UCLA School of Law

Mexico’s Constitution of 1917, following the 1910 Revolution, addressed the problem of pervasive rural drought and starvation by nationalizing water sources and distributing land to peasant communities in the form of ejidos, or collective farms. The Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (Mexican Supreme Court) applied these provisions in analyzing cases on ejido water supply. This book chapter assesses the extent to which the Court’s decisions from the 1920s to the 1950s enforced agrarian reform and thus facilitated local food production. In addition, the project uses archival documents to discover the relationship between ejidos, government, and private landowners regarding water access in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. The Court and public officials largely implemented the agrarian goals of the Revolution, although market forces and international agreements gradually moved Mexico’s rural food system towards a more export-oriented rather than subsistence economy. This trajectory shows that legal and other institutions were ultimately more responsive to the domestic and worldwide food law regimes than to doctrinal traditions.