NEWS & REPORTS

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A Tale of Two Ejidos

by Betsy Bowman

Mexico is a very special country because it is one of the few countries that has had genuine land redistribution.  After the Mexican Revolution, 1910-20, starting in the 1930’s with the administration of the famous President Lazaro Cardenas and continuing through the 1970’s, the Mexican government redistributed land from large land-holders and the church to the peasants working the land or other groups of people who had been displaced for some reason or other.

At some point in the 60s or early 70s, the Mexican government wanted to expand the Mexico City airport.  The local residents were resettled on an ejido named Peñon de los Baños north of Los Rodriguez.  They soon thereafter left.  Farmers from the Celaya and Salvatierra areas came to the deserted ejido of Peñon de los Baños, settled, and stayed. Their grandchildren live there to this day. 

Over the years, the neighbors of the folks at Peñon de los Baños gradually sold their ejido.  An ejido is a form of collective land-tenure; residents of an ejido have rights to live and farm their parcel of land within the ejido and share communal land of the ejido.  For many years Mexican peasants were protected from predatory developers by article 27 of the Mexican constitution which forbids the sale of ejidal land.  However, in 1992, under then President Salinas de Gortari, this all changed.  As a condition for Mexico to join NAFTA, Mexico had to allow the sale of land including ejidal land.

Today, the neighbors of the folks at the Peñon de los Baños ejido have sold their parcels to a wealthy, large landowner.  But the people in Peñon de los Baños have steadfastedly refused to sell.  The Center for Global Justice has been talking with a group of them for 1 ½  years.  They struck us as a well organized, hard-working group of people who also have some resources (about 500 cows from which they make their living now).  We introduced them to friends in the state of Hidalgo who have spent the last 3-5 years organizing a network of some 20 cooperatives, agricultural, livestock, construction, and sewing.  They have built greenhouses and are successfully growing and selling tomatoes in the local and Mexico City markets.  So the folks in Peñon de los Baños have also decided to build a greenhouse to grow organic tomatoes using drip irrigation.  Patricio Bravo, the organizer of the Hidalgo network, has come to help advise and instruct.  Thanks to the very generous contributions by a number of visitors, the Center for Global Justice’s Fund for Community Support has been able to loan them USD $9,000 for their project.  They still need another $3,000.

NAFTA and globalization are devastating the Mexican countryside.  Every day 1.5 million dollars worth of US food stuffs enter Mexico and every day 30 Mexican peasants head north.  But there are alternatives to emigration to the US and sale of one’s land. With help from the Center for Global Justice, the folks in Peñon de los Baños are forging such an alternative. 

This winter the Center for Global Justice will visit several communities to witness the alternatives Mexicans are creating for themselves.  And with a little help from their friends . . .  everything is possible.

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