Mexican Revolution - Agrarian Land Reform

Agrarian Land Reform

Under the Porfiriato, rural peasants suffered the most. The regime confiscated large sections of land, which caused a major loss by the agrarian work force. In 1883 a land law was passed that gave ownership of more than 27.5 million hectares of land to foreign companies. By 1894 one out of every five acres of Mexican land was owned by a foreign interest. Many wealthy families also owned huge estates, resulting in landless rural peasants working on the property as virtual slaves. In 1910 at the beginning of the revolution, about half of the rural population lived and worked on such plantations.

Salvador Alvarado, after taking control of Yucatán in 1915, organized a large Socialist Party and carried out extensive land reform. The large landed estates were confiscated, and the land was then redistributed to the liberated peasants.