Time journeying in discovery of historical findings of Mexican Republic.

Ejido

It’s was in the Mexican constitution. The right to farm. What noble common sense. This system of state owned land lent out free to a communities farmers goes back long before the European conquest of Mexico.

After the conquest, it was replaced by the Spanish with the Ecomienda and later, Hacienda systems (both types of feudal land systems with numerous farmers farming small plots for the owner of the land).

The Mexican constitution written in 1917 after the Mexican Revolution, brought back the ejido system whereby, landless farmers could petition the government for the formation of an ejido out of privately owned land that they had previously been leasing. Those who were granted plots in the ejido were given them only on the condition that the land not be out of production for more than two years.

Much of the privately owned land at the time were lands that had been distributed by former president Porifio Diaz to his loyalists. Therefore the government felt justified in taking these lands for the formations of ejidos, though compensation was still given to the previous owners.

The constitutional amendment concerning ejido It wasn’t implemented until 1934 by president Lazaro Cardenas and the constitutional right to ejidos was removed by president Carlos Salinas in 1991 though a large amount of land is still held in ejidos and continues to be farmed.

a Peter note:

Much of what I wrote came from online research. How the remaining ejidos are managed, I don’t know. I do however know the location of a government office called a Casa de Ejido that handles matters concerning land for the community where it is located. I was directed there once when searching out available land (different, other story). I’d like to go back to make further discoveries of management of communal land system in illustrious Republic of Mexico…the end

….or is it only the beginning?