Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas

Agrarian Reform and RevolutionaryJustice in Soconusco, Chiapas : Campesinosand the Mexican State, 1934–1940*

CATHERINE NOLAN-FERRELL

Abstract. During the mid- to late 1930s, rural activism surged in the coffee-growingregion of southern Chiapas and north-western Guatemala. This article examines thecauses and impacts of sustained campesino protests at the grassroots level on theMexican side of the border. The porous border between the two nations hinderedthe development of centralised power networks that prevailed in other parts ofChiapas. Campesinos and reformist federal government officials such as teachersand agrarian engineers built alliances that challenged the power of the coffeegrowers. This article explores the process of negotiation that occurred amongcampesinos, federal bureaucrats, regional authorities and elite coffee planters in orderboth to implement and to challenge agrarian reform.

Keywords : Mexican Revolution, agrarian reform, labour, state, campesinos, Chiapas,Cardenas

Introduction

In April 1939, agricultural labourers on the coffee plantation El Retiro, in

Soconusco, Chiapas, petitioned President Lazaro Cardenas for assistance in

their land reform struggle. Lazaro Avila, president of the Executive Agrarian

Committee, appealed to Cardenas as the man ‘who has erased our slavery

and saved our right to repossess the land’. Workers claimed that the pre-

sident’s support of land reform would allow peasants to ‘breathe air full of

liberty ’, and would prove the government’s commitment to rural workers.

Scarcely 15months later, however, when AgrarianDepartment officials finally

distributed land to these peasants, El Retiro workers rejected the grant

because ‘ it did not satisfy [the community’s] needs nor would it permit

Catherine Nolan-Ferrell is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas atSan Antonio. Email : [email protected].

* I would like to thank Stephen Lewis, Jan Rus, my colleagues at UTSA and the anonymousreviewers at JLAS for their helpful comments and criticism on this article. Research forthis project was carried out with the support of funding from the Fulbright IIE–GarcıaRobles Research Grant, the Transylvania University Faculty Research Award, and theAHA’s Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere.

J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 42, 551–585 f Cambridge University Press 2010 551doi:10.1017/S0022216X1000091X

subsequent growth’. The Agrarian Committee complained that the land was

‘not what we had requested’ ; moreover, it was ‘not what the government

initially promised’. Villagers objected to the agrarian engineer’s decision to

grant a portion of the land to a neighbouring village. After subsequent

negotiations, the community received 716 hectares of the 898 hectares it had

been promised.1

Such questioning of government-sponsored agrarian reform programmes

became widespread as rural Mexico experienced a period of campesino acti-

vism during the 1930s. Community members from El Retiro exemplify how

active participation in rural organising changed campesino expectations of

the emerging Mexican state. Why did campesinos participate in sustained

campaigns demanding concessions from the state during the Cardenas pre-

sidency? This article examines how campesinos negotiated with the ex-

panding federal bureaucracies, regional authorities and elite coffee planters

in order to implement and challenge agrarian reform. It is argued that

campesinos fought for, accepted and modified agrarian reform policies, and

in the process practised citizenship as members of the Mexican nation.

The confrontation on the El Retiro plantation brings into question the

often repeated comment that ‘ the Revolution never reached Chiapas ’.2

Historians writing in the 1980s and early 1990s provide foundational

knowledge for the socio-economic and political trajectory of Chiapanecan

history. These scholars emphasise the top-down nature of government

programmes and the elites’ ability to prevent substantive reform in Chiapas

during the Mexican Revolution. Antonio Garcıa de Leon carefully outlines

the complex socio-economic and political background of Chiapas, detailing a

history of racism, paternalism and social inequality that the revolution failed

to alter. Thomas Benjamin’s important study of Chiapanecan political history

focuses on relationships between landed elites and the government, yet his

emphasis on mapping formal political landscapes largely obscures peasant

activism. Daniela Spenser’s thorough research highlights agrarian struggles in

1 Lazaro Avila to President Cardenas, Tuxtla Gutierrez, 7 April 1939; Lazaro Avila toPresident Cardenas, 9 July 1940 ; Ing. Crotte to Jefe del Departamento Agrario, Finca ElRetiro, 29 Oct. 1940 ; ‘Solicitud de Tierras Ejidales ’, Finca El Retiro, 18 Feb. 1938. All thesedocuments are in the Archivo Historico de la Secretarıa del Estado de Desarrollo Agrario(henceforth cited as SEDA), exp. El Retiro, 1099. The ejidatarios officially receivedgovernment-promised land on 29 October 1940. Within three years community membershad petitioned for expansion of the ejido because poorly marked boundaries had causedconflicts with the neighbouring communities : Felix Gonzalez to president of ComisionAgraria Mixta (the state-level agrarian agency in Chiapas, hereafter cited as CAM), Finca ElRetiro, 16 Dec. 1943, SEDA, exp. El Retiro, 1099.

2 At the time of this research in Chiapas in 1997–8, 2001 and 2004, several people remarkedthat the Zapatista Rebellion of 1994 occurred because the Mexican Revolution never reallytook place in Chiapas. Such comments have appeared in the international press : see, forexample, Business Week, 17 Jan. 1994 ; El Mundo, 25 Feb. 2001.

552 Catherine Nolan-Ferrell

Soconusco. She argues that campesinos gained temporary reforms in the

1930s, but these improvements evaporated during the 1940s.3

Recent trends in Chiapanecan historiography build upon the works of

Alan Knight, Florencia Mallon and Gil Joseph. These historians, often re-

ferred to as post-revisionists and as being interested primarily in state

formation and the role of subalterns, argue that campesinos, workers, elites,

and local and national officials negotiated the meanings and practices of

the emerging Mexican state.4 Alan Knight’s seminal essay, ‘Cardenismo:

Juggernaut or Jalopy? ’, challenges ideas of a post-revolutionary leviathan

state. Knight argues that a relatively weak Cardenas administration bargained

with elites and the lower classes in order to implement government policies.

Gil Joseph and Daniel Nugent’s Everyday Forms of State Formation presents

multiple essays highlighting ways in which elites, government authorities and

the lower classes shaped government programmes. These authors argue that

the negotiation process itself structured the Mexican state. Florencia

Mallon’s work connects state formation with explorations of how the lower

classes experienced and practised citizenship.5 Mallon shows that campesi-

nos in Puebla used rhetorics of citizenship to make claims upon the emerg-

ing nineteenth-century Mexican nation.

Later studies of revolutionary Chiapas incorporate theoretical frameworks

of state formation. Building on Mary Kay Vaughan’s analysis of state for-

mation through education, Stephen Lewis’ Ambivalent Revolution examines

how campesinos and rural schoolteachers had mixed success in forming

revolutionary schools. His meticulous research incorporates debates within

indigenous communities about the benefits and costs of cooperating with

3 Thomas Benjamin, A Rich Land, a Poor People : Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas(Albuquerque NM, 1989) ; Antonio Garcıa de Leon, Resistencia y utopıa : memorial de agravios ycronica de revueltas y profecıas acaecidas en la provincia de Chiapas durante los ultimos quinientos anos desu historia, vols. 1 and 2 (Mexico City, 1985) ; Daniela Spenser, ‘Economıa y movimientolaboral en las fincas cafetaleras de Soconusco’ and ‘La reforma agraria en Soconusco y lacontraofensiva de finqueros cafetaleros ’, in Daniela Spenser et al. (eds.), Los empresariosalemanes, el Tercer Reich y la oposicion de derecha a Cardenas, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1988).

4 For the revisionist perspective that developed in the 1970s, see Barry Carr, ‘RecentRegional Studies of the Mexican Revolution ’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 15, no. 1(1980), pp. 3–14; and David C. Bailey, ‘Revisionism and the Recent Historiography of theMexican Revolution’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 58, no. 1 (1978), pp. 62–79.For an articulation of post-revisionism, see Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, ‘PopularCulture and State Formation ’, in Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms ofState Formation : Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham NC, 1994),pp. 3–23; and Florencia Mallon, ‘Time on the Wheel : Cycles of Revisionism and the ‘‘NewCultural History ’’ ’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 79, no. 2 (1999), pp. 331–51.

5 Alan Knight, ‘Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy? ’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 21,no. 1 (1994), pp. 73–107 ; Joseph and Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation ;Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation : The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley CA,1995).

Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas 553

revolutionary teachers.6 Similarly, Jan Rus’ article on indigenous villagers

from the central highlands shows how officials and pro-government cam-

pesinos used emerging institutions to create communities loyal to the post-

revolutionary state.7 The Soconusco region, located in the south-western

corner of Chiapas along the Guatemalan frontier, has also become a focus of

study for historians, in part due to its productive coffee-growing zone.

Maria Eugenia Reyes Ramos details how Cardenista reforms created new

social actors in Soconusco who initiated long-term rural reforms. Work by

these scholars challenges assertions of limited revolutionary change in

Chiapas.8 The Soconusco case study fits squarely into post-revisionist dis-

cussions of peasant activism in Sonora, Michoacan, Puebla and the Yucatan.9

From 1936 to 1940 Soconusco campesinos practiced similar bargaining

tactics common in other areas of rural Mexico, significantly influencing

revolutionary practices. As Reyes Ramos’ work suggests, these changes

continued through much of the 1940s.

Local archival research suggests that in Soconusco, emphasis on top-down

dissemination of reform programmes has underestimated the role of regional

rural activism. Steady commerce and migration between Guatemala and

Mexico impeded the growth of strong local and regional political networks

(camarillas). Although camarillas held power within labour organisations in

the main city of Tapachula, rural workers and peasants did not participate in

these networks. Instead, German planters held significant economic power

on both sides of the border, while regional Mexican elites exercised political

power. Workers migrated to fincas (coffee plantations) for both seasonal and

permanent labour opportunities. In Soconusco the lack of strong, centralised

power offers a unique opportunity to see how ordinary peasants influenced

agrarian policies and practices.

6 Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution : Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico,1930–1940 (Tucson AZ, 1997) ; Stephen Lewis, The Ambivalent Revolution : Forging State andNation in Chiapas, 1910–1945 (Albuquerque NM, 2005).

7 Jan Rus, ‘The ‘‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional ’’ : The Subversion of NativeGovernment in Highland Chiapas ’, in Joseph and Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of StateFormation, pp. 265–300.

8 Marıa Eugenia Reyes Ramos, El reparto de tierras y la polıtica agraria en Chiapas, 1914–1988(Mexico City, 1992) and Conflicto agrario en Chiapas, 1934–1964 (Tuxtla Gutıerrez, 2002) ; seealso Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Intimate Enemies : Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas(Durham NC, 2007).

9 Adrian Bantjes, As if Jesus Walked on Earth : Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution(Wilmington DE, 1998) ; Marjorie Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire : Lazaro Cardenas,Michoacan Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley CA, 1996) ;Christopher Boyer, ‘Old Loves, New Loyalties : Agrarismo in Michoacan, 1920–1928 ’,Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 78, no. 3 (1998), pp. 419–55; Ben Fallaw, CardenasCompromised : The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatan (Durham NC, 2001).


Campesinos, planters and political officials created extensive paper trails

through correspondence, reports, petitions and court cases found in

national, state and local archives. State agrarian archives in Tuxtla Gutierrez,

Chiapas, contain ejido files (including campesinos’ letters), meeting notes and

petitions to landlords and officials. Tapachula’s municipal archive includes

court cases between campesinos and landowners over land distribution,

mass layoffs of unionised workers and salary disputes. Interviews with for-

mer leaders of campesino organisations, community members and planters

provide additional perspectives.10 No source fully represents what all people

thought or did ; rather, these sources record a public performance of his-

torical memory. Although each source favours a particular type of infor-

mation, when they are taken together, patterns emerge which show that

campesinos experienced some success with sustained rural activism.

The case of campesino activism in Soconusco contributes to state-

formation studies by examining the role of federal bureaucracy and the

mixed results of expanding national power. Although many regional studies

have explored negotiation processes between the rural poor and government

officials, the national government initially had little presence in southern

Chiapas.11 In order to implement revolutionary reforms, the federal govern-

ment first needed to develop its bureaucratic infrastructure.12 During Lazaro

Cardenas’ presidency (1934–40), increasingly powerful bureaucratic agencies

enacted social, political and economic reforms. As agrarian bureaucracy

grew, it provided opportunities for social reforms that local and regional

officials often resisted. The growth of federal bureaucracy flourished in

Soconusco because of weaknesses in traditional power networks. Divisions

among local economic and political elites facilitated stronger ties between

federal officials and campesinos.

National and regional reform agencies grew in response to intense press-

ure from campesinos. Rural labour unions, agrarian committees and federally

run public schools all became increasingly common, and powerful, during

these years. Campesinos took advantage of changing federal attitudes, using

bureaucratic institutions to challenge local officials and landlords. Partly in

10 Documents in Tapachula’s municipal archive are loosely organised in boxes, sometimes bydate, sometimes by document type. Many documents have suffered damage by water,mould or insects. The archivists have been working diligently on organising and preservingthe material, and box or file information may have changed. I collected oral histories fromejidatarios and former ejidatarios over several months in 1997 and 1998. The three ejidoswhere this was done – Ahuacatlan, Santo Domingo and El Eden – all appeared frequentlyin the archival sources. I was extremely fortunate to meet archivists and teachers who knewpeople in these ejidos and who facilitated my initial contacts with the interviewees.

11 Benjamin, A Rich Land, a Poor People, chap. 4 ; Lewis, Ambivalent Revolution, chaps. 1 and 8.12 Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers : The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United

States (Cambridge MA, 1992), pp. 1–62.


reaction to petitions and complaints from the lower classes, Cardenas re-

moved the repressive governor of Chiapas in 1936, replacing him with one

who supported federal reform programmes.13 Although campesinos exper-

ienced mixed success, their activism resulted in the growth of the Agrarian

Department, ultimately causing significant regional land reform. Campesinos

also influenced the nascent state’s social programmes. Rural communities

pressured the Secretarıa de Educacion Publica (Ministry of Public Education,

SEP) to supply rural schoolteachers who suited villages’ needs. In some cases

the SEP assigned radicalised teachers to activist communities. In others,

campesinos ignored the SEP’s social reform messages, requesting teachers

who brought particular skills, such as sewing or agronomy.14 The com-

munities’ ability to influence how federal authorities enacted reform policies

illustrates that exercising power did not occur in an exclusively top-down

manner.

The study of agrarian reform in Soconusco shows how rural workers used

the rhetoric of citizenship and revolution to influence government policies.

The revolution opened dialogues between the lower classes and federal

authorities that defined the post-revolutionary Mexican state. Agricultural

workers and peasants from diverse ethnic and national backgrounds labelled

themselves as Mexicans and campesinos, which legitimated their bargaining

rights with the government and planters. Although actual agrarian reform

remained uneven, campesinos’ letters and petitions describe workers’ sup-

port for Cardenista reforms. Peasants anticipated that official reform pro-

grammes provided them with a possibility for economic improvement and

social respect. The widespread use of ‘ strategic identity ’ suggests that cam-

pesinos embraced the rhetoric of revolutionary justice, and that incorpor-

ation into the Mexican state had cultural meaning for the rural poor.

By restricting revolutionary reforms to peasants who clearly identified them-

selves as supporters of the Mexican Revolution, officials of the Cardenas

administration disciplined campesinos into accepting state-defined values

and behaviours, thereby establishing Mexican national identity. Even if

campesinos did not ‘become’ Mexicans, some permanent finca workers and

migrant labourers claimed Mexican nationality to gain government favours.

Through the process of agrarian reform, multiple groups (peasants, planters

and the government) created a shared language of revolution that acknowl-

edged peasant concerns. Such revolutionary language compelled politicians

and planters to address campesino claims because during the Cardenista era,

13 Adulfo Granados V. to President Cardenas, Mexico City, 11 Dec. 1934, Archivo Generalde la Nacion, Fondo Presidentes, Lazaro Cardenas (henceforth cited as AGN-LC),542.1/20. 14 Lewis, Ambivalent Revolution, chap. 6.


government and planters had to maintain their legitimacy with the lower

classes.

The Coffee Economy and Society in Soconusco, 1870s–1930s

The Soconusco region starts roughly halfway down Chiapas’ Pacific coast,

ending at the Guatemalan border. The Sierra Madre spans the region and the

climate varies from hot, humid coastal lowlands to increasingly temperate

agricultural zones between 200 and 1,500 metres above sea level. Mexican

and European planters took advantage of this excellent environment

and began cultivating coffee on unexploited land in the 1870s. Officials

signed a treaty demarcating the Guatemalan/Mexican border in 1882. The

stable border encouraged German planters from Guatemala to migrate to

the Soconusco frontier in search of cheaper land. Between 1897 and 1910,

the number of private property holders grew from 1,236 to 2,040.

Approximately 42 per cent of these new landowners established haciendas

and grew coffee. Germans dominated the region economically because

of their extensive ties with European markets. German immigrants often

became naturalised Mexican citizens, but they retained close ties to German

planters and merchants in both Guatemala and Germany.15

Increasing numbers of coffeefincas drew indigenousworkers to Soconusco.

In 1892 indigenous people constituted 37 per cent of the total population of

20,928. By 1921 the population of Soconusco had more than trebled to

75,441. Census statistics did not record the ratio of indigenous to mestizos, but

based on planters’ need for labour, the percentage of indigenous people

probably increased.16 Finca workers performed multiple jobs, including

planting, weeding, harvesting, and drying and sorting coffee. Labourers,

often self-described as ‘campesinos ’, also constructed and maintained finca

infrastructure and machinery. In the documents consulted for this study, the

term ‘campesino’ described disparate groups of impoverished people, in-

cluding permanent workers on the coffee plantations, migrant (temporary)

workers from indigenous regions of Guatemala and the Chiapas highlands,

and sharecroppers and renters who farmed small plots owned by large

planters.

Flows of immigrant settlers and migrant labourers depended upon the

needs of finqueros and variations in labour markets. Planters recruited

15 Regina Wagner, Los alemanes en Guatemala, 1820–1944 (Guatemala City, 1996), pp. 145–6;Sarah Washbrook, ‘Enganche and Exports in Chiapas, Mexico : A Comparison ofPlantation Labour in the Districts of Soconusco and Palenque, 1876–1911 ’, Journal of LatinAmerican Studies, vol. 39, no. 4 (2007), pp. 811–12.

16 Departamento de la Estadıstica Nacional, Censo general de habitantes : 1921, vol. 1 (MexicoCity, 1926) ; Washbrook, ‘Enganche and Exports ’, p. 807.


labourers from southern Chiapas or north-western Guatemala during the

1880s and 1890s. Jan Rus described how San Cristobal elites and Soconusco

coffee growers competed for indigenous workers (Chamulans) from the

Chiapas highlands from 1892 until 1912. Although significant seasonal

migration by Chamulans continued throughout the post-revolutionary era

(1920–40), finqueros failed to control a sufficient amount of indigenous

workers for the harvest. Coffee growers diversified their labour supply by

recruiting from Mariscal (the region immediately north-east of Soconusco)

Map 1. Coffee-Producing Municipalities : Soconusco, Chiapas, Mexico.


and north-western Guatemala.17 By 1910, the major coffee-producing mu-

nicipalities (Cacahoatan, Tuzantan, Union Juarez) had more than 70 per cent

of their populations living on coffee fincas. Mam Indians who were dis-

possessed of their lands in Guatemala frequently migrated to Chiapas, where

they became labourers on new coffee plantations and learned Spanish.18

People relocated to the coffee fincas for diverse reasons. Some campesinos

fled repressive labour requirements in Guatemala, others became ostracised

from their villages for various reasons, and still others simply sought better

economic opportunities.19 On the fincas, the owners and government offi-

cials reinforced ethnic and labour divisions by encouraging separate living

spaces for permanent and migrant workers.

Permanent workers on the coffee fincas consisted of two groups : peones

acasillados, who lived on the finca, performed wage labour and received small

plots for subsistence agriculture, and mozos, who lived in poblados and colonias

agrıcolas, villages established on national lands bordering coffee plantations.

Mozos typically divided their time between farming (often as squatters on

unclaimed land) and working on the fincas. Permanent workers identified

themselves as labourers who lived and worked on particular fincas.

They organised unions by fincas, not by particular types of labour. For per-

manent workers, connections to ‘place ’ provided a common community

framework, even though their jobs, ethnicity and nationality varied. In con-

trast, indigenous migrant workers from the Chiapas highlands organised

separately with Mexican government support.20 Guatemalans technically

lacked rights to unionise, but Guatemalan immigrants often ‘passed’ as

Mexicans.

Planters estimated that labour demands tripled during the harvest, although

specific numbers of permanent workers and temporary workers cannot be

accurately determined. Planters repeatedly complained of labour shortages,

suggesting that the massive influx of workers could not keep up with rising

17 Jan Rus, ‘Coffee and the Recolonization of Highland Chiapas, Mexico, 1892–1912 ’, inWilliam Gervase Clarence-Smith and Steven Topik (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy inAfrica, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989 (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 259–68; German MartınezVelasco, Plantaciones, trabajo guatemalteco y polıtica migratoria en la frontera sur de Mexico (TuxtlaGutierrez, 1994), pp. 77–85.

18 Washbrook, ‘Enganche and Exports ’, p. 809 ; Moises T. de la Pena, Chiapas economico, vol. 1(Tuxtla Gutierrez, 1951), pp. 215, 287–90.

19 Rosalva Aıda Hernandez Castillo, Histories and Stories from Chiapas : Border Identities in SouthernMexico (Austin TX, 2001), chap. 1 ; ‘ Informe administrativo ’, San Marcos, Guatemala,3 April 1934, in Archivo Historico de Centroamerica, Archivo de la Secretarıa deGobernacion y Justicia (henceforth cited as AHCA-ASGJ), Expedientes : San Marcos,leg. 29567 ; ‘Delito de Vagancia ’, AHCA-Archivo General de Tribunales, San Marcos,Ramo Criminal, Juzgado de la 1a. Instancia, Indice Juicios, #168, ano 1934, leg. 7E, exp. 11.

20 Lewis, Ambivalent Revolution, p. 122.


demand.21 Tzeltal or Tzotzil men from the Chiapas highlands worked

the harvest, leaving families, livestock and milpas in their home villages.

Temporary workers occasionally brought their families, and even young

children picked coffee cherries. Migrant workers identified themselves by

village, family or ethnicity, and often had little desire to become permanent

finca workers.

Distinctions between mozos, peones acasillados and temporary workers

became more important after rural reforms began in the 1930s. Agrarian

reform laws stipulated that mozos in ‘poblados and agrarian colonies had the

right to solicit land in an area of 7 km from the village ’.22 Because both

permanent and temporary workers referred to themselves as campesinos,

this ambiguous labelling caused confusion for owners and bureaucrats. It also

provided opportunities for campesinos to claim themselves as legitimate

recipients of labour or land reform programmes.

Against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and political upheaval

between 1910 and 1934, finca life was characterised by stability. Planters

cultivated ties with revolutionaries and opposition forces, appeasing both

sides to protect their fincas. The relative isolation of Soconusco from the

central areas of Chiapas insulated the area from the worst revolutionary

skirmishes.23 Increasing demand for coffee contributed to the fincas’ stab-

ility. Although European markets declined following the First World War,

planters increasingly exported to the United States and continued profitable

production.24 State and local officials accepted planters’ requests for tax re-

ductions, secure transportation and limited labour inspections because the

government depended on coffee revenues for state funding. Finqueros relied

on political influence to gain economic concessions from the state govern-

ment, regardless of official political positions.25 Chiapanecan governors

rarely enforced revolutionary laws, and life on the fincas faced few substan-

tive changes.

Since the early stages of Soconusco’s coffee economy, local officials and

immigrant (and Mexican) growers had developed paternalistic social struc-

tures to bind campesinos to plantations. One observer described the patron as

21 Leo Waibel, La Sierra Madre de Chiapas (Mexico City, 1998 [originally published by SociedadMexicana de Geografıa y Estadıstica, 1946]), pp. 185–7; Karl Helbig, El Soconusco y su zonacafetalera en Chiapas (Tuxtla Gutierrez, 1964), p. 92.

22 Helbig, El Soconusco, p. 101 ; interview with Jacobo Galvez, Ejido El Eden, 5 Oct. 1997.Galvez described how acasillados and colonias agricolas differed.

23 Rebora, Memorias de un chiapaneco, pp. 100, 104.24 Brigida von Mentz, ‘Empresas mercantiles y fincas cafetaleras en la decada de 1910–1920:

las empresas alemanes en general ’, in Spenser et al. (eds.), Los empresarios alemanes, pp. 102–4.25 Friederike Baumann, ‘Terratenientes, campesinos y la expansion de la agricultura capita-

lista en Chiapas, 1896–1916 ’,Mesoamerica, vol. 4 (1983), p. 49 ; Daniela Spenser, ‘Soconuscoen la Revolucion ’, in Spenser et al. (eds.), Los empresarios alemanes, pp. 119–20.


‘ like a father of all, [who] cared for his people from all points of view. He

gave them food, he watched them, he cured them, he got drunk with them,

and he beat them. ’26 Paternalism reinforced race and class divisions by set-

ting ladino planters above indigenous workers. Day labourers and permanent

settlers who migrated to Soconusco from Guatemala and the Chiapas high-

lands seemingly tolerated exploitative labour conditions because finca work

sustained families and fostered local communities. For temporary workers,

harvesting coffee supplemented their income, allowing them to maintain

connections to their home villages. Jan Rus points out, however, that these

paternalistic ties did not negate the repressiveness of the enganche system.

Planters repeatedly complained about workers who fled the fincas. Rus offers

two possible interpretations : either that workers took advantage of multiple

wage advances from landowners, or that workers fled oppressive labour

conditions.27 Although the evidence is ambiguous about the cause of worker

flight, lack of sustained complaints by indigenous labourers suggests

that social ties sustained by paternalism ameliorated the oppressive labour

system.

From 1910 to 1924, the efforts of revolutionary governments to im-

plement labour reform and land redistribution failed on the Soconusco fin-

cas because planters controlled workers by combining paternalistic relations

with repression. Few radical revolutionaries existed because patriarchal

society did not provide fertile ground for revolutionary ideology.28 Economic

growth reinforced hierarchical society, and regional elites ensured that few

people challenged social continuity. An emergent socialist movement briefly

gained strength in the late 1920s, but collapsed due to the assassination of its

leader, Carlos Vidal, and other labour organisers. Ultimately the socialists

failed to gain workers’ support for a sustained movement of class resistance.

Participants in radical movements met with swift and brutal repression.29

Although the Mexican Revolution brought rural reform to many parts of

Mexico prior to the 1930s, the revolution in southern Chiapas left social,

economic and political systems virtually intact.

Repression of Early Labour Movements, 1932–6

In 1932 Victorico Grajales, a finquero from central Chiapas (and former

counter-revolutionary activist), became governor. His state-level agrarian

26 Waibel, La Sierra Madre de Chiapas, p. 157.27 Rus, ‘Coffee and the Recolonization of Highland Chiapas ’, pp. 283–4; Alan Knight,

‘Mexican Peonage : What Was It and Why Was It? ’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 18,no. 1 (1986), pp. 56–60. 28 Rebora, Memorias de un Chiapaneco, pp. 77–9.

29 Daniela Spenser, El Partido Socialista Chiapaneco : rescate y reconstruccion de su historia (MexicoCity, 1988).


reform programme upheld the 1921 Agrarian Law that labelled landholdings

measuring over 8,000 hectares as latifundia subject to expropriation. Grajales

added a provision that placed no limit on landownership for plantations

producing coffee, sugar, bananas or cattle. Landowners who had fallow land

legally divided their property among family members, protecting land-

holdings. The governor decreed that planters who lost property would re-

ceive generous compensation.30 Grajales thus protected Chiapanecan elites

from threats of revolutionary reform.

From 1932 to 1936, the state governor initiated a repressive campaign

against anyone who participated in popular organisations. Organised labour

became an ‘enemy’ to Grajales’ administration.31 Campesinos asserted that

they faced assault, unjust arrests and fines, forced labour, and even murder

for participating in labour organisations. Labour organisers charged that state

authorities worked with planters, blocking any efforts to resolve the violence.

Members of the Camara Regional del Trabajadores del Sureste detailed assassi-

nation attempts against agraristas (supporters of agrarian reform) ordered by a

planter, Juan Luttman. Grajales responded that the information was ‘ incor-

rect ’. Luttman was also accused of threatening campesinos on Finca

Islamapa. Again, Grajales denied that any abuses occurred.32 Grajales tar-

geted indigenous workers, particularly Mam communities in Soconusco and

Mariscal, as obstacles to progress. Government officials labelled people who

spoke Mam or wore ‘ traditional clothing’ as Guatemalans and threatened

them with deportation.33 Under such conditions, campesinos had few op-

tions to protect their interests.

Several planters utilised the hostile labour climate to harass ordinary

workers as well as labour organisers. Landlords routinely broke fences and

let their cattle graze in campesinos’ milpas, which threatened workers’ sub-

sistence.34 In early 1936 the administrator of Finca El Retiro denied food

30 Reyes Ramos, El reparto de tierras, pp. 54–5.31 Marıa Barragan to President Cardenas, 15 July 1935, AGN-LC, 437/120 ; Angel Franco to

President Cardenas, 16 Nov. 1935, Archivo General de la Nacion, Direccion General delGobierno (cited hereafter as AGN-DGG), caja 42, 2.384(5)5699; Adulfo Granados V. toPresident Cardenas, Mexico City, 11 Dec. 1934, AGN-LC, 542.1/20 ; ConfederacionGeneral de Trabajadores to President Cardenas, 16 Nov. 1935, forwarded by EstebanGarcıa de Alba to Governor Grajales, 30 Dec. 1935, AGN-LC, 542.1/20.

32 Camara Regional de Trabajadores del Sureste to Governor Grajales, June 1934, AGN-DGG, caja 19a, exp. 29 ; Liga de Comunidades Agrarias to Governor Grajales, April 1935,AGN-DGG, caja 107, 2.384.2.1(5) 2972. The Camara de Trabajadores de Chiapas wasformed in early 1934 as an independent labour organisation and had multiple regionaloffices : see Garcıa de Leon, Resistencia y utopıa, vol. 2, p. 195.

33 Hernandez Castillo, Histories and Stories from Chiapas, pp. 36–7; Reyes Ramos, El reparto detierras, pp. 47–55.

34 Partido Socialista Revolucionario Chiapaneco to Interim Governor, Feb. 1931, AGN-DGG, caja 6, 2.380(5)21.


rations to peones acasillados because they demanded the minimum wage.

The administrator also fired all workers who participated in the finca union

movement. When labourers protested, government officials backed the ad-

ministrator’s claim that he had fired unionised workers because of unfulfilled

work quotas.35 Later that year on Finca Santo Domingo, the planter arranged

the arrest of the union president, expelled another leader from the finca and

threatened to fire any worker who complained to authorities.36 Landlords

labelled troublesome workers as Guatemalan and deported them, or simply

ordered authorities to fine, arrest or even beat workers in order to intimidate

and prevent them from organising.37 From 1932 to 1936 workers faced the

united power of finqueros and state officials. Elites effectively limited union

capacity to improve the working and living conditions of peones acasillados,

curtailing the popularity of union membership.

The emergence of Lazaro Cardenas as a reformist president provided

organised labour in Chiapas with an opportunity to enlist the federal

government for assistance in fighting Grajales and the planters. During the

1934 presidential campaign Cardenas toured Soconusco to investigate un-

ionised workers’ complaints and promised to implement revolutionary

change. By 1936 Cardenas had successfully consolidated his power nationally

and began removing political opponents. The gubernatorial campaign in

Chiapas in 1936 gave the president the opportunity to move against Grajales,

who scorned Cardenas’ affiliation with the lower classes and openly defied

the federal government’s calls for land redistribution, calling the policy

‘ irresponsible ’. Grajales also opposed Cardenas’ choice for the next state

governor, Efraın Gutierrez.38 Throughout the election campaign Grajales

persecuted Gutierrez’s supporters and argued that his ties with agraristas

destabilised state politics. After Gutierrez won the election, Grajales refused

to relinquish power and Cardenas called in the national army to force the

governor from office.39 The ousting of Grajales and his allies created a

favourable environment for the emerging labour movement in Soconusco,

opening a dialogue between workers and the Cardenas government.

Agrarian Reform Bureaucracy and Campesinos

At the national level, the 1934 Agrarian Code built a federal agrarian

bureaucracy that provided campesinos with increased opportunities to

35 Carmen Carpio to President Cardenas, 24 Jan. 1936, AGN-LC, 432/403.36 Alejandro C. Vazquez to President Cardenas, 25 July 1936, AGN-DGG, caja 21A, 4.37 Angel Franco to President Cardenas, 16 Nov. 1935, AGN-DGG, caja 42, 2.384(5)5699.38 Garcıa de Leon, Resistencia y utopıa, vol. 2, pp. 197–202.39 Benjamin, A Rich Land, a Poor People, pp. 189, 193–4.


negotiate with the emerging national state ; the bureaucracy became a cor-

nerstone of the federal government’s link with the rural poor. The Agrarian

Department extended its power by coordinating reform programmes at

local, state and national levels in order to implement two main goals. First,

reformers in the Cardenas government built federal power by establishing

multiple state-run labour organisations and weakening the power of local

elites. Second, officials began modernising rural sectors by creating ‘pro-

gressive ’ peasants allied with the national government. The agrarian radicals

in the Cardenas government envisioned the ejido (community-owned land

either farmed collectively or parcelled out into individual plots) as the main

production unit in post-revolutionary Mexico. Campesinos would rely on the

Banco Nacional de Credito Ejidal (National Bank of Ejido Credit) for credit,

technical and marketing advice.40 By making campesinos dependent on the

federal government, the Cardenas administration strengthened its political

base and maintained its goals of modernising agriculture and increasing

production.

The Agrarian Code defined appropriate behaviour for both agrarian offi-

cials and rural workers in order to develop modern, highly productive agri-

culture for Mexico’s small producers. The Agrarian Department hired

agronomists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, architects and others with ‘field

experience ’ to improve rural life. Officials had diverse roles : to build cama-

raderie with campesinos, to teach innovative agrarian techniques, to resolve

local problems, and to process land petitions.41 Agrarian officials advocated

collective labour to ejidatarios as a method of producing higher crop yields, as

well as encouraging them to market their products. By drawing campesinos

away from simple subsistence agriculture, the government hoped to relieve

extreme rural poverty and turn campesinos into political allies of the

emerging Mexican state.42

Officially the new ejido leaders had to be literate and employed, and have

good conduct and reputation; all necessary governing skills.43 The Agrarian

Department expected ejido officers to learn ‘modern, technical ’ aspects of

agriculture to promote more effective land use.44 Ejido officers often became

key mediators between the federal government’s dictates and local com-

munities’ actions. They also handled conflicts within the ejido. Dissident

40 Reyes Ramos, El reparto de tierras, pp. 59–61, 68.41 Departamento Agrario, Memoria del Departamento Agrario, apendice estadıstico, 1935 (Mexico

City, 1935), pp. 14–19 ; Departamento Agrario, Memoria del Departamento Agrario, 1935–1936(Mexico City, 1936), pp. 9–14.

42 Departamento Agrario, Memoria, 1935–1936, pp. 9–14.43 ‘Codigo Agrario de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos ’, Diario Oficial, 29 Oct. 1940, Book 1,

Articles 1–5. 44 ‘Codigo Agrario ’, Book 1, Articles 36 and 39.


villagers from Ejido Ahuacatlan, for example, complained to agrarian

engineer Jose Manuel Fernandez about the ejido’s work officer. They ex-

plained that he had made ‘poor management [decisions] ’ which had caused

‘serious discontent and disoriented the masses of ejidatarios ’. The docu-

ments do not detail the work officer’s management decisions, but the cam-

pesinos implied that they had concerns about their government loan

payments.45 Ejido leaders had to maintain the confidence of both the auth-

orities and their fellow ejidatarios.

Agrarian Department bureaucrats held regulatory power over ejidatarios.

Members of ejido executive committees could be punished for a variety of

offences, including ‘causing, fomenting, or failing to prevent conflicts among

communal landholders ’ and ‘ invading lands or enticing or tolerating ’

communal land invasions. Community leaders could be penalised if children

did not attend schools. Individuals could lose their land rights if they did not

participate in collective work, if they allowed their plot to go fallow, if they

failed to pay their taxes, or if their activities were ‘detrimental to the com-

munity or to another ejido member ’.46 The code of conduct for ejidatarios

stressed governmental goals that limited peasant activism by preventing land

invasions or harassment of landlords, while channelling campesino com-

plaints for government mediation and resolution.

Ideally, local ejido leaders and agrarian bureaucrats would form an alliance

benefiting all aspects of campesino life in rural Mexico. Along with other

federal departments, the Agrarian Department sought holistic changes by

advancing education, recreational sports and cultural festivals.47 Various

regulations concerning campesino behaviour reflected officials’ desire to

teach ‘better ’ work and leisure habits. Implicitly, this emphasis on reforming

lifestyles and cultural practices highlights the paternalism permeating agrar-

ian legislation. The implementation of such changes often met with mixed

results, however. Officials established Ligas Feminiles (Women’s Leagues) to

teach women how to improve their families’ lifestyle. Government advisors

helped women organise consumer cooperatives and gave technical and

social support so that women could purchase grinding mills to make corn

flour.48 Ultimately, the success of the Women’s Leagues varied widely. In

Ejido Ahuacatlan, for example, women paid little attention to school-

teachers’ organising efforts, preferring informal meetings to discuss their

45 Sotero Luarca to Ing. Jose Manuel Fernandez, 12 July 1938, SEDA, exp. 1130.46 ‘Codigo Agrario ’, Book 7, Penalties, Article 322, Section II.47 Ibid., pp. 28, 41–2.48 Departamento Agrario, Memoria del Departamento Agrario, 1937 (Mexico City, 1937),

pp. 19–27.


problems.49 Other ejidos embraced more active Women’s Leagues, writing

letters on behalf of husbands and sons trying to obtain ejido lands.50 By

creating controlled economic and social conditions for campesinos, the

government sought to create successful ejidos.

The new law encouraged campesinos to contact federal representatives

directly when they faced problems with agrarian reform issues. Presidential

resolutions decreed land grants, water access and even village location.

Peasant communities, along with landowners, could appeal to Mexico’s

Supreme Court against these presidential resolutions, but court decisions

could not be overturned.51 The appeals process legally protected participants’

rights to negotiate assertively with regard to establishing land reform. The

impact of the bureaucracy increased contact between federal authorities and

campesinos. Ultimately, lengthy bargaining among the various actors illus-

trates the way in which multiple groups shaped rural reform. By participating

in the ‘dance of agrarian reform’, the rural poor practised a new form of

citizenship. Campesinos linked citizenship to their power to influence the

agrarian reform policies that most intimately affected their lives.

In Soconusco, the removal of Governor Grajales in 1936 enabled nascent

peasant organisations to work with Cardenistas for land reform. In March

1938, pro-reform governor Efraın Gutierrez linked the Liga de Comunidades

Agrarias y Sindicatos Campesinos del Estado de Chiapas (League of Agrarian

Communities and Peasant Unions of the State of Chiapas), which re-

presented Chiapanecan agricultural workers and peasants, to the powerful

Confederacion Nacional Campesina (National Peasant Confederation, CNC), the

national federation advocating land reform for rural workers. The governor’s

Confederacion Obrera de Chiapas (Workers’ Confederation of Chiapas) included

the majority of unionised workers in Soconusco. In 1938 the national

Confederacion de Trabajadores de Mexico (Confederation of Mexican Workers,

CTM) integrated the Confederacion Obrera de Chiapas, forming an umbrella

union, the Federacion de Trabajadores del Estado de Chiapas (Federation of

Workers of Chiapas). Within two years the federation included 269 unions,

including 42 sections of coffee workers and 34 sections of banana workers in

49 Interview with Rosalia Mazariegos, 22 Aug. 1997. SEDA archival research supports hercomments. I found no petitions from the Liga Feminil in the Ahuacatlan papers, SEDA,exp. 1130.

50 Josefina Abarto de T. to Senora Amalia Cardenas, 7 May 1939, SEDA, exp. 1099 ; JosefinaAbarto de T. to President of CAM, undated (in packet from autumn 1938), SEDA, exp.1099 ; Jocelyn Olcott, ‘ ‘‘Worthy Wives and Mothers ’’ : State-Sponsored Women’sOrganizing in Postrevolutionary Mexico’, Journal of Women’s History, vol. 13, no. 4 (2002),pp. 106–31.

51 ‘Codigo Agrario ’, Book 1, Articles 16–22, 39–42, 219–28; Book 2, Article 36 ; Book 3,Articles 209–19.


Soconusco.52 Workers and peasants used the multiple labour organisations to

push the Cardenas administration to the left, influencing officials to address

regional campesino concerns.

Shifting political conditions provided opportunities for campesinos to

implement agrarian reform. The number of ejido petitions quadrupled be-

tween the Grajales and Gutierrez administrations. The pace of ejido petitions

and land distribution highlights the campesinos’ increasing success in pur-

suing agrarian reform once national institutional support had been acquired

(see Table 1).

The realities of agrarian reform, however, rarely followed idealised ex-

pectations. Agrarian Department personnel faced an overwhelming response

from campesinos nationwide who wanted land reform. Almost immediately

the department struggled to meet internal labour shortages, petitioning for

budget increases to expand its services. In Chiapas the number of agrarian

personnel tripled from 14 people in 1935 to 48 people in 1936, but employee

shortages plagued the department well into the 1940s.53 Campesino demands

for increased services led to an expanded bureaucracy, but the number of

agrarian engineers never kept pace with land reform demands. Personnel

statistics only appear in the 1935/6 Agrarian Department report, but it

is known that campesinos themselves often complained about the lack of

staff. One campesino wrote that the slow pace of agrarian reform made it

a ‘ fraud’.54 Petitioners from El Horizonte struggled with the Agrarian

Department over delays with their ejido request. After waiting 16 months the

agrarian committee finally offered to send gasoline or ‘ to prepare a saddled

horse so that you [the agrarian engineer] can transfer yourself to_ our

residences ’.55 During the extended time that engineers spent enacting details

of agrarian reform, campesinos constantly bargained with agrarian officials

over the specifics of their case. In spite of the reforms’ slow pace, the fact

that government authorities and campesinos kept negotiating attests to how

many peasants believed that the government listened to and tried to address

their concerns.

Villages often bargained with agrarian bureaucrats to advance their ejido

petitions. The Agrarian Committee from Ejido El Retiro complained

to President Cardenas that an agrarian engineer favoured another village,

52 Efraın Gutierrez, Trayectoria de un gobierno revolucionario, esfuerzo y labor realizado en el estado deChiapas : 1936–1940 (Tuxtla Gutierrez, 1940), p. 49, cited in Reyes Ramos, El reparto de tierras,pp. 58–9.

53 Departamento Agrario, Memoria del Departamento Agrario, apendice estadıstico, 1935, pp. x,17–25.

54 Lazaro Avila to Jose Manuel Hernandez, 29 July 1939, SEDA, exp. El Retiro, 1099 ; AngelGarcıa Gonzalez to Governor Gutierrez, 26 Oct. 1938, SEDA, exp. El Retiro, 1099.

55 Rafael Verdugo Cruz to Municipal President of Motozintla, 24 Dec. 1938, SEDA, exp.El Horizonte, 1075.


Table 1. Agrarian Reform Petitions and Distribution, 1917–44

Governor Year PetitionsArea(ha.)

Petitionsexecuted

Area affectedby reforms (ha.)

% ofpetitionsexecuted Beneficiaries

Hectaresper beneficiary

Pablo Villanueva 1917–20 10 17,295 4 4,470 40 1,464 3.05Tiburcio Fernandez Ruız 1921–4 19 20,752 14 20,274 74 1,122 18.1Carlos A. Vidal 1925–7 43 87,061 39 81,344 90 6,634 12.3Amador Coutino (interim) 1929 No agrarian reform activityRaymundo E. Enrıquez 1929–32 126 192,517 113 171,889 90 14,000 12.3Victorico Grajales 1932–6 104 105,602 61 66,087 59 6,131 10.8Efraın Gutierrez 1936–40 424 449,150 261 349,180 62 29,398 11.9Rafael Pascasio Gamboa 1941–4 227 151,705 101 160,852 44 6,896 23.3

Source : Leo Waibel, La Sierra Madre de Chiapas (Mexico City, 1998 [originally published by Sociedad Mexicana de Geografıa y Estadıstica, 1946]).Note : Unfortunately the statistics do not show land distribution by district, but the table provides an overview of the pace of agrarian reform.

568Catherine

Nolan-F

errell

arguing that the landlords allegedly supported the competing community.

They appealed to Cardenas to ‘support our present petition’ so that they

would not ‘ suffer the rigours of hunger with our poor families, only for the

reason that others [the competing ejidatarios] were favoured’.56 These peti-

tioners failed to sway the agrarian officials (or Cardenas) and continued to

struggle for land rights into the 1940s. The contentious case of two ejidos,

Union Roja and Salvador Urbina, highlights land struggles between villages.

These two communities petitioned for the same fields, which were owned by

a local coffee planter. The agrarian engineer attempted to convince villagers

to combine and file a joint land request, but changed tactics when Union

Roja members adamantly refused to cede their independence to Salvador

Urbina. The Union Roja campesinos then convinced the engineer to dis-

patch a squad of soldiers, forcing Salvador Urbina members to abandon the

disputed land. In this case, successful bargaining by Union Roja gave ejida-

tarios temporary access to cultivable land.57 Although most cases did not

result in success for the petitioners, by pushing campesinos to use the official

bureaucracy to request reforms the government tied the rural poor more

closely to the post-revolutionary state. The fact that the rural poor kept using

official channels to petition for agrarian reform indicates campesinos’ ex-

pectations that the post-revolutionary state had sufficient power to amelior-

ate land tenure problems, and that state responsibilities included helping the

lower classes to achieve reform.

Although some communities garnered support from larger labour con-

federations, the documents say little about political networks built by

government-sponsored unions. Instead, community leaders produced the

bulk of communications. One activist from Ejido Ahuacatlan explained that

several workers heard about unions forming on other fincas : at night the

men ‘crept into the coffee [grove] to talk about organising ’. In Ejido El Eden

the process began with a local teacher : ‘ In 1926, when the teacher was

here_ [he] showed us the necessity of becoming independent of the

finca_ and when he left here [we] continued fighting ’.58 Local leaders rarely

corresponded with regional or national labour networks, appealing directly

to federal agencies or the president. The lack of documentation on political

networks in Soconusco during the late 1930s suggests that camarillas held

less power among coffee workers than in regions such as the Yucatan or

56 Lazaro Avila to President Cardenas, 7 April 1938, SEDA, exp. 1099.57 Bernardo Roman Piedra Santa, quoted by Secretary of Department of Agriculture to

President of CAM, 11 Feb. 1936, SEDA, exp. 747.58 Interview with Jose Galindo Figueroa, Ejido Ahuacatlan, 8 Aug. 1997; interview with

Jacobo Galvez, Ejido El Eden, 5 Oct. 1997.


Sonora, or even in the highlands of Chiapas.59 For example, the authors

of letters and petitions from particular ejidos and unions vary over time,

implying that leadership regularly changed hands. The question about ca-

marillas stems from debates about the ability of outsiders to ‘manipulate ’

workers versus workers’ individual choices to organise for reforms. In

Soconusco, outsiders such as federal schoolteachers, union leaders and

agrarian reform officials played important roles in organising campesinos

into agrarian committees or rural unions, but the workers themselves sus-

tained the organising process.

Rural Educational Bureaucracy and Campesinos

In addition to the agrarian bureaucracy, the Cardenas administration used

education to link campesinos to the state. Mary Kay Vaughan’s Cultural

Politics in Revolution has sparked critical evaluations of the SEP’s strategies of

state formation, leading to nuanced understandings of negotiations between

campesinos, elites and government officials over the policies and practices

that would define post-revolutionary Mexico.60 In the case of Chiapas,

Stephen Lewis’ Ambivalent Revolution carefully examines educational policies,

contrasting the SEP’s programmes in the indigenous highlands with those in

Soconusco. Lewis initially asserts that ‘Article 123 schools in the lowlands

[Soconusco plantations] were doomed from the start ’.61 Campesino experi-

ences call this negative characterisation into question, however. Lewis con-

cedes that the associations between schoolteachers and campesinos paved

the way for broad agrarian reform in 1939, but also asserts that SEP-estab-

lished schools locked Soconusco’s campesinos into emerging corporate state

structures. For Lewis, the Mexican government’s sequestration of German-

owned coffee fincas during the Second World War led to the collapse of

Article 123 schools and the loss of the SEP’s influence in the region.62

59 Fallaw, Cardenas Compromised, pp. 151–7; Bantjes, As if Jesus Walked on Earth, chaps. 5–7;Rus, ‘The ‘‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional ’’ ’, pp. 265–300.

60 Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution ; Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire. See also ElsieRockwell, ‘Schools of the Revolution : Enacting and Contesting State Forms in Tlaxcala,1910–1930 ’, in Joseph and Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation, pp. 170–246;and Adrian Bantjes, ‘Saints, Sinners, and State Formation : Local Religion and CulturalRevolution in Mexico ’, in Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen Lewis (eds.), The Eagle and theVirgin : National and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940 (Durham NC, 2006), pp. 137–56.Both of these edited volumes contain other relevant essays.

61 Lewis, Ambivalent Revolution, p. 157. Mexico’s 1917 constitution required plantations withmore than 20 school-aged resident children to establish schools, staffed by governmentteachers and paid for by the plantation owner. These federal schools, named Article 123schools after the constitutional law that created them, became crucial links betweencampesinos and federal educators : see Lewis, Ambivalent Revolution, chaps. 2 and 9.

62 Ibid., pp. 173–80.


In contrast, it is argued here that even though campesinos used rural teachers’

expertise to form unions and agrarian committees, campesinos themselves

sustained actions and reforms that the teachers had initiated. While emerging

bureaucracies tied campesinos to the Mexican state, the bureaucracies did

not completely dominate the rural poor.

Cardenista officials expanded the powers of the SEP. The Article 123

schools that it established educated children and adults alike and became

the government’s revolutionary presence on coffee plantations. The SEP’s

‘General Plan of Work for 1935 ’ directed instructors to organise campesino

unions in all rural communities and fincas. The education agency reminded

teachers to ‘ strongly encourage ’ members of labour or agrarian organisations

to join the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party,

PNR).63 Rural teachers from Article 123 schools taught ‘ socialist education’,

emphasising the benefits of collective life and revolutionary goals. Students

learned about the advantages of modern agriculture, the benefits of cleanli-

ness, the risks of alcohol and the dangers of Catholic ‘ fanaticism’. The SEP’s

focus on ‘ improving ’ campesinos’ behaviour mirrored paternalistic language

in agrarian reform legislation. Cardenistas hoped that teachers and agrarian

bureaucrats would create a loyal campesino class and a productive agricul-

tural sector.

Teachers and campesinos worked together to organise unions and agrar-

ian committees. The teachers helped the campesinos navigate state and

national bureaucracies in order to register organisations, and the campesinos

kept up the pressure for rural reform. Rural educators instructed labourers in

revolutionary rhetoric, which campesinos used in hopes of gaining favour-

able government responses. Campesinos’ letters to the government prior to

1935 only occasionally referred to the ‘ imperialist bourgeoisie ’ or ‘exploited

masses ’, but letters from communities where rural schoolmasters resided

often used this sort of revolutionary language. This suggests that teachers

either dictated or advised campesinos on wording their petitions and com-

plaints to authorities. Similarly, the spelling and grammar of the letters im-

proved when a community had a functioning Article 123 school. In one case

local agrarian committee members, apparently with the instructor’s help,

used flowery language to complain about local landlords. The ‘ reactionary ’

planters were ‘ foreign capitalists ’ who performed ‘anti-revolutionary work’.

After the SEP transferred the teacher from his position, the campesinos

continued to use revolutionary rhetoric in their appeals to the government,

63 ‘Plan General de Trabajo que desarrollara la Direccion de Educacion Federal del Estado deChiapas, durante el ano escolar de 1935 ’, Archivo Historico de la Secretarıa de EducacionPublica, Departamento de Escuelas Rurales, Direccion de Educacion Federal (henceforthcited as AHSEP-DERDEF), 236/10.


but errors in spelling and grammar increased.64 This adaptation of rhetoric

demonstrates that schoolteachers helped to translate campesino grievances

into petitions that prompted responses from the agrarian authorities.

Such use of revolutionary language exemplified the ways in which rural

schoolteachers reinforced the ‘state capacity ’ to provide practical support to

the rural poor. Communities received concrete benefits from their associ-

ation with teachers. Finca Germania’s rural schoolteacher gained broad

support by implementing public health programmes aimed at minimising

mosquito-borne diseases like malaria.65 The schoolmaster in Pavencul

worked with community leaders to improve village drainage and sanitation.

Together they campaigned to keep the streets clean of rubbish and animal

droppings. Village leaders hoped that these combined changes would im-

prove community health.66 By focusing on providing immediate and visible

assistance to pressing problems for worker communities on fincas, school-

teachers successfully drew campesinos into the government fold.

In addition to teaching, rural educators acted as watchdogs to ensure that

finqueros followed labour laws. Teachers ‘oriented ’ workers about their

rights to unionise and reported violations of labour laws, including lack of

medicines, inadequate housing (one teacher compared finca lodging to

‘pigsties ’) and mistreatment of workers.67 When the municipal president of

64 Paulino Garcıa to President Cardenas, 17 July 1938, AHSEP-EA123, 80/470. The well-written letter begins, ‘Que protestamos atenta pero energicamente contra las maniobras delos reaccionarios del Sindicato de Cafeteros del Soconusco, capitalistas extranjeros quesiempre vienen desarrollando labor anti-revolucionaria en esta region_ pues es del todofalso que los maestros federales esta [this is struck through and replaced with ‘esten ’]desarrollando labor desorientadora anti-revolucionaria, por que son ellos los masrevolucionarios que hay en el Soconusco, que no son solo de palabra sino lo han demos-trado y siguen demostrando con hechos’. Teacher shortages closed the school for threeyears, resulting in the letter from which the following extract is taken, written in 1941, inwhich campesinos requested a Mexican flag: ‘por el caso que en distintas Ocasiones se andasaparesido barios Utiles Escolares al separarse determinados profesores que an estado enesta Escuela, y como hay Obras que sean echo con la coolaveracion de todos los avitantesde este lugar _ este Comite de educativo recogio dicha Bandera para sumayor seguridad.Aciendo saver a Vd. A la vez que en todo caso que la Escuela Nesesite la Bandera, como esdesir en las fiesta patrias este comete de educacion lo proporcionara con toda rapidesconsiderando que es indispensable proporcionarlo en todo caso sea necesario ’ : Manuel A.Molina, President of the Education Committee to Federal Inspector of Third School Zone,Finca El Retiro, 25 Oct. 1941, AHSEP-EA123, 80/470.

65 Alberto Galan Villanueva, ‘Census Escolar ’, 17 Nov. 1938, Archivo Historico de laSecretarıa de Educacion Publica-Escuelas Articulo 123 (hereafter cited as AHSEP-EA123),80/445.

66 Estanislao Rohlado T. to Secretary of Public Education, 30 June 1935, AHSEP-DERDEF,236/9.

67 Israel R. Vera to Jefe del Departamento Autonomo de Trabajo, 23 July 1938, Mexico City,Archivo General de la Nacion, Departamento Autonomo de Trabajo (henceforth cited asAGN-DAT), 262/19; Alfonso Vargas Espinosa to President Cardenas, 2 Nov. 1938,AGN-LC, 432/817; ‘ Informacion que se rinde a la Direccion General de Educacion


Tapachula complained about SEP rural activism, one educator explained that

because they ‘ live with the working campesino class _ teachers cannot re-

main indifferent _ The Socialist School, as interpreted by the revolutionary

teachers, is the soul of the current historical moment ’.68 Close interaction

between the rural poor and SEP teachers, at least on some fincas, helped

to forge emerging alliances between the federal government and the cam-

pesinos.

SEP schoolteachers expected campesinos to be appropriately ‘Mexican’.

Authorities in Mexico City charged Chiapanecan educators with enacting ‘an

intense Mexicanisation campaign ’, especially in the frontier communities

between Chiapas and Guatemala. Instructors sought to inculcate a sense of

Mexican identity in large numbers of indigenous workers within Chiapas.

They also tried to assimilate the Guatemalan peasants who migrated to

Soconusco for finca jobs. Students learned the Mexican national anthem, the

origin of the Mexican flag, the ‘glorious past ’ of Maya civilisations in Mexico,

and the value of the Mexican Revolution.69 Civic holiday celebrations pro-

vided opportunities to incorporate indigenous and immigrant workers. For

the Mexican Independence celebrations in 1938, the teacher at Finca El

Retiro organised a three-day programme including revolutionary speeches,

poetry recitations honouring Mexican heroes, flag ceremonies, musical

numbers and dances, with the intention of creating community spirit.70

Glorifying all things Mexican was a strategy to subsume the region into a

national identity and expand federal power. The Mexicanisation campaign

did not necessarily create a Mexican identity, but it did teach campesinos

how to act and speak in certain ways, creating a ‘ template ’ of what it meant

to be Mexican. Teachers narrowed the range of acceptable Mexican behav-

iour, repressing beliefs and cultural practices that failed to meet ‘Mexican’

ideals.

Although many villages welcomed teachers, some rural communities re-

jected Article 123 schoolmasters and programmes. The Cardenista anti-

alcohol campaign attracted few regional followers, though teachers repeatedly

presented skits outlining the evils of alcohol. On Finca San Geronimo the

instructor stopped trying to eliminate drinking on Sundays, which prompted

Primaria Urbana y Rural ’, AHSEP-Direccion General de Educacion Primaria de losEstados y Territorios, Direccion de Educacion Federal, Chiapas (henceforth cited asAHSEP-DEFC), 282/35.

68 Humberto Cordova C. to Municipal President of San Antonio Chicharras, 27 Sep. 1938,AHSEP-EA123, 80/475.

69 ‘ Informacion que se rinde a la Direccion General de Educacion Primaria Urbana y Rural ’,AHSEP-DEFC, 282/35; ‘Plan General de Trabajo que desarrollara la Direccion deEducacion Federal del Estado de Chiapas, durante el ano escolar de 1935 ’, AHSEP-DERDEF, 236/10.

70 ‘Programa: Fiesta de 16 Sept. 1938 ’, 16 Sep. 1938, AHSEP-EA123, 80/470.


the head of the local anti-alcohol campaign to ask the SEP to remove him.71

The workers at San Geronimo objected to the teacher on other grounds ;

they petitioned the SEP for a female educator because most students on the

finca were young girls. Another community requested a woman because the

villagers wanted someone to teach domestic skills like cleaning and sewing.72

These communities put less emphasis on what they perceived as ‘artificial ’

goals of socialist education and focused on needs that were more relevant to

the community. Negotiations between campesinos and SEP officials mirror

several state-formation studies that suggest that educational policy often re-

sponded to local concerns. Examples from Soconusco show that power

relationships among peasants, schoolteachers and federal officials did not

always flow from authorities to campesinos. Instead, peasants sometimes

challenged federal power and influenced choices about teachers and cur-

riculum.

Rural teachers sometimes exacerbated tensions within communities by

fostering divisions among campesinos. When the instructor at Finca San

Geronimo attempted to organise the ‘Bloc of Revolutionary Youth’, the

finca’s existing union president charged the teacher with creating a compet-

ing union.73 Workers occasionally attempted to remove schoolteachers be-

cause of community conflicts. On Finca Mexico a landlord-sponsored labour

committee attempted to oust a socialist teacher. The pro-landlord committee

drafted a letter demanding the instructor’s resignation, threatening campe-

sinos who refused to sign with immediate job dismissal. The teacher learned

of the plot to appoint a new schoolmaster when community members op-

posed to the pro-landlord faction came to offer him support.74 On Finca

El Retiro, unionised workers turned against pro-ejido campesinos after the

agraristas received the schoolteacher’s help on their ejido petition. Disputes

between the groups turned violent when the planter asked local authorities to

remove prospective ejidatarios from the finca. Police ransacked the school

at gunpoint, arresting several men. Union workers charged that the teacher

only concerned himself with the welfare of the agraristas, ignoring the needs

of those who wanted to remain on the finca.75 Community divisions led

to bitter confrontations, illustrating divisions among members of the same

socio-economic class.

71 ‘ Informe’, 18 Nov. 1938, AHSEP-EA123, 80/445 ; Dr. Jesus Diaz Barriga to Secretary ofPublic Education, 20 June 1936, AHSEP-DEFC, 280/20.

72 M. Galvez to R. Vela, 25 Nov. 1935, AHSEP-DERDEF, 236/7.73 Absalon Gomez to Director of Federal Education, undated (stamped 1935), AHSEP-

DERDEF, 236/7.74 Luis Lopez Ricoy to Director of Federal Education, 11 May 1936, AHSEP-EA123, 82/404.75 Benjamın Martınez Palma to Director of Federal Education, 17 May 1940, AHSEP-EA123,

80/470.


Because the SEP emphasised the multiple duties of teachers, educators

risked taking ownership of revolutionary organisations away from campesi-

nos. Paternalistic attitudes often permeated relationships between campesinos

and teachers. One schoolmaster, Amadeo Tercero, requested SEP officials to

appoint an assistant for him. In addition to teaching, Tercero claimed to be

the local union leader, local agrarian committee president and, interestingly,

director of the local Women’s League.76 Although Tercero clearly took pride

in his successes in organising permanent workers, his apparent reluctance to

allow peones acasillados to assume leadership roles undermined the goal of

creating a revolutionary rural class. In this case rural workers appeared to

accept Tercero’s domination because he provided valuable assistance to the

campesinos’ struggle for land reform.

Alliances between teachers and campesinos provoked a strong backlash

by landed elites and local officials. Planters and municipal authorities accused

educators of ‘disorienting ’ workers by implementing a socialist curriculum.

The administrator on Finca Mexiquito charged that the only goal of in-

structors and unions was the destruction of coffee fincas.77 Finca Germania’s

owner successfully prevented unionisation by threatening to fire workers or

deny them food rations if they joined. The finca’s schoolteacher repeatedly

explained to workers that these were illegal actions, but workers rejected his

offers to help them organise.78 The planters’ intimidation tactics discouraged

union activism, and landowners used local authorities to threaten workers

and educators. The municipal government in Tapachula warned teachers to

‘abstain from involving themselves in matters of political interest or of in-

tervening in cases of the workers of the region’.79 Finqueros’ efforts to block

unionisation did intimidate some teachers and labourers, but overall, growers

failed to break the alliances between finca workers and federal officials.

Limits of State Building through Bureaucracy

The state-led agrarian reform project faced multiple obstacles from coffee

planters, local elites and deteriorating economic conditions. As federal offi-

cials retreated from agrarian activism, campesinos in Soconusco increasingly

fought to maintain power. Landed elites used ties with local politicians to

harass agrarian community leaders. In Ejido El Ocotal, villagers complained

that the municipal president had replaced the elected police officer with a

76 Amadeo Tercero to Director of Primary Education in States and Territories, 17 Nov. 1938 ;Amadeo Tercero to Inspection Manager, 3 Aug. 1938, both in AHSEP- EA123, El Retiro,80/470.

77 ‘Acta ’, Education Committee, 27 Aug. 1938, AHSEP-EA123, 80/480.78 ‘ Informe’, Alberto Galvan Villanueva, 18 Nov. 1938, AHSEP-EA123, 80/445.79 Domingo Martınez P. to Rural Teachers of Tapachula, 27 Sept. 1938, AHSEP-EA123,

80/475.


new official who was ‘an enemy of revolutionary principles ’ known for his

‘previous bad conduct ’.80 Planters also wrote to the governor or regional

military commander, or to the president directly, to solicit federal troops to

protect property and prevent unrest. In 1934 one planter, Juan Pohlenz,

complained that local authorities had acted too slowly when campesinos

invaded his finca. Pohlenz requested that Cardenas order the army’s regional

commander to use military force to clear the offending campesinos from his

land. When national officials took too long to respond, Governor Grajales

ordered the state militia to burn the people out of their village.81 Landlords

and local political authorities defied federal agrarian programmes by terror-

ising the ejidos. Planters used their military connections to protect their

interests, and the unwieldy agrarian bureaucracy could not always protect the

ejidatarios.

Local authorities also directly attacked government officials who sup-

ported land redistribution. Campesinos from Ejido Tapachula protested

against community members’ imprisonment for the assassination of an

Agrarian Department engineer, Manuel Lazos. Ejidatarios claimed that a

coffee planter, Senor Aceves, had masterminded the assassination because

Lazos was preparing to redistribute land. Aceves had framed ejido leaders as

Lazos’ killers.82 Later case documents originating from the public jail in

Tapachula suggest that campesinos were punished for the murder. Local

officials who opposed reform had two victories in this case : they slowed the

pace of reform by killing the engineer and they eliminated the ejido’s leaders.

Other police intimidation tactics included arresting ejido organisers, their

families and their associates.83 The alliances between finqueros and local

authorities often superseded federal officials’ power to implement reform.

Ultimately the finqueros’ ability to protect their interests by using local

authorities highlights both the planters’ strength and the federal govern-

ment’s weakness in sustaining radical programmes. Even when campesinos

and government officials tried to continue radical agrarian reforms, ties

between conservative government authorities and planters gave the latter

more power to discourage peasant claims.

80 J. Mariano Herrera to President Cardenas, 10 June 1940, AGN-LC, 543.21/368.81 Juan Pohlenz to President Cardenas, 24 April 1934, AGN-DGG, caja 5, 2.382(5)56.82 Amado Lopez to President Cardenas, 30 Jan. 1935 ; Porfirio Mena Flores to President

Cardenas, 14 April 1936, AGN-LC, 542.2/117.83 Lazaro Avila to President of CAM, 28 Aug. 1939, SEDA, exp. El Retiro, 1099 ; Teodoro

Villetoro to Agrarian Department, 1 Dec. 1936, ASRA, exp. Santa Rita, 947 ; Mauro Perezto President Cardenas, 2 Dec. 1938, AGN-LC, 551.2/35; Jorge Elorza Flores to Ministerof Public Prision, 30 Sep. 1940, Archivo Municipal de Tapachula (henceforth cited asAMT), caja 1940–1949, exp. 1940. Note that Tapachula’s municipal archives were beingorganised at the time of writing, and classifications may change.


Changes in the international coffee economy and the national political

climate also weakened the alliance between Cardenistas, Chiapanecan re-

formers and campesinos. By 1938, political conflicts over oil industry ex-

propriation, socialist education and agrarian reform had forced the president

to retreat from most radical political programmes.84 This political change

coincided with sharply deteriorating coffee prices. In the mid-1930s, pro-

duction costs for one quintal of coffee (equal to 46 kilos) in Soconusco varied

between 40 and 42 pesos. In 1938 Brazil dumped its coffee surpluses on the

world market, causing international prices for a quintal of coffee to fall to

25 pesos.85 Dramatic price falls hurt Soconusco coffee growers, causing an

economic recession that lasted into wartime. By June 1938 Cardenas was

attempting to sustain coffee production by forcing the Banco de Mexico to

release credit to growers. Governor Gutierrez could not initiate tax relief for

fincas because it would risk creating severe treasury shortfalls.86 Factors

weakening agrarian restructuring coincided with increasing campesino acti-

vism, creating uneven implementation of rural reform.

Planters responded to economic decline and rising worker activism by

petitioning the Junta Central de Conciliacion y Arbitraje (Labour Relations Board,

JCCA) for permission to ‘readjust ’ or reduce the fincas’ labour force.

Finqueros claimed they could no longer pay workers or invest in next year’s

crop because of credit shortages.87 Campesinos hoped that the 1937 collec-

tive contract would protect them from economic downturn because it sti-

pulated that the JCCA had to authorise all layoffs or firings of unionised

labourers. Nevertheless, between 1938 and 1940, Soconusco planters re-

peatedly reduced their labour force. Labour boards included three re-

presentatives ; one each from landlords, workers and state government

officials. Since the JCCA accepted finqueros’ claims that declining coffee

prices made finca production virtually impossible, it seems likely that

government representatives voted with the planters.

The response of workers to readjustments varied considerably. Some ap-

pealed directly to Cardenas for assistance because Cardenas’ political style

84 Knight, ‘The Rise and Fall of Cardenismo’, pp. 288–91; Toledo, ‘La ruptura cardenista ’,pp. 34–8.

85 Juan Huthoff to Governor Gutierrez, 9 Nov. 1937, AGN-DGG, caja 6, 2.382(5)16030 ;Ernesto W. Reinshagen to President of JCCA, 7 Feb. 1938, Archivo de Concentracion deChiapas, Junta de Conciliacion y Arbitraje (henceforth cited as ACCh-JCCA), exp. FincaSan Cristobal, 1938.

86 Spenser, ‘Economıa y movimiento laboral ’, pp. 273–5; Garcıa de Leon, Resistencia y utopıa,vol. 2, p. 160.

87 Otto Pohlenz to President of JCCA, 15 Jan. 1938, ACCh-JCCA, exp. Finca El Rincon,1938; Ernesto W. Reinshagen to President of JCCA, 7 Feb. 1938, ACCh-JCCA, exp. FincaSan Cristobal, 1938; Herbert Luttman to President of JCCA, 17 Dec. 1937, ACCh-JCCA,exp. Finca La Alianza, 1938.


reinforced the view of government as ‘ rescuer ’ in times of crisis. When

workers on Finca Hannover faced layoffs, they petitioned Cardenas for

‘moral and material support ’ because without his assistance they could not

feed their families.88 Women also wrote to the president to express concerns

about their own jobs and on behalf of husbands and sons who participated in

unions and agrarian committees.89 On Finca Santa Rita, the owner com-

pletely stopped production, prompting labourers to petition Cardenas as ‘ the

only salvation [for this intolerable situation]_ We direct ourselves with all

respect to you, Mr. President, so that you give us your valiant support in

order to resolve this situation of anguish’.90 The president’s office forwarded

the workers’ petitions to the appropriate authorities, who then replied

directly to the campesinos. Correspondence between government agencies

and campesinos reinforced the perception that the government responded to

people’s needs.

Rural workers created new strategies to cope with the deteriorating con-

ditions. On some fincas, labourers and owners negotiated alternate work

schedules to conserve jobs. Campesinos expected growers to maintain

worker housing and ensure access to subsistence plots during the crisis.91

Workers even accepted wage suspensions because they recognised that

planters were struggling financially.92 Perhaps these finqueros fostered more

paternalistic relationships with their workers ; perhaps the peones acasillados

saw deteriorating machinery, buildings or roads on fincas as evidence of

legitimate financial difficulties. Documents are silent about why workers ac-

cepted layoffs on some fincas ; in any event, unionised labourers on these

plantations began looking for other ways to protect their interests.

On other fincas, workers rejected planters’ attempts to limit the number

of workdays or labourers. Peones acasillados from Finca El Retiro protested

that readjustments reduced them to ‘hunger wages ’, claiming that layoffs

shifted the burden of the economic crisis from planters to labourers. Union

members requested that the JCCA ‘readjust ’ the pay rates of finca adminis-

trative personnel because management could tolerate reduced salaries without

88 Juan B. Gonzalez to President Cardenas, 15 June 1938, AGN-DAT, 262/17.89 Brıgida Morales to President Cardenas, undated (received 17 May 1940), AGN-LC,

432/626 ; Marıa Borraz to President Cardenas, Finca El Retiro, 22 July 1940, AGN-DGG,caja 21A, 40.

90 Sindicato de Trabajadores del Campo, no. 29, to President Cardenas, 6 June 1938,forwarded by Florencio Padilla, Labour Department to Governor of Chiapas, 21 June1938, AGN-LC, 432/102.

91 ‘Resolucion de Peticion, Finca El Rincon ’, 31 Jan. 1938, ACCh-JCCA, exp. Finca ElRincon, 1938 ; ‘Convenio ’, Francisco Hernandez G., Sindicato de Trabajadores del Campo,no. 2, Efraın Poumian, Labor Inspector, and Enrique Josephın, Finca Administrator, 8 Jan.1938, ACCh-JCCA, exp. Finca La Alianza, 1938.

92 Angelino Olivares to Bernardo Parlange, 6 April 1940, AGN-DGG, caja 12, 54.


suffering.93 On Finca Mexiquito, union officials claimed that growers were

using readjustments to instil fear and to ‘ teach a lesson’ to the finca workers.

Even though Finca Mexiquito was financially sound, neighbouring growers

had pressured the owner to petition for worker readjustments. These plan-

ters believed that readjustments would intimidate the workers, preventing

the spread of unions to other plantations.94 Labour activism generally de-

clines during weak economic periods, but in Soconusco during the late 1930s

unionised workers persistently fought landed elites and their allies.

Labour unions had mixed results in protecting workers from the econ-

omic downturn. Changing structural conditions gave planters additional

opportunities to reverse union gains. Representatives from the large regional

union Sindicato Unico de Trabajadores de la Industrıa de Cafe del Soconusco (the Only

Union of Workers in the Coffee Industry of Soconusco, SUTICS) claimed

that planters had fired the union’s executive committee on Finca San Jose

Nexapa, denied corn rations to unionised workers and refused to sign a new

collective contract.95 Labourers on Finca San Rafael objected to minimum-

wage reductions that the governor forced upon them in May 1938. Workers

claimed they had ‘been under the lash ’ for four months because of workday

reductions and could not tolerate further wage falls.96 A similar readjustment

led workers on Finca El Retiro to strike in August 1939 ; soldiers subse-

quently occupied the finca to protect the grower, drawing protests from

SUTICS.97 The owner’s successful request for military force highlights the

often conflicting positions of federal authorities. While the SEP teacher and

agrarian officials supported the workers, General Antonio Rios Zertuche,

commander of the 31st Military Zone, did not. General Zertuche owned

Finca San Juan Chicharras in Soconusco and hesitated to support worker

demands for better pay and job security.98 Powerless to threaten planters

with strikes because of deteriorating coffee prices, and unable to rely on the

Cardenas government for assistance, coffee workers focused on alternatives

to labour reforms.

Labour readjustments provoked divisions between rural workers. Militant

campesinos, disillusioned with the Cardenistas’ inability to sustain reforms,

complained that the national government had broken its promises to im-

prove campesinos’ lives. On Finca El Retiro, where the military intervened to

93 Octavio Garcıa to Labour Department, Finca El Retiro, 23 March 1938, AGN-DAT,227/13; Octavio Garcıa to President of JCCA, 21 March 1938 and 28 March 1938, ACCh-JCCA, exp. Finca El Retiro.

94 Walter Pinto to President of the Senate, 1 April 1938, AGN-DAT, 262/16.95 Juan Merida to President Cardenas, March 1940, AGN-LC, 432/1222.96 Pablo Escobar to President Cardenas, 14 May 1938, AGN-DAT, 181/V/332(727.4)/1s.97 Angel Arevalo to Commander of 31st Military Zone, 2 Aug. 1939, AGN-DGG, caja

21A, 40. 98 Spenser, ‘La reforma agraria en Soconusco’, p. 297.


keep order, unionised workers threatened to seize the finca and run it by

themselves. The governor intervened and convinced workers to step back

from their militant stance, but some permanent labourers continued to

demand the immediate expropriation of the finca. They argued that the

owner had fired workers involved in agrarian movements and that people

had nowhere else to go. According to the campesinos, El Retiro already

belonged to them because they had worked the land for years.99 The El

Retiro case demonstrates that labour movement participation radicalised

some workers, who continued to express grievances through the unions,

while others cooperated with the government bureaucracies.

The labour unions’ inability to prevent massive wage readjustments led

many workers to join agrarian committees. Union members realised that the

federal authorities could not shield them from international fluctuations

in the coffee economy. Fincas could not run profitably and pay workers a

decent wage. For campesinos, ejidos became the only option to ensure

economic security.100 Union leaders now headed agrarian committees, and

members petitioned for finca expropriations. Campesinos urged agrarian

officials to deliver fincas to labour organisations so that peones acasillados

could work the property collectively.101 The alliance between federal auth-

orities and campesinos ultimately provided some workers with agrarian re-

form options when labour reform became untenable.

In response to the campesinos’ demands for ejidos and because of de-

clining coffee revenues, the Agrarian Department announced a major land

redistribution campaign in Soconusco in March 1939. Planters fiercely op-

posed the new wave of ejido petitions and government-supported ex-

propriations. Coffee elites argued that rural workers had failed to follow

proper legal procedures in ejido petitions or labelled potential ejidatarios as

Guatemalans, provoking lengthy nationality investigations of each com-

munity member. These procedural and nationality-based complaints slowed

the progress of the petitions, but ultimately the agraristas and campesinos

benefited from the agrarian reform initiative. One planter allegedly offered a

bribe of 300,000 pesos to agrarian officials to protect his property from

expropriation, but the authorities rejected the money and confiscated his

land – the agrarian law allowed him to keep 300 hectares of coffee groves and

99 Lazaro Avila to Governor of Chiapas, 4 Jan. 1940, AGN-DGG, caja 21A, 40.100 Jose Galindo Figueroa, interview with author, Ejido Ahuacatlan, 28 July 1997.101 Gonzalo Guzman to President Cardenas, 6 June 1938, AGN-DAT, 181/V/332(727.4)/1 ;

SUTICS, no. 7, to President Cardenas, 18 March 1940, AGN-LC, 432/626; Sindicato deTrabajadores del Campo, no. 29, to President Cardenas, 6 June 1938, forwarded byFlorencio Padilla, Labour Department to Governor of Chiapas, 21 June 1938, AGN-LC,432/102.


machinery, however.102 Overall, officials divided more than 8,000 hectares

into six ejidos that campesinos would work collectively. During Governor

Gutierrez’s term in office between 1936 and 1940, state agrarian reform

programmes delivered 349,130 hectares of land to 29,398 campesinos.

The government resolved 261 of 424 petitions for agrarian reform (see

Table 1).

Land redistribution, which seemed inconceivable in Soconusco in the

1920s, demonstrates that agrarian committees and unions had some suc-

cesses in creating a more radical state during the 1930s. Yet Cardenas’ grand

gesture of regional agrarian reform in 1939 marked a new phase of campe-

sino activism as a result of problems in its implementation. Ejidatarios and

agrarian officials became mired in conflicts over mapping ejido boundaries,

often because initial land grants gave multiple villages the same plot of land.

Inter and intra-community conflicts developed over who qualified as a land

reform recipient. As Mexico entered the 1940s, the federal government re-

treated from radical Cardenismo.103 Federal teachers and agrarian authorities

no longer provided strong support networks for the rural poor. As federal

involvement declined, campesinos increasingly organised at the community

level to agitate for land distribution and labour law enforcement. The

agrarian reform process in Soconusco continued through the Second World

War with decidedly mixed results.104 Campesino activism did not break the

bonds of rural poverty, but it did create opportunities for an impoverished

ejidatario class to participate as active Mexican citizens.

Conclusions

Why did rural workers and peasants in Soconusco support the post-

revolutionary Mexican state, despite receiving scant economic benefits from

labour and agrarian policies? Did campesinos create a Mexican state re-

sponsive to their needs? A study of rural activism in the region shows that

dialogues among campesinos, Cardenista officials and planters produced a

system in which workers and peasants gained at least some power to shape

102 Luz Sanchez to Governor of Chiapas, 12 July 1940, SEDA, exp. 1099; Francisco Zetina toPresident Avila Camacho, 12 Feb. 1943, AGN-MAC, 110.1/9 ; Enrique Braun to BernabeAcosta Ruız, 18 July 1944, AHSEP-EA123, 86/443.

103 Luis Medina, Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana, 1940–1952, vol. 18 : Del cardenismo al avilaca-machismo (Mexico City, 1988), pp. 229–36, 250–4.

104 Reyes Ramos, Conflicto Agrario en Chiapas, pp. 211–34; Lewis, Ambivalent Revolution,pp. 183–201 ; Blanca Torres,Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana, 1940–1952, vol. 19 :Mexico en lasegunda guerra mundial (Mexico City, 1988), pp. 301–9. For examples of village conflicts overland reform, see Benjamın Gomez and others to President of the Republic, Tapachula,undated (stamped 1943), AGN-DGG, caja 12 A, exp. 11 ; and Lazaro Avila to LazaroCardenas, El Retiro, 20 February 1939, SEDA, exp. 1099.


rural reforms.105 The growing federal bureaucracy provided opportunities for

impoverished campesinos to confront coffee growers. Campesinos collabo-

rated with government-supported organisers, including rural schoolteachers,

labour union leaders and agrarian reform agents. Article 123 schoolteachers

taught rural workers the language of revolutionary ideology and justice,

which workers then adapted to reflect their own concerns. They used such

revolutionary rhetoric to emphasise their right to bargain with planters, local

officials and emerging federal agencies for labour and land reform.

In the absence of strong regional camarillas and with few rural caciques in

Soconusco, government representatives and peasants often communicated

directly. Local or regional networks of power rarely mediated these linkages.

This contrasts with the experiences of indigenous villagers in the central

highlands of Chiapas, where revolutionary programmes created new com-

munity leadership directly tied to the state. As Jan Rus details, these

‘ Institutionalized Revolutionary Communities ’ ultimately undermined in-

digenous autonomy by inserting state power into Tzeltal and Tzotzil villages.

Camarillas and caciquismo also continued in northern Chiapas. When foreign

growers lost land and political power, local ladino elites stepped into the

void, continuing the cycle of isolating and exploiting the Chol.106 Continual

labour migration, coupled with divisions between local polıticos and pre-

dominantly foreign economic elites, may have contributed to limited caci-

quismo in Soconusco.

Proximity to the Guatemalan border, coupled with persistent migration

related to coffee production, caused the federal government to tie the

Soconusco border region more firmly to central Mexico, both economically

and ideologically. Various representatives of the Cardenas government

linked Mexican revolutionary ideals of social justice to Mexican national

identity. The relationship between campesinos and agrarian reform officials

challenges perceptions that the Agrarian Reform Department primarily

protected landlords’ interests.107 In Soconusco, peasants created their own

definition of ‘ revolutionary Mexican campesinos ’ by merging local needs

and federal bureaucracy requirements. This mirrors Christopher Boyer’s ar-

gument that Michoacan peasants defined an ‘agrarista identity ’ by merging

local practices with government-defined revolutionary behaviour.108 Rural

105 Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution ; Bantjes, As if Jesus Walked on Earth ; Becker, Setting theVirgin on Fire.

106 Rus, ‘The ‘‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional ’’ ’, pp. 267–77 ; Lewis, AmbivalentRevolution, p. 155 ; Jose Alejos Garcıa, ‘Los Choles en el siglo de cafe : estructura agraria yetnicidad ’, in Juan Pedro Viqueira (ed.), Chiapas : los rumbos de otra historia (Mexico City,1995), p. 326.

107 Benjamin, A Rich Land, a Poor People ; Spenser, ‘La reforma agraria en Soconusco’.108 Boyer, ‘Old Loves, New Loyalties ’, pp. 422–3.


workers attempted to meet community needs by identifying themselves as

‘ revolutionary Mexican campesinos ’ in order to influence various govern-

ment officials and planters.

Cardenista reforms, however, fell short of reorganising political and

economic systems to favour the rural poor. Structural and ideological con-

straints within the government, along with changing international economic

conditions, limited radical agrarian reform. Local governments and planters

often used agrarian bureaucracy to delay reforms until campesinos conceded

to less radical programmes. Additionally, the 1938 economic crisis restricted

rural workers’ ability to influence discussions on the post-revolutionary state.

Strikes became less effective, and workers lost power to pressure authorities

to enforce labour reforms. Massive layoffs in 1938, coupled with renewed

repression by planters, also weakened the labour movement. Faced with

deteriorating economic conditions on the plantations, rural labourers in-

creasingly demanded land reform to protect their long-term economic and

social interests. Labour reform limitations resulted in new waves of nego-

tiations among campesinos, government agencies and planters over land

reform.

This pattern of negotiation continued until well after Cardenismo had

ended. Structural changes in the 1940s, including those resulting from

the Second World War and Mexico’s decision to sequester German-owned

coffee fincas, led to new waves of labour activism and negotiations with the

Mexican state, particularly during 1942–3.109 Many ejidatarios cemented their

land rights, but rural workers struggled to maintain wages and improved

working conditions. After the Second World War, federal authorities re-

turned much of the sequestered land to the original German owners in order

to revive the coffee industry. These planters naturalised as Mexican citizens

but remained a distinct economic elite, and they returned to a different rural

landscape that included ejidos, labour unions and government regulators.

The rhetoric of revolutionary social justice provided legitimacy to rural re-

form programmes, and planters were forced to adapt to new laws. Aaron

Bobrow-Strain described how this process also occurred in northern

Chiapas, weakening rural elites.110 In contrast, coffee elites in Soconusco

maintained economic power and generally protected their interests by bar-

gaining with authorities. Planters’ resources, coupled with campesinos’ co-

operation with federal negotiating processes, reinforced unequal bargaining

relationships.

109 The Junta Central de Conciliacion y Arbitraje (Labour Relations Board) archives show a flurryof labour complaints against landlords in Soconusco in 1942–3.

110 Bobrow-Strain, Intimate Enemies, introduction and chap. 5.


Land and labour reforms, though slight, effectively legitimated the post-

revolutionary state well into the 1960s. Campesinos willingly participated in

uneven negotiations with the government and planters for social and econ-

omic justice, even though they received few economic benefits from the

reform programmes. General consent over government legitimacy was re-

inforced by periodic violence by planters and the state. The 1994 Zapatista

uprising failed to garner major support from Soconusco campesinos, illus-

trating the way in which the balance between consent and coercion sup-

ported the Mexican state. Landlords and the Mexican military used

intimidation, threats and violence against activist campesinos, but more im-

portantly, Soconusco campesinos continued to see the Mexican state as

legitimate. Recently ejidatarios have used state-sanctioned channels to ex-

press discontent by supporting opposition political parties such as the Partido

de la Revolucion Democratica (Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD). Yet

even this acceptable ‘challenge ’ to the revolution seemed inappropriate to

one founder of Ejido Ahuacatlan. He remarked that younger ejidatarios

‘ lacked respect ’ for the revolution because it was the PRI (Partido

Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) who gave cam-

pesinos land.111 The presence of ‘ foreign’ workers has also helped to sustain

loyalty to the Mexican state. Guatemalans who cross the Mexican border into

Soconusco for coffee harvesting and day-labour jobs have generated negative

discourses similar to those on the US–Mexican border. Mexican campesinos

define themselves against the Guatemalan ‘other ’, thus strengthening their

national identity.

Cardenista reforms left a mixed revolutionary legacy in Soconusco.

Federal authorities did not impose a top-down rural reform programme, nor

did the lower classes dictate radical policies to officials and planters. Instead,

government bureaucrats, planters and campesinos negotiated rural policies,

with each group making concessions. Perhaps the most significant change

for the rural poor came from identifying themselves as Mexican campesinos,

cementing their position as national citizens who deserved guaranteed rights

from the state. By demanding inclusion in negotiations on rural reforms,

peasants and agricultural workers in Soconusco established themselves as

legitimate members of the national community and inheritors of the Mexican

Revolution.

Spanish and Portuguese abstracts

Spanish abstract. Durante mediados y finales de los anos 30 surgio un movimientorural en la region cafetalera del sur de Chiapas y el noroccidente de Guatemala. Este

111 Interview with Jose Galindo Figueroa, Ejido Ahuacatlan, 8 Aug. 1997.


artıculo examina las causas e impactos de las protestas campesinas a nivel de base enel lado mexicano de la lınea divisoria. La frontera porosa entre las dos nacionesdificulto el desarrollo de redes centralizadas que existıan en otras partes de Chiapas.Campesinos y funcionarios gubernamentales federales reformistas, como maestros oingenieros agrarios, construyeron alianzas que desafiaron el poder de los cafi-cultores. El material explora el proceso de negociacion que se dio entre campesinos,burocratas federales, autoridades regionales y caficultores de la elite, con el fin tantode implementar como de desafiar la reforma agraria.

Spanish keywords : Revolucion mexicana, reforma agraria, trabajo, estado, campesi-nos, Chiapas, Cardenas

Portuguese abstract. Entre os meados ate o final da decada de 1930 o ativismo ruralirrompeu na regiao cafeicultora compreendendo o sul de Chiapas e o noroeste daGuatemala. Este artigo examina as causas e os impactos dos prolongados protestosdas bases camponesas, no lado mexicano da fronteira. A fronteira porosa entreambas as nacoes dificultou o desenvolvimento de redes de poder centralizadas queprevaleceram em outras partes de Chiapas. Camponeses e funcionarios reformistasdo governo federal, incluindo professores e engenheiros agronomos, construıramaliancas que desafiavam o poder dos produtores cafeeiros. Este artigo explora oprocesso de negociacao que ocorreu entre camponeses, burocratas federais, auto-ridades regionais e cafeicultores de elite para implantar e tambem desafiar a reformaagraria.

Portuguese keywords : Revolucao Mexicana, reforma agraria, sindicalismo, o estado,camponeses, Chiapas, Cardenas


Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas

Documents

Transcript of Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas