Large Estate

We explain what a latifundio is, its characteristics, why it is fought and what a minifundio is. Furthermore, the latifundium in Mexico.

large estate
Large lands in few hands leave little room for work for the less favored classes.

What is a latifundia?

A large estate It is a significant tract of land belonging to a single owner or a few associated owners generally idle or not very productive from an agricultural point of view. The minimum areas of land necessary to be able to speak of latifundia may vary according to each country.

This term today has a negative connotation, associated with the unequal distribution of land, and comes from Roman antiquity, in which they spoke of latifundium for extensive agricultural holdings, usually in the hands of wealthy local landowners. This word came from the union of latus (“broad” or “extensive”) and fundus (“background”, “root” or “base”).

Latifundismo, that is, the tendency to latifundia, emerged since ancient times as a consequence of military conquest or colonial expansion, since newly acquired lands were often distributed among military leaders as a reward for their performance in war.

A perfect example of this was the distribution of American lands after the Spanish conquest and colonization, in the 16th to 18th centuries. These lands became part of the heritage of the local aristocracy, worked by African slave hands and administered under a feudal regime.

With the passage of time and American independence, the descendants of those first landowners became the large landholders of the Spanish American republics, that is, their landowners.

The large estates have been fought through different strategies by the States, especially during progressive governments, since It is considered a source of inequality and impoverishment: large tracts of useless land in the hands of rich and powerful families, for example, leave little room for work for the historically less favored classes. One of these strategies is the so-called agrarian reform.

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Characteristics of the large estates

The latifundia are characterized by the following:

  • are large areas of land that are private property of a single owner or a small group of owners. A few hundred hectares in Europe are enough to talk about latifundia, while in America higher figures are used.
  • tend to be inefficient agricultural exploitation units or even unproductive, that is, they exploit the land far below its capacity.
  • usually have low levels of capitalization and performance, low levels of technology and precarious labor, all of which means that they contribute to low standards of rural living.
  • are characteristic of plains and valleys and less common in mountainous topography, due to the natural restrictions that the relief brings with it.

Latifundia and smallholdings

The latifundio and the minifundio are to a certain extent contrary concepts. Latifundio involves large tracts of idle land in private hands, on the other hand The smallholding involves modest or small plots, in private hands and equally unproductive, in this case due to the limitations of its size or the quality of its land.

The smallholdings allow their growers a subsistence agricultural economy, but are unprofitable for large-scale agricultural development. Like the large estates, they present low capital investment, little technological development and are characteristic of underdeveloped and traditional economies.

However, smallholdings should not be confused with small agricultural properties. It is common for the minifundio to occur when dividing a large estate into small parts, destined for rent by farmers who, in turn, will have to face the problems of low economic profitability, and since they are not owners, they will be prevented from associating with other small producers. to improve your situation.

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Latifundia in Mexico

latifundio mexico carranza
Carranza concretized the Agrarian Reform, the objective of the Mexican Revolution.

Just as in many Latin American nations, The latifundio is a rural problem that Mexico inherited from its colonial history at the hands of Spain. The rural populations, who carried out all the agricultural work for internal consumption and export to other nations, lived in very poor conditions, while the State was controlled by the wealthy classes, often associated with the military establishment.

For this reason, The fight against large estates was found in practically all Mexican revolutionary social movements of the 19th and even 20th centuries, and played an important role within the aspirations of the Mexican Revolution: the Agrarian Reform. All the revolutionary factions had to do with it, in one way or another.

However, recently In 1915 the Agrarian Law was enacted thanks to Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920), favoring small property and granting land ownership to many of its workers. To do this, it was necessary to seize estates and large estates, and create state organizations that would deal with agrarian issues, such as the National Agrarian Commission (CNA) or private executive committees.

Among the changes that this legislation brought was the ejido system, a community system of distributing arable land among peasants, part of which survived until the National Constitution of 1917.

Continue with: Agronomy

References

  • “Latifundio” in Wikipedia.
  • “Latifundio” in Agrarian Bulletin.
  • “The estates and the latifundium” in Encyclopedia Juridica.eu.
  • “Latifundio” in Legal Encyclopedia.
  • “Latifundium (estate)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.