Reforma agraria y violencia campesina en Catemaco, Veracruz (México), 1921-1958

Abstract

The objective of the article is showing the management that the farmers from Catemaco, Veracruz, one of the towns that comprised the Province of Tuxtlas, made before the agricultural authorities in order to obtain lands. The process turned out to be highly conflicting as a consequence of different facts: the conflict emerged between two groups farmers, since the very beginning of the conflict, to obtain the management of the agricultural committee; the alliances that the two groups established with political stakeholders like the Mayor’s Office, the farmers’ guerrilla, and the state and national authorities, said alliances contributed to modify the balance of power; and the acts in which an prominent engineer in the town from the National Agricultural Commission was involved, which would produce an armed struggle between the ‘ejidatarios’ (land borrowers) of Catemaco and Maxacapan. The conflict between the two towns would have an unexpected resolution: the disaggregation of part of Catemaco’s land.