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governance are based on organized forms of land control such as in the case of
forests (forests governance within local communities) or social movements against
multinational exploitation and land control and/or institutional re-scalings based on
huge development projects (such as public or private infrastructures). However,
state strategies to govern environmental resources and reorder land spaces at local
levels are commonly embedded within practices of both farmers and state actors.
The interplay between the two often produces outputs where the re-shaping of the
environment is constitutive of transformation processes at local level. (Barnes 2014)
Actual places, peoples, and practices interact to make up the new landscape and new
tenure regimes. In this chapter, we will focus on land policy and regime as proxy for
institutional arrangements of environmental government. We will analyze communal lands in Mexico as a case study.
The Case of Communal Lands in Mexico
Land tenure and tenure regimes in Mexico date back to Spanish conquest in the
fifteenth century and their evolution can be analyzed in the context of changing
power relations and accumulation regimes over the Mexican economic and political
history. From the economy of the colonial power to the hacienda system of late
nineteenth century, several patterns of land tenure emerged in the country. During
the second half of the nineteenth century, under an increasingly agro-export oriented economy, a liberal legislation of tenure has dominated the use of land in
Mexico and by the early twentieth century, during the Mexican Revolution, a process of substantial redistribution of land was put in place (Assies 2008). In contrast
to most other Latin American countries, the agrarian sector was assigned a privileged role in this new model and received extensive government support. Land
redistribution peaked under the Cárdenas government (1940s), which consolidated
the ejido as a form of tenure and experimented with collective ejidos.
The Mexican economic crisis of the 1980 and 1990s brought a new wave of liberal and neoliberal reforms that affected land tenure. The opening up of the economy, the NAFTA agreement and aggressive trade policies, reshaped the former land
tenure system by opening the way to privatization of lands in the country. Under the
Salinas government (88–94), many fundamental legal restrictions on ejidos were
lifted. The legal reforms allowed to empower the owners of ejidos to change their
tenure regime to private property (dominio pleno). The Ejidos vary considerably
across the different regions of Mexico (Haenn 2006) and it is difficult to generalize
given this heterogeneity.
Land units in Mexico are commonly known as ejidos. The ejidal lands are
defined by the Agrarian law into: (a) Lands for human settlement; they integrate the
area for the development of community life of the ejido. They are made up of
the land in urban zones and where legal estates both private and public are located;
E. Nickl et al.
governance are based on organized forms of land control such as in the case of
forests (forests governance within local communities) or social movements against
multinational exploitation and land control and/or institutional re-scalings based on
huge development projects (such as public or private infrastructures). However,
state strategies to govern environmental resources and reorder land spaces at local
levels are commonly embedded within practices of both farmers and state actors.
The interplay between the two often produces outputs where the re-shaping of the
environment is constitutive of transformation processes at local level. (Barnes 2014)
Actual places, peoples, and practices interact to make up the new landscape and new
tenure regimes. In this chapter, we will focus on land policy and regime as proxy for
institutional arrangements of environmental government. We will analyze communal lands in Mexico as a case study.
The Case of Communal Lands in Mexico
Land tenure and tenure regimes in Mexico date back to Spanish conquest in the
fifteenth century and their evolution can be analyzed in the context of changing
power relations and accumulation regimes over the Mexican economic and political
history. From the economy of the colonial power to the hacienda system of late
nineteenth century, several patterns of land tenure emerged in the country. During
the second half of the nineteenth century, under an increasingly agro-export oriented economy, a liberal legislation of tenure has dominated the use of land in
Mexico and by the early twentieth century, during the Mexican Revolution, a process of substantial redistribution of land was put in place (Assies 2008). In contrast
to most other Latin American countries, the agrarian sector was assigned a privileged role in this new model and received extensive government support. Land
redistribution peaked under the Cárdenas government (1940s), which consolidated
the ejido as a form of tenure and experimented with collective ejidos.
The Mexican economic crisis of the 1980 and 1990s brought a new wave of liberal and neoliberal reforms that affected land tenure. The opening up of the economy, the NAFTA agreement and aggressive trade policies, reshaped the former land
tenure system by opening the way to privatization of lands in the country. Under the
Salinas government (88–94), many fundamental legal restrictions on ejidos were
lifted. The legal reforms allowed to empower the owners of ejidos to change their
tenure regime to private property (dominio pleno). The Ejidos vary considerably
across the different regions of Mexico (Haenn 2006) and it is difficult to generalize
given this heterogeneity.
Land units in Mexico are commonly known as ejidos. The ejidal lands are
defined by the Agrarian law into: (a) Lands for human settlement; they integrate the
area for the development of community life of the ejido. They are made up of
the land in urban zones and where legal estates both private and public are located;
E. Nickl et al.