land use and land tenure change in the - El Colegio de Chihuahua

4in the rest of the country (Katz 14). During this period, Mexican regions retained significant degrees ofautonomy and policies other started at the state level. One such state program was the abolition ofcommunal land ownership that transformed many Indian holdings into private property (Chihuahua 1825;Zacatecas 1825; Sinaloa and Sonora 1828). The national-level Ley Lerdo (1856) continued these policies,providing for the breakup of communal land holdings and the expropriated land holdings of the Church,although some regions provided for communal holdings to avoid the dangers of social instability that mightarise from large numbers of indigenous landless. Although the stated intent behind these reforms was thecreation of Jeffersonian yeoman farmers, the expropriated land was auctioned to the highest bidder and themost frequent result was extensive private estates, which contributed to the concentration of regionaleconomic power in the hands of a few families. The land laws of 1875and 1883 that permitted individualsto acquire vacant or untitled lands also reinforced the concentration of land holdings. Indigenous groupswere often forced onto more marginal lands, into the Sierra, or became peon laborers on the large haciendasbecause they could not prove legal title.The nineteenth century also saw massive land transfers from Mexico to the United States through aseries of wars and treaties. When Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836 its territory included someof the Chihuahuan Desert. Most of New Mexico and northern Arizona was acquired from Mexico after theU.S. – Mexican War (1846-48) through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. More territory, includingSouthern Arizona and Mesilla, was acquired in the 1953 Gadsden Purchase, in which the Land Grantsestablished by Spanish and Mexican governments were to be respected.The autonomy of the northern states of Mexico was reduced with the construction of railroads in thelate 1800’s, although local politicians and families dominated at the state and regional levels. Mexican ores,often exploited with American capital, were shipped to the U.S. for smelting. In Chihuahua, the cattleindustry boomed and at the national level commercial production for export replaced subsistence agricultureand small-scale farming. The introduction of irrigation in the Laguna region of Coahuila and Durangocreated a booming cotton industry; from 1880 to 1890 production quintupled, and it doubled in thefollowing decade (MacLachian and Beezley 113).Regional industries developed and the area became one of the country’s most important industrialzones, with increasing urbanization and a large number of immigrants from the U.S. as well as other regionsof Mexico, attracted by the highest agricultural wages in the country (Katz 44). The rapid expansion ofproduction in the north contributed to rapid rates of in-migration; by non-natives (MacLachlan and Beezley1999:125). The region’s economy was relatively diversified, producing minerals and agricultural andtimber products for exports, as well as goods for the local market (Katz 34). Economic and political powergenerally remained in the hands of families who dominated their states: the Terrazas-Creel in Chihuahua,the Maderos in Coahuila, and a handful of industrialists in Monterrey (Katz 43). By the turn of the century,the north could be considered the most modern region of the country, with a relatively urban population,diversified economy, and high literacy rate.The shift to commercial export agriculture put pressure on domestic food supplies; by the 1870sprotests, such as food riot in Durango involving 4000 people (Maclachlan and Beezley 189), started to breakout. From the 1890s onwards. Mexico continually imported staple foodstuffs and the concentration of landeliminated the possibility of subsistence agriculture providing any sort of safety net. Nevertheless, theprivatization of municipal and communal lands continued, allowing both foreigners and Mexicans toacquire and expand large landholdings. In 1907, a recession in the U.S. dragged the Mexican economy intoa downturn with falling wages and mass layoffs, exacerbated by the return of migrant workers fro the U.S.and a coincident agricultural crisis precipitated by floods and droughts (Katz 64). This crisis hit particularlyhard in the north, contributing to a united opposition to the national government. The hacendados of theregion did not have a dispossessed peasant class to fear, they had claimed uninhabited lands and manydeveloped a paternalistic relationship with their peons who received relatively high wages and degrees offreedom (72).Porfirio Diaz was president of Mexico from 1877 to 1911, and under his dictatorship andencouragement of foreign investment the economy grew rapidly.