Forsaken Harvest: Haciendas and Agrarian Reform in Jalisco, Mexico: 1915-1940

By Luis G. Cueva

This historical monograph examines the decline of the hacienda estates within Jalisco, Mexico during the early decades of the 20th century. The book also explores the impact of the land reform program of President Lazaro Cardenas in transforming the agrarian economic structure of the region. This study contributes to an ongoing lively debate about the hacienda system and the meaning of the Cardenas reforms.
This is an important work because it explores the evolution
of a regional socio-economic system that promoted urban
industrial growth at the expense of the rural poor. The model
of regional development described is applicable to other areas of Mexico and underdeveloped Third World nations with extensive peasant populations. The research for this investigation has wider implications regarding issues of global hunger and malnutrition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477155783

Luis G. Cueva

Luis attended the University of California San Diego where he received a doctorate in Latin-American Studies in 1994. Professor Cueva has been teaching history at several colleges in San Diego over the past two decades. Currently he is teaching at United States University in Chula Vista, California. His areas of interest for research include issues related to global hunger. Beyond his academic achievement, Luis has an extensive personal history of involvement in civil rights activism on issues such as immigration reform.

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Copyright © 2013 by Luis G. Cueva.

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Rev. date: 10/14/2017

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CONTENTS

MAP OF JALISCO

Hacienda de Atequiza: municipality of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos

Hacienda de Santa Lucia: municipality of Zapopan

SPANISH TERMS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: The Haciendas and the Wealthy Elite Families

CHAPTER ONE: Commercial Agriculture in the

Early Twentieth Century

CHAPTER TWO: The Agrarian Reform Bureaucracy

CHAPTER THREE: The Haciendas and Land Redistribution

CHAPTER FOUR: The Use of Hydraulic Resources

CHAPTER FIVE: The Hacendados and Political Repression

CHAPTER SIX: Crisis in the Countryside and the

Global Depression of 1929

CONCLUSION: Cárdenas and the Great Land Reform

EPILOGUE: Failure of Developmentalist Strategies

in the Post-Cárdenas Era

APPENDICES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SYNOPSIS

PROFILE OF AUTHOR

In dedication to the loving memory of my parents,

Esperanza Ramírez Merino de Cueva

and

Benjamin Cueva Pérez

This is the story of their generation . . .

I also wish to express my appreciation to my brother, Benjamin Albert

Cueva and his family, and my sister Dr. Mary Carolina Cueva and her

family, and to my son Anthony Acevedo

I would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the

following individuals for their support in making

this book possible,

Dr. Ramón Eduardo Ruiz

Dr. Eric Van Young

Dr. Peter Smith

Dr. Christine Hunefeldt

Dr. León Zamosc

Dr. Edward Reynolds

Dr. Richard Griswold del Castillo

Lic. Cecilia Ubilla

Dr. Diana Marcus

Santo Fragale

I also extend my deep appreciation to President Timothy P. Cole

and Provost Steven A. Stargardter of United States University

for their support of this publication

Special Thanks to

Mario Chacon

Cover Design and Interior Illustrations

008_a_lbj23.jpg009_a_lbj23.JPG010_a_lbj23.jpg

SPANISH TERMS

Land tenure

casco: manor or mansion residence of the hacienda estates

ejido: lands granted to peasant villages under the agrarian reform

fundo legal: urbanized zone of ejido community

hacienda: large landed estates that dominated Mexican countryside

latifundio: large, generally unproductive and idle landed estate

manantial: natural water springs or thermal mineral springs

minifundio: small peasant family land parcel too small to survive on

Nueva Galicia: name of Jalisco during Spanish colonial era

pequeña propiedad: small property holdings

potreros: livestock pasturelands

pueblo: village community or provincial township

rancho: small, independently owned ranch property

tierras de agostadero: grazing pasture lands

terrenos baldíos: vacant uncultivated lands

tierras cerriles: rough barren mountainous lands

tierras de monte: mountainous or wooded lands

tierras ociosas: idle lands

tierras de riego: irrigated lands

tierras de temporal: rainwater-fed agricultural lands

Social groups

acaparador: monopolist of agricultural production (hacendado) or crop distribution (middleman)

agrarista: peasant who petitioned for ejido lands under agrarian reform

aparcero: a sharecropper who receives less than half of the crops harvested from estate owner

arrendatario: property renter

arriero: muleteer

ayuntamiento: town council

bandolerismo: banditry

cacique: political leader, boss

campesino: peasant, country dweller

colono: colonist or private farmer who generally produces cash crops exclusively to supply surrounding local agro-industrial complexes

comunidad agraria: agrarian community of ejido land grant recipients

Cuerpos Rurales: rural security forces

ejidatario: peasant who received ejido lands under the agrarian reform

gavilla: gang

hacendado: owner of a large hacienda estate

jornalero: temporary or seasonal wageworker

latifundista: owner of an unproductive estate composed mainly of idle lands

mediero: sharecropper

mestizo: racial mix between Spanish and indigenous populations

patrón: hacienda owner, boss

peón: day laborer

peón acasillado: permanent hacienda worker

pequeño propietario: small property owner

poblado: rural village, population center

presidencia municipal: municipal government

presidente municipal: municipal president or town mayor

ranchero: owner of a small ranch property

Tapatíos: colloquialism for people of Jalisco

vecino: resident, neighbor

Crop cultivation

agave: a cactus variety used to produce tequila liquor

aguardiente: fermented alcoholic beverage

ajonjolí: sesame

arroz: rice

camote: sweet potato

camote silvestre: wild sweet potato

caña de azúcar: sugarcane

cebada: barley

chicle: coagulated juicy milk extract from tropical tree used to make chewing gum

coquito de aceite: coconut pulp extract used in elaboration of various oils

fríjol: bean

garbanzo: chickpea

guayaba: guava

henequén: hemp

higuerilla: prickly pear cactus

hortalizas: vegetables

jícama: turniplike tuber

legumbres: vegetables

maguey: type of pita cactus used in the production of the fermented beverage pulque

maíz: corn, maize

nopal: nopal cactus

oleaginosas: oil-producing plants

piloncillo: raw sugar-cube confectionary or crude brown sugar in a loaf

pulque: beverage made from fermented cactus juice of maguey plant

raíz de zarzaparilla: zarzaparilla root

resinas: resins

salitre: saltpeter, nitrate, or the place they are found

semilla de linaza: linseed

tequila: distilled liquor made from

agave cactus

trigo: wheat

tubérculos: tubers

tunas: fruit of prickly pear cactus

verdolagas: purslane

Infrastructure and measurements

contribución: ejido property taxes

hectárea: metric land measure equal to 2.471 acres

ingenio: sugar mill

molino: mill

pignoración: a system of credit provided to ejidatarios by government banking institutions whereby the advance of a loan is based on payment from future crop harvests

presa: reservoir or dam

tienda de raya: company store on a rural estate

yunta: land measurement equal to 3.5 hectares

Civic organizations and government agencies

Almacenes Nacionales de Depósito: National Granary Deposit

Almacenes Generales de Depósito: General Granary Deposit

Asociación de Productores de Arroz del los Estados de Colima y Jalisco: Cooperative of Rice Producers from the States of Colima and Jalisco

Banco Agrícola Ejidal de Jalisco: Ejidal Agrarian Bank of Jalisco

Banco Regional de Crédito Agrícola: Regional Bank of Agrarian Credit

Caja de Préstamos para Obras de Irrigación y Agricultura, S.A: Lending Institution for Irrigation Works and Agriculture, Inc.

Cámara Agrícola Jalisciense: Chamber of Agriculture of Jalisco

Cámara Agrícola Nacional Jalisciense: National Chamber of Agriculture of Jalisco

Cámara Agrícola Nacional de Puebla: National Chamber of Agriculture of Puebla

Cámara Agrícola Nacional de la República Mexicana: National Chamber of Agriculture of the Mexican Republic

Cámara Central Agrícola de Mexico: Central Chamber of Agriculture of Mexico

Cámara Sindical de Comercio de Buenos Aires: Syndical Chamber of Commerce of Buenos Aires

Censo Estadística Nacional: National Statistical Census

Código Federal de Trabajo: Federal Labor Code

Comisariado Ejidal: Ejidal Commissary

Comisión Agraria Mixta: Mixed Agrarian Commission

Comisión Local Agraria: Local Agrarian Commission

Comisión Nacional Agraria: National Agrarian Commission

Comisión Nacional de Irrigación: National Irrigation Commission

Comité Permanente de Productores de Trigo de la República: Permanent Committee of Wheat Producers of the Republic

Comité Regulador de Mercado de las Subsistencias: Regulatory Committee of the Subsistance Staples Market

Comité Regulador del Mercado de Trigo: Regulatory Committee of the Wheat Market

Compañía Exportadora e Importadora, S.A: Exporting and Importing Company, Inc.

Compañía de Fomento de Chapala: Development Company of Chapala

Compañía del Ferrocarril Sud Pacífico: South Pacific Railroad Company

Compañía Electrica de Chapala, S.A: Electric Company of Chapala, Inc.

Compañía Irrigadora: Irrigation Company

Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares, S.A: National Company of Popular Subsistance Foods, Inc.

Concurso de Mazorcas de Maíz: Concourse of Maize Stalks

Confederación Católico de Trabajo: Catholic Confederation of Labor

Confederación de Cámaras Agrícolas Nacionales: National Confederation of Chambers of Agriculture

Consejo Económico Nacional: National Economic Council

Confederación Campesina Mexicana: Mexican Peasant Confederation

Consejo Directivo de Agricultura: Directive Council of Agriculture

Convención Nacional de Transportes: National Convention of Transportation

Convención Obreros y Patrones: Convention of Workers and Employers

Departamento de Control Agrícola: Department of Agrarian Control

Departamento de Economía Agrícola: Department of Agrarian Economy

Departamento de la Estadística Nacional: Department of National Statistics

Dirección de Economía Rural: Directorate of Rural Economy

Dirección de Rentas: Directorate of Rents

Empresa de Luz y Fuerza Villanueva y Cía: Villanueva Light and Energy Company

Empresa Nacional Distribuidora, S.A: National Distribution Company, Inc.

Ferrocarriles Nacionales: National Railroad Company

Ley de Plagas: Law of Plagues

Ley de Reglamento: Regulatory Statute

Ley Federal de Tierras Ociosas: Federal Law of Idle Lands

Ley Sobre Prenda Agraria: Law of Agrarian Security

Liga de Comunidades Agrarias y Sindicatos Campesinos: League of Agrarian Communites and Peasant Syndicates

Liga de Comunidades Agraristas de Jalisco: League of Agrarista Communities of Jalisco

Oficina de Estadística e Inspección Agrícola: Office of Statistics and Agrarian Inspection

Oficina de Ingeniería Rural: Office of Rural Engineering

Partido Nacional Revolucionario: National Revolutionary Party

Procurador de Justicia: Procurer Attorney of Justice

Productos Nacionales Rey de Celaya: King National Products of Celaya

Secretaría de Agricultura y Fomento: Ministry of Agriculture and Development

Secretaría de Economía Nacional: Ministry of National Economy

Secretaría de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo: Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Labor

Secretaría de Guerra y Marina: Ministry of War and Navy

Secretaría de Hacienda: Ministry of Finance

Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores: Ministry of Foreign Relations

Secretaría General de Gobierno: Office of the State Attorney General

Servicio de Estadística Agrícola: Service of Agrarian Statistics

Sindicato de Agricultores de Jalisco: Syndicate of Agriculturalists of Jalisco

Sistema Alimentario Mexicano: Mexican Nutrition System

Unión Agrícola Regional: Regional Agrarian Union

Unión de Agricultores de Jalisco: Union of Agriculturalists of Jalisco

Unión de Asociaciónes de Arroceros: Union of Rice Producer Cooperatives

PREFACE

The primary archival documentation upon which this research investigation is based was drawn almost exclusively from the Archivo Histórico de Jalisco. This archive is located in Guadalajara and houses historical records pertaining to the administration of the state government. This study was based upon a wealth of information obtained from one main branch of the archive classified as Agricultura y Ganadería (AG). Within this branch, documents were located in the sections classified as Administración (1) and Tierras (6). The branches classified as Gobernación and Fomento were also consulted.

This inquiry provides a social portrait of the owners of the great hacienda estates within Jalisco, Mexico during the early decades of the twentieth century. These aristocratic families were members of a powerful regional oligarchy that dominated the rural hinterland areas surrounding the city of Guadalajara. For generations, these elite families maintained a reserved place at the pinnacle of social hierarchy within provincial society. They ruled strictly over their peón laborers who served them in the tradition of medieval feudalism, controlling every aspect of their workers’ lives.

Theirs was a system of exploitation that kept the rural masses in wretched conditions of poverty and oppression. The hacienda system of land tenure was similar to the plantations of the Caribbean, with workers laboring like slaves from dawn to sunset. Although technically and legally free, the hacienda peón workers were paid such low wages that they were essentially bound to the land similar to serfdom in nineteenth century eastern Europe. The monopoly domination imposed by the hacienda estates over tillable soils adversely affected the lives of countless peasant villages. The communal lands once belonging to these indigenous communities had been stolen from them by the avaricious latifundistas over the course of centuries.

The vast hacienda properties of colonial Nueva Galicia emerged in the late decades of the sixteenth century. This came in the wake of the devastating population decline following the Spanish conquest led by Nuño de Guzman in 1530. The earlier estancia common pasturelands shared by cattle ranchers served as the foundation for these immense rustic estates. With the population in recovery by the early 1600s, the haciendas began to consolidate their boundaries as private property gained momentum and land prices rose. Through the historical process known as primitive accumulation, the hacendados were able to amass enormous properties by forcibly dispossessing the surrounding townships of their traditional communal lands.

The haciendas blossomed in the late eighteenth century as this system of land tenure underwent fundamental transformations. During those years, the huge properties underwent a transition from a system based primarily on cattle-ranching and livestock to a structure founded more upon agriculture and crop cultivation. This transition was fueled by the more lucrative prices for cereals and grains to feed the expanding urban population of Guadalajara. The hacienda labor system was relatively mild as workers were scarce and they were able to command a semblance of bargaining power vis-à-vis the owners of the great estates.

But by the late nineteenth century, the situation had changed substantially. During the Porfiriato, the structural problems associated with the hacienda system were becoming more pronounced, eventually leading to widespread economic crisis. Population growth in the countryside produced a vast reserve pool of unemployed workers that the hacendados were able to exploit through entrenched low wages. By the late 1800s hacienda workers were living in miserable conditions of subjugation and poverty. Meanwhile, the lack of capital investment among the latifundio estates contributed to the massive unemployment and the marginalization of the poor people.

Furthermore, new business trends in commercial agriculture during the late Porfiriato were also adversely affecting the lives of the rural population. There was a growing tendency among the haciendas away from the production of staple grains such as maíz and fríjol that had traditionally served as the foundation for the diet of rural consumers. Instead, hacienda production shifted toward more lucrative national and international markets and the cultivation of cash and export crops. At the same time, other agrarian products were undergoing industrial processing or being incorporated into manufactured consumer goods. As a result, the rural poor suffered from the shortages of staple foodstuffs and many experienced conditions of hunger and malnutrition.

For the hacendados, the years of national reconstruction after 1915 were the dawn of a new era. Following the destructive civil war battles during the Mexican Revolution, the wealthy elite envisioned new horizons and greater opportunities for commercial agriculture. They incorporated greater mechanization and applied modern technology to their agricultural enterprises. The use of motorized tractors and manufactured farm machinery was becoming common practice upon the more modern estates. The building of infrastructure linkages such as railroads, highways, shipping, and irrigation systems encouraged the integration of nationwide markets and expanding international trade.

The large-scale commercial agriculturalists turned to modern science and the use of chemical compounds such as pesticides, herbicides, seed disinfectants, and chemical-based fertilizers for the crops they cultivated. However, the application of modern farming methods and technology was only in its incipient stages, and the landowners encountered several barriers to these endeavors. There was an unsound and growing dependence upon foreign manufactured goods and technology. Concomitantly, Mexico was undergoing further integration into the global economy on distinctly unfavorable terms.

Moreover, this study also examines the social conditions affecting Jalisco’s peasantry and the rural poor. For the lower strata of society, the early decades of the twentieth century were a time of struggle and survival. The rural communities suffered despairingly from the monopoly over arable soils imposed by the enormous latifundio estates. Most peasants lacked enough land to produce sufficient harvests with which to feed their families. On the other hand, the agrarian reform policies adopted by the revolutionary regimes prior to Cárdenas proved entirely inadequate in meeting the pressing needs of the landless masses. The ejido communities that received parcels from the government through the agrarian reform were a relatively small percentage of the rural population. In the years prior to the Cárdenas administration, there were growing incidents of illegal land invasions by desperate and hungry peasant families who had been excluded from the agrarian reform.

Beyond the issue of land monopoly, there were other structural problems associated with the large estates. The hacendados dominated the consumer markets that supplied the growing urban working and middle classes in Guadalajara with basic grains at low prices. This adversely affected the evolution of agrarian market structures in the outlying regions. Small producers such as rancheros, small farmers, and peasant families could not compete successfully with the large commercial agriculturalists for the urban market in staple grains. The massive wholesale volumes of crops supplied by the large estates drove down the prices and made participation in commercial agriculture by small producers virtually impossible. For the hacendados, large-scale production was profitable despite the relatively low wholesale prices they received for their harvests within metropolitan consumer markets.

Several fundamental structural problems such as low wages and prices within the agrarian sector contributed to the conditions of underdevelopment and widespread poverty in the countryside. Hacienda workers were paid exceedingly low wages under the hacienda labor system known as debt peonage. Under this labor system, the peón acasillado workers were essentially bound to the land reminiscent of serfdom and servitude in feudal Europe. These distortions to the structure of evolving labor markets affected broad masses of the rural population. Members of the lower social strata such as hacienda workers and sharecroppers experienced formidable barriers to their participation within emerging capitalist structures as either producers or consumers.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the overthrow of the Porfirian regime marked the rise of the urban middle class to national political prominence. The aspirations of the middle classes for upward social mobility encouraged them to embrace the ideals of modern capitalism as their ideological foundation. The middle class sought to construct a political system that would promote the growth of the market economy, private property, and individual rights. However, in order to confront the powerful landowning elite, this aspiring bourgeoisie depended upon a tenuous political alliance with urban wageworkers and the rural peasantry.

Yet the political interests of the lower classes frequently ran counter to those of the rising middle class. Thus, the new political system that emerged was fraught with the contradictions of class collaboration and political compromise. In order to gain the political allegiance of the rural masses, the revolutionary regimes expanded government intervention within the countryside. The role of the state as social arbiter of class interests between landlord and peasant was strengthened. The federal government offered the rural masses a program of agrarian reform to ameliorate their desires for land. But the project of land redistribution was beset with problems of bureaucracy, opportunism, and corruption. The early moderate phase of the agrarian reform program between 1915 and 1934 exposed the limitations of attempting to implement fundamental social changes through constitutional and legalistic methods. The agrarian reform administration was founded upon an excessively bureaucratic institutional apparatus. This institutional framework oftentimes served more as a barrier to land redistribution rather than as an avenue for the acquisition of tillable lands among the poor.

In order to better monitor and control the course of land reform, the revolutionary regimes imposed a relationship of political patronage over the peasant masses that received ejido land grants. The newly established system of corporatist patronage expanded government influence over the lives of the peasantry and made them more dependent upon institutions of the state for their welfare. This relationship of patronage gave rise to political bossism, or caciquismo, and opportunistic middle-class politicians who exploited the peasantry through their control over land redistribution. The politicians and bureaucrats that administered the agrarian reform program often maintained personal connections with the prominent families of the oligarchy.

These typically parasitic middle-class power brokers could be ruthless and at times dealt harsh punishment to political opponents and members of the peasantry that did not submit to their authority. Repressive measures were sometimes employed to obstruct the efforts of agrarista communities to petition for ejido lands. Corrupt politicians sought to undermine democratic and fair elections through their control of municipal government offices and positions of ejido leadership. Under the system of corporatist patronage, the personal welfare and security of vulnerable peasant families was frequently compromised. The agraristas encountered extreme repression over the issue of land redistribution not only from landlords, but from government authorities as well.

The mounting problems associated with the enormous hacienda properties culminated in a monumental crisis during the late 1920s. The turbulent social conditions already existing within the countryside of Jalisco converged with downward spiraling exogenous macroeconomic factors. This resulted in a deep economic collapse and drastic decline in agricultural production. These harsh conditions were exacerbated by the destructive Cristero religious civil war that erupted between 1926 and 1929. Massive unemployment raged throughout Jalisco, while refugees were forced to flee the armed conflict between federal troops and Cristero rebels. Furthermore, the global depression of 1929 complicated what had already become a desperate situation. The Mexican national economy came to a virtual standstill, especially affecting the import/export and agrarian sectors. The decline of lands cultivated with staples such as maíz and fríjol led to widespread food shortages among the poor. The rural townships experienced debilitating conditions of hunger and malnutrition, with some people reduced to the point of starvation.

It was under these circumstances that the Cárdenas administration was forced to take resolute action to alleviate the suffering of the rural poor. The federal government undertook the massive project of dismantling the latifundio estates and redistributing the lands among the surrounding peasant populations and hacienda workers. In Jalisco, government authorities moved quickly to ensure the closure of the Cámara Agrícola Nacional Jalisciense, a civic institution which represented the political interests of the ruling oligarchy. These actions drastically reduced the influence of the hacendados within the state government and circumvented their legal opposition to the Cardenista reforms.

The CANJ was shut down and replaced by the state Departamento de Control Agrícola, which sought to implement the comprehensive and radical reforms of the Cárdenas administration within Jalisco. This agency was part of the nationwide program to regulate agricultural markets and establish peasant cooperatives within different areas of Mexico. The administrative bureaucracy for this project was known as the Consejo Nacional de Agricultura which functioned under the newly formed Secretaría de Economía Nacional. Under this program, the federal government sought to regulate the production, distribution, and prices for agricultural consumer goods. Government authorities attempted to organize small producers into agricultural cooperatives that would regulate the distribution and sales of all agricultural commodities. Agrarian authorities felt that only through regulated and controlled markets could the small agricultural producers be successfully integrated into the structures of the capitalist economy.

One of the main postulates of this investigation is that the extensive reform policies adopted by the Cárdenas administration after 1934 were historically necessary in order to remove the vestiges of feudalism and colonialism that served as barriers to capitalist development within the countryside. The failure to pursue these policies in the post-Cárdenas era after 1940 resulted in the return to a system that failed dismally to integrate the peasant populations into the structures of a growing market economy. In recent years, several scholars have proposed a revisionist interpretation that raises contentious criticisms of the far-reaching agrarian policies adopted by the Cárdenas administration between 1935 and 1940. These authors either directly or implicitly suggest that the Great Land Reform was an abysmal failure. They contend that the dismantling of the hacienda estates was a political miscalculation resulting in severe economic hardships for the nation. Some place the blame for the deplorable conditions in the countryside today on the Cárdenas reform policies rather than on the legacy of the latifundio estates.

The claims made by the revisionist school that land hunger among the rural population was a myth are less plausible and seemingly alienated from the harsh social and economic realities that existed within the countryside. Several scholars argue that there was no indication that the rural populace was in rebellion against the hacienda system. However, the evidence presented in this study suggests quite the opposite. According to the research presented here, there was an urgent need for arable lands among broad numbers of the rural population. The monopoly over land resources by the haciendas had a devastating impact upon the peasant villages, with many families living in conditions of chronic hunger and malnutrition. While the rural poor of Jalisco had not coalesced into a coherent social movement in the early years of the twentieth century, political pressure from the peasantry forced the urban middle classes to make concessions in favor of agrarian reform and incorporation of Article 27 into the Constitution of 1917. The peasants of the post-civil war era after 1915 were politically mobilized and indoctrinated with the ideals of agrarian reform, while organizing themselves to make forceful demands for land.

The revisionists make further affirmations that are in direct opposition to the central thesis of this study. Several authors argue that the situation in the countryside was not urgent and did not serve as a major catalyst for the events that led to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Critics contend that the dismantling of the great estates was not historically inevitable and that the hacienda system of land tenure could have continued to exist indefinitely. The evidence for this study indicates quite the contrary. The available documentation suggests that the hacienda had reached its zenith as a system of social organization in the late nineteenth century, and then underwent conditions of eventual atrophy and decline. As the early decades of the twentieth century progressed, the hacienda system was imposing major obstacles to further economic growth in the countryside. These conditions forced the Cárdenas regime to intervene and abolish this long-outdated system of land tenure.

The Cardenista ideological orientation of destroying latifundismo was essential to removing the remnants of feudalism and colonialism that served as barriers to capitalist growth within the agrarian sector. Over the course of generations, the hegemonic position of the hacienda estates was preventing vast numbers of the rural poor from participating within the structures of the emerging capitalist economy. The kind of growth that did occur within the region was based upon a political economy of severe austerity and under-consumption among the rural masses. The gradual evolution of an urban/rural hierarchical socioeconomic structure encouraged the unbridled exploitation of both the human labor and natural resources from within the countryside. Moreover, the forced alienation of village lands by the hacienda estates through the historical process of primitive accumulation culminated during the years of the Porfiriato. The privatization of those properties should have fostered transformations based upon capitalist economic principles.

These conditions assigned to the hacendados the historical obligation of constructing an agro-industrial foundation that could help absorb the growing pool of dispossessed and unemployed peasants as wageworkers. This was a task at which the hacendados of Mexico had failed abysmally to achieve. The historical transition among the rural population from peasant family farmers to industrial wageworkers, or proletarianization, had been severely truncated and obstructed. Under these circumstances capitalist expansion could no longer progress within the existing structures of rural labor markets. Although most of the hacienda estates within Jalisco were productive, only a small minority of the rural population actually benefitted from the wealth that was produced. Despite the claims by revisionists that debt peonage did not exist by the early twentieth century, living and working conditions upon the haciendas were exceedingly harsh and oppressive, if not more coercive.

Among the arguments erroneously proposed by members of this revisionist academic school is that the breakup of the haciendas destroyed a relatively efficient, surplus-producing system of production based upon wage labor and replaced it with the expansion of the subsistence sector. The argument advanced that the Cárdenas policies transformed hacienda wageworkers into peasants producing for self-subsistence on small, inefficient parcels does not withstand closer examination. First of all, hacienda workers were paid wages so excessively low that their families were kept in conditions of deprivation reminiscent of feudal European serfdom. Obviously, hacienda workers did not receive wages sufficient enough for the daily social reproduction of their families except under the most austere and restricted circumstances. Thus, they cannot be described as possessing genuinely functional proletarian characteristics.

Furthermore, the Cárdenas reform policies in Jalisco were never designed to foster self-subsistence among the peasant families. The Cárdenas project of reforms had the objective of promoting the greater integration of the peasantry into the structures of the expanding capitalist economy. The federal government sought to promote extensive commercial crop cultivation among peasant cooperatives which would be destined for sales in outside urban consumer markets such as Guadalajara and Mexico City. The federal agrarian policies were designed to achieve a second equally important goal of increasing the consumption of basic staple grains among the rural population as well.

The evidence presented in this investigation indicates that during the six-year administration of the Cárdenas presidency, most of these political objectives were achieved. The increase in staple food consumption among the peasantry was a bold, ambitious and highly constructive political achievement. The reformed system allowed for greater volumes of the wealth produced by peasant families to be retained for their own benefit. Under the obsolete hacienda system, grains were sold mainly in urban consumer markets, with the rural population benefitting very little from this arrangement.

The failure of the hacienda estates to construct a more adequate and robust agro-industrial foundation led to the entrenchment of modern-day economic problems such as low rural wages and prices, obstructions to the process of proletarianization, massive unemployment, and emigration out of the countryside. The failure of the haciendas to achieve a more extensive level of agro-industrial development encouraged foreign corporations to fill the vacuum, thereby furthering the region’s dependence upon outside capital. Thus, the legacy of the haciendas for modern Mexico was conditions of underdevelopment, poverty, and hunger.

The termination of the Cárdenas administration in late November, 1940 brought to an end the only attempt ever made to fundamentally restructure the Mexican countryside. The conservative Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) administrations of the post-Cárdenas era abandoned the project of comprehensive and radical reforms that favored small food producers and the peasantry. After 1940, the federal government turned to policies that encouraged commercial agriculture among middle-class farmers and large agribusiness corporate producers. Government support for the ejidos and cooperatives of small producers was eventually abandoned. Gradually credit, agricultural inputs, and price incentives were removed in favor of large enterprises and transnational corporations.

Instead, there was a return to policies that promoted a highly stratified urban/rural socioeconomic structure within the region of Jalisco. The newly adopted conservative policies of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional after 1940 meant the return to a system which fostered the growth and industrial development of Guadalajara at the expense of the rural poor. As Jalisco became more firmly integrated into the structures of the global economy, the rural population experienced further setbacks to their living standards. This was the result of harsh economic readjustments to Mexico’s subordinate position within the international division of labor. The rural sector became more firmly linked to the global marketing strategies of the foreign transnational and agribusiness corporations.

In the years after 1940, the federal government attempted to impose bandaged stop-gap solutions to what, in reality, had become profound structural failures and weaknesses within the rural economy. Government food agencies were created to address the impending social crisis in the countryside, producing little success. Several fundamental problems such as massive unemployment, emigration, and marginalization of the rural population intensified. Hunger and malnutrition continued to plague a large percentage of the rural population. At the same, the Mexican people lost their capacity to feed themselves, and the government was forced to abandon its national food security policy.

The research focus area of central and southern Jalisco was chosen for this study for several reasons. A region that was representative of broad social and economic conditions characteristic of other areas of Mexico was an important prerequisite for the project design. An area in which the production of staples and commercial crops had been dominated by the hacienda estates was another major consideration. This sub-region had experienced the widespread alienation of peasant communal lands during the years of the Porfiriato, which was also an essential requirement for the research design. This study focuses on a region that did not benefit from state sponsored infrastructural development programs oriented toward agricultural exportation in the post-1940 Green Revolution period, as was the case with areas such as the Mayo and Yaqui river valleys in Sonora. Finally, an area marked by substantial homogeneity in demographic variables among the rural population such as ethnic, racial, social and cultural composition similar to other regions of Mexico was an important element for this research investigation.

These factors found suitable representation in the central and southern sub-regions of Jalisco. In this area, land tenure had been dominated by the vast rural estates. Moreover, the agrarian reform in the years after 1915 provided the dispossessed peasantry with a substantial redistribution of hacienda lands as ejido parcels. This was a predominantly mestizo peasant population that had, over the course of time, been steadily integrated into the structures of the emerging regional market economy.

These demographic and economic variables are in significant contrast to conditions found in the other sub-regions of Colotlán in the north, Los Altos to the east, and the sierra-coastal zone in the west. The central and southern areas were well integrated into the market reach of Guadalajara by the end of the Porfiriato. This was not the situation in Colotlán, where self-subsistence agriculture dependent on primitive farming techniques was widely prevalent among the Huicholes, Tepehuanes and Cora indigenous communities and the rural population as a whole. While similar conditions of isolation existed within specific municipalities in the southern zone, such was not generally the case.

Land tenure in Los Altos was based primarily on small ranch property holdings dispersed throughout the highland zone. The prevalence of hacienda in this area and the redistribution of ejido lands during the years of agrarian reform were both limited. The racial composition of a large segment of the population in Los Altos was based more upon European stock rather than on the miscegenation that had occurred in the central and southern zones. The influence of the indigenous genetic pool in Los Altos was minimal in comparison to Colotlán and the isolated communities in southern Jalisco. The sierra-coastal zone was sparsely populated and served more as a safety valve of emigration for population pressures from other areas. The municipalities of Jalisco that serve as the focus of this study are identified in illustration 1. The area is composed of the total 125 municipalities within Jalisco.

This study can be described as a regional history, focusing on the rural areas surrounding the city of Guadalajara. The relationship between the urban center and outlying hinterland areas is intimately tied to the expansion of market networks. Market activity, then, is the basis for the application of regional analysis to this investigation. The region of Guadalajara has the features of the solar type of regional model, with hinterland areas surrounding a prominent urban center.

This model, according to Eric Van Young, is characterized by extensive urban/rural sectorial hierarchy, complicated internal economic and social structures, and complex differentiation between social classes. The solar model is a regional system based on complex marketing arrangements and a minimal importation of foodstuffs. At the turn of the twentieth century, the region surrounding Guadalajara was dominated by hacienda production for intra-regional consumption. This is in contrast to the plantation-oriented, dendritic export regional model whose agricultural production, according to Van Young, is destined for export or heavily commercialized distribution. Examples of the dendritic model are the late nineteenth century Morelos sugarcane zone and the henequén-producing zone of Yucatán.

INTRODUCTION

The Haciendas and the

Wealthy Elite Families

For more than three hundred years, the haciendas dominated the countryside of Jalisco. During this era, much of the social and cultural life of the hinterland areas surrounding Guadalajara was focused upon the great landed estates. There was the iconic image of the adobe hacienda manor, surrounded by the daily activities of cattle-raising with vaquero cowboys wearing leather charro outfits. The great fields of maize, wheat, sugarcane and agave cactus provided the homeland of the Tapatíos with an opulent and picturesque western setting.¹

The hacienda was a colonial institution that blossomed during the eighteenth century in Nueva Galicia. It proved to be a resilient and adaptive system that was able to meet the problems of production for a growing market economy while utilizing several traditional pre-capitalist social and economic structures.² These immense propertied estates were able to take advantage of abundant and inexpensive resources like labor while limiting the use of more scarce inputs such as operating capital.³ The hacienda was far from being economically irrational as critics and reformers have charged. The system was able to adapt to the archaic conditions of a colonial society burdened by an austere shortage of capital resources.⁴

Yet in spite of the strengthening of rural markets and commercial agriculture in the latter years of the eighteenth century, the haciendas remained severely undercapitalized. Hacienda production was not based upon fully developed monetary structures. Moreover, the large rustic estates were unable to generate a strong process of capital accumulation. The slow development of agro-industrial linkages among the haciendas was a formidable barrier to capitalist expansion. The effects of these retrograde conditions in the countryside would be felt most intensely during the late years of the Porfiriato.

The structural weaknesses inherent within the hacienda system eventually proved to be insurmountable for the proprietors of those vast landed estates. The rural masses were forced to endure severe economic dislocations because of the monopoly imposed over arable lands by the powerful landlords. Over generations, the peasant communities had been dispossessed of their village communal lands by the expansive latifundio estates. However, the rural poor were not being fully integrated into the emerging capitalist economy through the transitional historical process as wageworkers.⁵ The hacienda system of land tenure left a legacy of profound structural economic problems within the countryside and was proving to be an antiquated and outdated institution. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the remnants of feudalism and colonialism had become a serious impediment to further economic progress. The process of capitalist expansion could no longer be expected to continue under the old regime of severe under-consumption and marginalization of the lower rural social classes.

The underdeveloped neo-colonial economy that evolved was based upon a highly skewed and hierarchical urban/rural socioeconomic structure. This evolving regional system depleted the countryside of capital, raw materials, and human resources in order to underwrite the growth of the city of Guadalajara.⁶ The monopoly imposed by the large estates over arable lands served to depress wages and prices within the agrarian sector. This allowed the large landowners to pursue a strategy of low reinvestment of profits upon their rustic estates for infrastructural improvements. But such a strategy also served as a barrier to the process of capital accumulation and agro-industrial development within the countryside.

The central argument of this investigation is that by the decade of the 1920s, the structural economic weaknesses associated with the hacienda system of land tenure were leading to a devastating crisis in the hinterland areas of Jalisco. The lack of capital investment among the latifundio estates was the root cause for the massive unemployment among the rural poor. At the same time, the aristocratic elite exploited the vast reserve of unemployed workers with miserably low wages. Growing numbers of the rural population were abandoning their villages in search of jobs in urban centers such as Guadalajara or migrating to the United States.

The latifundio estates were also responsible for the scarcity of staple crops within the countryside. This contributed heavily to the hunger and malnutrition that was adversely affecting growing numbers of the rural poor. These conditions were exacerbated by the destructive Cristero religious rebellion that swept across the region between 1926 and 1929. Refugees by the hundreds were forced to flee the desperate conditions in the wake of this bloody civil war. Finally, the effects of the global depression of 1929 sounded the death knell for the hacienda estates as tens of thousands of the poor faced the grim prospects of possible starvation.

The living conditions in the rural areas were so deplorable that agrarian reform officials under the Cárdenas administration were forced to intervene. Government authorities took steps to dismantle the massive estates and redistribute the lands among the clusters of hungry peasants. By late 1938, the federal government had effectively destroyed the hacienda system of land tenure,