Molina Enríquez, Andrés (1868–1940)

Andrés Molina Enríquez (b. 30 November 1868; d. 1 August 1940), Mexican land reformer and lawyer. Portrayed in Mexico as the "Father of Agrarian Reform" and the "Rousseau of the Mexican Revolution," Andrés Molina Enríquez made important contributions, both ideologically and politically, to the official land-reform program of the Mexican Revolution. Molina Enríquez studied Mexico's agrarian problems in depth during the fifteen years prior to the Revolution while working as a land notary and judge in various rural locations in the state of Mexico. As early as 1905 he had arrived at the legal basis for land reform in Mexico in a proposed water law that mandated national control of natural resources for the common good and regulated foreign ownership of Mexican resources. He included these principles in his seminal book, Los grandes problemas nacionales, written on the eve of the Mexican Revolution in 1909, warning the hacendados, or large landowners of Mexico, that they faced land reform or revolution. Molina Enríquez appeared in Querétaro at the 1917 constitutional convention and wrote the first draft of Article 27, which followed his pre-Revolutionary land-reform ideas. The provisions limited foreign ownership of Mexican land and resources, called for the restitution of Ejido lands despoiled during the Porfiriato, and directed state governments to establish laws limiting the size of individual landholdings.

See alsoMexico, Constitutions: Constitution of 1917 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. A. Brading, "Social Darwinism and Romantic Idealism: Andrés Molina Enríquez and José Vasconcelos in the Mexican Revolution," in his Prophecy and Myth in Mexican History (1984).

Andrés Molina Enríquez, Los grandes problemas nacionales [1909] [y otros textos, 1911–1919] (1978), includes the best general introduction to Molina Enríquez's life and ideas in Spanish in the prologue by Arnaldo Córdova.

Stanley F. Shadle, Andrés Molina Enríquez: Mexican Land Reformer of the Revolutionary Era (1994).

Additional Bibliography

Basave Benítez, Agustín Francisco. México mestizo: Análisis del nacionalismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enríquez. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992.

Kouri, Emilio H. "Interpreting the Expropriation of Indian Pueblo Lands in Porfirian Mexico: The Unexamined Legacies of Andres Molina Enríquez." The Hispanic American Historical Review 82:1 (February 2002): 69-117.

Sánchez Arteche, Alfonso. Molina Enríquez: La herencia de un reformador. Toluca, Mexico: Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, 1990.

                                        Stanley F. Shadle