Landed Society in New Spain: A View from the South
W ^tIm GOOD REASON, great landed estates hold the attention of many students of modern Latin America. Landholding in wide areas of the subcontinent to the south is inseparable from latifundios. Great estates were especially conspicuous in the century after Independence, often dominating local economies and political power. The size and traditional functions of these rural estates have also made them obvious targets of those who demand modernization, nationalism, and social justice in the twentieth century. Political and social reformers have naturally concentrated their attention on the land regime, not only because of its economic and political power but also because nowhere in Latin America have landed barons given up their privileged position voluntarily. Rural estates with colonial beginnings continue to dominate regional economies and societies in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Guatemala. In Mexico, where traditional latifundios have declined in the last fifty years, concentration of land in a few hands was once an even more important issue. Mexico's Revolution of 1g9o, and its fulfillment under Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s, reacted against a colonial heritage that was symbolized by haciendas and a landed aristocracy. If large estates have a conspicuous place in the rural landscape of Indoand Mestizo America, their functions and socioeconomic effects also have brought them under attack, as values changed in the direction of economic efficiency or social justice. Whether operated primarily for profit or prestige, the large, labor-intensive rural estates perpetuate income inequalities and authoritarian-paternalistic rule. Even when large estates have declined, they leave behind a residue of values and attitudes that resists change. Like a gnarled old oak, the latifundio's roots reach well beyond its visible boundaries into personal and psychological relationships, such as the patron-servant posture or