José Francisco Ponciano Arriaga Leija (1811–1865) was a prominent liberal puro who played a significant role in shaping Mexico’s constitutional framework during a pivotal era of reform. As president of both the Asamblea Constituyente and the Comisión de Constitución, Arriaga was a vocal advocate for transformative change, particularly in addressing the deep-rooted issue of land inequality. Alongside other radical liberals, he championed the need for land reform as a means to dismantle the lingering vestiges of colonial privilege and empower the rural poor. While the full realization of these reforms would not occur during Arriaga’s lifetime, his advocacy laid crucial ideological groundwork. The demands for land redistribution would ultimately be brought to fruition decades later with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), where agrarian justice became one of the central rallying cries of the movement. Consider the following questions as your read the selections below:
- How is the ownership of land distributed amongst Mexicans?
- What recourse do the landless turn to?
- What will the value of a new constitution be without land reform?
- How is the peasantry exploited?
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Speech on Land Reform
One of the most deeply rooted evils of our country— an evil that merits the close attention of legislators when they frame our fundamental law— is the monstrous division of landed property. While a few individuals possess immense areas of uncultivated land that could support millions of people, the great majority of Mexi-cans languish in a terrible poverty and are denied property, homes, and work. Such a people cannot be free, democratic, much less happy, no matter how many constitutions and laws proclaim abstract rights and beautiful but impracticable theories—
impracticable by reason of an absurd economic system. There are Mexican landowners who occupy (if one can give that name to a purely imaginary act) an extent of land greater than the area of some of our sovereign states, greater even than that of one or several European states. In this vast area, much of which lies idle, deserted, aban-doned, awaiting the arms and labor of men, live four or five million Mexicans who know no other industry than agriculture, yet are without land or the means to work it, and who cannot emigrate in the hope of bettering their fortunes. They must either vegetate in idleness, turn to banditry, or accept the yoke of a landed monopolist who subjects them to intolerable conditions of life. How can one reasonably expect these unhappy beings to escape from their condition as abject serfs through legal channels, or hope that the magic power of a written law will transform them into free citizens who know and defend the dignity and importance of their rights?
We proclaim ideas and forget realities; we launch on discussions of rights and turn away from stubborn facts. The constitution should be the law of the land, but we do not regulate or even examine the state of the land. . . . How can a hungry, naked, miserable people practice popular government? How can we proclaim the equal rights of men and leave the majority of the nation in conditions worse than those of helots or pariahs? How can we condemn slavery in words, while the lot of most of our fellow citizens is more grievous than that of the black slaves of Cuba or the United States? When will we begin to concern ourselves with the fate of the proletarians, the men we call Indians, the laborers and peons of the countryside, who drag the heavy chains of serfdom established not by Spanish laws— which were so often flouted and infringed— but by the arbitrary mandarins of the colonial regime? Would it not be more logical and honest to deny our four million poor Mexicans all share in political life and public offices, all electoral rights, and declare them to be things, not persons, establishing a system of government in which an aristocracy of wealth, or at most of talent, would form the basis of our institutions? For one of two things is inevitable: either our political system will continue to be dominated for a long time to come by a de facto aristocracy— no matter what our fundamental laws may say— and the lords of the land, the privileged caste that monopolizes the soil and profits by the sweat of its serfs, will wield all power and influence in our civil and political life; or we will achieve a reform, shatter the trammels and bonds of feudal servitude, bring down all monopolies and despotisms, end all abuses, and allow the fruitful element of demo-cratic equality, the powerful element of democratic sovereignty— to which alone authority rightfully belongs— to penetrate the heart and veins of our political institu-tions. The nation wills it, the people demand it; the struggle has begun, and sooner or later that just authority will recover its sway. The great word
reform has been pro-nounced, and it is vain to erect dikes to contain those torrents of truth and light. . . . Is it necessary, in an assembly of deputies of the people, in a congress of representatives of that poor, enslaved people, to prove the unjust organization of landed property in the Republic, and the infinite evils that flow from it? . . . In the realm of a purely ideal and theoretical politics, statesmen discuss the organization of chambers, the division of powers, the assignment of jurisdictions and attributes, the demarcation of sover-eignties, and the like. Meanwhile other, more powerful men laugh at all that, for they know they are the masters of society, the true power is in their hands, they exercise the real sovereignty. With reason the people think that constitutions die and are born, governments succeed each other, law codes pile up and grow ever more intricate, “pronouncements” and “plans” come and go, but after all those changes and upheav-als, after so much disorder and so many sacrifices, no good or profit comes to the masses who shed their blood in the civil wars, who swell the ranks of the armies, who fill the jails and do forced labor on the public works, who, in fine, suffer all the misfortunes of society and enjoy none of its benefits.
With some honorable exceptions, the rich landowners of Mexico (who rarely know their own lands, palm by palm), or the administrators or majordomos who represent them, resemble the feudal lords of the Middle Ages. On his seignorial land, with more or less formalities, the landowner makes and executes laws, administers justice and exercises civil power, imposes taxes and fines, has his own jails and irons, metes out punishments and tortures, monopolizes commerce, and forbids the conduct without his permission of any business but that of the estate.
The judges or officials who exercise on the hacienda the powers attached to public authority are usually the master’s servants or tenants, his retainers, incapable of enforcing any law but the will of the master. An astounding variety of devices are employed to exploit the peons or tenants, to turn a profit from their sweat and labor. They are compelled to work without pay even on days traditionally set aside for rest. They must accept rotten seeds or sick animals whose cost is charged to their miserable wages. They must pay enormous parish fees that bear no relation to the scale of fees that the owner or majordomo has arranged beforehand with the parish priest. They must make all their purchases on the hacienda, using tokens or paper money that do not circulate elsewhere. At certain seasons of the year they are assigned articles of poor quality, whose price is set by the owner or majordomo, constituting a debt that they can never repay. They are forbidden to use pastures and woods, firewood and water, or even the wild fruit of the fields, save with the express permission of the master. In fine, they are subject to a completely unlimited and irresponsible power.
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