Nearly Half of Mexico’s Ejidos Lack Access to Banking and Federal Support

Mexico City — Nearly half of Mexico’s ejidos and agrarian communities lack access to banking services and federal support programs due to outdated administrative structures, according to an agricultural advisor.

Arturo García Jiménez, an advisor to the National Coordinator of Ejidos and Communities, said that while ejidos and communities cover 50.7% of Mexico’s territory with 32,266 agrarian nuclei, only 48% have updated their representative bodies. This prevents them from processing paperwork, requesting federal agency support for forest exploitation, opening bank accounts, or obtaining federal taxpayer registration.

“The agrarian backlog faces major challenges that require a change of course,” García said, calling for land to be returned to those dispossessed and for legal safeguards against theft.

He described as “worrying” that more than 30 years after the constitutional reform of Article 27 and the enactment of the Agrarian Law, private interest exploitation, corruption, lack of public funds, institutional disorganization, intermediation, and marginalization have disrupted the organic life of these entities.

García noted that ejidos and communities are home to the country’s biodiversity, containing forests, water sources that feed rivers, mines, beaches, and other natural resources. They support 5.5 million ejidatarios or rights holders along with their families.

Key Challenges

The agronomist from Chapingo University identified several key challenges contributing to the agrarian backlog beyond the lack of updated representative bodies.

One issue is the renewal of membership rolls. Of the 8,764 requests for roll purification received by the National Agrarian Registry—representing 27% of the country’s total agrarian nuclei—only 1,589 have been updated, amounting to just 4.9%.

Additionally, only 25% of ejidos have developed or renewed their internal regulations or communal statutes. García lamented that most are poorly done, based on templates without community participation.

The final challenge involves succession lists, where 64% of ejidatarios have updated their heir lists, which helps prevent future problems.

Privatization Consequences

García emphasized that among the consequences of the Agrarian Law, enacted in 1992 by then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was that it allowed land privatization. While this mechanism gave ejidatarios certificates guaranteeing full ownership of their property, it also enabled them to sell or rent it.

This allowed ejidatarios to rent their lands to national and foreign businesses through mining concessions, forestry exploitation, contract farming, and carbon capture. However, García warned that when natural resources are depleted, “those who rent leave for elsewhere, leaving everything contaminated, without trees.”

Speaking around the anniversary of the death of General Emiliano Zapata, who began the agrarian revolution and was assassinated on April 10, 1919, García expressed regret that the federal government lacks a coordinated response to combat the backlog. He noted that the agencies responsible for resolving this issue—the Attorney General’s Office, Registry, and Unitary Agrarian Courts—have reduced budgets.