Notarios y agricultores: Crecimiento y atraso en el campo mexicano, 1780–1920

In 1909, with Mexico on the verge of revolution, a public notary from the central-plateau town of Jilotepec published a book that would deeply influence the tenor and tone of national resource policy in the twentieth century. Andrés Molina Enríquez’s Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales set forth a scathing critique of the hacienda system, faulting its feudalistic tendencies, venal landlords, and labor oppression, among other things, for the countryside’s overall failure to modernize. Molina Enríquez went on to help craft Article 27 of Mexico’s 1917 Constitution, a condensation of both liberal and radical agrarian ideals stemming from the revolution, which broke out in 1910. Article 27, along with a raft of enabling legislation, set the stage for the subsequent breakup and redistribution of large landholdings, some of which originated in the colonial period.For years, students of rural Mexico—such esteemed luminaries as Frank Tannenbaum (1929) and Francois Chevalier (1963)—drew inspiration ...