The Life and Times of Pancho Villa by Friedrich Katz

The Life and Times of Pancho Villa by Friedrich Katz

Author:Friedrich Katz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804765176
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-05-20T16:00:00+00:00


Carrancista and Villista Agrarian Policies

Villa’s abstention from matters of ideology and social legislation on a national scale ended in May 1915, when he decreed an agrarian law. It is certainly no coincidence that this law was proclaimed after Villa had suffered his two great defeats at Celaya. He and his advisors probably felt that such a law was a way of restoring his waning internal and external support. All estates beyond a certain size were to be divided among the peasants, and the owners would receive some form of indemnity from the peasants, who would have to pay in small installments. And although this was a national law, it still reflected Villa’s commitment to decentralization, since the state governments, rather than the federal government, were to implement the law. The communal property of the villages was not mentioned. Finally, the law reflected the heterogeneous and divergent character of the Conventionist movement: in order to maintain the unity of the factions that supported him, Villa allowed the states wide leeway in the application of agrarian reform.

The law also reflected the wishes and desires of the northern peasants, the majority of whom had never been organized in communal villages, in contrast to those of southern and central Mexico. One of the main provisions of the law was best defined by Zapata’s adviser Soto y Gama. “When one compares the northerners’ and southerners’ opinion regarding agrarian problems, one sees that they were and are very different.”



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