ejido

Sp. /e hee"dhaw/, n., pl. ejidos Sp. /-dhaws/.

a Mexican farm communally owned and operated by the inhabitants of a village on an individual or cooperative basis.

[1885-90; < MexSp; Sp: common fields (immediately outside a village) < L exitus EXIT]

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In Mexico, village lands held in the traditional Indian system of land tenure, blessed by Mexican law in the 1920s, that combines communal ownership with individual use.

The ejido consists of cultivated land, pastureland, other uncultivated lands, and the fundo legal, or town site. The cultivated land is generally apportioned in family holdings, which until recently could not be sold but could be passed down to heirs. Though the land reform of the mid 18th century was aimed at breaking up the large church holdings, it also forced the Indians to give up their ejidos. The village lands were restored by the 1917 constitution. In 1992 the Carlos Salinas government revoked the ban on the sale of ejido land.

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▪ communal land

      in Mexico, village lands communally held in the traditional Indian system of land tenure that combines communal ownership with individual use. The ejido consists of cultivated land, pastureland, other uncultivated lands, and the fundo legal (townsite). In most cases the cultivated land (land reform) is divided into separate family holdings, which cannot be sold although they can be handed down to heirs.

      Measures taken during the reform period that began in 1855 abolished the landownership rights of civil and religious corporations. Although the primary purpose of this reform was to dissolve the large ecclesiastical estates, the law also forced the Indians to give up their village lands. The land reform measures in the 1917 constitution restored land that had been taken from ejidos, made land grants to landless villages, and divided large estates into smaller private land holdings. Today ejidos constitute some 55 percent of Mexico's cultivated land.

      The increasing fragmentation of the land caused by the family inheritance pattern has in some cases resulted in an inefficient scale of operation. This result, together with a lack of capital and limited educational attainment, has retarded progress in ejido agriculture. Some cooperatively run ejidos, however, particularly in the cotton-raising areas, have shown great success.

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