajoled those who could into selling their property or else took it by force. In 1894, Daz decreed that lands without proper legal title were also considered vacant and subject to auction. This led to the further usurpation of millions of acres from indigenous communities and small property owners.

By 1910, fewer than eleven thousand haciendas controlled 57 percent of Mexico's national territory. Meanwhile, small farmers and ranchers together held 20 percent of the land, and communal campesino communities controlled an additional 6 percent. The remaining lands were either national or unclaimed. The year 1911 marked the highest point of landlessness in Mexican history. As for the residents of the states analyzed here, 77 percent in Sonora and 88 percent in Baja California were landless rural workers. Land concentration and the resultant increase in peonage, tenantry, sharecropping, and migratory labor, along with the rapid industrialization of certain agricultural sectors like sugar, worsened the working and living conditions for rural laborers and impelled many to take up arms in the revolution.

Mexico's revolution brought an end to the Porfiriato in 1911 and ushered in profound changes in land tenure. During both the revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras, agrarian legislation was still used as a political and socioeconomic tool by the country's ruling elite. Now, however, the agrarian laws were designed to return the land to the peasantry and ensure the political survival of competing revolutionary factions. The extensive land redistributions carried out by Emiliano Zapata in Morelos, and the more statist land reforms envisioned by...