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Enacting Agrarian Law: The Effects of Legal Failure in Post-revolutionary Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2015

MÓNICA M. SALAS LANDA
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Abstract

The agrarian body of law created by government legislators and jurists in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), sought to restore pueblos’ juridical standing by allowing communities to hold land collectively in the form of ejidos. Yet, state efforts to restructure property relations in the countryside often articulated with local alternative territorial projects that challenged the implementation of these redistributive legal measures. During the course of 50 years, cattle ranchers from the community of El Huanal in Nautla, Veracruz, defended private property, resisted land expropriation, and prevented the establishment of an ejido in the community. How did rancheros achieve this? How did they respond to the pressures of ‘peasant’ mobilisation? How did post-revolutionary legal discourse come to frame this struggle over land? What changes did this failed attempt to implement land reform trigger in the region? Looking closely at the conflicts, interactions, negotiations, and everyday practices that unfolded among a variety of actors around the interpretation and the applicability of ‘the law’, this article demonstrates how the agrarian reform, despite never having been implemented, altered both the material landscape and the social configuration of this community of coastal Veracruz.

Spanish abstract

El conjunto de leyes agrarias creadas por legisladores y juristas una vez concluida la Revolución Mexicana (1910–1920) buscaba devolver a los pueblos su estatus jurídico, al permitir que las comunidades fueran propietarias de tierras colectivas bajo la fórmula del ejido. Sin embargo, con frecuencia los esfuerzos del Estado por reestructurar las relaciones de propiedad en el campo se articulaban con proyectos territoriales alternativos que dificultaban la implementación de estas medidas legales redistributivas. Por un lapso de cincuenta años, ganaderos de la comunidad de El Huanal en Nautla, Veracruz, defendieron la propiedad privada, se opusieron a la expropiación de la tierra y evitaron que se estableciera el ejido en la comunidad. ¿Cómo lo lograron? ¿Cómo respondieron a las presiones de la movilización “campesina”? ¿Cuál fue el papel del discurso legal postrevolucionario al enmarcar esta lucha por la tierra? ¿Qué cambios detonó en la región este fracaso en implementación de la reforma agraria? Al examinar cuidadosamente los conflictos, las interacciones, las negociaciones y las prácticas cotidianas que se dieron entre actores diversos en torno a la interpretación y la aplicabilidad de “la ley”, este artículo demuestra cómo la reforma agraria, a pesar de no haber sido nunca implementada, modificó tanto el paisaje físico como la configuración social de esta comunidad en la costa de Veracruz.

Portuguese abstract

O conjunto de leis agrárias criado por legisladores e juristas no periódo pós a Revolução Mexicana (1910–1920) buscava restaurar o status jurídico dos pueblos ao permitir que as comunidades mantivessem a posse coletiva da terra na forma de ejidos. No entanto, os esforços estatais de reestruturação das relações de propriedade no campo frequentemente searticulavam com projetos territoriais alternativos que desafiavam a implementação dessas medidas legais de redistribuição. Durante um período de cinquenta anos, pecuaristas da comunidade de El Huanal, em Nautla, Veracruz, defenderam a propriedade privada, resistiram à expropriação de terras, e impediram o estabelecimento de um ejido na comunidade. Como os rancheros alcançaram esse resultado? Como responderam às pressões de mobilização ‘camponesa’? Qual foi o papel do discurso legal pós-revolucionário ao moldar essa disputa por terras? Quais mudanças foram ocasionadas por esta tentativa fracassada de implementação de reforma agrária na região? Observando detalhadamente práticas cotidianas, conflitos, interações e negociações entre vários atores sobre interpretações e aplicabilidade da “lei”, este artigo demonstra como a reforma agrária, apesar de nunca ter sido implementada, alterou tanto a paisagem material quanto a configuração social desta comunidade da costa de Veracruz.

Keywords

agrarian reformpost-revolutionary Mexicolegal failureagrarian lawVeracruzreforma agrariaMéxico post-revolucionariofracaso de la leyley agrariaVeracruzreforma agráriaMéxico pós-revolucionárioinsucesso legalleis agráriasVeracruz
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 685 - 715
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 Gómez, Marte M., Historia de la Comisión Nacional Agraria (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones Agrarias, 1975)Google Scholar and Craib, Raymond B., Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 221Google Scholar; this law, promulgated by Venustiano Carranza and authored by Luis Cabrera and Andrés Molina Enríquez stipulated that lands illegally usurped from communities be returned. Those communities without land or unable to show prior possession could ask for a grant of land, known as ejido. In order to implement this agrarian reform, post-revolutionary governments expropriated millions of hectares of land from Mexican and foreign owned estates. In a modified version of this decree, incorporated in Mexico's Constitution of 1917, the executive branch of the government acquired total control of the process of agrarian redistribution.

2 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, Archivo Central de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, Mexico City (hereafter ACSCJN), file 2061/68, fojas 19–35. On the historical circumstances in which the ‘Mexican campesino’ was constructed as a social and political entity see Guidiño, María Rosa and Palacios, Guillermo, ‘Peticiones de tierras y estrategias discursivas campesinas: procesos, contenidos y problemas metodológicos’, in Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar, Gordillo, Jaqueline and Guidiño, María Rosa (eds.), Estudios campesinos en el Archivo General Agrario (México DF: CIESAS-RAN, 1998)Google Scholar; Boyer, Christopher R., Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; Nolan-Ferrell, Catherine, ‘Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas: Campesinos and the Mexican State’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 42: 3 (2011), pp. 551–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Craib, Raymond B., ‘The Archive in the Field: Document, Discourse, and Space in Mexico's Agrarian Reform’, Journal of Historical Geography, 36: 4 (2010), pp. 411–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Rancheros often used their close relationships with the Catholic Church against agrarismo. In the archival sources consulted for this article, the religious component of their struggle is absent. Yet, that does not necessarily mean religious belief did not inform their ideas and actions in El Huanal, specially, during the early phases of the conflict which coincides with Adalberto Tejeda's anticlerical campaigns. See Fallow, Ben, Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Falcón, Romana and García, Soledad, La semilla en el surco: Adalberto Tejeda y el radicalismo en Veracruz 1883–1960 (México DF: El Colegio de México, 1986)Google Scholar; William, John B., ‘Adalberto Tejeda and the Third Phase of the Anticlerical Conflict in Twentieth Century Mexico’, Journal of Church and State, 15: 3 (1973), pp. 437–53Google Scholar.

4 As Rose, Nikolas argues in Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, power operates, in large part, through the creation of governable spaces. See also, Scott, James, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Post-revolutionary ejidos, however, were the latest in a series of efforts of the modern Mexican state during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to achieve economic development and facilitate the political control of the countryside. See Craib, Cartographic Mexico; Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar and Butler, Matthew (eds.), México y sus transiciones: reconsdieraciones sobre la historia agraria mexicana, siglos XIX y XX (México DF: CIESAS, 2013), pp. 33–76Google Scholar.

5 The rich scholarship on rancheros builds on the classic studies of González, Luis y González, Pueblo en vilo: microhistoria de San José de García (México DF: El Colegio de México, 1968)Google Scholar; Schryer, Frans J., The Rancheros of Pisaflores: The History of a Peasant Bourgeoisie in Twentieth-century Mexico (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Brading, David, Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío 1700–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Jacobs, Ian, Ranchero Revolt: The Mexican Revolution in Guerrero (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981)Google Scholar. See also, López, Estebán Barragán, Hoffmann, Odile, Linck, Thierry and Skerritt, David (eds.), Rancheros y sociedades rancheras (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1993)Google Scholar; on how rancheros mobilised Catholic belief to undermine the implementation of the agrarian reform and the secular vision of the nation that animated it see Fallow, Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Also, Smith, Benjamin, The Roots of Conservatism in Mexico: Catholicism, Society and Politics in the Mixteca Baja 1750–1962 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press)Google Scholar; on the construction and collapse of rancheros’ territorialities in domains ‘untouched’ by the Mexican revolution. See Bobrow-Strain, Aaron, Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Violence, and Power in Chiapas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Schryer, Frans, ‘Peasants and the Law: A History of Land Tenure and Conflict in the Huasteca’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 18: 2 (1986), p. 309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Similarly, recent research on Mexican agrarian history alludes to the ways in which peasant communities successfully negotiated (liberal and post-revolutionary) legal reforms. See Baitenmann, Helga, ‘Popular Participation in State Formation: Land Reform in Revolutionary Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 43: 1 (2011), pp. 1–31Google Scholar; Nolan-Ferrell, Catherine, ‘Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas: Campesinos and the Mexican State’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 42: 3 (2011), pp. 551–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Medrano, Ethelia Ruiz, Mexico's Indigenous Communities: Their Lands and Histories (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2010)Google Scholar. Falcón, Romana (ed.), Culturas de pobreza y resistencia: estudios de marginados, proscritos, y descontentos. México, 1804–1910 (Querétaro: Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2005)Google Scholar; Antonio Escobar Ohmstede and Matthew Butler (eds.), México y sus transiciones, pp. 33–76. See also, Joseph, Gilbert and Nugent, Daniel (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

8 A literature review on critical legal geography can be found in Blomley, Nicholas, ‘From What? To So What? Law and Geography in Retrospect’, in Holder, Jane and Harrison, Carolyn (eds.), Law and Geography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 17–33Google Scholar; and in Blomley, Nicholas, Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), pp. 11, 45–6Google Scholar, 51.

9 Blomley, ‘From What? To So What? Law and Geography in Retrospect’, pp. 30–2.

10 Ibid.

11 Archivo Central de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación. See Amparo en Revisión 2061/68, 18 June 1969, ACSCJN. These original documents were consulted to make sure that there wasn't any information missing in the copy that the Salas-Torres family holds in their records. Moreover, I am aware that when used as historical or ethnographic sources, legal documents, such as these, can present problems. As critical legal scholars have argued, the law, its orderings, categorisations and unfolding, systematically favour the powerful. Yet, in this article, I am also interested in bringing into view the ways in which non-elites do and undo the law and the effects that this legal reworking generates.

12 See Escobar et al. (eds.), México y sus transiciones, pp. 36–7.

13 See Skerritt, David, ‘Tres culturas: un nuevo espacio regional, el caso de la colonia francesa de Jicaltepec-San Rafael’, in Hoffmann, Odile and Velázquez, Emilia (eds.), Las llanuras costeras de Veracruz. La lenta construcción de las regiones (México DF: ORSTOM, 1994), pp. 161–91Google Scholar; Emilia Velázquez and Odile Hoffmann, ‘Introducción’, in Hoffmann and Velázquez (eds.), Las llanuras costeras de Veracruz. La lenta construcción de las regiones, pp. 13–33. See also, Ana Lid Del Ángel Pérez, ‘Formación de la estructura productiva ganadera en la llanura costera de Veracruz central’, in Hoffmann and Velázquez (eds.), Las llanuras costeras de Veracruz, pp. 193–210.

14 Craib, Raymond B., ‘Standard Plots and Rural Resistance’, in Joseph, Gilbert M. and Henderson, Timothy (eds.), The Mexico Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 252–62Google Scholar. See also, González, Luis y González, ‘Liberals and the Land’, in Joseph, Gilbert M. and Henderson, Timothy (eds.), The Mexico Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 232–51Google Scholar.

15 Velázquez and Hoffmann, ‘Introduction’, pp. 25–26. By 1846, the basic national regulations for the Dirección de Colonización were developed and published. This agency embodied the approach of Mexican Liberals to government-regulated immigration and called for a national survey of lands to identify unclaimed and vacant parcels and designate them as terrenos baldíos. See Burden, David K., ‘Reform Before La Reforma: Liberals, Conservatives and the Debate over Immigration, 1846–1855’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 23: 2 (2007), pp. 283–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Blomley, Nicholas, ‘Introduction: Property and the City’, in Blomley, Nicholas, Delaney, David and Ford, Richard T. (eds.), The Legal Geographies Reader: Law, Power, and Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 115–117Google Scholar (cited passage on 116).

17 Skerritt, David, Colonos franceses y modernización en el Golfo de México (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1995), pp. 66–99Google Scholar. For a detailed study of the history of French colonies in coastal Veracruz see David Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’; and Odile Hoffmann, ‘Entre mar y sierra: nacimiento de la región de Martínez de la Torre, Veracruz’, in Odile Hoffmann and EmiliaVelázquez (eds.), Las lanuras costeras de Veracruz, pp. 129–56.

18 Kourí, Emilio, A Pueblo Divided: Business, Property, and Community in Papantla (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 52–61Google Scholar.

19 Hoffmann, ‘Entre mar y sierra’, p. 137; Del Ángel Pérez, ‘Formación de la estructura productiva ganadera en la llanura costera de Veracruz central’, p. 200; and López, Esteban Barragán and Linck, Thierry ‘Los rincones rancheros de México. Cartografía de sociedades relegadas’, in Esteban Barragán López, Thierry Linck and David Skerritt (eds.), Rancheros y Sociedades Rancheras (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1994), pp. 57–80Google Scholar (cited passage on p. 80).

20 Skerrit, ‘Tres culturas’, p. 170.

21 Hoffmann, Odile and Castro, Fernando Salmerón, ‘Entre representación y apropriación, las formas de ver y hablar del espacio’, in Hoffmann, Odile y Castro, Fernando Salmerón (eds.), Nueve estudios sobre el espacio: representación y formas de apropriación (México DF: CIESAS, 1997), pp. 13–30Google Scholar.

22 Skerritt, Colonos franceses y modernización en el Golfo de México, pp. 125–6.

23 Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’, p. 172.

24 On the effects of vanilla production and trade in northern Veracruz see Kourí, A Pueblo Divided.

25 The central objective of the desamortización decreed by the 1856 Lerdo Law was to privatise communal property a change that was considered essential for both agricultural and fiscal modernisation. See Ohmstede and Butler (eds.), México y sus transiciones, p. 43. On the effects of Liberal legislation in Veracruz see Skerritt Colonos franceses y modernización en el Golfo de México, pp. 120–1; and Hoffmann, ‘Entre mar y sierra’, p. 142. Although Skerritt and Hoffmann document how French settlers in Veracruz were able to acquire church property, they make no reference to the disentailment of indigenous communal lands. For a critique see Kourí, Emilio, ‘Interpreting the Expropriation of Indian Pueblo Lands in Porfirian Mexico: The Unexamined Legacies of Manuel Molina Enríquez’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 82: 1 (2002), pp. 69–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cited passage on pp. 26–7).

26 Besides the commercialisation of vanilla, French settlers – in particular those who arrived between 1875 and 1887 from the region of Savoy were also involved in the trade of salt, meat and other products sold in casas comerciales in San Rafael and Jicaltepec. See Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’, p. 172.

27 Skerritt, Colonos franceses y modernización en el Golfo de México, pp. 196–7.

28 Skerritt, Colonos franceses y modernización en el Golfo de México, p. 202.

29 Hoffmann, ‘Entre mar y sierra’, p. 144.

30 Skerritt, ‘Lo ranchero, génesis y consolidación’, in Hoffmann, Link and Skerritt (eds.), Rancheros y sociedades rancheras, pp. 141–52; Hoffmann, ‘Entre mar y sierra’, p. 144; López and Linck, ‘Los rincones rancheros de México’, p. 71.

31 Verdery, Katherine, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 18Google Scholar.

32 The literature on reparto, in fact, demonstrates that since the nineteenth century, native communities throughout Mexico had favoured the conversion of their communal land into private property. See Chevalier, Jacques and Buckles, Daniel, A Land without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment, and the Mexican Nahuas (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing Co., 1995)Google Scholar. According to these scholars, the private ‘lot system’ allowed the Nahua-speaking village of Pajapan, in southern Veracruz, to retain political autonomy such as the collective ownership and the flexible organisation of communal lands. Similar defensive arrangements are described by Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar, ‘La estructura agrarian en las Huastecas, 1880–1915’, in Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar and Rabiela, Teresa Rojas (eds.), Estrucutras y formas agrarias en México del pasado y del presente (México DF: CIESAS, 2001), pp. 177–96Google Scholar and by Purnell, Jennie, ‘With all due Respect: Popular Resistance to the Privatisation of Communal Land in Nineteenth-Century Michoacán’, Latin America Research Review, 34: 1 (1999), pp. 85–122Google Scholar. Conversely, in Papanlta, condueñazgos were primarily commercial ventures that favoured the expansion of vanilla cultivation. See Kourí, A Pueblo Divided, p. 156. Also Brian Stauffer, ‘Community, Identity, and the Limits of Liberal State Formation in Michoacán's Coastal Sierra: Coalcomán, 1869–1940’, in Escobar Ohmstede and Butler (eds.), México y sus transiciones, pp. 149–80. Overall, these studies demonstrate that private property is not a transparent stable category devoid of its own interpretative frameworks and historical specificities.

33 Knight, Alan, The Mexican Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), p. 238Google Scholar.

34 Under Tejeda's leadership (1920–4 and 1928–32), rural folk in Veracruz benefited from a rapid land distribution despite the strong opposition from the national government. On Tejeda's agrarismo see Fowler-Salamini, Heather, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Falcón, Romana, El agrarismo en Veracruz (México DF: El Colegio de Mexico, 1977)Google Scholar; Baitenmann, Rural Agency and State Formation in Post-revolutionary Veracruz; and Ginzberg, Eitan, ‘State Agrarism versus Democratic Agrarism: Adalberto Tejeda's Experiment in Veracruz 1928–1932’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 30: 2 (1998), pp. 341–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ejido land grants (dotaciones and restituciones) were a product of Mexico's twentieth-century agrarian reform and should not be confused with those lands designated for the communal use of Indian pueblos – often also called ejidos See Mikael Wolfe, ‘The Sociolegal Redesignation of Ejido Land Use, 1856–1912’, in Escobar Ohmstede and Matthew Butler (eds.), México y sus transiciones, pp. 291–316. Moreover, as legal categories, the meanings attached to these forms of land tenure, cannot be reduced to those given by jurists. Local villagers, over time, changed the use and meaning of communal and ejido land as the emerging literature on nineteenth-century reparto and on twentieth-century processes of state formation, respectively, demonstrate. See Antonio Escobar Ohmstede and Matthew Butler (eds.), México y sus transiciones; Joseph, Gilbert and Nugent, Daniel (eds.), Everyday forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

36 See Kourí, ‘Interpreting the Expropriation of Indian Pueblo Lands in Porfirian Mexico’, p. 105.

37 Fowler-Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, p. 72; Falcón, El agrarismo en Veracruz, p. 63.

38 Ginzberg, ‘State Agrarism versus Democratic Agrarism’, pp. 352–66.

39 Ibid, p. 357.

40 Ibid, p. 365.

41 Ibid, p. 364.

42 Saucedo, Pedro, Historia de la ganadería en México (México DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), p. 67Google Scholar.

43 Benda-Beckmann et al., ‘Space and Legal Pluralism: An Introduction’, pp. 4–22.

44 Fowler-Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, p. 97.

45 Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas, p. 101. See also, Ben Fallow, Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico, pp. 101–56.

46 Acta Constitutiva de la Asociación Ganadera de Nautla, 11 July 1949, Registro 1,850-G. See also, González-Montagut, Renée, ‘Factors that Contributed to the Expansion of Cattle Ranching in Veracruz’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 15: 1 (1999), pp. 101–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Odile Hoffmann, ‘Rancheros notables de Veracruz: su actuación política en las sociedades locales’, in Barragán López et al. (eds.), Rancheros y sociedades rancheras, pp. 219–34 (passage cited on pp. 222–8); Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’, pp. 189–90.

48 Hoffmann, ‘Rancheros notables de Veracruz’, pp. 222–8; Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’, pp. 189–90.

49 Del Ángel Pérez, ‘Formación de la estructura productiva ganadera en la llanura costera de Veracruz central’, p. 193; Velázquez and Hoffmann, ‘Introduction’, p. 31; Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’, pp. 189–90.

50 Skerritt, ‘Tres culturas’, p. 90. See also, Rose, Carol, Property and Persuasion. Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 6, 296Google Scholar.

51 Craib, Cartographic Mexico, pp. 231–2. Between 1935 and 1940, 516 750 hectares were granted as ejidos in Veracruz. See Cambrézy, Marchal and Lascuráin, Crónicas de un territorio fraccionado, pp. 133–4.

52 Dictamen Negativo del Cuerpo Consultivo Agrario, 1 July 1992, fojas 1–44, Expediente de Dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado de El Huanal, en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425. See also, ACSCJ Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, file 2061/68.

53 Dictamen Negativo del Cuerpo Consultivo Agrario, 1 July 1992, fojas 1–44, Expediente de Dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado de El Huanal, en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425. See also, ACSCJ Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, file 2061/68.

54 Craib, Cartographic Mexico, p. 233.

55 Craib, Cartographic Mexico, p. 242.

56 Baitenmann, ‘Rural Agency and State Formation’, p. 180.

57 In the 1940s Mexico entered into an era of stable and long-term economic growth. There were external factors that contributed to it, such as the United States being at war yet, the role played by the state in the creation of new industries in accordance with the import-substituting-industrialisation model was central. While export agriculture was encouraged, subsistence agriculture continued to struggle as the population exploded and the government kept ejidos undercapitalised and undersupplied. See Joseph, Gilbert and Büchenau, Jurgen, Mexico's Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 142–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knight, Alan, ‘The End of the Mexican Revolution? From Cárdenas to Ávila Camacho, 1937–1941’, in Gillingham, Paul and Smith, Benjamin (eds.), Dictablanda: Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1938–1968 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), pp. 47–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hodges, Donald C. and Gandy, Daniel Ross, Mexico: The End of the Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Sherman, John W., ‘The Mexican Miracle and Its Collapse’, in Meyer, Michael C. and Beezley, William H. (eds.), The Oxford History of Mexico (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 575–98Google Scholar; Leonardo, Venegas, Lomelí, ‘La construcción del sistema político mexicano: el período de Adolfo Ruiz Cortines’, in Compeán, Miguel González and Lomelí, Leonardo (eds.), El partído de la revolución: institución y conflicto, 1920–1999 (México DF: Fondo de Cultural Económica, 2000), pp. 239–84Google Scholar.

58 On the work of surveyors see Craib, Cartographic Mexico; Craib, ‘The Archive in the Field’. Also relevant is the work of Ervin, Michael A., ‘The 1930 Agrarian Census in Mexico: Agronomist, Middle Politics, and the Negotiation of Data Collection’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 87: 3 (2007), pp. 537–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On this piece, Ervin demonstrates how the activities of agricultural experts – not unlike those of surveyors – were central for the implementation of agrarian policies, mainly due to their ability to negotiate with both political elites and rural Mexicans. See also, Cotter, Joseph, Troubled Harvest. Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003)Google Scholar.

59 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 37. See also, Informe reglamentario. Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, 4 July 1958, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

60 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file, 2061/68, foja 36.

61 Boyer, Becoming Campesinos, p. 29. This effort by agrarian experts to reconcile the competing goals of both politicians – in this case supporting the agrarian reform – and rural inhabitants – rejecting the implementation of the ejido – is what Ervin refers to as ‘middle-politics’. See Ervin, ‘The 1930 Agrarian Census in Mexico’, p. 544.

62 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 36.

63 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68 foja 36.

64 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 36. See also, Informe reglamentario. Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, 4 July 1958, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

65 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 38.

66 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68 foja 38.

67 On how the agrarian reform generated new relationships, alliances and tacit work agreements between landowners, ranchers and rural labourers, see Mummert, Gail, ‘Ejidatarios, pequeños proprietarios y ecuareros: conflictos y componendas por el acceso a tierra y agua’, in de Vries, Peter and Zendejas, Sergio (eds.), Las disputas por el México rural, vol. 1 (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1998), pp. 291–320Google Scholar; Cambrézy, Marchal and Lascuráin, Crónicas de un territorio fraccionado, p. 135; and Del Ángel Pérez, ‘Formación de la estructura productiva ganadera en la llanura costera de Veracruz central’, p. 193.

68 Cambrézy, Marchal and Lascuráin, Crónicas de un territorio fraccionado, p. 135.

69 Interview with José Luis Salas, resident and jurist in Xalapa, also son of Cirilo Salas, 10 Dec. 2009.

70 Informe de Trabajos, Expediente ‘El Huanal’, 31 May 1976, RAN-XAL, file 6425. See also Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68.

71 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 39. See also, Informe reglamentario. Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, 4 July 1958, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

72 In his famous speech in Sonora in 1959, López Mateos stated that he stood at ‘the extreme left within the limits set by the Constitution’ and claimed his support to the peasant sector. Joseph and Buchenau, Mexico's Once and Future Revolution, pp. 158–9. See also, Hurtado, Guillermo and Niszt, Florencia, ‘Emilio Uranga: ideólogo del Lopezmateísmo’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 28: 2 (2012), pp. 307–25Google Scholar.

73 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, fojas 50–1. See also, Acta de Clausura de Trabajos Censales. Rectificacion Censal, 30 June 1965, 063, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 1246. On violence and intimidation tactics during the Agrarian Reform see Nolan-Ferrell, ‘Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas’, p. 576; Santana, Laura Gómez, ‘Violencia cotidiana durante el reparto agrario en Jalisco’, in Quijas, Aquiles Ávila, Serrano, Jesús Gómez, Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar, Rodríguez, Martín Sánchez (eds.), Tierra y agua: negociaciones acuerdos y conflictos en México, siglos XIX y XX (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2009), pp. 265–89Google Scholar; and Bobrow-Strain, Intimate Enemies, p. 96.

74 Acta de Clausura de Trabajos Censales. Rectificación Censal, 30 June 1965, 063, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCanton de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

75 Acta de Clausura de Trabajos Censales. Rectificacion Censal, 30 June 1965, 063, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCanton de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

76 Acta de Clausura de Trabajos Censales. Rectificacion Censal, 30 June 1965, 063, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

77 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 1.

78 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 42.

79 Land reform in Veracruz was implemented at an unprecedented rate in the 1930s. However, it was during the conservative and authoritarian government of Díaz Ordaz (1964–70) that the greatest amount of land was redistributed (24,738,000 ha). See Cambrézy, Marchal and Lascuráin, Crónicas de un territorio fraccionado, p. 135.

80 See Navaro-Yashin, Yael, ‘Make-believe Papers, Legal Forms and the Counterfeit. Affective Interactions between Documents and People in Britain and Cyprus’, Anthropological Theory, 7: 1 (2007), pp. 79–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Craib, Cartographic Mexico, p. 231.

82 Cuerpo Consultivo Agrario, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, 1 July 1992, RAN-XAL, file 6425, foja 127.

83 Desalojo de los campesinos del Ejido de El Huanal, Mpio. De Vega de Alatorre, Edo de Veracruz, 25 abril de 1967, Archivo General de la Nación, Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales. Información General de los Estados, Distrito Federal, Tomo IX–X, Caja 515, foja 198–203.

84 This report is not included in the amparo file.

85 Echeverría presented himself as a populist president. He distributed close to 12.8 million hectares. Yet, his support of land re-distribution did not stop the expansion of cattle ranching. According to some scholars, Veracruz continued, in the 1970s, to be the Mexican state with the largest number of cattle. See Cardiel, Héctor Amezcua, Veracruz: sociedad, economía, política y cultura (México DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990)Google Scholar; Gonzáles-Montagut, ‘Expansion in Cattle Ranching in Veracruz’, p. 122. His critics also acknowledge, on the one had, the poor quality of the land distributed and, on the other, the authoritarian qualities of his regime See Julio, Moguel and López, Pilar, ‘Política agraria y modernización capitalista’, in Moguel, Julio (ed.), Historia de la cuestión agraria Mexicana, vol. 9: los tiempos de la crisis 1970–1982 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1990) pp. 321–76Google Scholar; Joseph and Buchenau, Mexico's Once and Future Revolution, p. 168.

86 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 44.

87 Cuerpo Consultivo Agrario, 1 July 1992, foja 126. Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425. On the hope-generating capacity of the bureaucracy see Nuijten, Monique, Power Community and State. The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico (London: Pluto Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Nolan-Ferrell, ‘Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas’.

88 Cuerpo Consultivo Agrario, 1 July 1992, foja 127. Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425.

89 Several cattle ranchers, envisioning possible future expropriations, started to fragment their estates in the early 1960s. Cirilo Salas for instance, transferred his property to his wife and sons in 1962. Although Mercedes Torres, Cirilo Rafael and Jose Luis Salas-Torres, appear as legal owners of the estate, it was Cirilo Salas who kept control over the property. His estate, consequently, remained exempt from land reform.

90 On how class-based agrarian struggles have the potential to conjoin people of different ethnicities see Schryer, Frans, Ethnicity and Class Conflict in Rural Mexico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68 fojas 1–20.

92 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 24.

93 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, fojas 3–4.

94 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, fojas 3–4.

95 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, fojas 30–2.

96 Mummert, ‘Ejidatarios, pequeños proprietarios y ecuareros’, p. 292.

97 Monique Nuijten, Power Community and State, p. 16. On ‘affective administration’ see Navaro-Yashin, Yael, The Make-believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 33, 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Ibid, p. 119.

99 Ibid, p. 119.

100 After the Cárdenas period of political consolidation there were repeated waves of peasant mobilisation in pursuit of both agrarian demands and, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, a certain degree of freedom from the system of political control embodied in the official organs of popular representation like the Confederación Campesina (CNC). See Clarisa Hardy, El estado y los campesinos: la Confederación Nacional Campesina (México DF: Nueva Imagen, 1984). The CNC was created in 1938 and constituted an important base of political support for the Revolutionary Party (the PRM) and the succeeding Partido Revolucionario Institutcional (PRI). The CNC's continuing ties with the PRI regime have generally been interpreted as the product of political coercion, corruption and manipulation. This close alliance generated the establishment of independent peasant organisations. Often, the state managed to defuse the militancy by either co-opting leaderships or making selective concessions that did not threaten the fundamental interests of the PRI regime.

101 Acta de inexistencia del grupo campesino que solicita dotación de ejido para el poblado ‘El Huanal’, municipio de Nautla, estado de Veracruz, 30 Nov. 1982, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 1246.

102 Monique Nuijten, Power Community and State, 119.

103 Saldívar Zárate and the 23 campesinos who were part of the revived agrarian process of the 1960s were also included in the census but were not considered eligible for land repartition because they failed, again, to prove they were residents of the community. Cuerpo Consultivo Agrario, Dotación de Tierras, El Huanal. Nautla, Veracruz, 1 July 1992, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425, foja 161.

104 Trabajos técnicos informativos complementarios, Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 497.

105 Inejecución de sentencia No. 16/977, 13 April 1993, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425.

106 See Nuijten, Monique, ‘Changing Legislation and a New Agrarian Bureaucracy: Shifting Arenas of Negotiation’, in Vires, Peter de and Zendejas, Sergio (eds.), Rural Transformations Seen From Below (La Jolla, CA: Center for U. S.-Mexican Studies, 1995)Google Scholar.

107 According to Helga Baitenman, in 1992, the governor of Veracruz, disclosed that there were 1,200 unresolved case files. By 1994, the Ministry of Agrarian Reform claimed that Veracruz ‘had completely dispatched its administrative lag’. However, a large number of case files were simply discarded. See Baitenmann, ‘Rural Agency and State Formation in Post-revolutionary Veracruz’, p. 192.

108 Inejecución de sentencia No. 16/977, 13 abril 1993, Expediente de dotación de Ejidos para el Poblado ‘El Huanal’ en el municipio de Nautla, ExCantón de Misantla, Estado de Veracruz, RAN-XAL, file 6425.

109 Amparo en Revisión, 18 June 1969, ACSCJ, file 2061/68, foja 37.

110 Blomley, ‘From What? To So What? Law and Geography in Retrospect’, pp. 30–2.