Evolution of Land Distribution in Rural Mexico: Cárdenas to Zedillo

Date

2006-05

Authors

Silerio, Lorena

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Abstract

Successful societies require a means for securing political order because political order is a necessary condition for economic and political development. Consider for example the United States, which the institutional foundations were in the Constitution and a stable, well-specified system of economic and political rights that together provided the credible commitment that was a necessary prerequisite to efficient economic markets. In contrast countries like Mexico, after independence disorder prevailed for decades revealing the utter absence of institutional arrangements capable of establishing cooperation among rival groups. There is other aspect that changed the fate of Mexico, the public policies in the distribution of rural landownership. In the case of the United States awarded small landholdings to people who would settle and farm the land for a specified period. In contrast, Mexico awarded large landholding to developers. This policy difference led to extreme differences in the degree of inequality in rural landownership in these two countries. In other words in Mexico a small minority of households owned all the land. In contrast, in the United States a big percentage of heads of household in rural areas owned the land. The combination of bad policies supported for the lack of strong institutions with a consistent political and economic program supported the political order had as consequence a path of stunningly poor performance of Mexico in comparison to the United States. This thesis is a chronology of Mexico's presidents and their policies of the land distribution in rural Mexico. Although was for some of them important part of theirs mandates and speeches, was not sufficient, and for the contrary brought as a consequence a huge disparity in Mexico. This work is about how the Mexican politicians knowing that the countryside has been one of the most explosive political sectors in Mexico's history, they until today can not provide them with a political order for an individual as requiring three fundamental aspects of personal security; for one's life, family, and source of livelihood. The latest manifestation of this situation was the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) on New Year's Eve of 1994 reconfirmed the effervescence of rural Mexico.

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land reform, land tenure, political stability, Mexico

Citation

Silerio, L. (2006). Evolution of land distribution in rural Mexico: Cárdenas to Zedillo (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas.

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