Abstract

LEONARD, Eric. Internal frontiers, rent extraction and livestock enclaves: the agricultural colonization of the Mexican Central Isthmus, 1945-1985. Trace (Méx. DF) [online]. 2021, n.80, pp.49-78.  Epub Oct 11, 2021. ISSN 2007-2392.  https://doi.org/10.22134/trace.80.2021.786.

This article analyzes the processes through which social networks and private patronage devices developed in order to coordinate the internal frontier process in the Isthmus of Veracruz during the second half of the 20th century. It particularly focusses on the institutional bases, both official and informal, which enabled private actors, associated with the power network of President Miguel Alemán, to establish and expand their strategies for controlling the natural and state resources mobilized in this process. In many ways, such social and institutional arrangements crystallized in enclave dynamics, i.e. in the formation of spaces regulated by private sets of rules and authorities, segregated to a major extent from the territorial jurisdictions established by laws and official regulations. In the Central Isthmus, territorial structures were molded by personalized private patronage networks that conferred them the characteristics of exceptional jurisdictional fields.

Keywords : internal frontier; patronage; cattle reeding; enclave; privatization.