A Ranchero Economy in Northwestern Hidalgo, 1880-1920

Abstract

No segment of the rural population, prior to the Mexican Revolution, has been so neglected or misunderstood as the rancheros. The meaning of this term itself is ambiguous, referring at the same time to small farmers of predominantly Spanish descent in the state of Jalisco, to traditional landowners occupying very modest estates in more isolated regions in other parts of central and southern Mexico, or to pioneer cattle ranchers in the more sparsely populated northern frontier.' The common denominator seems to be their middle-class status in rural Mexican society, or their intermediate position between the mass of landless peons or sharecroppers and a small elite of hacendados. Sometimes the term is also used to refer to relatively prosperous commercial farmers, working as tenants within the boundaries of large landed estates,2 or even to prosperous, capitalist landowning farmers in northern Mexico.3 Most scholars, however, including Eric Wolf, George McBride, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, and Roger Hansen4 depict the typical ranchero as an independent smallholder, a type of poor family farmer who mainly relies on his own labor and that of his family. This picture is part of a more widely held view which portrays the social structure of Mexico