Land Market in a Mexican Ejido: The Case of Campos, in Manzanillo, Colima, 1994-2013

Abstract

The reform to Article 27 of the Constitution in 1992 offered Mexico’s ejidatarios the opportunity to become owners of the land they cultivated, while the Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales (Certification Program for Ejidal Rights, or Procede), instituted in 1994, awarded them titles to their fields as legitimate private property. One collateral effect of these neoliberal policies was to stimulate the land market that, in turn, facilitated national and foreign investment in Mexican territory. In the case of the port of Manzanillo (Colima) and, more specifically, the Ejido de Campos, those changes led to the construction of a liquefied petroleum gas storage and distribution plant, and a second facility for processing liquefied natural gas. In addition, a pipeline was built to connect this port city to Guadalajara, Jalisco. In light of these transformations, the main objective of this article is to show how the constitutional reforms enacted over two decades, along with a series of factors both global and local in nature, have intensified the land market in the Ejido de Campos, and stimulated additional capitalist investment. The information presented in the research was obtained primarily from interviews with local ejidatarios conducted as part of the ethnographic research carried out periodically by the two authors from 2011 to 2013.