Land Privatization in Mexico by Maria Teresa Vázquez-Castillo

Author:Maria Teresa Vázquez-Castillo [Vázquez-Castillo, Maria Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, General, Political Science, Public Policy, Regional Planning
ISBN: 9780415946544
Google: ZTh5g8H130UC
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2004-01-15T01:15:02+00:00

TERRITORIAL RESERVES

The formation of the Territorial Reserves was not free from opposition. Affected ejidatarios who either did not want their lands to be expropriated or wanted to receive a fair payment for their lands, were against the project of Territorial Reserves. Since the 1940s expropriated ejido and communal lands had been paid at their agricultural instead of their commercial values. Ejidatarios rightly feared that they would be paid minimal prices for their lands as had always been the case.

By 1985, the opposition to the Territorial Reserves program prompted several changes in its implementation. The State raised the payment of the agricultural value for expropriated ejido land, although it still did not compensate expropriatees for the true commercial value of their lands. The second modification was to request that local governments, prior to expropriation action, sign agreements with ejidatarios to request their consent. This was a basic informational step that did not exist in the initial program. Local governments, however, continued to be the entity that unilaterally set the schedule of payments and the amounts to be paid for ejido land.91

By the end of the presidential term of de la Madrid, the agrarian and urban bureaucratic institutions competed for decision making power over the fate of ejido lands and the way they would be transformed. As part of that struggle, in 1988, the peasant national organization CNC or Confederación Nacional Campesina, proposed to organize, along with rural populations, real estate ejido enterprises. A prompt response to that proposal came from the de la Madrid administration under the form of a new bureaucratic entity: the InterSecretary Commission of Territorial Reserves and Regularization of Land Tenure. Three clashing Ministries participated in this commission: The Secretary of Urban Development and Ecology (SEDUE), the Agrarian Reform Secretary (SRA), and the Programming and Budget Secretary (SPP). These ministries represented different actors and interests: the SRA represented the rural sector, SEDUE embodied the urban sector, and the SPP held the resources available to develop either sector. Since the 1940s each sector had tried to obtain more control over decision-making on ejido lands and now they were part of a single entity.

Through the Inter-Secretary Commission, local governments were awarded control of ejido land through the creation of State enterprises that supposedly would include the ejido populations affected by expropriatory decrees.92 The creation and new functions of the Inter-Secretary Commission led to the decentralization of CORETT to the different State governments. This movement restructured not only institutions and their functions, but mainly ejido land near major cities, the potential location of economic activities, and, consequently, the organization of regions and labor.

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