Abstract

KOURI, Emilio. On communal village property, from the reform to the revolution. Hist. mex. [online]. 2017, vol.66, n.4, pp.1923-1960. ISSN 2448-6531.  https://doi.org/10.24201/hm.v66i4.3422.

This essay offers a series of general observations intended to guide the development of a new historiography regarding the subdivision of the communal lands of the pueblos during the half-century that preceded the Revolution of 1910. It summarizes the deficiencies of the narrative that for most of the twentieth century framed the explanation of the causes and consequences of those civil disentailments, and it highlights the recent emergence of research findings from local and regional archives that contradict that narrative and open up new analytic and interpretive paths. The essay then outlines six large themes that deserve both a conceptual reconsideration and further research in primary sources: the law as cause; the distribution of communal property rights inside the pueblos prior to the disentailments; the distinction between the political community and the landed community; the character of social relations (and differences) regarding access to juridically communal property in nineteenth-century pueblos; the fate of the private, formerly communal land parcels created by disentailment; and the relationship between the history of the evolution of village land tenure during the Porfiriato and the ejido-centered agrarian reform of the Revolution.

Keywords : Mexico; ejidos; tenure; historiography; 20th Century.