Access to land-based resources under the influence of land reform: a case study from an agrarian community in Mexico

This study provides important empirical and analytical insights that represent a step forward towards a deeper and better understanding of the effects of land reform and land policies on the distribution of access to land-based resources. It explores the extent to which the process of land reform during the early 1990s, and the subsequent implementation of complementary land policies and programmes brought deep modifications to the way in which agrarian communities obtain benefits from resources. The empirical evidence on which this research is based consists of both qualitative and quantitative data elicited by a combination of research methods applied to a case study design. The case study chosen is San Francisco Oxtotilpan, an agrarian community in Mexico‟s central highlands that is home to the smallest indigenous group in the region: the Matlatzinca. The theoretical and analytical framework designed takes into account the main scholarship on access to natural resources. This extended analytical framework of access to land-based resources provides a characterization of access mechanisms that disentangle the complex set of cultural, socio-economic and political processes underlying access to land-based resources. It enables an assessment of the effects of the implementation of land reform-related policies and programmes over the different ways in which members of the agrarian community benefit from land-based resources. The study concludes that the implementation of land policies in Mexico since the early 1990s has brought deep modifications in the local governance of land-based resources. It illustrates that the differential distribution of benefits from land-based resources depends on households‟ ability to use a set of access mechanisms to gain, control or maintain the flux of benefits from land-based resources. Results show that when it comes to land-based resource governance, the implementation of land policies and programmes has produced conflicts between the agrarian community and external politico-legal institutions –especially from the State. Furthermore, it modified the internal structure of the agrarian community, and consequently, the complex set of mechanisms that shape the distribution of access to land-based resources available.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of East Anglia

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Calderon Contreras, Rafael

Language dc:language

en