An ejido (Spanish pronunciation: [eˈxiðo], from Latin exitum) is an area of communal land used for agriculture in which community members have usufruct rights rather than ownership rights to land, which in Mexico is held by the Mexican state. People awarded ejidos in the modern era farm them individually in parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings with government oversight. Although the system of ejidos was based on an understanding of the preconquest Aztec calpulli and the medieval Spanish ejido,^[1][2][3] since the 20th century ejidos have been managed and controlled by the government.

After the Mexican Revolution, ejidos were created by the Mexican state to grant lands to peasant communities as a means to stem social unrest. As Mexico prepared to enter the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1991, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari declared the end of awarding ejidos and allowed existing ejidos to be rented or sold, ending land reform in Mexico.^[4]

In central Mexico following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire (1519-1521), indigenous communities remained largely intact, including their system of land tenure. The Spanish crown guaranteed that indigenous communities had land under its control, the fundo legal [es]. It also established the General Indian Court so that individual natives and indigenous communities could defend their rights against Spanish encroachment.^[5] Spaniards applied their own terminology to indigenous community lands, and early in the colonial era began calling them ejidos.^[6]

Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821, following the Mexican War of Independence. The new sovereign nation abolished crown protections of natives and indigenous communities, making them equal before the law rather than vassals of the Spanish crown. The disappearance of the General Indian Court was one effect of independence. With political instability and economic stagnation following independence, indigenous communities largely maintained their land holdings, since large landed estates were not expanding to increase production.

For nineteenth-century Mexican liberals, the continuing separateness of natives and indigenous villages from the Mexican nation was deemed "The Indian Problem," and the breakup of communal landholding was identified as the key to integrating Indians into the Mexican nation. When the Liberals came to power in 1855, they embarked on a major reform that included the expropriation and sale of corporate lands, that is, those held by indigenous communities and by the Roman Catholic Church. The Liberal Reform first put in place the Lerdo Law, calling for the end of corporate landholding, and then incorporated that law into the Constitution of 1857. Ejidos were thus legally abolished, although many continued to survive.^[7] Mexico was plunged into civil unrest, civil war, and a foreign invasion by the French. Land reform did not begin to take effect until the expulsion of the French in 1867 and the restoration of the Mexican republic under Liberal control. Under liberal general Porfirio Díaz, who seized power through a coup in 1876, policies aimed at promoting political stability and economic prosperity with the motto "order and progress" led to the expansion of large haciendas, forcing many villages to lose their lands and leaving the peasantry landless.

Many peasants participated in the Mexican Revolution, with the expectation that their village lands could be restored. In particular, many peasants in the state of Morelos under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata waged war against the presidency of Francisco I. Madero, a wealthy landowner whose reformist political movement sought to oust the regime of Porfirio Díaz; Victoriano Huerta, the leader of a reactionary coup that ousted and assassinated Madero; and Venustiano Carranza, a wealthy landowner who led the Constitutionalist faction, which defeated all others. In 1917, a new Constitution was drafted, which included empowerment of the government to expropriate privately held resources. Many peasants expected Article 27 of the Constitution to bring about the breakup of large haciendas and to return land to peasant communities. Carranza was entirely resistant to the expropriation of haciendas, and in fact returned many to their owners that had been seized by revolutionaries.

Distribution of large amounts of land did not begin until Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934. The ejido system was introduced as an important component of the land reform in Mexico. Under Cárdenas, land reform was "sweeping, rapid, and, in some respects, structurally innovative... he promoted the collective ejido (hitherto a rare institution) in order to justify the expropriation of large commercial estates."^[8]

The typical procedure for the establishment of an ejido involved the following steps:

1. landless farmers who leased lands from wealthy landlords would petition the federal government for the creation of an ejido in their general area;
2. the federal government would consult with the landlord;
3. the land would be expropriated from the landlords if the government approved the ejido; and
4. an ejido would be established and the original petitioners would be designated as ejidatarios with certain cultivation/use rights.

Ejidatarios do not own the land but are allowed to use their allotted parcels indefinitely as long as they do not fail to use the land for more than two years. They can pass their rights on to their children.

Opponents of the ejido system pointed to widespread corruption within the *Banco Nacional de Crédito Rural* (Banrural)—the primary institution responsible for providing loans to *ejidatarios*—illegal sales and transfers of ejido lands, ecological degradation, and low productivity as evidence of the system's failure.^[9] Proponents countered these arguments by pointing out that every administration, since that of Cárdenas had been either indifferent or openly hostile to ejidos, that the land assigned to ejidos was often of lower quality and inherently less productive than privately held land. Also, the majority of agricultural research and support was biased towards large-scale commercial enterprises. The politicians complaining about Banrural were often the same people responsible for the corruption, and regardless of productivity metrics, subsistence production provided a vital survival strategy for many peasants.^[10]

Studies of common resource management within ejidos have identified significant governance challenges. Research indicates that only about 25% of all ejidos with common pastures had established limits on the number of livestock that could graze on commons, suggesting widespread potential for overgrazing problems. This lack of management rules corresponds to documented high levels of weed problems and indications of recent erosion on common pasture land. Approximately half of all ejidos showed little evidence of cooperation in resource management, particularly those with sizable common property resources.^[10]

Environmental consequences of weak ejido governance include unsustainable resource use. When individuals squat on common pool land with even a small probability of eviction, they are "more likely to reduce their investments in long-lived assets such as forests and soil conservation practice, in favor of less sustainable activities which yield higher returns in the short run".^[10] This insecurity in land tenure contributes to resource depletion, soil fertility loss, and erosion. However, not all environmental outcomes have been negative. "Titling has served in some instances to promote secure property rights of communities and ejidos over their common lands and forests by, among other things, clearly defining boundaries and rights over the common land. In some cases this has reduced contraband timber cutting and promoted cooperation in the formation of associations with private firms".^[10]

Following the 1992 constitutional reforms allowing privatization of ejido lands, reports emerged of an "agrarian mafia" exploiting legal vulnerabilities to appropriate communal lands, particularly in regions like the Yucatán Peninsula.^[11] These operations often involved document forgery facilitated by corrupt notaries, with courts documenting cases where business interests illegally obtained deeds to substantial ejido holdings. According to researchers, "The privatization of these ejido lands for use in agroindustrial, tourism and energy projects has been orchestrated by an agrarian mafia with the financial means to bypass legal restrictions such as the sub-division of ejido lands with extensive vegetation".^[11] Not all privatization of ejido lands resulted from corruption, however. "Land sales by ejidos has become a lucrative business since the 1990s legal reforms".^[11]

The economic reforms of 1992 that allowed privatization and sale of ejidal land have been widely criticized for their outcomes. Studies indicate that these changes "have largely failed to improve ejidal productivity, and have been implicated as significant contributing factors to worsening rural poverty, forced migration, and the conversion of Mexico, where the cultivation of maize originated, into a net importer of maize and food in general". Economic comparisons have consistently shown a "low level of productive assets in the ejido sector in comparison to private producers".^[12] Researchers have noted that in some cases, successful ejido management would require either subdivision of common land or its sale as a whole unit, depending on efficiency factors such as economies of scale. The argument is that "an environmentally superior outcome would result if the ejido were permitted to either subdivide the common land or sell all the common land to a private party or the government".^[10]

The ejido system shaped Mexico's rural social structures in significant ways. The system was predominantly patriarchal, with "the majority of peasants were part of the ejido system with a male figure being the head of the household". Limited economic opportunities on ejido lands created "a push for the male figures to migrate to the United States in order to support their households and land", disrupting family and community cohesion. This outmigration pattern had mixed gender impacts. While it disrupted families, it also inadvertently created space for "women increased participation in household decision-making in the absence of male figures". US job opportunities for Mexican migrants would include agricultural sectors which contributed to further development of the ejido land and growing agricultural technology.^[9]

As part of a larger program of neoliberal economic restructuring that had already been weakening support for ejidal and other forms of small-scale agriculture and negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1992 pushed legislation through Congress that modified article 27 of the Mexican Constitution to permit the privatization and the sale of ejidal land.^[13] This was a direct cause of the Chiapas conflict.

The changes to the ejidal system have largely failed to improve ejidal productivity, and have been implicated as significant contributing factors to worsening rural poverty, forced migration, and the conversion of Mexico, where the cultivation of maize originated, into a net importer of maize and food in general.^[14]

The majority of peasants were part of the ejido system with a male figure being the head of the household. On ejido land job opportunities were limited creating a push for the male figures to migrate to the United States in order to support their households and land. US job opportunities for Mexican migrants would include agricultural sectors which contributed to further development of the ejido land and growing agricultural technology.^[15] Those who lived on ejido land but did not own the land were more inclined to leave the rural land as well. After these male figures would leave the household the families left behind would consist of the wife and her husband's family, which allowed women increased participation in household decision-making in the absence of male figures.^[16]

• Appendini, Kirsten. “Ejido” in The Encyclopedia of Mexico. Chicago: Fitzroy and Dearborn 1997.
• Finkler, K. (1980). "Agrarian Reform and Economic Development: When is a Landlord a Client and Sharecropper his Patron?". In Barlett, P. F. (ed.). Agricultural Decision Making. Anthropological Contributions to Rural Development. pp. 265-288.
• Markiewicz, Dana. The Mexican Revolution and the Limits of Agrarian Reform, 1915-1946. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers 1993.
• McBride, George M. The Land Systems of Mexico. 1923, reprinted 1971
• Perramond, Eric P. "The rise, fall, and reconfiguration of the Mexican ejido." Geographical Review 98.3 (2008): 356–371.
• Simpson, Eyler N., The Ejido: Mexico's Way Out. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1937.
• Yetman, David. "Ejidos, land sales, and free trade in northwest Mexico: Will globalization affect the commons?." American Studies 41.2/3 (2000): 211–234.

• Rural Development Institute: Ejidos and Communidades in Oaxaca, Mexico (pdf) Archived 2013-04-12 at the Wayback Machine
• Centro de Investigacion y Documentacion de la Casa and Sociedad Hipotecaria: Current Housing Situation in Mexico 2005 (pdf)
• David W. Connell at adip.info: CAN I BUY "EJIDO" LAND? Archived 2008-08-08 at the Wayback Machine