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With the 1994 developments in Mexico, I thought some historical background
might be welcome. Although the following concentrates on central
Mexico---Emiliano Zapata's home---it places the development of
_Zapatista_-type groups in historical context.
This is the appendix to _Zapata of Mexico_ by Peter E. Newell, published
1979 by Cienfuegos Press, Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW17 2BL, U.K.
The Ejidos and the Land Question
PEOPLE have lived in Mexico a long time. Their roots are planted deep in
the soil. They are part of the great migration that crossed the Bering
Strait from Siberia, fought the bitter cold of the Fourth Glaciation which
covered much of Asia and North America, and then moved south.
No one knows exactly when what is now called Mexico began to be populated,
but the anthropologist, William Howells, reports the finding of a human
skeleton, together with the skeletons of two mammoths at Tepexpan, northeast
of Mexico City, in a glacial layer at least 12,000 years old. Hand-made
artifacts have been found at Valsequillo in central Mexico dated from 20,000
years ago. Settled farming communities existed in Mexico from about 7,000
BC. By 6,000 BC beans were being raised, and 1,000 years later, squash.
Corn, cultivated since at least 5,000 BC, became Mexico's major crop around
1,500 BC.
The first Mexicans of whom there are records, lived in the Valley of Mexico
and surrounding areas, including what is now called Morelos. They settled
there about one century BC. They occupied permanent villages, and subsisted
chiefly on the products of their common fields. They produced sufficient
for their needs. They appear to have been peaceful. Their irrigated lands
and artificial island gardens were enormously productive, and crops were
planted several times a year.
About AD 400, a new people spread into the Valley of Mexico from Puebla and
beyond Morelos. These have been called Toltecs or Master Builders.
Tenochtitlan was their capital. The Toltecs have been described as great
architects. ``The were skilled likewise in agriculture, cultivating corn,
cotton, beans, chili peppers, and all other domesticated plants known to
Mexico,'' comments George C. Valiant. They held a market every twenty days
in Cuernavaca and many other towns. They prospered and multiplied. But by
AD 1,000, Toltec culture began to decline, and shortly after came to an end.
>From then until about 1,300, Mexican society was chaotic, resulting in a
mixture of cultures, and eventually giving rise to what has generally been
called Aztec civilization. This is not the place for a detailed account of
the development of Mexican society and the ultimate dominance of the Aztec
Confederacy in the Valley of Mexico and southward to Puebla and the Valley
of Morelos. Briefly, Bamford Parkes observes that the Aztecs' ``cultural
level was roughly equivalent to that of the Egyptian Pharaohs and the
priest-kings of Chaldaea, or the Jewish people under Joshua and the Judges.
Society was still theocratic; the gods were, for the most part, still tribal
deities and had not yet been universalized, nor had the individual been
freed from priestly control.''
What we are interested in, however, is the Mexican Indians' attitude towards
the land and land-ownership, from early times, through the Aztec period, the
Spanish Conquest, and right up into the present century---particularly in
central Mexico, including Morelos, where the mass of the population of
Mexico lived.
THE original hunting tribes of Mexico, as elsewhere, had no conception of
landed property. Hunting and fishing was practiced jointly, and the produce
shared in common. The idea of private, or even family, ownership of land
developed very slowly indeed, even when the Indians ceased to lead a nomadic
existence and lived in villages or _pueblos_. Indeed, the Mexican Indians'
attitude towards the land and land-ownership changed very little over the
centuries.
Of the situation in the fifteenth century, Parkes remarks:
``The mass of the people cultivated the land. Land was not held as private
property. Ownership belonged to the tribe or to some smaller unit within
it. Each family, however, was allotted a piece of land which it cultivated
independently. Certain lands were reserved for the expenses of the
government and the support of the priests, these lands being cultivated by
the common people.''
But in the areas dominated by the Aztec Confederation, there began to
emerge to a small extent a form of peasant slavery or _peonage_ over members
of some of the subject tribes. Nevertheless, of the Aztecs, Lewis Henry
Morgan writes: ``The Aztec and their Confederate tribes still held their
lands in common [and] lived in large households composed of a number of
related families.'' The majority of the people possessed some personal
property, ``but the land belonged to the tribe, and only its produce to the
individual.'' Indeed, ``agriculture was the basis of Aztec life, and corn,
_zea mays_, was the chief food plant. The cultivation of plants ensured a
food supply near at hand, which was not subject to the fluctuations of game,
and thereby enabled man to take thought for the morrow. The clan system
recognized that the fruits of the land supported the tribe. Therefore, it
was only natural that the tribe should own and control the land which
supported its members.''
Beyond the Valley of Mexico the situation was very similar.
``The people of the provinces,'' notes William H. Prescott, ``were
distributed into _calpulli_, or tribes, who held their lands of the
neighborhood in common. Officers of their own appointment parceled out
these lands among several families of the _calpulli_; and on the extinction
or removal of a family its lands reverted to common stock, to be again
distributed. The individual proprietor held no power to alienate them.
The laws regulating these matters were very precise, and had existed ever
since the occupation of the country by the Aztecs.
Land, therefore, was all-important to the Mexican Indian, but it was not the
private possession of any one person. In a sense, it belonged to all and,
at the same time, it belonged to no one. Of course, the colonization of
Mexico by the Spaniards often changed such relationships and
behavior-patterns---but not all at once or without resistance and conflict,
however. Indeed, at the end of the last century, Peter Kropotkin says that
``it is well known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico
used to cultivate their fields in common.
And Ricardo Flores Magon wrote in 1906 that ``in Mexico there are some four
million Indians who lived, until twenty or twenty-five years ago, in
communities that held land, water and woods in common. Mutual aid was the
rule in these communities and authority made itself felt only when the rent
collector made his periodic appearance or when the _rurales_ came in search
of recruits for the army. . . . All had a right to the land, the water for
irrigation, the forest was for cutting timber, and the timber was used in
the construction of cabins. Ploughs passed from hand to hand, as did the
yoke of oxen. Each family cultivated its special strip of land, which was
calculated as being sufficient to produce what the family required; and the
work of weeding and harvesting the crop was done in common, the entire
community uniting to get Pedro's crop today, Juan's tomorrow, and so on.''
The common lands usually lay on the outer edges of the _pueblo_---hence the
term _ejido_ (pronounced e-hee-do) which means ``exit'' or ``way out.''
THE Spaniards first arrived in Mexican waters in 1517. In 1519, an
adventurer by the name of Hernan Cortes sailed to Mexico with five hundred
men. First, he established a town, which he called Veracruz. His small
force moved inland, and three months later they arrived outside the great
Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Neither he nor any of his men had ever seen
such a place before. Babylon in all its glory had never been so splendid!
But Cortes was not able to capture the city, or destroy the Aztec Empire
until the end of September, 1521. The Mexicans were not defeated by
military conquest but by disease---an epidemic of smallpox, unknown to the
Mexicans, brought from Europe by the Spaniards.
Tenochtitlan was systematically destroyed by the Spaniards, and then rebuilt
on the model of a Spanish town. It was to become Mexico City. It also
became the center for a series of expeditions, in which the Spaniards
founded more towns and cities and, over the next two decades, conquered what
was to become New Spain. The Aztecs, as well as all the other peoples of
central Mexico, were subjugated; and the Spaniards gained control over
enormous tracts of land.
New Spain was largely conquered by private adventurers known as
_conquistadors_, whose ambitions were to become rich. The _conquistadors_,
however, were firmly controlled by a small group of agents of the Spanish
Crown, called _gachupines_---Wearers of Spurs. New Spain was despotically
ruled by a Viceroy. The leaders of the Catholic Church, who were all
_gachupines_, worked closely with the Viceroy, and were part of the colonial
bureaucracy. Their aim was to make Christians of the Mexicans and, thereby,
increase the power and wealth of the Church and themselves. Victor Alba
describes the system which Spain imposed upon the people of Mexico.
``First, there was the _encomienda_, by which a _conquistador_ received a
certain amount of land and the Indians who lived on it, in exchange for
protecting and Christianizing them. The arrangement was in essence a
transplant of the feudal system which had long since become moribund in
Europe. To save the Indians from being entirely at the mercy of the new
lords, and to preserve the ancient system of communal ownership, each
Indian village was guaranteed a tract of common farm land---eventually
standardized at one square league in size. These _ejidos_. . . could not
be sold; with these lands, waters, pastures, and woodlands, the Indians
were able to subsist. The new lords, however, found ways to make the
_encomienda_ and the _ejido_ profitable for themselves. The former gave
them _de facto_ domination over the Indians; the latter enabled them to put
the Indians to work on the _conquistadors'_ lands without pay, since the
natives could presumably live on the produce of their _ejidos_.''
The _conquistadors_ numbered only a few hundred, and the first generation of
colonists a few thousands; yet more than five hundred Spaniards acquired
_encomiendas_. At first, the Emperor tried to limit the exploitation of the
Indians. He ordered payment for all labor exacted from free and
_encomienda_ Indians. Indeed, under the rule of the early Viceroys, the
conditions of the tribes of central Mexico were not all that worse than they
had been under the Aztecs. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
the Indian villages began to suffer from illegal exactions of the
_corridors_ and from the encroachments of the emerging _creole_ landowners.
All attempts to protect the _ejidos_ were frustrated by corrupt officials.
Parkes comments:
``According to Spanish law, all the land of Mexico was ultimately the
property of the Crown, and only a royal grant gave legal title to ownership.
Since most of the Indian villages had never obtained grants, it was easy for
the _creoles_ gradually to enlarge the boundaries of their estates, claiming
that they were occupying land which belonged to the Crown. After such a
usurpation had been tolerated for a considerable period, it was regularised
by the government through a _composicion_. . . . By a slow process of
attrition extending through generations, the relatively small holdings of
the original _conquistadors_ were gradually enlarged into enormous
_haciendas_ which covered most of the fertile lands of central Mexico.''
Nevertheless, while Mexico remained part of the Spanish Empire, many
_pueblos_ preserved a precarious independence. But a considerable
proportion of the population---probably almost forty per cent---were
compelled to become laborers on the _haciendas_. They were transformed into
_peones_---debt-slaves, and their debts were inherited from generation to
generation.
The _hacendados_ were not interested in improving their methods of
production. The Indians were deprived of farm implements and domesticated
animals like oxen. Agriculture, therefore, stagnated. Only the
comparatively small number of independent small-scale farmers---_rancheros_
like the Zapata family for example---could be relied upon to use the land
reasonably efficiently. But early in the nineteenth century, a form of
``plantation capitalism'' slowly began to emerge. _Haciendas_ developed
whose aims were purely commercial. By 1810, shortly before Mexico gained
her independence, there were 5,000 such estates, of which about one quarter
raised livestock. Many of these were, however, in the arid north of the
country, and employed very few _peones_ or wage-workers. The
sugar-producing _haciendas_ were generally located in Morelos and the
central heartland where the Indian population was most numerous. Yet, in
1810, there were still 4,500 autonomous Indian communities with their
_ejidos_.
``Thus,'' says Eric R. Wolf, ``Mexico emerged into its period of
independence with its rural landscape polarized between large estates on the
one hand and Indian communities on the other---units, moreover, which might
be linked economically, but which remained set off against each other
socially and politically.''
AFTER a long and bitter struggle, Mexico achieved her independence in 1821.
``Independent'' Mexico stripped the Church of much of its power, and forced
it to sell off considerable amounts of land as well.
But the _hacendados_ improved their position. A law passed in 1856, the
_Ley Lerdo_, despite the intentions of some of its supporters, made the
situation worse for the _peones_. The purposes of the law were to increase
government revenues and to stimulate economic progress. The Church was
forbidden to own land, but was to receive payment for its estates. No
provision, however, was made for the division of large clerical
_haciendas_. Only the already wealthy landowners, therefore, were able to
pay the purchase price of the Church lands and the heavy government sales
tax. Furthermore, the _Lay Lerdo_ ordered the sale of Indian _ejidos_
attached to the new Spanish towns, as well as the traditional _pueblos_.
When many of the land-hungry _mestizos_ (people who were part-Indian and
part-Spanish) realized that they would not be able to buy the Church lands,
they rebelled. The immediate result was a series of minor _mestizo_ and
Indian revolts throughout central Mexico.
Nevertheless, the number of small _rancheros_ did increase, but the most
conspicuous result of the _Ley Lerdo_ was to increase the concentration of
land ownership on a scale hitherto unknown.
By 1889, twenty-nine ``companies'' had obtained 27.5 million hectares, or
fourteen per cent of the total land area of Mexico. And between 1889 and
1894, another six per cent was alienated. ``At the same time,'' comments
Wolf, ``cultivators who could not show a clear title to their lands were
treated as illegal squatters and dispossessed.'' By 1900, there were about
fifty _haciendas_ of over 100,000 hectares. One _hacendado_, Luis
Terrazas, owned fifteen _haciendas_, comprising two million hectares,
500,000 head of cattle, and 250,000 sheep! Of the situation under Diaz's
dictatorship, Gerrit Huizer observes:
``The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910 and in which the armed
peasantry played a crucial role, should be seen against the background of
the usurpation of communal lands by large _haciendas_, which took place in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Many indigenous communities
tried in vain to retain or recover the communal lands of which they had been
deprived under legislation which favored private property. Particularly in
the densely populated state of Morelos, the sugar estates expanded at the
cost of the communities. The peasants' homes and crops were destroyed to
obtain land for sugar cultivation. The peasants affected were forced to
work on the estates.''
BETWEEN 1910 and 1920, Mexican society was turned upside down. In a number
of states like Morelos and Puebla, the _peones_ were able to take much of
the land back from the _hacendados_. Nevertheless, in many instances, by
1920, some of the _hacendados_ had been able to repossess it again.
During his term as president, Carranza did little more than make promises to
the _peones_. Between 1917 and 1920, only 48,000 _peones_ received any
land. And even these usually possessed neither water, seeds, nor tools, and
were forced to work for the local _hacienda_. But Obregon, once elected,
made plans for the rural areas. Naturally, they were of a paternalistic
nature. In 1923, he had a law passed which gave a parcel of land to each
member of an _ejido_ as his personal, private property, though the recipient
could not sell it. Agrarians like Soto y Gama supported the law
enthusiastically. And the landowners received compensation in the form of
government bonds. During Obregon's presidency, about 1.2 million hectares
were distributed.
In 1924, General Calles was elected president. His regime was more
authoritarian than that of Obregon, but he continued to distribute land to
the _peones_. He even proclaimed himself the heir of Zapata! What Calles
actually did, in an attempt to destroy the power of the local _jefes
politicos_ and the village _caciques_, was to divide the _ejidos_ into
individual plots. He also established agricultural banks, but four-fifths
of their loans went to the _hacendados_, and not to the ordinary _peones_.
Altogether, Calles distributed just under 3.3 million hectares to 1,500
villages.
Calles left office in November, 1928. And he was followed by Portes Gil,
whose policies were largely dictated by the ex-president. He lasted less
than a year. Nevertheless, during that period, Gil distributed more than
one million hectares. In 1930, Ortiz Rubio became president. He lasted two
years, during which time he distributed less than 200,000 hectares. He was
followed by Alberland Rodriguez, who showed little interest in the land
question---or anything else for that matter. Up to the end of 1933, perhaps
less than eight million hectares of arable land had been given back to the
_peones_. Parkes observes that ``there were still nearly two-and-a-half
million families with no land at all. In other words, at the end of twenty
years of allegedly revolutionary administration, Mexican rural society was
still basically feudal.''
But between 1934 and 1940, during the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, the
rural feudalism, to which Parkes refers, was largely broken. Cardenas was
an idealist, but he was also a very practical man and a modernizing
reformer. In six years, he parceled out and distributed over twelve
million hectares. And he organized an _ejidal_ bank, to give credit to
the new _rancheros_ and farmers. Nevertheless, even by 1940, there were
still many large _haciendas_ in Mexico. ``. . . the big owners still held
more than three times as much land as the _ejidatarios_; sixty per cent of
the land was held by less than ten thousand _hacendados_, and there were
still three hundred _haciendas_ of more that 40,000 hectares apiece.''
Fifty per cent of the population engaged in agriculture were still _peones_
or wage workers.
WITH the slow, but inevitable, development of industrial capitalism in
Mexico, the old as well as the newly-created _ejidos_ naturally took on a
different form. They tended to become merely cooperative farms, financed
largely by the government.
The agricultural bank, which was founded in 1926, soon found itself in a
difficult situation due to the duality of its functions. On the one hand,
it was supposed to help organize the _ejidatarios_ into cooperatives and,
at the same time, operate the cooperative farms as non-profit-making
concerns; and, on the other hand, it was to make loans to _rancheros_ and
even some large landowners and _hacendados_ producing crops for commercial
profit. In 1931, however, the National Agricultural Bank was reorganized.
It ceased to lend to the _hacendados_, and only lent money to the
_ejidatarios_ organized into cooperatives. But in 1934, it was fused with
the rural bank; and, once again, these banks were allowed to extend credit
to non-_ejidatarios_---but only to small and middle-sized _rancheros_.
Another problem was the legal status of the _ejido_. Originally, the land
was, and was to be, held and worked in common. The _ejidatarios_ could
neither alienate nor mortgage their land. They were to enjoy it ``in
usufruct'' rather than ``fee simple.'' The subject of the right was the
community, not the individual. In theory, at least, the land belonged to
the _pueblos_. Even the tractors---where they existed---were used in common
and the marketing of the produce was also done collectively. A law of
``_Ejido Patrimony_'' was promulgated. But by 1935, only about twenty per
cent of all _ejidos_ had been ``legalized.''
Other methods of ``solving'' the agrarian question were, therefore, tried.
One of them was the ``colonizing projects,'' in which, where there was
said to be no more land available for distribution in a given area, the
_peones_ were to be persuaded to move to other regions with more land. It
was not a success.
Since 1940, more land has been distributed. But, in the main,
government-organized _ejidos_ and cooperative farms have not been all that
successful or productive, though their establishment---together with an
increasing number of _rancheros_---has undoubtedly assisted in breaking the
power of the old feudal _hacendados_ and many of the planters. Furthermore,
the general standard of living (or, perhaps, we should say existence) for
the majority of _peones_ has not improved all that much. This is borne out
by Dr. Josue de Castro, the former Director General of the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, who observed in 1952:
``The _ejido_ was undoubtedly a step forward for Mexico in the struggle
against hunger, but unfortunately, the results fell short of expectation.
The Mexican revolutionaries were idealists rather than technicians, and they
forgot that mere redistribution of land is not enough. In order to
cultivate it adequately, technical and financial resources are also
necessary. The result was that the Indians, who were generally unprepared,
disoriented, and without adequate technical knowledge, were unable to make
proper use of the plots they received. The agrarian reform did not lead to
the increase of production or to the indispensable diversification of crops
which were needed to raise the national living standards. As proof of this,
one may cite the fact that even today Mexico imports appreciable quantities
of her basic food element---corn---and still does not have adequate supplies
of many protective foods.''
And of the situation, Segovia writes:
``From 1936 onwards there have been attempts, through agrarian reform, to
solve the human problems of the rural sector, especially by distributing
land to the peasants in the form of _ejidos_. These lands represent
thirty-seven per cent of the registered land of the country. Both _ejidos_
and small holdings, owing to population growth, have shown a pronounced
tendency to split into uneconomically small sub-holdings; the absolute
growth of the rural population has today (1968) created a situation in which
over two million peasants have a statutory right to share in an _ejido_.''
Yet, despite all the so-called idealism of the official ``revolutionaries''
and politicians, the land that has been distributed has been distributed in
an authoritarian and paternalistic manner, often as a means of heading off
further _Zapatista_-like insurrections and struggles, as well as a method of
destroying feudal land ownership in the countryside. Such schemes---at
least for the _peones_---were bound to fail. In fact, in the main, even
during Cardenas' presidency, government policy has consistently been to
encourage _rancheros_ and ``middle'' farmers to the detriment not only of
the old _hacendados_ but also of the _ejidatarios_. Such policy is, of
course, in line with the development of an industrial capitalist
economy---in Mexico, as elsewhere.
Morelos, as always, spotlights the trend.
Like the rest of Mexico, it began to change. Factories sprang up, and
highways were constructed. Moreover, it became a center for cash
crops---peanuts, rice, and, of course, sugar cane. Zapata would not have
been pleased. Over the years, the population was more than twice that of
1920; and by 1970, over fifty per cent of the inhabitants had come from
elsewhere, or were the children of those from elsewhere.
By 1966, there were 32,000 _ejidatarios_ in just over two hundred _ejidos_,
comprising almost 300,000 hectares of fields, pasture, and timber forests.
But there were also 10,000 private proprietors and _rancheros_, often with
tiny plots of uneconomical land. Between 1927 and 1967, the number of
_ejidos_ and _ejidatarios_ doubled; and the number of hectares of land that
they worked also more than doubled, but the pressure of population and,
perhaps even more important, the lure of ``high'' wages in the factories
during the post-war boom, ineluctably drove the _peones_ from the land.
FEUDALISM in Mexico has gone. A new bourgeois, middle-class, has emerged,
as well as its opposite, a propertyless, wage-earning proletariat. But
there are still large numbers of _peones_, often living in appalling
poverty. Indeed, in absolute numbers, due to the increase in population,
there are more landless peasants in Mexico today than there were in 1910.
In October, 1972, Hugh O'Shaughnessy reported that ``the poor are getting
relatively poorer, and the rich, richer in what is for the moment a
businessman's paradise.'' He quoted Robert McNamara, president of the World
Bank, as saying that in Mexico during the last twenty years, the richest ten
per cent of the population had increased its share of the national wealth to
just over half, while the poorest forty per cent had seen their slice of the
national cake shrink to eleven per cent. And Luis Echeverria, in his
inaugural presidential address, admitted that, after one hundred-and-fifty
years of independence, very many Mexicans lived in ``lacerating poverty,''
with not enough food, clothes, or even drinking water. ``Let us produce
more food, and get it to the poor man's table,'' he added. According to Dr.
Bartolome Perez Ortiz, a nutrition expert at the Mexico City children's
hospital, over seventy per cent of Mexican children suffered from
malnutrition in 1974. Possibly, the situation has worsened since then.
For many years, however, neither the peasants nor the industrial workers
attempted to do much about the situation. The had become apathetic,
demoralized, even frightened. Mexican governments had become increasingly
repressive. But by 1968---the year of student and worker unrest throughout
much of the world---Mexico began to stir.
``In 1968,'' writes Victor Alba, ``more than halfway through Diaz Ordaz's
term, which had been characterized by the widening of the economic gap
between rich and poor, there was an outbreak of fury, and during it the
president was attacked, cursed, and booed. The Mexicans could hardly
believe what occurred themselves.''
In October, on the eve of the Olympic Games which were being held in Mexico
City, there was a student demonstration in the Plaza de Tlatelolco. Units
of the army were called in to disperse it; over two hundred people were
killed by the army (government sources claim that some of the troops were
fired upon), and many hundreds were jailed, some for more than three years
without trial. Accusations were also made to the effect that the trouble
was stirred up by Russian-trained KGB agents. True or not, subsequent
unrest in Mexico---particularly in the countryside---has been rooted in
socioeconomic conditions.
AFTER May 1969, numerous _Zapatista_-type groups were formed, and have been
active in different parts of the country.
Early in 1973, for instance, a group of _guerrilleros_ ambushed government
troops in the Acapulco area on a number of occasions, killing a score or so.
During the same year, there was considerable unrest in both the state of
Puebla and in Puebla City itself. Following a series of land occupations and
expropriations, the whole state was in turmoil. There were numerous
assassinations. Among those murdered were three university professors who
had supported the peasants. A number of _peones_, who had been occupying
privately-owned landholdings, were also murdered by fanatical rightist
vigilante groups, encouraged, according to the _peones_ by the local
archbishop of the Catholic Church.
In the state of Guerrero, a guerrilla ``party of the poor''---which was
not, in fact, a political party, but a _Zapatista_-type organization---had
considerable grassroots support among the peasants. The ``party of the
poor'' operated in the vast, and almost impenetrable, mountain areas
between Acapulco on the Pacific Coast and eastern Morelos. Its armed
``wing'' was called the ``brigade of peasant executioners.'' The ``party of
the poor'' helped local _peones_ to establish _ejido_-type cooperative
farms. Its leader, the highly talented former school teacher, Lucio
Cabanas, was finally shot by the army in December, 1974.
During 1975, large numbers of poor peasants developed a broad movement of
``illegal'' occupations of lands throughout Guerrero, Hidalgo, Michoacan,
Sonora, and Tlaxcala. They were, in many instances, attacked by regular
army units. Scores of them were killed and injured, In Michoacan, in
January, 1976, forty-five families were driven from the lands which they had
occupied. And during the first five months of the year, fifty _campesinos_
were killed and over five hundred injured in clashes with government forces
in various parts of the country. In November, two hundred landless peasants
occupied four large _ranchos_ in Culiacan.
In a desperate attempt to head off further unrest, the outgoing president,
Luis Echeverria, expropriated about 100,000 hectares of private land in the
state of Sonora for distribution to the peasants. The peasants had been
seizing much of the land anyway! And they refused to give it back.
Nevertheless, by the end of 1977, land seizures began to slacken off.
Attempt have been made to build and organize autonomous labor unions. ``The
change of tactics corresponds to a growing realization by agricultural
workers that local seizures or grants of tiny, individual plots of land,
will never give them the power base they need to become self-sufficient. .
.'' The _Coordindora Campesino Revolucionaria Independent_, founded in
Mexico City, co-ordinates groups from Colina, Morelos, Qaxaca, Pueblo,
Sinaloa, Veracruz, and elsewhere. A number of traditional agricultural
unions, as well as two or three so-called ``revolutionary'' parties, also
vie for the _campesinos_ support.
In one form or another the struggle continues. . .
And in the words of Mary Charlesworth: ``The Mexican revolution is still
incomplete, as great inequalities in wealth exist and the peasant-land
problem is still unsolved. But at least there is the ideal of the
revolution to struggle towards, and this is important for the Mexican
temperament.'' The spirit of Zapatismo lives on.