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Neoliberalism, Gender, and Property Rights in Rural Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Sarah Hamilton
Sarah Hamilton*
Affiliation:
University of Denver
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Abstract

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The Mexican Constitution was revised in 1992 to foster privatization of agrarian reform lands. Legal inheritance protections for spouses were removed, and individual title holders (85 percent male) obtained rights to sell land formerly considered family patrimony. State disinvestment contributed to economic crisis in the land-reform sector. This longitudinal study of four communities in northern and central Mexico explores the counterintuitive effects of agrarian law, customary inheritance norms, and women's changing roles in household economies and community sociopolitics on the material and ideological bases for women's entitlement to land. Quantitative and qualitative data show that women's rights to land under customary inheritance norms were upheld locally and that women's control of family land increased along with growing responsibility for production and community activism. Women's property rights were enhanced rather than eroded as families and communities struggled to meet the economic and social challenges posed by the neoliberal agenda.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 119 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Field research was supported by the Ford Foundation and the University of Pittsburgh Environmental Policy Studies Program. Completion of the research was facilitated by travel grants from the Office of International Research and Development at Virginia Tech. The author gratefully acknowledges the collaboration of Nancy Leigh Johnson, Billie DeWalt, David Barkin, Ivonne Sánchez Vásquez, and Juan Vigueras Bernardino.

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