Over the next 15 years, they succeeded in redistributing and gaining legal title to more than 50 percent of the good riverside land. Both the food supply and economic base of these poor families were substantially improved, contributing to a visible improvement in health. Serious malnutrition in infants became uncommon, parents began to look toward the future, rather than just for the next meal. More families could afford notebooks and pencils, so more children stayed in school. The power structure in Mexico was more than willing to do this because they had been violating the ejido laws for a long time anyway.
Land owners have very close ties to government there.
The US government insisted that the agrarian reform statutes conflicted with free trade. They wanted to open the way for big US agri-businesses to buy huge parcels of land in Mexico. As a result, the land will be concentrated into fewer hands, and millions of peasants will be forced off their land and into the growing slums of cities where they will add to the unemployed. Over the last 10 years, the real wages of Mexican workers have dropped by 40 percent. It takes four minimum wages to adequately feed a family of five.