Matters of Justice: Pueblos, the Judiciary, and Agrarian Reform in Revolutionary Mexico

Abstract

This thorough and pathbreaking book upends the ways historians have traditionally understood Mexico's revolutionary agrarian reform. Helga Baitenmann sheds new light on the foundational institutions and early trajectory of the twentieth-century ejido. The book shows that, far from being reluctant to distribute land, Carrancista officials and villagers actively participated in the early implementation of agrarian reform. It also argues that Emiliano Zapata and the Zapatista movement were not, in fact, rebelling against capitalism, but against the unprecedented ways its intrusions threatened villagers in Morelos.The book demonstrates that Arturo Warman's dichotomy, which informed generations of historians—land restitutions as a form of autonomy and land grants as a form of co-optation—was ultimately a false one. Indeed, Baitenmann finds some unexpected similarities when comparing the Zapatista and constitutionalist land reforms. Among these are that both created temporary methods for local administrators to manage restitution and grant lands. Although the Zapatista agrarian reform ultimately remained unfulfilled, the “accidental permanence” of the Carrancista temporary agrarian reforms became the origin of the twentieth-century ejido. Equally important, the book also traces the role of the judiciary in the process involved in the shift from restitution of pueblo lands to granting expropriated lands to villages, and it showcases villagers' agency in promoting and shaping that process of revolutionary land reform.The first chapter shows the litigious tradition of pueblos' filing land restitutions that stretched back to the nineteenth century. While hundreds of pueblo representatives filed restitutions in court (far more than previously acknowledged in the scholarship), it was difficult for them to win because of corruption, favoritism, or lack of legal documentation. These difficulties continued into the twentieth century (something discussed at length in chapter 6), but Baitenmann's focus is on the agency of pueblo representatives. Despite the many challenges they faced, they actively engaged in litigation and strategically pitted branches of government against one another.Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate that the early phase of the Mexican Revolution witnessed not only armed battles but also legal ones, as pueblos continued exerting pressure on various levels of government to resolve land and water claims and fight over territorial boundaries with haciendas. Focusing on the localized Zapatista agrarian reform, a process that remains understudied, Baitenmann finds that Zapatista leadership resolved conflicts in the form of temporary repartos in their attempts to deal with the problem of vague or nonexistent documents. They intended to finalize these temporary repartos once the revolution was complete.In chapter 4, Baitenmann broadens her scope to the national level by examining the Carrancista land reform at a time when the Supreme Court was disbanded. Finding that the reform was more substantial than previous scholars claimed, she shows that José Venustiano Carranza's regime set the main procedures for land reform. These amounted to a shift in power from courts to commissions, and from the judiciary to the executive branch.Chapter 5 expands on Timothy M. James's work by showing that the Supreme Court was not more interventionist in resolving land and water issues during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because it prioritized redistributing land over restricting the power of the executive branch. This, Baitenmann explains, is one of the reasons sitting presidents have had so much jurisdiction over the agrarian question throughout the twentieth century.Chapter 6 delves into the 1920s land reform in Morelos, arguing against the “revolution betrayed” thesis that has characterized so much of the historiography of twentieth-century Mexico. Baitenmann shows that the reason for so many land grants, and so few land restitutions, was that all the players—the National Agrarian Commission, the interim governor of Morelos, and the Supreme Court—prioritized their commitment to create agrarian reform in Morelos as quickly as possible. Furthermore, they gambled that inter-village conflicts over land and water would be resolved most effectively through land grants and not through restitutions.By deftly analyzing how neither reform intended to create what became the modern ejido, Baitenmann offers an excellent example of how to historicize the lasting consequences of unintentionality. In sum, this is a well-organized, dense, and clearly argued book to be appreciated by all historians of agrarian Mexico.