A
Agrarian Reforms
The aim of
an agrarian reform is usually to obtain a fair land sharing, by
expropriation of the big estates to the benefit of farmers having
no cultivated land at all. Particularly important in Latino-America
where the "latifundia" heritage of the colonial period was in favour,
the agrarian reforms were of different kinds and were more or less
successful. The Mexican agrarian reform with the invention of the
"ejido" was undoubtly the most original and the longest in time.
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A
Amerindian Civilizations
This
terminology applies to cultural and political groups of the Indian
Americans, before the Discovery of America by the Europeans (the
terminology of "pre-Columbian culture can be used as synonimous).
The most brilliant civilizations (Olmec, Toltec, Maya, Aztec) spread
in the "meso-American" part of the continent i.e. the
Southern part of Mexico and Central America. The Northern populations
were considered as "barbarous".
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A
Agrarian politics
Means applied
by public power to frame the economic and social developement
of the rural community: laws, agreements, incentive actions, financial
support.The agrarian politics can strongly interfer (as it was
the case in Mexico where the "ejidal" system was maintained under
government supervision, vote considerations being involved in)
or on the contrary it can sacrifice to liberalism (as it is the
case nowadays in most of the countries).
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E
Ejido
The latin root
of the Mexican word is "exitus" which means the lands
located " at the exit of the village"; This terminology
was already in use in Spain and later in colonized Mexico with the
meaning of "free grazing land" which could be used by
everybody. With the law on the Ejidos dated 1920, the word takes
a legal meaning for land usage, i.e. "the social property".
The lands coming from the former big properties were dismantled
and given in common to groups of peasants who asked for them, each
family owning a transmittable right (for their children) but not
possible to third parties . Private property remained, but the size
of the land was controled. This basis of the Mexican agrarian reform
was debated and ruled over by the new law "Nueva Ley Agraria"
from 1992 which put an end to the distribution of cultivated lands
and stopped the private right on "Ejidale land".
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G
Green revolution
It means
the change in the agricultural production conditions in terms of
intensification, by the way of training to new techniques, offered
to the Third-World (Developing Countries) from the years 1960 to
1970.
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H
Haciendas
Big land
properties owned from the Spanish conquest when land was taken from
the native populations. Some haciendas could be as large as 100 000
hectares. The average hacienda was self-sufficient provided to all
the needs of the workers and was specialized in a commercial trade:
haciendas ganaderas (livestock breeding), azucareras (sugar cane),
pulqueras (agave).In the XIXth century such haciendas could add an
industrial activity such as textile for instance.
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L
Latifundia
A very
big land property. The latin word "latifundium" included a pejorative
meaning especially in Spanish. The "Latifundista" did not cultivate
his land by himself but ran the land in an extensive way thus monopolizing
the land. He was accused of wasting good lands wanted by "minifundios"
which were too small and overpopulated farming units.
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M
Mexican
revolution
It started
in 1910 with a popular uprising when Francisco Madero called
the population against the political regime of General-President-Dictator
Porfirio Diaz, who had been keeping the power for 35 years.
The country then was in fire (with revolutionary confrontations
by particularly famous emblematic characters as Emilio Zapata
and Francisco Vila) up to the 1917 Constitution and the presidency
of Venustiano Carranza. The reason for such a great social change
was undoubtly the land property problem. After that a deep agrarian
reform started. (we advise to read The Mexican Revolution by
Jesus Silva Herzog, Maspero ed., Paris 1977).
N
NAFTA:
North American Free Trade Agreement (ALENA into
French "Accord de Libre Echange Nord-Américain") and
TLC into spanish "Tratado de Libre Comercio"),signed
in 1992 between Canada, USA and Mexico to suppress the custom
duties between these countries.
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P
Peón
(plural
peones): litterally "a pawn" as on a chess board. He is a farming
worker, daily paid, a farmer without any land. In the haciendas
of pre-revolution time, such peones were at the mercy of the land
owner by endebtment at the farmer's shop "la tienda de raya". The
endebtment was transmitted from father to son and could never die.
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