Review: Matters of Justice: Pueblos, the Judiciary, and Agrarian Reform in Revolutionary Mexico, by Helga Baitenman

Abstract

Book Review| November 01 2022 Review: Matters of Justice: Pueblos, the Judiciary, and Agrarian Reform in Revolutionary Mexico, by Helga Baitenman Helga Baitenman. Matters of Justice: Pueblos, the Judiciary, and Agrarian Reform in Revolutionary Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. 342 pp. Paul Hart Paul Hart Texas State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (2022) 38 (3): 512–515. https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2022.38.3.512 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Paul Hart; Review: Matters of Justice: Pueblos, the Judiciary, and Agrarian Reform in Revolutionary Mexico, by Helga Baitenman. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 1 November 2022; 38 (3): 512–515. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2022.38.3.512 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentMexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Search This well-written, deeply researched book provides a fine-grained analysis of Mexico’s agrarian reform and how it shaped modern Mexico. Born out of social forces unleashed during the Mexican Revolution, the country’s resulting agrarian reform was the largest land redistribution program in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Engaging the messy process of implementing such a dramatic redistribution of landed wealth from its revolutionary impetus to its pragmatic implementation, the author provides a dynamic social, legal, and institutional history told from both the bottom up and top down. One of the main objectives of the book is to explain how the executive branch emerged preeminent over the judiciary as the main arbiter and power behind the country’s historic agrarian reform. Unraveling the complicated history of land tenure in Mexico, the author succeeds in explaining in exemplary fashion how the authority to act on issues of land rights went from the usual... You do not currently have access to this content.