Land for Those Who Work It – The Ejido System (1938-Present)
In 1937, something revolutionary happened at La Misión—and we mean that literally. The Mexican Revolution’s promise of “Tierra y Libertad” (Land and Liberty) finally reached our community. After decades of land being concentrated in the hands of rancho owners, the federal government granted permission for a group of people to establish Ejido La Misión. This wasn’t just a change in who owned what—it was a fundamentally different way of thinking about land, community, and the relationship between them.
Understanding the Ejido System
To appreciate what happened in 1938, we need to understand what an ejido actually is, because it’s a uniquely Mexican institution that doesn’t have a perfect parallel in U.S. or European land systems.
An ejido is communal land granted by the government to a group of people (called ejidatarios) who have the right to work it. The land isn’t privately owned in the traditional sense—you can’t sell it to just anyone, and it doesn’t pass through normal inheritance laws. Instead, ejidatarios have use rights that can be passed to their children, but the land remains fundamentally communal property.
Think of it as occupying a middle ground between private ownership and pure communal holding. You have secure rights to work specific parcels of land, but you’re also part of a larger community with shared resources and collective decision-making about common areas.
The ejido system emerged from Article 27 of Mexico’s revolutionary Constitution of 1917, which declared that “the Nation shall at all times have the right to impose on private property such limitations as the public interest may demand.” This was revolutionary language—it meant that property rights weren’t absolute, that land should serve social purposes, and that the government had authority to redistribute land in the public interest.
Why Ejidos? The Revolutionary Context
To understand why Mexico created the ejido system, we need to look at what the revolution was fighting against. During the Porfiriato (the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz from 1876-1911), land became concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Massive haciendas controlled enormous territories while peasants who worked the land owned nothing.
This wasn’t just economically inefficient—it was deeply unjust. Families who had worked land for generations could be evicted on a landlord’s whim. Workers lived in poverty while producing wealth for others. The hacienda system kept most Mexicans trapped in a kind of neo-feudalism well into the 20th century.
Revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata made land reform a central demand. “Tierra y Libertad” wasn’t just a slogan—it was a vision of Mexico where those who actually worked the land would have secure rights to it. The ejido system was designed to make that vision real.
Establishing Ejido La Misión
In 1937, the Agrarian Law permitted people in the La Misión area to petition for ejido status. This wasn’t automatic—it required formal application, surveys to determine boundaries, legal processes to define who qualified as ejidatarios, and negotiations with existing landowners (like the Crosthwaite family) whose holdings would be reduced.
The federal government approved the petition, and Ejido La Misión was formally established in 1938. A group of families received collective rights to work lands that had previously been part of Rancho La Misión Vieja. Each ejidatario family received specific parcels for their own use—typically for agriculture and housing—while other areas remained common land for grazing, gathering firewood, or other shared uses.
This was a profound transformation. Families who had worked these lands as employees or tenant farmers now had secure, long-term rights. They couldn’t be evicted. They could pass their rights to their children. They had a voice in community decisions about how common lands would be managed.
How Ejidos Work: Governance and Rights
Ejidos are democratic institutions, at least in principle. The ejidatarios meet in assemblies (asambleas) to make decisions about common lands, resolve disputes, and elect leaders. The comisariado ejidal (ejido commission) manages day-to-day operations, while the consejo de vigilancia (oversight council) ensures that leaders don’t abuse their authority.
Major decisions—like whether to allow development on common lands, or whether to invest in infrastructure—require assembly approval. This creates a system where community members have genuine voice in decisions affecting their land and livelihoods.
Individual ejidatarios have specific rights:
- They can work their assigned parcels, keeping the produce or profits
- They can build homes on their parcels
- They can pass their rights to their children (traditionally to one heir, though this has become more flexible)
- They have access to common lands for traditional uses
- They have a vote in ejido assemblies
But these rights come with responsibilities:
- Land must be actively worked—you can’t just claim ejido land and leave it fallow
- You must participate in community work projects (faenas)
- You must attend assemblies and participate in governance
- You can’t sell your parcel to outsiders without ejido approval
The Ejido Philosophy: Community Over Individual
What makes the ejido system distinctive is its underlying philosophy. Rather than treating land as a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder, ejidos treat land as a community resource that should benefit those who work it.
This creates a different relationship to place. Ejidatarios aren’t just property owners extracting profit from an investment—they’re community members with long-term stakes in the land’s sustainability and the community’s wellbeing.
This philosophy aligned well with traditional Kumeyaay concepts of communal territory, even though ejidos were a Mexican revolutionary institution rather than an indigenous one. The idea that land belongs to the community of people who live on and work it, rather than being a commodity for speculation, resonated with values that had existed in this region for thousands of years.
Ejido Life in Mid-20th Century La Misión
Life in Ejido La Misión during the mid-20th century centered around agriculture, fishing, and mutual support. Ejidatario families grew crops—corn, beans, vegetables—primarily for their own consumption but also for local sale. Some families raised livestock on common pastures. Coastal families fished, with catches shared or sold locally.
This was largely a subsistence economy supplemented by modest cash income. Families were largely self-sufficient, producing much of what they needed and trading with neighbors for the rest. The Río Guadalupe provided irrigation water. The ocean provided fish and shellfish. The land provided building materials, firewood, and grazing.
Children grew up learning agricultural skills, fishing techniques, and traditional knowledge. Extended families often lived on adjacent parcels, creating clusters of related households. Religious celebrations, civic events, and shared labor projects brought the community together.
This wasn’t an easy life—it was hard work with uncertain rewards depending on rainfall, fish runs, and market prices for surplus production. But it was a life with dignity, security, and community—things that had been in short supply for landless workers during the rancho period.
Challenges and Tensions
The ejido system, while well-intentioned, faced challenges from the beginning. Boundaries between ejidos and private property were sometimes disputed. The rules about who could inherit ejido rights created tensions, particularly as families grew larger and parcels had to be subdivided. The prohibition on selling ejido land frustrated some who wanted to profit from development opportunities.
There were also tensions between the ejido’s communal philosophy and individual ambitions. Some ejidatarios wanted to farm commercially and expand production. Others preferred subsistence farming. These different visions sometimes clashed in assembly meetings.
Moreover, the ejido system depended on agricultural livelihoods at a time when Mexico was urbanizing and modernizing. Younger generations increasingly sought opportunities in cities or across the border rather than continuing agricultural work. This created questions about who would inherit ejido rights and whether anyone would actually work the land.
The 1992 Reforms: Everything Changes
In 1992, President Carlos Salinas reformed Article 27 of the Constitution, fundamentally changing the ejido system. The reforms allowed ejidos to choose to privatize—converting communal holdings into individual private property that could be bought and sold freely.
This was controversial. Supporters argued that ejidos needed to be able to participate in modern market economies, attract investment, and allow individuals to use their land as collateral for loans. Critics worried that privatization would lead to ejidatarios losing land to developers and speculators, recreating the land concentration that the revolution had fought against.
Many ejidos throughout Mexico chose to privatize, while others maintained their communal structure. Ejido La Misión, like many coastal ejidos near attractive tourist areas, faced intense pressure to privatize to allow for resort and residential development.
The reforms created opportunities but also vulnerabilities. Ejidatarios who privatized their parcels could suddenly sell to developers for substantial sums—life-changing money for families who had struggled on subsistence agriculture. But once that land was sold, it was gone forever. The community’s control over its land diminished with each sale.
Ejido La Misión Today
Today, Ejido La Misión exists in a complex hybrid state. Some land remains under communal ejido control. Other parcels have been privatized and sold, leading to the development of properties like those in the LMPOA community. The ejido still functions as a governance body for remaining communal lands, but its authority and territory are much reduced from 1938.
You can see the ejido’s legacy throughout La Misión. The village center of Ejido La Misión maintains a distinctly Mexican character—local businesses, Spanish-language signage, families who have lived here for generations. The school, behind which the mission ruins stand, serves primarily ejido families. Community celebrations and civic events still bring ejidatarios together.
But alongside this, you have the newer residential developments—Loma La Misión with its gated security, Playa La Misión properties often owned by international buyers. These represent the privatization path, where former ejido land became private property available for market-rate purchase.
This creates an interesting dynamic. The LMPOA community exists partly on land that was once communal ejido property. We’re beneficiaries of privatization that some argue betrayed the revolution’s promise. Our gated communities and property values represent a very different vision of land use than the communal philosophy that created the ejido.
What the Ejido Period Gave Us
Despite its challenges and the changes since 1992, the ejido period made lasting contributions to La Misión:
Community Infrastructure: The ejido system encouraged collective investment in roads, water systems, schools, and other infrastructure that benefited everyone. Much of La Misión’s basic infrastructure was established during the ejido era.
Environmental Stewardship: Because ejidatarios had long-term stakes in the land rather than short-term profit motives, they tended to manage resources sustainably. The ejido period maintained the agricultural character and environmental quality that makes La Misión attractive today.
Cultural Continuity: The ejido system kept families in place across generations, maintaining cultural traditions, local knowledge, and community memory. Many older residents today grew up in the ejido system and remember those times.
Democratic Practices: Ejido assemblies provided experience with democratic decision-making and community governance that influenced how people thought about civic participation more broadly.
Legal Framework: The ejido’s formal status, legal boundaries, and documented rights created a foundation that made later development more orderly than it might have been otherwise.
Respecting This Legacy
As members of the LMPOA community, we’re living with the consequences of the ejido system’s transformation. The land beneath our homes was once communal property held for the benefit of farming families. Market forces, legal changes, and individual choices converted it to private property that we could purchase.
This doesn’t make us bad people or our presence illegitimate. Legal changes allowed this transition, and people on both sides—ejidatarios selling and international buyers purchasing—made choices that made sense for them. But we should understand and respect this history.
When you encounter long-time local residents whose families were ejidatarios, remember that they have a different relationship to this land than property owners who arrived recently. Their grandparents helped establish the ejido. Their parents worked these fields. They remember when this was agricultural land, not residential subdivisions.
We can honor that history by being good neighbors, supporting local businesses in the ejido village, respecting local customs and traditions, and recognizing that La Misión’s story didn’t begin when we arrived. The ejido period—with its philosophy of land for those who work it, its emphasis on community over individual profit, its creation of long-term security for farming families—is part of what made La Misión the special place we chose to call home.
The tension between communal and private visions of land use remains unresolved, here and throughout Mexico. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe the best path forward involves finding ways to honor both visions—secure private property rights that allow investment and development, alongside respect for communal spaces, environmental protection, and the needs of long-term local residents.
The ejido system’s legacy reminds us that there are different ways to think about land, community, and the relationship between them. As La Misión continues evolving, keeping these different perspectives in conversation rather than conflict might be our most important challenge.
