

CHAPTER IV 

 AGRARIANISM IN MEXICO 



The history of Mexico is essentially a survey of 

 ethnic conflicts and agrarian revolutions. "One can- 

 not understand Mexico, its history, its international 

 problems, its illiteracy," says Ramon P. De Negri, 

 "unless one understands that large scale landholding 

 is the base of all Mexican social organization." 

 Humboldt says: "Mexico is the country of inequali- 

 ties. Nowhere does there exist such a fearful dif- 

 ference in the distribution of fortune, civilization, 

 cultivation of the soil and population." There are 

 many lessons to be learned from a review of the 

 history of Mexico, as it is interpreted in the light of 

 agrarian inequalities. 



Racial Basis of Agrarianism 



When the Spanish conquerors invaded Mexico 

 they found that the Indian tribes had developed an 

 imperfect social organization based upon a primitive 

 agrarian civilization. Prescott in his Conquest of 

 Mexico directs attention to the superiority of Indian 

 agriculture in Mexico over the husbandry practiced 

 by most of the other tribes of North America. "It 



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