Urban latifundism, in the hands of mafias

Rolando Medrano Gomez

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, November 1, 2022, p. 6

In Mexico it is emerging a urban latifundism in the hands of mafiasin which former sector officials, former governors and former politicians are involved, said the chief director of the National Agrarian Registry (RAN), Plutarco García Jiménez.

There are real estate agencies in Yucatan that bought a square meter of land for 4 pesos and now sell it for 10 thousand dollars; Antonio Almazán, former head of the RAN in that state, is now one of the largest hoardersassured.

Interviewed at the headquarters of the National Agrarian Registry, he said that when the reform to article 27 of the Constitution was carried out, which allowed the privatization of the ejido, Mexico had more than 53 percent of social property and currently it is around 50.7; “It was reduced by about 3.5 million hectares, since that period about 5 percent has been lost, counting the full domains already consummated and the 31,000 applications, of which most are in process.

“They believed that national and foreign companies could buy, but apparently it didn’t work, because the Mexican peasant is very attached to the land; I remember that someone from Anenecuilco (municipality of Ayala, Morelos) said: ‘The land cost blood, we cannot sell it’.”

García Jiménez considered that a new legislation on agrarian matters is necessary, “because we are facing one (the one that is in force) that aims to privatize and open the ejido to the land market; (Carlos) Salinas rubbed his hands because he said: ‘we have 100 million hectares, if half is sold, a lot of money will enter the country’”.

Regarding the hoarding of plots by organized crime, he asserted that They do not do it through violent dispossession, as happened in Colombia, but here, as they have a lot of money, they buy land through frontmen, businessmen or real estate agents..

They also have, he added, connections with government officials from some states, including presidents, and that makes it easier for them to do so.

Plutarco García, son of peasants from Guerrero, who studied at the Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, at the National School of Teachers and has been the protagonist of various social and political movements, considered that the current legislation limits the RAN, since it is limited to the technical; We cannot investigate, we know of hoarders, but we are not empowered to follow X subject who obtained land with resources of illicit origin.

However, he stressed, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance and the Attorney General’s Office can do it, we need a certain margin that allows us to provide information; for example, we cannot stop procedures even if we find irregularities.

There were two initiatives to reform the Agrarian Law by the Morenista senators David Monreal and José Narro Céspedes, presented in October and December 2018, respectively; however, they are frozen.

The one in Monreal, in the opinion of Carlos González, a lawyer from Ostula and a member of the National Indigenous Congress, has the purpose of harmonizing the agrarian legal provisions with the structural reforms in energy and hydrocarbon matters, as well as with the privatizing regimes of mining concessions, of waters and national assets.

Meanwhile, Narro Céspedes presented a project to create the Code of Agrarian Procedures in order to modernize the legal system on the matter. An order, it was exposed then, that regulates the tenure regimes that make up the land property system (private, colonial, ejidal, communal and public), as well as the basic legal institutions of the ejidal and communal property models (family , inheritance, contracts and usufruct).

Addressing what has happened with social property in the last 30 years, the director of the RAN recalled that since he assumed the leadership of the body, in December 2018, 31,000 freehold applications have been received (act through the which the ejidatarios, possessors and neighbors obtain full ownership of their land), of which more than 4 thousand are already resolved and the rest in process.

Real estate agents, with different agents and managers, urgently need the titles, but if there is an irregularity, we cannot pass it on, which is why many of the hoarders have sued usrevealed.

–Do you consider a new Agrarian Law necessary?

-Yes, one that in the first place guarantees the social property of the land, that does not continue to be reduced, that considers the plot as family patrimony, that maintains its character of inalienable, imprescriptible, non-transferable.

It is not necessarily a question of returning article 27, but to a beginning, but the neoliberals, in order to put everything on the market, made a law that can be considered a counter-reform, contrary to the agrarian law.

For example, he added, they created the Agrarian Prosecutor’s Office and the courts, “not as a brake, but to help facilitate the land market, and the courts, when they began to resolve complaints, always favored privatization, not the defense of the social property.

It is what we are facing now, the entire system is armed with that logic and it must be changed; We understand that the country, for its development, requires land for roads, public works and hospitals, but that it is not through deception and dispossession of the peasants by the real estate trade, which sells them multiplying their valuereproached.

García Jiménez announced that, currently, there are cases like that of a subject who owns 5,000 parcels in Yucatán, which also happens in other tourist states, such as Guerrero and Quintana Roo.

He mentioned that local complaints have been filed against several involved in these illegalities, for which the corresponding authorities must proceed in accordance with the law.

–Obviously this new law should combat these agrarian mafias?

-That’s right, in a logic that puts social property first, with locks so that the land is not rapidly privatized, as is happening.

–How does the RAN fulfill its main objective, which is to be the guardian of the territorial heritage in the hands of ejidos and communities?

–We try to thoroughly review the applications and the conditions under which they were submitted, the requirements, whether they meet them or if they are missing. That makes them stop, but, sometimes, those interested take cover; then many cases go to litigation.

There are real estate companies that have sued us and asked for our dismissal, but our idea is to ensure that the law is complied with.

Plutarco García stressed that the RAN handles 55 different procedures, which he considers excessive, so they must be reduced, compacted and simplified in order to combat bureaucracy, but a reform of the Agrarian Law is required that gives the body the power to do it.

“We have a delay of many decades, procedures that were never attended to, fellow peasants come to us and tell us ‘we have been dealing with this matter for 40 years,'” he stressed.

He admitted that there are many anomalies, such as when gender parity is not met in the ejido assembly or when people who are not ejidataria or comunero participate; if we detect them, we stop the process.

Another case it is when a real estate tycoon becomes an ejidatario; he buys from the commissioner, enters the ejido and acquires plots. Unfortunately, the law does not limit him, because if he has already been accepted into the agrarian nucleus, he can buy 100 parcels or 200.