Chapter 11

The Lerdo Law of 1856

The Lerdo Law (‘Ley Lerdo’)– complicated, ambiguous and incomplete – initiated an uneven process that would drag on for a further fifty years. The immediate result was a deluge of requests for clarification. In the first place, it was unclear what the main objective was, whether the law was designed to undermine ecclesiastical proprietorship or to privatise village lands. Both were overriding Liberal goals, towards which several precedents already existed, going back to state laws, the Cádiz legislation of 1810–14 and even to the Bourbon reforms. Did this law aim at both or did it prioritise the former over the latter? The general belief among Liberals was that the Church was rich, but the State poor. In terms of the estimated value of properties eligible for disentailment, the states with the highest values were Mexico, Puebla, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Jalisco and Veracruz. In Mexico City, the religious orders owned properties valued in total at 11,065,768 pesos and the secular clergy to the value of 1,322,839 pesos, most of them rented to tenants. Religious communities subsisted on the rents, which traditionally were fixed at little more than 6 per cent.¹

The Ley Lerdo of 25 June 1856 aroused conflict both at the time and later among historians concerning its significance and impact. Implementation of the law had serious implications, well beyond the ideology of equality before the law that motivated it. In general terms, it proposed the transfer of most categories of the properties of civil and ecclesiastical corporations into private ownership. The intervention of third parties in these transfers threatened to scupper preference for existing tenants. This danger occurred in the transformation of civil communities’ properties. In the case of ecclesiastic properties, the law proposed to transform tenants into proprietors, paying to the Church as interest what they had previously paid as rent. The government would take a 5 per cent sales tax for the transfer. Lerdo stated in ‘La Sociedad’ on 28 June 1856, that he aimed to release property on to the market that had been held in mortmain or by communities, thereby stimulating industry and employment. He meant to create a rural middle class of small proprietors and extend the base of taxation. This latter aim would enable the government to secure the revenue to fund its projects. The fiscal and economic motives, however, were clearly uppermost and took precedence over any social revolutionary intent. This fiscal intent was fundamental to the entire process, because it was also designed to provide collateral for a loan from the United States.²

The measure removed legal recognition of the right of communities and corporations to property ownership. The general principles, however, did not apply in the same way in practice to Church properties as it did to village common properties. In reality, everything would have to be sorted out on the ground. With respect to the State of Veracruz, Michael Ducey explains that ‘the objectives of the Laws of Reform were to transfer the right of property ownership from corporations to those who worked the corporate lands’. That, in his view, is only where the problem began. The Veracruz State Law of 22 December 1826 had described the farmers who worked the land as the legitimate owners, not the community as a body. The lands should then be divided equally among these participants. Such a position allowed Indian community members to maintain that they, not an abstract corporation, were legally the landowners, when the State Law of 4 April 1856 removed the legal existence of repúblicas de indios. This principle was maintained in the Ley Lerdo. In any case, the unforeseen obstacles to putting the Lerdo Law into effect – the cost of measurement, division amd identification of individuals – greatly impeded any swift translation into reality. Much was left to be worked out among the individuals themselves, who would be most likely to opt for the simplest solution, which would be to preserve as much of the past custom as possible in accordance with the law. This would entail upholding the Liberal legislation while at the same time maintaining community identity.³

In practical terms, implementation required the definition of which properties were involved and the qualified surveyors, of which there were few, and their valuation. Few authorities could work out which among them were supposed to initiate the procedure of disentailment.⁴ Furthermore, when assessing the impact of this law, we should bear in mind the continuing weakness of the Mexican state, a central theme of this present book, and the upheaval already prevalent across much of the republic in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s.

The Constituent Congress discussed the Ley Lerdo on 28 June. Zarco called for immediate approval, drawing attention to the frustration of earlier measures in 1833–4 and 1847. He argued that it reconciled the interests of the three principal categories involved: the pueblos, the National Treasury and the Church. In that sense, he did not regard disentailment as an attack by the Liberal state on either the village communities or the Church, although he did recommend prudence in the implementation of the measure. Ignacio Ramírez welcomed the law but did not think that it went far enough. He pointed out that the intended beneficiaries did not have sufficient funds to promote an adjudication procedure. In that sense, the law was defective. Zarco defended the social objective of the law, championing, along with Ignacio Vallarta, the principle that lands should be divided before sale, in order to facilitate the emergence of small proprietors. Congress requested the presence of Lerdo in the chamber, but, as a minister, he was not invited to address it. Zarco, in effect, acted as his spokesman. Congress approved the law by fifty-seven votes to twenty-seven, a division that indicated the wariness of many deputies towards this measure. Payno opposed the Ley Lerdo at the time of its enactment. When he became Finance Minister for a second time, he attempted to remove it, but discovered that it was too late to do so.⁵

The Law of 25 June 1856 raised the question of how ‘corporate properties’ were to be defined and which were eligible for adjudication. Confusion rapidly arose concerning the status of properties described in the law as ejidos, lands set aside for community use for collecting wood or for pasture. These appeared to be exempted under article 8, along with the colonial fundo legal. Community propios, which generated income for the municipality, were not excluded, whether they were rented or retained. If not adjudicated within three months, such properties were to be put up for public auction. The Regulating Law of 30 July 1856 reiterated these stipulations. The Resolution of 9 October emphasised that the objective of the law had been to benefit the disadvantaged classes of society by ensuring the division of landed properties. Lerdo called for the compilation of a complete list of all corporate properties in the states and territories of the Republic. The Resolution recognised the difficulties experienced by indigenous communities in trying to give effect to the law as it was intended. Responding to this situation, the government removed the obligation to pay sales tax, official-paper tax and the adjudication fee of 5 per cent on all properties valued at under 200 pesos adjudicated in favour of existing tenants. The minister then stressed the economic and social importance of his law, rather than the fiscal intent.⁶

The procedure began in the State of Mexico during the second half of 1856. According to government figures, a total of 65,373 new proprietors came into existence by the end of 1869 in a drawn-out process. Although peaceful appeals were the norm, many disturbances still occurred. Community responses often depended on who was the local jefe político and how the existing private proprietors behaved. Although Indian communities possessed lands assigned to the upkeep of the cults of locally venerated saints and for the maintenance of the village church, such lands were included in the disentailment process. This met with resistance.⁷

The Bishop of Puebla protested against the law and defended ecclesiastical property on the grounds that it protected the unfortunate and kept properties out of the hands of monopolists, speculators, agiotistas and foreigners. He declared the law null and void, excommunicating beneficiaries and those giving effect to it. This action exacerbated the conflict in the diocese, which had begun late in March.⁸ Private individuals secured relatively quick and easy control of many urban properties previously held by religious bodies, such as the Oratory of St Philip Neri in Oaxaca, the church in which Juárez had married Margarita Maza in 1843.⁹

The Ley Lerdo in the State of Oaxaca

The State of Oaxaca, with its Indian majority, surviving civil and religious institutions at the village level, widely spoken indigenous languages and vibrant community consciousness, should provide a testing ground for the impact of the Ley Lerdo. However, Church proprietorship was scant here compared to Puebla or Michoacán. In the case of village common ownership, wide discrepancies occurred, exacerbated by passive resistance, indifference and subtle procedures of getting around the law. In reality, outright opposition was rare, if not exceptional. Conflictive legal cases, furthermore, often dated back to decades before the Ley Lerdo. In this predominantly Indian state, few widespread and deeply rooted confrontations occurred between the rural population and the Liberal authorities for those reasons. The Central District (where there were twenty-eight Indian villages) and the northern sierra of Oaxaca remained Liberal strongholds. Charles Berry argues that, in view of the widespread acceptance of individual ownership within Indian communities, little communal land was disentailed. Resistance was much less common in the centre than in other areas of Oaxaca. Land transfers occurred rapidly in the Central District and virtually ceased after December 1856. Initiatives were being taken by the communities themselves. Berry points to division of lands among community members and to sales of cofradía land to outsiders in return for small sums paid into the municipal treasury. The black-pottery village of San Bártolo Coyotepec, located between the city of Oaxaca and Ocotlán, sold four tracts of such land for 1,000 pesos to outsiders, while keeping pastureland and wood-collection for the village. The bulk of land transfers occurred in the Valley of Oaxaca – 180 in the district of Zimatlán and ninety-four in Ocotlán. Outlying areas did have significant transfers, though these were in districts with specific characteristics, such as sugar-cultivation or other market-demand products: eighty-three disentailments in Teposcolula, fifteen in neighbouring Tlaxiaco and sixty-one in Jamiltepec. Berry rejects the idea that the disentailment obliged villages to surrender their lands and became impoverished as a result, although this did occur in remoter areas beyond central political control. Even so, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Lerdo Law ran counter to Indian culture in Oaxaca with its multifaceted perception of landownership. Furthermore, most land disputes occurred between villages, dating often well before 1856, rather than with private proprietors.¹⁰

Ten days after the publication of the law in the State of Oaxaca an uprising took place in Tlaxiaco over disputed adjudications between sugar producers and Indian communities, from which they had been renting land.¹¹ This suggests that civil disentailment had the most serious effect in the first instance in those areas where specialisation in a high demand commodity, such as sugar, was in process. Oaxaca’s Tlaxiaco zone shared a number of characteristics with sugar zones in southern Puebla – Izúcar, Chietla and Chiautla – and the future State of Morelos. In the case of mid-century Tlaxiaco, the value of common lands was calculated at 3,756 pesos in 1854. In December 1856, 107 items were listed as ‘adjudicated lands’ under the provisions of the Ley Lerdo. Fifteen of these pertained to the Tlaxiaco municipality – ten ranches and five sugar refineries. The municipality received 17,465 pesos annually from rental income.¹²

The Tlaxiaco case reveals a great deal about how the process of civil disentailment was conducted at the local level and what interests were involved. Sugar had been planted in the area known as the Yosotiche Valley since the early eighteenth century by newly arrived Spanish merchant-investors. Two of the small processing units (trapiches), ‘San José’ and ‘La Concepción’, were leased, respectively by José Antonio Guergué and Captain Estéban García, from Indian caciques or villages.¹³ Increasing market demand gave the Tlaxiaco producers greater incentives during the second half of that century. One leading merchant, Gabriel Esperón, Royalist Captain during the Wars of Independence, began accumulating rented properties early in the nineteenth century, forming them into the ‘Hacienda de la Concepción’. Although damaged by insurgent activity in the Mixteca Alta in 1811–13, Esperón had salvaged his enterprise and then expanded it. At Independence, however, D. Gabriel, returned to Spain, leaving his enterprise in the hands of his son, Estéban. The family transferred the focus of its activities to Oaxaca City, where Estéban’s brother, Lic. José Esperón, began a political career culminating in the positions of Secretary of the Governor in 1860–3 and Liberal State Governor from November 1874 to January 1876. Until the mid-1850s, the naturales (i.e., ‘the Indians’) were still regarded as the legitimate property owners. Then, the Ley Lerdo made corporate property ownership illegal under article 25. Estéban Esperón saw the opportunity presented by the law to transform his enterprise into private property. His brother approached Governor Juárez on 10 September 1856 for the purpose of instructing the Municipal Council of Tlaxiaco to see to the adjudication of its properties, which it had still failed to do. Lic. Esperón argued that this delay showed disrespect for authority. Governor Juárez, always keen to see the law upheld, ordered the sub-prefect to see that the municipality complied.¹⁴

In public auctions held in nearby Teposcolula on 13 and 15 October 1856, the total value of corporate properties came to 11,411 pesos, of which 6,320 pesos pertained to civil corporations. The bulk of these latter went to a private proprietor, Gerardo Manzano, for the sum of 5,050 pesos in the form of a mill that had belonged to the small town of Tamazulapan. Two other individuals purchased a ranch each for 920 pesos and 350 pesos, respectively. They had belonged to the community of San Juan Teposcolula. The same Manzano bought several lands belonging to the cofradía of Our Lord in Tamazulapan. Domingo Magro, from the colonial-era merchant family, bought the ‘Molino de la Virgen’, in the same town, for 1,000 pesos.¹⁵

The Governor of the Department of Teposcolula reported to Juárez on 6 September that he found grave difficulties concerning how to proceed under the law. The Regulation of 30 July also presented problems: ‘citizens’, as he referred to the community population, were supposed to have the land they worked adjudicated, so that these corporate lands could be shared among them as private properties. Few in the clase proletaria could afford the expense involved, especially in view of the small value of these plots. For this reason, many ‘unfortunates’ drew back from requesting land adjudications. As a result of ‘these insuperable difficulties’, he said that he had suspended the whole procedure of drawing up land titles for la clase indígena until the federal government resolves the matter. Lerdo’s Resolution of 9 October sought to respond to this.¹⁶

If we look at the Mixteca de la Costa, we see other forms of unrest in the small towns and villages of the Pacific coast and hinterland. Local cattle-ranchers, who had traditionally rented grazing lands from the peasant-artisan communities, saw in the Ley Lerdo the opportunity to transform themselves into proprietors. Some of them were local creole or mestizo notables; others had significant landholdings elsewhere in the state or might be military or political figures of some weight. One who combined several of these features was Colonel Manuel María Fagoaga, scion of a Oaxaca merchant family, owner of the important ‘Hacienda El Vergel’, located in the central-southern parish of Ejutla in the Ocotlán district, and a leading Conservative, even though he was married to the Esperón brothers’ sister, Crescencia. In September 1856, Fagoaga requested adjudication of the lands, pastures and waters of the villages of Pinotepa de Don Luis, San Pedro Jicayán and San Juan Colorado, and others which he rented at that time. He also controlled what was then known as a hacienda volante, seasonally migrating herds of livestock, which arrived on the Pinotepa lands at the appropriate time of year. The problem, however, was that the lands in Pinotepa and Jicayán had already been identified as falling under the adjudication procedure by Bernardino Carvajal, parish priest of Jamiltepec, head-town of the district of Jicayán, and a close political ally of Juárez. Carvajal had paid the sum of 4,100 pesos and received title to these lands as their new proprietor, as reported by the justice of the first instance on 4 September. The sub-prefect, nevertheless, doubted whether Carvajal had rented the lands before his purchase of them. The latter agreed to transfer the lands to Fagoaga for the same price to avoid a lawsuit. This transaction was agreed on 11 November.¹⁷

The village of Huaspaltepec lost all its lands in the disentailment. Its municipal authorities appealed to Juárez on 20 November to ensure their return. They wrote that most of those lands had been acquired under the Ley Lerdo by Manuel de Santaella, who came from one of the leading families of Oaxaca City, and two other individuals, without the consent of the community, which they described as the república. This action had deprived the village of its best lands and it could no longer subsist or pay taxes.¹⁸ In the village of Huazolotitlán, ranchos belonging to its cofradías of Asunción and San Felipe fell, according to the district governor and judicial officer, under the terms of the law. They put them up for auction. This would deprive the villagers of pastureland and income. Accordingly, they asked the state governor, ‘Why does the Law of 25 June 1856 benefit everyone but us? And why isn’t the Federal Government behaving like a good father towards us?’¹⁹

With respect to the mining districts of the northern sierra of Oaxaca, Porfirio Díaz, who became jefe politico of Ixtlán in 1857 when a young man in his twenties, wrote that his father had been employed around 1808–9 by a mining company there, which refined its metals in the haciendas de beneficio, adjacent to the mines of ‘Cinco Señores, San José, and El Socorro’, all in the district of Ixtlán. These refining properties belonged to the Oaxaca Cathedral, which had rented them to a British company (unnamed but probably to Diego Innes and Juan Sadler). Díaz said that he had adjudicated them to Miguel Castro, who had reported them as eligible for privatisation under the provision of the Reform Laws. At that time, his relative was Bishop of Oaxaca. It fell to Díaz to inform him of the transfer of the properties to civil ownership.²⁰

Short-term Results

Lerdo believed that less than one-half of the value of ecclesiastical real estate had undergone the adjudication procedure by the end of 1856. The Memoria de Hacienda of 1857 estimated the total value of disentailed properties at $3,313,879, of which a total of $1,002,032 came from the State of Guanajuato alone, where eleven haciendas were included in the transfer. These figures applied to properties valued at $25,000 and above. By 1866, the value of disentailed properties had reach 20 million pesos in the Federal District, 10 million in Puebla, 5.29 million in Guanajuato and 4.6 million each in Michoacán and Jalisco. The Guanajuato properties were principally rural. In the Federal District, one of the two largest purchasers was José Yves Limantour, father of the future Finance Minister (1893–1911) in the Díaz regime, spending $533,078 pesos. In San Luis Potosí, the largest purchasers were the Verástegui, who paid $52,989.²¹

Implementation of the Lerdo Law was in no way uniform or consistent. Much depended on local circumstances and responses from particular districts, villages and communities. Close examination of such instances will often reveal divisions within communities over how to respond. Despite overall aims, no administration of whatever complexion possessed sufficient power to enforce its measures effectively in the localities. The nature and impact of the Lerdo Law would be decided at the state, department, district and village levels, rather than by central government imposition. This meant that negotiation, lawsuits or localised conflict would decide the issue, protracted over decades. In some cases, former civil corporations, henceforth deprived of legal status, might redefine themselves in Liberal terms as bodies of individual proprietors, challenging officials or outside private individuals on that basis in defence of their lands. Within the village environment, the mentality of community, as a religious and cultural form of identity, might well have subsisted.

Furthermore, market conditions in the 1850s and 1860s did not encourage widespread transfers of landed property, least of all in states with large units of indigenous population wedded to the land for both their own subsistence and marketing prospects and also for cultural and religious reasons. In many cases, the rural population, given the history of the decades from the Insurgency of the 1810s to the 1860s had already demonstrated its readiness and ability to defend its position, whether through the courts, negotiation or armed resistance to external pressures. By and large, it would be they who decided whether Liberal laws benefitted them or not, how to get around them, exploit them, pretend they did not exist or oppose them. When international market conditions stimulated growing demand for primary and tropical produce in countries such as Mexico, and, accordingly, required a transformation of internal infrastructures from the 1880s, then more intense pressures on landownership and land usage would be felt in the rural areas.

The immediate results of the law spread uncertainty among property owners and confusion among indigenous communities and existing tenants. Two questions arose immediately: who would be affected? and how was this law to be enforced? The Liberal leadership had not envisaged the possible consequences of the law. In any case, the process was interrupted at the national level by the Conservative seizure of power in January 1858, followed by the Civil War of the Reform and by the War of the French Intervention of 1862–7. After the Liberals’ military victory in 1867, the Juárez administration, restored to Mexico City, renewed the disentailment process begun at the national level in 1856. It was not formally brought to an end until 1900. The federal government received a total of 25 million pesos in revenue as proceeds from the disentailment and the Nationalisation of Ecclesiastical Properties decreed in Veracruz on 12 July 1859.²²