Mexico and its reconstruction/Chapter 12

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CHAPTER XII

THE MEXICAN LABORER: HIS OPPORTUNITIES

It is safe to say that no great colonizing power ever handled the land problems that confronted it in a new and sparsely settled territory in a way that later generations have found satisfactory. To those who, in the age of discovery, set out to increase the national domain, the home governments gave grants of what they found—land. Had these large early grants, often with the most indefinite boundaries, continued in the hands of their original owners they would have been a great abuse in practically all the colonies of the world. But they very seldom did so. The estates fell apart by their own unwieldiness. Accumulations of property by institutions, notably the church, often held together to a greater degree but even these in most cases later broke up by the development of new economic conditions or by political measures directed against the holders.

Mexico is no exception to the rule. The grants of the colonial period are not the cause of present-day land problems, nor is the church an element that complicates agrarian conditions. The land question of the republic is of its own creation. To it three elements have prominently contributed, the tendency of the upper classes to put their capital into land rather than into industrial ventures, the breaking up of the communal land holdings of the Indian communities, and the disposal of "unoccupied lands" by the government.

Many of the great estates in Mexico arise from a characteristic common to many countries of Spanish civilization. Wealth is considered by the local society to be synonymous with landed property. Extensive real estate holdings give a family position to a greater extent than other forms of capital. The preference does not depend only on the belief that real estate is less disturbed by revolution than industrial property. It is due, also, to tradition. There can be no doubt that many of the large estates, because of their very size, have been a burden to their owners and that smaller areas could have been better administered and made to yield a better net return. Of the three elements above mentioned this is, however, the least important.

The Spanish land policy included the granting to the Indian villages of certain areas, called ejidos, which were held in common. This practice was inherited, and for a generation continued, by the republic. In the law of June 25, 1856, steps were taken for the distribution of community lands in lots of the value of $200 or less. No measures were taken, however, to insure that the new proprietors should be instructed how to cultivate their lands to the best advantage, nor was legislation enacted to prevent the prompt alienation of their holdings.^[1] As a result, a measure intended to stimulate individual initiative and to encourage Indians to become citizens of the republic, with rights and responsibilities similar to those of the more enterprising classes, failed. The lands were sold and the native, who formerly had, in his communal rights, at least a claim on a living of the standard to which he had been accustomed for generations, was thrown on the community landless and dependent.

The policy that resulted in this state of affairs has been condemned both in and out of Mexico and the revolution favored attempts in all parts of the country to restore the old status. Such steps have not succeeded. It is seldom possible, after any important change in social or economic relations, to turn back the clock and start anew. It is very doubtful whether it would be to the advantage of Mexico to reestablish any large portion of the Indian population on a communal basis of life. Land is never used to advantage, at least under modern conditions, where it is held in that way. Other countries, notably the United States, have made similar errors in trying to shift the indigenous populations too rapidly from the old to a new standard of life, but the step once taken can not be retraced. The failure to surround the elimination of the ejidos with proper safeguards has complicated the Mexican land problem, yet former conditions can not be restored by any legislative act.

In its desire to encourage the development of its agricultural resources Mexico found itself at the winning of Independence in a peculiar position. It had large extents of public land, at least land that belonged technically to the state, inasmuch as no one held legal title thereto. But a survey of the national territory had never been made and the public authorities of neither the nation nor of the states could inform inquirers where the "unoccupied" land lay. In fact, land legally unoccupied might have been actually subject to possession by individuals for generations.

The obvious first step, if private property rights were to be given adequate protection, would have been to carry out a government survey of the territory and to try to protect those who were ignorant of the insecurity of their titles. Unfortunately the government did not feel itself financially able to adopt this plan. Until after the middle of the century there was no plan upon which action had been taken sufficient to allow it to be called a national policy for the management of the public lands. In 1863 a law was passed outlining the conditions under which individuals might secure ownership of the terrenos baldíos, unoccupied lands. For the moment, however, the French intervention kept the policy from any practical application. With the restoration of the republic in 1867 sales became important. By 1876, an area of 1,376,169 hectares had been distributed, yielding, by the prevailing schedule of prices, $292,736.30. From 1877 to 1890 the lands were alienated at a much more rapid rate. A total of 33,929,256 hectares were adjudicated, valued at $4,421,656.80.^[2] The states in which the greatest distribution occurred in this period were in the dry belt immediately south of the United States. In Lower California 9,800,000 hectares were sold; in Chihuahua, 9,000,000; in Coahuila, 7,000,000; in Sonora, 3,600,000; in Durango, 1,300,000, and in Sinaloa, 1,100,000. Up to the middle '80s practically all the lands distributed went to Mexicans. In 1883 the American Minister declared that no American in his senses would try to locate and claim any land because of the disputes for ownership that would be sure to follow. In the years that followed, however, the survey of terrenos baldios went on very rapidly by companies, native and foreign. They obtained shares of the land surveyed in payment for their work. The contracts were undertaken under the law of December 15, 1883, regarding survey and colonization of public lands and under a series of laws passed between 1889 and 1894 known as the Leyes de Deslindes. These measures have been criticized severely for failure to protect the public interests. Up to 1889 there had been surveys authorized for 38,249,373 hectares, of which 12,693,610 belonged to the surveying companies, 14,618,980 were segregated for various reasons, and 10,936,783 hectares, or some 26 per cent, remained at the disposal of the government. From that time to April, 1892, 3,011,440 acres were surveyed. Statistics for later years do not appear to have been published.

That there were abuses in carrying out the disposal of lands is beyond doubt. The "squatters" were frequently dispossessed of holdings of which they had long been in actual possession. The surveying companies which took contracts from the government often did their work in a haphazard manner and received very large grants in return for very small services. The government sold large areas at very low prices. Subsequent writers have been unsparing in their criticism of the policy that allowed such things to occur to the disadvantage of the public treasury.

It is doubtful whether the real abuse lies in the rate at which the lands were sold. After all, the settler who goes into a rough, undeveloped country creates all but a small portion of the value of the land he occupies and it is at least open to doubt whether a country in the position in which Mexico found itself might not well afford to give generously of her public land to actual settlers. The increase of the national wealth caused by their industry would be more important than the payments for the land.

The real abuses lie in the other circumstances sketched. The rights of those in possession were ineffectually guarded. The purchasers were not, as a rule, themselves settlers. Often their contracts provided that they must bring in families who would exploit the land, but these provisions were not enforced. In other words, though Mexico could have given her public land to settlers for small payments and still be considered fortunate, what happened was that many of her small farmers were dispossessed, and she sold her lands for negligible amounts and did not get the settlement that would have been her chief reward.

Under 79 contracts for colonization entered into between 1878 and 1889—about one-half of the total being made in 1883-4—only some 6,000 colonists had been brought into the country. The number reported in 1892 was only 10,985, and the later years for which statistics are not available have brought no real improvement.

It is not possible to state exactly to what degree large land holdings came to prevail in Mexico before the revolution. No public record shows the development in a satisfactory way and discussions by private writers are almost without exception propagandist. That there were many enormous holdings and that they were an abuse, is beyond question. A few examples may be cited. Before the revolution Luis Terrazas was credited with holdings in Chihuahua of a larger area than the sovereign state of Costa Rica; other large properties were those of José Escandon in Zacatecas, Iñigo Noriega in Mexico, Garcia Pimentel in Morelos, Juventino Ramirez in Puebla, and the extensive possessions of the Madero family in Coahuila. In the sparsely populated Lower California there are some enormous extents of territory held by land companies. Three companies it is asserted acquired 93,798 square kilometers, an area larger than Ireland. Luis Haller and Company owned 53,950 square kilometers; the California and Mexican Land Company, Ltd., 24,883; and Flores and Company, 14,965. It is asserted that the 18 largest land companies had an average possession half as great as Portugal and that 11,000 haciendas comprised 880,000 square kilometers or 44 per cent of the total area of the republic.^[3] The state of Morelos is alleged to have developed the most intolerable conditions. Thirty-two men are reported to have "owned" practically the entire area.^[4]

That the large estate system was not a wholesome element in the life of the republic the government of Diaz had recognized. The reports by the Department of Fomento protested against it. The economists of the country, while recognizing that there were certain regions that could prosper only under extensive cultivation and that certain crops could not, under the conditions obtaining, be profitably cultivated on a basis of peasant ownership of land, were in general agreement that some change must come.^[5] But their beliefs did not take form in action.

Unwillingness to attack the problem has not characterized the revolutionary reformers. The abolition of latifundismo has been a prominent part of their program. The end toward which they have declared their intention to work is one that meets general approval. The reasoning and the methods adopted, however, do not show that there has yet been worked out a land policy from which permanent improvement may be expected.

The central idea in the radical discussion of land problems during the revolution has been that the native . population is inspired by a hunger for possession of land. One of the manifestos issued reads in part:^[6]

The man of the fields was hungry and full of misery; he had been exploited beyond endurance and at last he took up arms to win the bread which the rich in their greed had denied him; to obtain possession of the lands which were in the grasp of the selfish proprietors. . . . He embarked upon revolution, not to win illusory political rights which fail to provide food, but to procure a bit of ground which would yield him bread, liberty, a home, independence, and a chance to get ahead. . . . The greater part, if not all of the territory, which must be "nationalized" represents land wrested from some small proprietors with the connivance of the Diaz dictatorship. The second aim is the restoration of these lands to their original individual owners, and to the. . . pueblos. This great act of justice will be followed by presenting those who never had anything with a portion of the lands confiscated from the accomplices of dictatorship, or expropriated from the spendthrift heirs of the old land robbers, who do not even trouble themselves to cultivate their inheritance. Thus will the hunger for land and the appetite for liberty, which are felt from one end of the republic to the other be satisfied.

There is little to show that any such general land hunger exists among the peasant population. Except in a few districts desire for land on the part of the lower classes was conspicuous by its absence before the revolution and is not general now. The remedies adopted to eliminate the prevalent abuses are not above question. It is impossible to return the destroyed ejidos to their original owners, and to give them to their landless descendants, even when these can be discovered, is not a step that promises to solve the land problem. The measures for taking over land from the larger estates and dividing it among the peons are also too simple to inspire confidence. The fact is the land problem in Mexico is much more complicated than the revolutionary reformers seem to have conceived it. It is a psychological problem more than a physical one. The land hunger of the peasant does not now need to be satisfied, it needs to be created.

There are large areas in Mexico in which the price of land is still ridiculously low. The landowners complain of a lack of labor supply and many of them would welcome an opportunity to sell small holdings in order to get the laborers fixed in their neighborhoods. Such men could be counted on to furnish an auxiliary labor supply when their time was not demanded by their own properties.

It must be remembered too that most of the large landholdings are in regions unsuited to small ownership. In such areas the "forty acres and a mule" standard of property endowment, which was talked of in the United States for the Southern negro at the end of the Civil War, would be no measure of blessing to a peon. It would mean starvation for both the animal and his owner. In some of the regions, where large properties lie. Irrigation might make small ownership practicable. But, unfortunately for Mexico, irrigation developments imply a technical ability and resources that the Government of Mexico has not been able to supply and will not be able to supply for a long time to come. Such developments require also the investment of large amounts of private capital. Until security for property can be well assured, investments of this sort will continue to be rare exceptions.

After all is said, it must be frankly admitted that a great portion of Mexico, if it is to yield as it should, must be held, so far as the present generation can see, in large units. Enthusiasts may prove the possibility of utilization of running water for irrigation and the storage of rainfall in huge reservoirs for the same purpose. By such means immense areas may theoretically be made highly productive and suitable for cultivation by small proprietors, especially educated for their tasks. The great majority of such schemes are, so far as our present knowledge of engineering and construction costs indicate, ones that will not leave the realm of dreams.^[7]

Small land holdings, to be successful, must be set up where there is a desire for them. If the reformers turn their attention to the task of creating the demand for homesteads, they will have set their hands to a task, the importance of which it is almost impossible to overemphasize. No country that aims to be a democracy can overlook the importance of the conditions under which its real estate is held. Where there never has been or where there has ceased to be a large class of property owners living on the soil they own, true republican government does not flourish. The possession of no other sort of wealth so surely stimulates respect for the rights of others and love of order and progress as does the possession of land. There is no other that makes its owner realize so clearly that the state is the guarantor of his well-being and that, by supporting it, he is working for his own advantage and for that of his community.

From this point of view there is, indeed, a land problem in Mexico. The average Mexican does not crave land ownership. He has not thought of it, because it is a privilege never enjoyed either by him or by his forbears. Giving him land alone will not create the desire to keep it. Any unguarded division scheme will soon disillusion those who foster it, because the small peasant ownership will vanish as did that created by the laws that divided up the ejidos. More than such a simple formula is needed: the creation of conditions that will give the Indian land, keep him on it, and stimulate his desires so that he will use it intelligently. Without this there will be no solution of the Mexican land problem worthy of the name. It is here that the land question shows its human side. It is more a problem involving the capacity of the population of Mexico than the division of its acres. Legislation can be adopted that will break up the big estates where that is needed for the best development of the country and legislation can help the landless to acquire land by loans of credit and the other expedients made familiar by the experience of other countries; but the economic impulse cannot be created by fiat. It can be fostered by building up around the people a complex of social conditions that emphasizes the desire to enjoy the best that the community offers. The love of family, the property sense, emulation of the economic success of others, the desire for influence in the community and for the applause of his fellows, pride in morality, public and private, these and an indefinite number of similar impulses must rouse the common citizen of Mexico, if the "land problem" is to be attacked with any real success. Whether a norm can be found depends more on the capacity of the Mexican people than upon that of its leaders. These latter can contribute to shape the conditions that may bring success, but all their efforts will be in vain unless the peon, and especially the Indian peon, shows capacity to become a citizen in fact as well as in name. He must forsake the economic, social, and civic childhood in which he has lived and take on the rights and responsibilities of manhood.

1. The abuses practiced especially in the north and west in the disposition of the community lands are described by R. B. Brinsmade. El latifundismo Mexicano, su origen y su remedio, Mexico, 1916.
2. Luis Pombo, Mexico: 1876-1892, Mexico, 1893, p. 39, from figures quoted from official publications. Other figures are published on p. 47.
3. E. B. Brinsmade, op. cit., pp. 10-13. See also Manuel Calero, Ensayo sobre la reconstrucción de México, New York, 1920, p. 105 et seq.
4. See a detailed but uncritical discussion of the land problem in F. Gonzalez Roa, The Mexican People and Their Detractors, New York, 1916, p. 1 et seq.
5. Luis Pombo, op. cit., p. 44 et seq.
6. The manifesto of Zapata from which these extracts are taken was published in the Voz de Juarez, of Mexico City, August 20, 1914, and later republished in part in the Review of Reviews, vol. 50, p. 630, November, 1914. Though issued by the leader of the state where land hunger it is alleged did exist, the declaration applied to the whole of the republic.
7. See a discussion of the merits of various irrigation schemes presented and an interesting discussion of the colonization problem in general in Alberto Robles Gil, Memoria de la secretaría de fomento presentada al congreso de la union, Mexico, 1913, passim.