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A Rejoinder to Robert Adie's “Land and Politics in Mexico”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
In his article “Land and Politics in Mexico” Robert Adie argues that the ejido has served the important political function of maintaining stability in the Mexican countryside. We agree entirely with this conclusion; however, we disagree with the arguments which Adie uses to arrive at this conclusion. To develop his thesis concerning the primacy of the ejido's political function, Adie attempts to demonstrate the non-viability of the ejido as a unit of economic organization. Thus he argues that “for political reasons the ejidatarios have the land, while the federal government has devised a means to use that land for its own economic purposes.” The implications of this statement are that ejidos not only do not but could not have played a major role in Mexico's agricultural development, and that the policies of the federal government (which have favoured the large, privately owned capitalist agricultural enterprises) have been rational and correct in economic terms. To corroborate his thesis, Adie uses an extensive body of literature which essentially maintains that the economic performance of the ejido has been weak as a consequence of peasant backwardness – the persistence of traditional attitudes, or of a “subculture of poverty” in which the ejidatarios are inextricably caught.
- Type
- Notes
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , June 1975 , pp. 305 - 307
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1975
References
1 Hansen, Roger D., The Politics of Mexican Development (Baltimore 1971), 81Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 82
3 Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, “Social Aspects of Agrarian Structure in Mexico,” in Agrarian Problems & Peasant Movements in Latin America, ed. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (Garden City, N.S. 1970), 250–1.Google Scholar See also Hansen, , Mexican Development, 63, and Centro de Investigaciones Agrarias, Estructura Agraria y Desarrollo Agricola en Mexico (Mexico 1970), 308–48.Google Scholar
4 Ibid.
5 Some of the studies that document the early early economic and social success of the ejidal program set in motion by the large-scale land distributions carried out and supported by Cárdenas in the Laguna region are: Senior, Clarence L., Land Reform and Democracy (Gainsville, Fla. 1958), 143–9Google Scholar; Socialistas, Liga de Agronomos, El Colectivismo Agrario en Mexico: La Comarca Lagunera (Mexico 1940), 133—6Google Scholar; Eckstein, Salomon, El Ejido Colectivo en Mexico (Mexico 1966), 140Google Scholar; Porta, Juan Ballesteros, Explotacion Individual o Colectivo? El Caso de los Ejidos de Tlahualilo (Mexico 1064), 46.Google Scholar
1 Hansen, Mexican Development, 81
7 Adler, Judith, The Politics of Land Reform in Mexico, M. Phil thesis, London School of Economics, 1970Google Scholar; and Anderson, Bo and Cockcroft, James D., “Control and Cooptation in Mexican Politics,” in Dependence and Underdevelopment: Latin America's Political Economy, ed. Cockroft, James D. et al. (Garden City, N.J. 1972), 219–44Google Scholar