Ejido

In Mexican system of government, an ejido (, from latin exitum) is an area of communal land used for agriculture, on which community members individually possess and farm a specific parcel. Ejidos are registered with Mexico's National Agrarian Registry (Registro Agrario Nacional). The system of ejidos dates from the Aztecs' rule of Mexico. During the colonization of Mexico by the Spanish and other European settlers, the Spanish encomienda system replaced the ejidos.

History and rationale
During the Porfiriato lands occupied by the indigenous peoples of Mexico were routinely seized by the government of Porfirio Díaz and granted to his cronies. These and other abuses resulted in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Emiliano Zapata leader of the Liberation Army of the South was a strong advocate of land redistribution to the people.

The encomienda system was abolished by the Mexican Constitution of 1917, with the promise of restoring the ejido system. The system was reinitiated after the Mexican Revolution in some states, notably Morelos but the repartition of land in most of Mexico did not begin until Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934. The ejido system was introduced as an important component of the land reform program. The typical procedure for the establishment of an ejido involved the following steps: Ejidatarios did not actually own the land, but were allowed to use their allotted parcels indefinitely as long as they did not fail to use the land for more than two years. They could even pass their rights on to their children. In order to forestall landlords buying up ejido parcels restrictions on transferability prevented lease or sale, or even loss due to foreclosure; the property could not be used as collateral for a loan; thus ejido farming operations were often undercapitalized and inefficient.
 * 1) landless farmers who leased lands from wealthy landlords would petition the federal government for the creation of an ejido in their general area;
 * 2) the federal government would consult with the landlord;
 * 3) the land would be expropriated from the landlords if the government approved the ejido; and
 * 4) an ejido would be established and the original petitioners would be designated as ejidatarios with certain cultivation/use rights.

As of 1992 about half of Mexico's land was held in 28,000 ejidos occupied by 2 and a half million subsistence farmers. A portion of an ejido was farmed collectively; the remainder individually, typically, less than 12 acres.

Reform and decline
In 1991, as part of a program of "economic reform" dating from the 1980s, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari eliminated the constitutional right to ejidos, citing the "low productivity" of communally owned land. The reforms permitted renting or leasing of ejido land and both acquisition of title, and, eventual, sale to both domestic and foreign corporations which were permitted to own agricultural land. This opened up opportunities for agribusiness corporations in California to enter joint operations to grow vegetables for export to the United States. Displacement of Mexican peasants, 26% of the population, was predicted in 1992 by United States analysts for the Federal Reserve to result initially in a flood of cheap labor in both Mexico and the United States, but in the long run to loss of the low-wage pool of subsistence farmers in Mexico as displaced farmers found urban employment in industry and other trades.

The change anticipated the requirements of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement:

Entry into a free trade agreement with the United States and Canada required intense preparation for Mexico. To quell U.S. investors' fears of political upheaval (and thus, possible confiscation of foreign property), the authors of NAFTA included an extensive section on expropriation and confiscation. Mexico was also pressured by the World Bank and the United States to re-write Article 27 of its Constitution - a pillar of the new government that grew out of the 1910 Mexican Revolution - effectively doing away with the ejido system of collective land ownership. This opened up traditional Mexican territory for sale to foreign investors eager to buy up land. The ejido system had been a cornerstone of indigenous and peasant rights in the Mexican agricultural system. Eliminating ejido protections and privatizing traditional landholdings left the most marginalized populations even more vulnerable.

Chiapas conflict
By breaking the social contract with the indigenous peoples of Mexico the Mexican government set the stage for the Chiapas conflict and the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in 1994 and the social netwar that resulted.