An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

community members had to work the land regularly to maintain the right to use it and
could not sell or mortgage the land, but could pass usufruct rights on to their heirs.
Commentary by lifelong residents of El Marquesillo suggest that occupation by
extended families existed during the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, but that the
occupants had no legal claim to the land. In 1936, less than two decades after the
Mexican Revolution, President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río began an agrarian reform
program that re-invigorated the system of ejidos. This redistribution of land to
campesinos, or subsistence farmers, was an effort to diminish the domination of the still
active and extensive hacienda system that originated in the 16 th century (Fallaw 2001).
Cárdenas transferred 18 million ha from the haciendas to ejidos, increasing the
cultivatable land in possession of ejidos from 13 percent in 1930 to 47 percent in 1940.
Juan E. Franyuti was the owner of the Hacienda Nopalapa-El Blanco in the early
20 th century. According to the “Documentos Básicos que Amparan la Propiedad Social y
Posesíon de la Tierra” issued by President Lopez Portillo (1939), Franyuti’s estate
included more than 13,000 ha (32,124 ac). On January 16, 1939, an official request was
made to the Republic of Mexico on behalf of the 237 inhabitants of El Marquesillo,
consisting of 59 families and individuals, to expropriate 980 ha (2422 ac) of this estate
for the establishment of an ejido. This request was granted on May 6, 1939. Under the
edict, 60 eight-ha parcels were distributed; one to each family or individual, and one
additional parcel assigned to be used for community structures and schools. The
remaining 500 hectares consisting of surrounding “fields and hills” were assigned for
collective use by the inhabitants (Lopez-Portillo 1939:66-67).
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