Land Reform in Mexico: 1910–1980 presents the workings of the Mexican government by analyzing actual policies, their implementation, and their outcomes in a significant and central sector of the Mexican economy, agriculture. This book discusses the pattern of Mexican redistribution policy in agriculture over an extensive period of time, with emphasis on the causes and effects of these policy shifts. Organized into eight chapters, this book begins with an overview of the agricultural policy and modernization strategy of Mexico. This text then relates regional variations in the rural social structure of the late 19th century to the history of Mexico's unique agricultural policy. Other chapters consider the policy shifts reflected in agrarian legislation by presidential period. This book discusses as well the politics of land reform and its linkages to local, state, and national administrations. The final chapter deals with the status of agricultural policy in Mexico during the 1980s. This book is a valuable resource for scholar and students with interest in Mexican politics.

After the fall of the Porfirio Díaz regime, pueblo representatives sent hundreds of petitions to Pres. Francisco I. Madero, demanding that the executive branch of government assume the judiciary's control over their unresolved lawsuits against landowners, local bosses, and other villages. The Madero administration tried to use existing laws to settle land conflicts but always stopped short of invading judicial authority. In contrast, the two main agrarian reform programs undertaken in revolutionary Mexico--those implemented by Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza--subordinated the judiciary to the executive branch and thereby reshaped the postrevolutionary state with the support of villagers, who actively sided with one branch of government over another. In Matters of Justice Helga Baitenmann offers the first detailed account of the Zapatista and Carrancista agrarian reform programs as they were implemented in practice at the local level and then reconfigured in response to unanticipated inter- and intravillage conflicts. Ultimately, the Zapatista land reform, which sought to redistribute land throughout the country, remained an unfulfilled utopia. In contrast, Carrancista laws, intended to resolve quickly an urgent problem in a time of war, had lasting effects on the legal rights of millions of land beneficiaries and accidentally became the pillar of a program that redistributed about half the national territory.

Examines Mexican politics and government from the dictatorship of General Porfirio Dâiaz to the presidency of General Lâazaro Câardenas.

This comprehensive two-volume history of the Mexican Revolution presents a new interpretation of one of the world's most important revolutions. While it reflects the many facets of this complex and far-reaching historical subject it emphasises its fundamentally local, popular and agrarian character and locates it within a more general comparative context.-- Publisher.