A number of our customers have repeatedly asked us about the nature of Ejido land. What is it, and is it possible to purchase it as a foreigner? We at Trans Caribbean Trust pride ourselves as being up front and open with all of our customers, and we wish for them to make educated decisions about where in Mexico they should invest. The following is an expose on Ejido Land in Mexico.
What is Ejido Land?
In brief, Ejido Land (pronounced Ay-he-doe) is Federal land the Mexican Government permits the Mexican Nationals to USE for agricultural purposes. Usually, the Ejido Lands are large communal areas or Ejiditarios, for the natives USE to live on, and farm. In Spanish, Ejido means ‘communal land’.
The concept of Ejido Land can be traced back to the days of the ancient Maya, where cities and towns were broken into neighborhoods or ‘capulli’, and included the surrounding communal lands. Each capulli was governed by an individual known as a capullec, along with a counsel of elders known as a consejo. The capullec and his counsel was responsible for: maintaining a register of all the communal lands in the capulli, receiving a tax from the capulli members for duties performed as their capullec, and lastly organizing communal work parties for public projects.
After the conquest of the Spaniards, encomiendas (large land grants) were given to the conquistadores by the Spanish Crown. Though the owners of these encomiendas had control over the land and everything on it (including the natives), the Crown attempted to be sympathetic to the Maya peasants.
Laws were established which limited native exploitation; fixed hours that slaves could work, set wages that free natives should be paid, and allow the native villages to retain their system of communal lands which the Spanish called ejidos. Unfortunately, the 17th and 18th centuries saw this land illegally expropriated from the natives by unscrupulous tax collectors and owners.
