Latifundia

Latifundia, a system of land tenure dominated by large rural estates (latifundios). Concentration of landownership began during the Conquest, with sizable royal grants establishing a system of land concentration that persists in much of Latin America. Figures from Milton Esman indicate that in 1978, 60 percent of rural Mexican households were landless or near landless; the figure was 66 percent in Colombia and 70 percent in Brazil. Latifundia has been especially persistent in cattle-ranching regions.

Chile is among the extreme cases of a latifundia-dominated society. From colonial times onward, a rural elite controlled the best lands in the central valley around Santiago. In 1924 fewer than 3 percent of farms in the fertile central valley controlled 80 percent of the arable lands. The rural poor (huasos; inquilinos, or sharecroppers; migrant workers; and squatters) remained subservient to a powerful patron. The Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei (1964–1970) passed but did not enforce land-reform legislation. The socialist regime of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) attempted unsuccessfully to reform the latifundia system.

Mexico's landowners established the first association in the Western Hemisphere to promote rural interests. In 1529 town councilmen in Mexico City organized the Mesta, patterned on a powerful organization of sheep ranchers in Spain. While not as powerful as its Spanish predecessor, the Mexican Mesta appointed many important rural officials and shaped rural legislation. As a public official recorded in 1594, ranching and agriculture were "in the hands of the rich and of those possessing Indians under the encomienda system." While latifundia was not universal in Mexico, on the northern grazing lands the large haciendas ably described by François Chevalier dominated into the twentieth century. Even the great upheaval of the Mexican Revolution only replaced one set of latifundistas with another.

Similar circumstances prevailed in Uruguay and Argentina. Spanish colonial policy promoted land concentration and the marginalization of the gauchos and others of the rural lower classes. Rich, landed Uruguayan families—the Viana, de la Quadra, and others—dominated the countryside and, after Independence, the country. Argentina, with vast lands and a small population, also experienced latifundia, especially on the Pampas. Colonial and national policies granted control of the vast plains to the few.

Great estates (hatos) also developed on the Venezuelan and Colombian Llanos during the early eighteenth century. In mid-eighteenth-century Venezuela, about thirty families owned forty ranches covering 219 square leagues on which about 300,000 cattle grazed.

Independence speeded land concentration in much of Latin America. Land granted to war veterans quickly passed to the hands of caudillos and wily speculators. Venezuelan caudillo José Gregorio Monagas distributed land to followers in 1848, but more than half the total went to ten concessions. Owing to the income and prestige of landownership, latifundistas have retained strong political clout. Through rural societies and associations, they continue to promote their interests at the regional and national levels.

See alsoEstancia; Fazenda, Fazendeiro; Fundo; Hacienda.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

François Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico, translated by Alvin Eustis, edited by Lesley Byrd Simpson (1963).

Charles H. Harris III, A Mexican Family Empire: The Latifundio of the Sánchez Navarros, 1765–1867 (1975).

Brian Lovemen, Struggle in the Countryside: Politics and Rural Labor in Chile, 1919–1973 (1976).

Milton J. Esman, Landlessness and Near-Landlessness in Developing Countries (1978).

Richard W. Slatta, Cowboys of the Americas (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Azcuy Ameghino, Eduardo. El latifundio y la gran propiedad colonial rioplatense. Buenos Aires, Argentina: F.G. Cambeiro, 1995.

Rodríguez Mirabal, Adelina C. Latifundio ganadero y conflictos sociales en los llanos de Apure, 1700–1800. Caracas: Fondo Editorial Tropykos, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, 1995.

                                            Richard W. Slatta