Throughout most of the twentieth century Mexico's rural sector has been an open sore. In the years following the 1910-17 revolution, large private estates were expropriated by the government and divided into tiny plots for distribution to landless peasants. But political power soon passed from the countryside to the cities. The peasants, victorious in the revolution, were largely neglected by subsequent “revolutionary” governments.

As a result, the near-feudal social conditions of nineteenth-century Mexico were perpetuated. Most peasants, lacking credit, seeds, fertilizer, machinery, and education, were scarcely able to feed their own families. With each new generation the tiny plots were further subdivided and more and more farmers were forced to migrate to cities or to follow seasonal crop harvests as far north as the United States.