Evening star., 1934-12-09
CARDENAS GOVERNMENT
FACES LAND PROBLEM
Success of Administration Will Be De-
termined by Extent Agrarian Pro.
gram Is Carried Out.


destroyed the program of the Diaz
government and repudiated the theory
Of radical and social inferiority upon
which 1t rested. They rose in rebel
lion and saved themselves from the
fate of becoming poems upon the
large plantations-peons without a
voice. without land, without a COM
munity, without hope-with nothing
but burden of debt from the cradle
to the grave. Rather than accept
that fate the villages, each one for
itself, without much concert or broad
general philosophy, took their stand
and fought their battle, and in the
process shifted the structure of the
Mexican nation from its original
base"
That was the beginning of the rev.
olution. Before any definite political
plans had been made. before any
social program had been outlined,
even before a revolutionary regime
had been set up, as soon as the news
OF Diaz' resignation became known,
armed groups of Indians and poems
took over by force the properties OF
large plantations and began to use
them to satisfy their needs. The rev.
olution started as a movement to re-
cover land.
After the idealist Madero, after the
autocratic Huerta, but particularly
after the several years of continuous
and successful campaigns of capita,
"the father of the agrarian revolu-
tion," who seized most of the large
estates in Morelos, Guerrero and Hi
dalgo and turned them over to his
followers, the Carranza government
was finally forced, in January. 1915,
to provide a legal basis for the dis
tribution of land. The Carranza de-
cree provided that all the communal
lands which had been alienated by
the "hacendados" from the villages
through force or guile should be res
tituted. 1t further stipulated that the
villages which could prove no title to
lands but could establish they needed
them should also be given some.
Little Progress Made.
These provisions were made part Of
the organic law of the nation by the
constitution of 1917, which confirmed
both the restitution of lands tradi-
tionally belonging to the free villages
and the right of appropriation of pri-
vate lands for the benefit Of commu-
mites in need of them.
Unfortunately. the agrarian laws so
far passed. apart from having re-
mained largely on paper-the land re-
form made very little progress under
Carranza and Obregon, moved for
ward under Gales and Portes Gil, Ian
guished under Ortiz Rubio and picked
up mildly under Rodriguez only
partially solved the problem. The new
administration not only will have the
task of carrying out the laws already
written into the constitution and so
slowly being fulfilled-at the present
rate of distribution it will take another
10 years before even one-fourth Of the
communities entitled to it have been
provided with land-but it, also, will
fall to its lot to correct the short
comings and limitations Of the present
laws, which have merely scratched the
surface of the Mexican agrarian
problem.
Some Of these shortcomings Chalf
the rural population is beyond the
reach of the agrarian laws because
these have not yet struck at the large
plantation communities; restitution is,
still, to a large extent, the basis for
land distribution, instead of right to
land; the minimum of 20 families re-
quired to qualify a village to ask for
land leaves more than $4,000 villages
outside the laws; the legal machinery
involved could stand simplification,
etc. have delayed the consummation
of the agrarian aspect of the revolu-
ton.
Recent utterances by Gen. Plutarco
Elias Gales, the dominant figure in
the Mexican political scene, and by
the recently inaugurated chief execu-
tive, Gen. Lazaro Cardenas, seem to
indicate that the new administration
will accelerate the pace Of the agra
rian reform, which Is to say the pace
Of the Mexican revolution.
lCopyrisht. 1934.)