Land In Mexico Research Articles

Water, Endangered Fishes, and Development Perspectives in Arid Lands of Mexico

Nearly half of Mexico is arid or semiarid, with scarce waters. At least 92 springs and 2500 km of river have dried in this area. Surface waters have diminished, and phreatic waters are sinking deeper, provoking intrusion of saline waters and salinization of agricultural wells in Sonora, reversing phreatic circulation in the Comarca Laguenera, allowing arrival of arsenic to agricultural waters, and threatening metropolitan Torreón. There are nearly 200 species of freshwater fishes in this region, 120 under some threat, 15 extinct through human impact. As of 1985, an average of 68% of species was eradicated in local fish faunas. Finally, salinization of the lower Rio Bravo del Norte has replaced 32 native fish of fresh or slightly brackish water with 54 mainly marine or highly salt‐tolerant species; the salinization threatens all uses of water. Some marine fishes invade up to 400 km upstream. Pollution is strong, and fish kills have been reported. These low‐quality and scarce waters comprise future resources for cities such as Monterrey, which, along with its border twin cities, is expected to double its human population by 2010. Redesign of regional development is urgently needed, in keeping with the real availability of water. All water use should be equal to or less than lower recharge averages; norms of integral basin management should rely on criteria of high‐use efficiency, recuperation, recycling, and reutilization. Also necessary are reduced pollution and increased treatment of residual waters. Innovative environmental vision is especially essential in light of expectations for development through the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Border Integral Environmental Plan, industrial expansion, and the modernization and internationalization of the northern Mexican border belt. These all conflict with the high priority recently decreed for species conservation by the Mexican Act, creating the National Committee on Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity.

Residential Land Price Changes in Mexican Cities and the Affordability of Land for Low-income Groups

This research demonstrates that the price of residential land in Mexico declined significantly in real terms during the 1980s. Land prices appear to follow a cyclical trend which tracks Mexico's macro-economic performance. Data derived from advertised plot prices in newspapers, and from a large sample of household interviews conducted in low-income settlements in three intermediate-sized Mexican cities, suggest that, for the poor, real wage levels are the key determinant of changing affordability. The erosion of real wages has led to some decline in affordability, but this has largely been offset by multiple-earning strategies within households through which purchasing power may be maintained.

Common Property and Uncertainty: Compensating Coalitions by Mexico's Pastoral "Ejidatarios"

The election of Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988 initiated a process of privatization in Mexico's financial and industrial sectors. Banks, state-controlled during most of the 1980s, were reprivatized by reducing the controlling interest of the central government and encouraging recapitalization by the private sector. State-owned industries such as airlines and mines were sold to private investors in an effort to improve efficiency and reduce demands on the public treasury. Also, an increased inflow of foreign investment capital, to be stimulated by legal changes allowing increased foreign private ownership, is now viewed by the Salinas de Gortari administration as a necessary condition for Mexico's future economic growth and stability. In January of 1992, Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution was amended to facilitate the modernization of Mexican agriculture. Two economic conditions help explain this action. First, Mexico is a net importer of agricultural commodities. In some years beans and corn, staples in the Mexican diet, must be imported to meet the demands of a burgeoning population. Second, 50% of the agricultural land in Mexico is controlled by organized community groups: comunidades and ejidos. Ejidos, groups that hold property in common, control approximately 40% of the agricultural land. On average, these lands are 30%50% less productive than comparable private farms and represent, according to some Mexican analysts, an opportunity for increased productivity through privatization.1 The ejido is an important component in Mexico's culture and historical heritage. Its revolutionary past, deeply rooted in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-15, should give pause to the reformer who argues for privatizing these common property land holdings. Questions should

The Effects of Ejido Reform on Common Lands in Mexico

The Effects of Ejido Reform on Common Lands in Mexico

Memory and Identity

What are the identifying traits of a person? Sex, age, eye color, height, scars, glasses, a mole above the lips? A passport or identity card, a document that says one exists a license to exist? In Latin America, how many possess a credential? Many of the poor and peasants who shouted Land and Liberty! with Zapata go through life worshipping their land titles as if they were images of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They carry them with them to Mexico City in their wallets, those yellowing titles giving them the sacred right to possess land, inherited from their parents, delivered to them by the blessed revolution, and now rejected as proof of ownership by the Ministry of Agrarian Reform because in Mexico land is divided in layers down to the very core of hell and for a long time public servants have divided it among their friends. (During the administration of L6pez Portillo, his supporters presented him not only with horses but also with the ranches to quarter them.) What are the identifying traits of a country? The space it occupies on earth, the number of years since it was discovered and named (in which case, Latin America is but a lion's cub, since it will only be 500 years old in 1992)? Or its development, its trajectory in universal history -its personal history of conquest, invasion, violence, repression, loss of political sovereignty, the crushing of all of its values, and gradual emancipation? Its idiosyncrasy or, better, its character, its particular manner of being despite the terrorism of the colonial period that destroyed its idols and altars -a massacre that failed to extinguish its spirit to the point that Tonantzin continues to be our mother within the Spanish Virgin Mary? The intrinsic energy or perhaps the sublime indifference that forces us to live on the brink of tragedy or in limbo?

Groundwater problems in Mexico

Mexico has two kinds of groundwater problems. The first, which is common to many nations, includes groundwater contamination, saltwater intrusion, and severe drawdown in aquifers. The second, which amplifies effects of the physical problems, is a lack of trained professionals in the hydrogeologic sciences. For a country with a population of more than 80 million inhabitants, this is a serious problem.Of the approximately 2 million km2 of surface land in Mexico, at least 1.2 million km2 are of hydrogeologic interest. Almost 50% of the water used in Mexico comes from groundwater. In many areas, such as the Yucatan peninsula, groundwater is the only source of water available. Approximately 340 aquifers have been identified. Of these, eighty are over‐exploited, sixteen have salt water intrusion problems, ten have contamination problems, and five have land subsidence problems associated with groundwater extractions. Drawdowns range from a few meters to more than one hundred meters in the past 50 years in areas of northern Mexico.

Evaluating the impact of Mexico's land reform on agricultural productivity

In Mexico, land reform law and the terms of credit access suggest a priori that farmers in the land reform ( ejido) sector should be less productive than private farmers. Analysis of studies comparing the productivity of individual ejido parcels and small private holdings, however, reveals no significant difference between the two sectors. Between tenure categories there is a de jure but not a de facto difference in small farmers' control over resources, partly because farmers circumvent restrictions implicit in the land reform. The case for formal privatization of the ejido sector may be less compelling than has been suggested.

Further Analysis of the Mexican Food Crisis

A large and influential body of work has been published on the recent transformation of Mexican agriculture, focusing on how the growth of linkages to the international economy has reallocated Mexico's land and labor resources in a way that threatens the survival of peasant forms of food production. Curiously, the working assumptions of this corpus have remained largely unchallenged in the academic literature. The thrust of this approach is well captured in an article published in LARR by David Barkin and Billie DeWalt a few years ago. These authors were seeking to explain the origins of Mexico's “food crisis” and made a series of recommendations for tackling the problem. Although many of Barkin and DeWalt's observations are irrefutable, the framework of their analysis begs a number of questions, and elements within it are mutually inconsistent. Their work merits close attention nonetheless because, unlike much of the literature on the “food crisis,” it goes beyond analysis of the problem to make fairly explicit policy recommendations. Because their recommendations are so out of line with the present thrust of Mexican policy, it is instructive to return to their article. Their contribution exemplifies a paradigm that, in rejecting trade liberalization, fails to lend itself to constructive criticism of the policies now being vigorously pursued in Mexico. In challenging Barkin and DeWalt's analytical framework and policy recommendations (from a standpoint that is sympathetic toward trade liberalization), this research note is intended to provoke a lively debate about new ways to conceptualize Mexican food issues.

Priorities of the State in the Survey of the Public Land in Mexico, 1876-1911

Priorities of the State in the Survey of the Public Land in Mexico, 1876-1911

Priorities of the State in the Survey of the Public Land in Mexico, 1876-1911

HE private companies hired by the Mexican governments of Presidents Manuel Gonzalez and Porfirio Diaz to survey public lands from about i88o to 11go were both the agents and the beneficiaries of the greatest single turnover of public lands in the nation's history. In a single decade, from 1883 to 1893, survey companies received as compensation 18.4 million hectares of public landone-third of all the land they surveyed, or about one-tenth the total area of Mexico. Over the entire period, from 1878 to 1908, about 50 companies received some 2i. 2 million hectares of public lands, which at the compensation rate of 3 to 1 implied that roughly 63.6 million hectares had been surveyed.' The historical literature of the period correctly emphasizes the most salient features of the surveys, namely, their explosive pace, the enormous areas of land the companies disposed of, and the government's method of compensating them. References to the complaints about the surveys from landholders both rich and poor, as well as to the companies' unjust enrichment derived from their supposed insider status, have enhanced the notoriety of the infamous compaiiias deslindadoras.'

Mexico: The Myth of "Renovatio"

Yes, I believe in a force that lies dormant in the land of Mexico .... I believe in the magical reality of these forces as one believes in the beneficial and curative power of certain waters, wrote Antonin Artaud.' It was Mexico where he chose to go on 7 February 1936 to live the myth of renovatio, by getting to know the most primitive arcana of the solar and agrarian tribes of Aztecs, Toltecs, Zapotecs, and Chichimecs. Differentiated by their names, just as the earth, the space they occupy in the world of contingency, is multiple, for Artaud, the mystic, these people are one-bathing as they do in the unus mundus. Artaud, the alchemist, sought to <expand himself (9, p. 108) by ferreting out the prima materia about which Robert Fludd and Paracelcus had so often written: this substance in which all contradictions are re-

Agrarian Reform and Populist Politics

Stephen Sanderson's Agrarian Populism and Mexican State (198 1) begins with premise that the salvation or destruction of present Mexican regime may well rest with that roughly 40 percent of Mexican populace who now fill countryside with their hard work and their poverty ( 198 1: xi). Although he does not enter debate as to whether urban or rural popular movements will be driving force of possible future radical social change in Mexico, his assumption is correct. The peasantry has been a central pillar of support (albeit passive) for regime. To shake that pillar would indeed shake regime to its foundations. Sanderson grapples with form and content of contradictions inherent in institutionalized Mexican Revolution's populist pact. The capitalist economic development process combined with regime's historic social obligations necessarily generate conflicts between private accumulation and public equity. Sanderson's political economy approach explores changing nature of these conflicts over time, leaving reader with a clear sense of loosening and tightening of structural limits to reform in Mexico. The historical background extends to a full discussion of liberal legacy, nineteenth-century roots of dispossession of rural majority (chap. 2). Agrarian Populism is particularly good at imparting a sense of texture of politics of land in Mexico, tracing contours of struggle over role of property in society from genocide of independent native peoples in last century (chap. 3) to crescendo of militant campesino land invasions in 1975 and 1976 (chap. 7).

&lt;sc&gt;victor westphall&lt;/sc&gt;. &lt;italic&gt;Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region&lt;/italic&gt;. (New Mexico Land Grant Series.) Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1983. Pp. xviii, 356. $24.95

Journal Article victor westphall. Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region. (New Mexico Land Grant Series.) Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1983. Pp. xviii, 356. $24.95 Get access Westphall Victor. Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region. (New Mexico Land Grant Series.) Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1983. Pp. xviii, 356. $24.95. David J. Weber David J. Weber Southern Methodist University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 89, Issue 4, October 1984, Pages 1156–1157, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/89.4.1156 Published: 01 October 1984

From Sharecroppers to Entrepreneurs: Peasant Household Production Strategies under the "Ejido" System of Mexico

Previous articleNext article No AccessFrom Sharecroppers to Entrepreneurs: Peasant Household Production Strategies under the "Ejido" System of MexicoKaja FinklerKaja Finkler Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 27, Number 1Oct., 1978 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/451076 Views: 5Total views on this site Citations: 26Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1978 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jean-Philippe Colin, Ali Daoudi, Eric Léonard, Emmanuelle Bouquet From formal rules to local practices: A comparative perspective between Algerian and Mexican land reforms, Land Use Policy 101 (Feb 2021): 105120.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105120Jean-Philippe Colin La concentration foncière par la tenure inversée (reverse tenancy), Études rurales , no.194194 (Mar 2014): 203–218.https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesrurales.10194Pieter Van der Zaag, Edwin Rap THE PIVOTAL ROLE OF CANAL OPERATORS IN IRRIGATION SCHEMES: THE CASE OF THE CANALERO, Irrigation and Drainage 61, no.44 (Apr 2012): 436–448.https://doi.org/10.1002/ird.693Emmanuelle Bouquet State-Led Land Reform and Local Institutional Change: Land Titles, Land Markets and Tenure Security in Mexican Communities, World Development 37, no.88 (Aug 2009): 1390–1399.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2008.08.015Ram D. Singh, Maria Santiago Farm earnings, educational attainment, and role of public policy: Some evidence from Mexico, World Development 25, no.1212 (Dec 1997): 2143–2154.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(97)00107-1Rebecca Jean Emigh LAND TENURE, HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURE, AND FERTILITY: AGGREGATE ANALYSES OF FIFTEENTH‐CENTURY RURAL TUSCANCOMMUNITIES, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 17, no.7/87/8 (Jul 1997): 220–254.https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013321Serap Ayşe Kayatekin Sharecropping and Class: A Preliminary Analysis, Rethinking Marxism 9, no.11 (Mar 1996): 28–57.https://doi.org/10.1080/08935699608685475Hans P. Binswanger, Klaus Deininger, Gershon Feder Chapter 42 Power, distortions, revolt and reform in agricultural land relations, (Jan 1995): 2659–2772.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1573-4471(95)30019-8John Richard Heath Evaluating the impact of Mexico's land reform on agricultural productivity, World Development 20, no.55 (May 1992): 695–711.https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(92)90146-MThoric Cederstrom Migrant Remittances and Agricultural Development, Culture <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Agriculture -, no.4040 (Sep 1990): 2–7.https://doi.org/10.1525/cag.1990.-.40.2Thoric Cederström Migrant Remittances and Agricultural Development, Culture & Agriculture 11, no.4040 (Jun 2008): 2–7.https://doi.org/10.1525/cuag.1990.11.40.2 Keijiro Otsuka , and Yujiro Hayami Theories of Share Tenancy: A Critical Survey, Economic Development and Cultural Change 37, no.11 (Oct 2015): 31–68.https://doi.org/10.1086/451707Richard H. Wood Literacy and basic needs satisfaction in Mexico, World Development 16, no.33 (Mar 1988): 405–417.https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(88)90007-1Kaja Finkler Spiritualist Healing Outcomes and the Status Quo : A Micro and Macro Analysis, Social Compass 34, no.44 (Nov 2016): 381–395.https://doi.org/10.1177/003776868703400405Kaja Finkler The Social Consequence of Wellness: A View of Healing Outcomes from Micro and Macro Perspectives, International Journal of Health Services 16, no.44 (Jan 1995): 627–642.https://doi.org/10.2190/CFER-HPVL-27QA-235X Miriam J. Wells The Resurgence of Sharecropping: Historical Anomaly or Political Strategy?, American Journal of Sociology 90, no.11 (Oct 2015): 1–29.https://doi.org/10.1086/228046Kaja Finkler Dissident Sectarian Movements, the Catholic Church, and Social Class in Mexico, Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no.22 (Jun 2009): 277–305.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500010434Louis Putterman A modified collective agriculture in rural growth-with-equity: Reconsidering the private, unimodal solution, World Development 11, no.22 (Feb 1983): 77–100.https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(83)90061-XKaja Finkler Part one: A comparative study of health seekers: Or, why do some people go to doctors rather than to spiritualist healers?, Medical Anthropology 5, no.44 (Aug 2010): 383–424.https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.1981.9986996Kaja Finkler Dissident religious movements in the service of women's power, Sex Roles 7, no.55 (May 1981): 481–495.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00288626Kaja Finkler Non-medical treatments and their outcomes, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 5, no.11 (Mar 1981): 65–103.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00049159Guy Standing Migration and modes of exploitation: Social origins of immobility and mobility, The Journal of Peasant Studies 8, no.22 (Feb 2008): 173–211.https://doi.org/10.1080/03066158108438133Kaja Finkler Non-medical treatments and their outcomes, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 4, no.33 (Sep 1980): 271–310.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00048417KAJA FINKLER Agrarian Reform and Economic Development: When Is a Landlord a Client and a Sharecropper His Patron?, (Jan 1980): 265–288.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-078882-8.50016-7KAJA FINKLER applying econometric techniques to economic anthropology, American Ethnologist 6, no.44 (Oct 2009): 675–681.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1979.6.4.02a00040 Bibliographie, (): 291–307.https://doi.org/10.4000/books.irdeditions.10145

Changing Patterns of Agricultural Output and Productivity in the Private and Land Reform Sectors in Mexico, 1940-60

Previous articleNext article No AccessChanging Patterns of Agricultural Output and Productivity in the Private and Land Reform Sectors in Mexico, 1940-60Marnie W. MuellerMarnie W. Mueller Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 18, Number 2Jan., 1970 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/450423 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1970 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Francisco Gutierrez Agrarian Inequality and Civil War Revisited, Geography Compass 9, no.88 (Aug 2015): 423–431.https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12225Kirsten Appendini, Diana Liverman Agricultural Policy and Climate Change in Mexico, (Jan 1996): 525–547.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61086-8_20Kirsten Appendini, Diana Liverman Agricultural policy, climate change and food security in Mexico, Food Policy 19, no.22 (Apr 1994): 149–164.https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-9192(94)90067-1John Richard Heath Evaluating the impact of Mexico's land reform on agricultural productivity, World Development 20, no.55 (May 1992): 695–711.https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(92)90146-MDiana M. Liverman Drought Impacts in Mexico: Climate, Agriculture, Technology, and Land Tenure in Sonora and Puebla, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no.11 (Mar 1990): 49–72.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1990.tb00003.x

Folk Mining in Colombia

T no most of us the mining industry brings to mind large-scale undertakings financed and managed by companies using modern equipment and large numbers of laborers. Today most of the world's minerals are, of course, produced by such methods. But much of the mineral wealth in some areas is still won by small enterprises, owned and operated by a single individual, a family, or a group of neighbors, for whom mining is a traditional fullor part-time occupation carried on with antiquated mining techniques handed down from father to son. A relic of the past, such activity, usually termed native mining, might better be called folk-mining; for the latter term implies a cultural tradition, regardless of whether the people' who practice that tradition are natives to a given area or are recent arrivals. Familiar examples of folk-mining are the tin placers of many parts of Southeast Asia; the 19th century placers and open-pit gold mines of mountain folk within the Blue Ridge of Georgia and the Carolinas; the placers of the garimpeiros, or diamond miners of Brazil; and. formerly, the vein workings of the famous miners of Cornwall, many of whom have taken their mining skills to various parts of the world. Other examples include the early gold workings in California and the Klondike as well as the present small-scale placer operations scattered over the western United States. A less well-known instance of folkmining is that carried on in Colombia, where alluvial and vein deposits of precious metals, chiefly gold, have been worked since pre-conquest times. The modern folk-miners are found in all gold-producing areas of the country, but Antioquia and the tropical lowlands of the Pacific coast are the main strongholds of these people. Although today large American and British companies using modern mining methods produce most of Colombia's output of precious metals, the production of the folkminers is not insignificant. It is estimated that at least 45 per cent of the country's annual production of platinum and between 20 and 25 per cent of its yearly output of gold are obtained from small placer and vein deposits worked by peasant miners. Folk-mining in Colombia is a colonial heritage. During the late 16th, the 17th, and the early 18th centuries the area that is now Colombia supplied most of the gold produced in the Spanish colonies, and after the silver lands of Mexico and Peru it ranked as Spain's third most important source of precious metals. The major gold fields exploited in colonial' days were in Antioquia, the upper Cauca drainage, and the Pacific lowlands, still Colombia's principal miningy districts. Into those areas the Spaniards brought large numbers of Negro slaves to work alluvial and vein deposits; the Negro and mulatto de-

The Plan of William McKendree Gwin for a Colony in North Mexico, 1863-1865

Since the sixteenth century advance of the great captains of Spanish industry, the rich mining area of North Mexico has attracted the attention of American capitalists. In the mid-nineteenth century this territory was particularly alluring to the advocates of national expansion. The devastation of the South during the Civil War in the United States led another class to plan emigration to this region. Many landholders sought new opportunities. Among the group was William McKendree Gwin who, though a citizen of California and an ex-United States Senator from that state, owned extensive plantation lands and many slaves in Mississippi. Always he had been a champion of national expansion and at this period he felt the necessity of rebuilding his personal fortune. So it was that interest in the wealth of the mining lands of Mexico became the incentive for his so-called Sonora project a business scheme and a colonization plan to exploit the mines and the soil.'

The Volcanoes of the Table Land of Mexico

THE following account with extracts is based on information gathered from a notice which appeared in the Phila delphia Public Ledger, sent us by the courtesy of Prof. Heilprin. He had been obliged to issue the notice in advance of the full publication of his papers by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, as he found on his return many varying reports of the work carried on in Mexico.