Popular Resistance to the Privatization of Communal Lands in 19th Century Michoacan

Abstract

"This paper examines the dynamics of popular resistance to the 19th century liberal land reform in the center-west state of Michoacan. It begins with a brief overview of liberal thinking with respect to the privatization of communal land, and then looks at the characteristics of popular resistance to the disamortization laws passed at the state and national level. This general discussion is followed by a case study of the politics of privatization in the village of Zacapu, located in the municipio of the same name, in what would later become the agrarista heartland of Michoacan. The villagers of Zacapu managed to delay the implementation of the reform for some three decades, from 1869, when state officials began to apply concerted pressure on the communities to carry out the reform, until 1904, when the process was finally completed with the distribution of individual titles. The cost of that resistance was, however, extremely high: during this same period, Zacapu lost much of its communal land to neighboring haciendas, either through the auspices of the state, which seized and auctioned off some of the land for non-payment of back taxes assessed on undivided property, or through fraudulent deals struck between a minority faction within the community and outsiders. As elsewhere throughout Michoacan, Zacapu's experience with the liberal reform was decisive in explaining its partisanship in the revolutionary conflicts of the 1910s and 1920s: together with some of their neighbors from Naranja, Tirandaro, and Tarejero, and under the leadership of Primo Tapia, many Zacapu villagers participated in the region's agrarista movement, petitioning for, and ultimately recovering, at least some of the lands lost through both legal and illegal maneuvers associated with the liberal reform."