Agrarian property in México

In the Mexican countryside land tenure is made up of individual private properties called smallholdings, and ejidos and agrarian communities, designating these last two as social property or agrarian nuclei. The ejidos and communities² constitute modalities of land tenure exclusive to the country and are product of the agrarian reform (1934 and 1992)³; there are also barren lands (without formal owner) and national lands (property of the Nation). These different forms of agrarian property cover 198.5 million hectares; of these, the social possessions cover an expanse close to 102 million ha (ejidos 84.5 million and communities 17.4 million), equivalent to 53.4 % of the surface. To private property (including agricultural colonies) belong close to 79 million hectares, 39.8 % of the national land area, while national terrains reach 7.7 million hectares (3.9 %) and other types, surely barren lots, 5.8 million hectares (2.9 %) (^{INEGI, 2007b}) (Table 1).

Table 1 National agrarian structure based on type of tenure (surface in million hectares), 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, RAN and PA.

The smallholding has a general limit in its extension of 100 hectares of irrigation lands or the surface that is equivalent in other less productive classes of land; it can also be 150 hectares for cotton sowing and up to 300 hectares if they are destined to the cultivation of banana, sugar cane, coffee, henequen, rubber, palm, grapevine, olive tree, cinchona, vanilla, cacao, agave, prickly pear or fruit trees, while for livestock use the maximum allowed is the sufficient space for their grasses and fodder to feed up to 500 heads of large livestock or the equivalent in smaller animals. In social property, within the same ejido, none of the members could be title holder of plot rights over an extension larger than the equivalent of 5 % of the nucleus lands, or of more surface than what corresponds to smallholding; in addition, individually the ejidatarios cannot be owners of forests or rainforests (agrarian law, article 59)⁴.

Ejidos are a rustic modality of property founded by the Mexican State and unique in the world, while agrarian communities have a history since the Colony (with the name of indigenous towns or natives) to which the government granted legal recognition, although only to a very small part of them, since most of them were forced to become ejidos.⁵ The communities were created during Colonial times through royal identity cards, which were titles granted by the kings of Spain, granting lands to native peoples for human settlement, farming plots and lands of common use (in ancient Spanish this last type of surface were called exidos). With the agrarian reform, the government renamed the ancient indigenous towns with the epithet of agrarian communities, imposed the restriction of not being able to sell or rent their own lands, and made obligatory an organizational regimen foreign to their uses and customs, making it equal for all of them even if being so diverse.

Currently, practically the only differences there are between ejidos and agrarian communities are that in the latter the law does not allow for farming plots to be entitled personally (even if they are farmed individually) and comuneros cannot sell their lands; however, because of agreement in assembly of the majority of the members of a community they can change to the ejido system and thus gain access to individual plots and, even, to their later sale if it is decided by a qualified assembly.

The maximum authority of ejidos and agrarian communities is the general assembly and the direction organs are the commissary (whether ejidal or of communal goods) that is designated by direct vote from ejidatarios or comuneros and is made up of president, secretary and treasurer, which in turn are supervised by a vigilance council integrated by its president, secretary and vocal; in addition, they all have their respective substitutes.

Agrarian subjects are ejidatarios and comuneros who have the rights to farming plots and access to all the common goods from the agrarian nucleus; in addition to them, there are the titleholders, who are only allowed to have access to farming plots. There are also the avecindados (agrarian law, article 12), who are people of Mexican nationality, over age and who have lived at least for one year in the agrarian nucleus, which, with the authorization of the general assembly or through agreement by the agrarian tribune can acquire the legal figure of ejidatario and have the right to purchase land in the ejido.

Depending on their resources and characteristics, the surface that constitutes an ejido can be destined to up to five different uses: cultivation or farming (generally they are individual plots), lands of common use (hills, forests and rainforests), and plots with a specific destination that are used - by decision of the general assembly - to tend to needs of community nature, such as children’s education (school plot), women’s productive activity (agricultural/livestock farm or rural industries for women) and for the formation of young people (youth plot); likewise, plots in favor of the ejido, which are the places where goods that belong to the group of ejidatarios are located (such as wells, nurseries, farmyards, facilities for storage, processing or transformation), and the human settlement area (where each ejidatario has the right to a plot in private property to establish his home).

The particularities of social property

Concerning the property, ejidatarios and comuneros were and are the owners of ejidos and agrarian communities, even since before the physical hand-over of land⁶ and even when the allotment had been granted free of charge. In the case of the ejidos, the common areas belong to everyone and the plots to individuals (so they are titled in the name of each person); that was the most important change with regards to tenure modified with the new legislation in the matter (^{Pérez Castañeda, 2002: 26}). In the agrarian communities the common areas belong to everyone and the plots are found in the possession of the comunero who farms them, although they are property of the community (this was the same for ejidos up until changes in the agrarian legislation from 1992).

With regards to the essence or nature of social property, the ejidos and agrarian communities always constituted a modality (with a series of limitations and obstacles) of private property. Their lands do not belong to the nation, since if they were of national property the only way that the State would have to transfer land to peasants would be under the modality of a free loan that receives the name of comodato⁷.

Ejido and communal goods are property of the population nucleus (the set of people benefited with land endowment), and the ^{Agrarian Reform Federal Law (1971)} and the ^{agrarian law in force (1992)} are perfectly clear about it. Therefore, in the case of public utility, the lands from ejidos or communities do not return automatically to the dominion of the nation but rather through an expropriator act with prior compensation and, as is known, the expropriation takes place and only those who are legitimate owners of a good are reimbursed. In other words, the ejido was not a form of comodato but rather a modality of private property, which is seen not only in practice (reimbursement from expropriations) but in the legislation itself (Ley Federal de Reforma Agraria, article 51 and agrarian law, article 9)⁸.

Currently the ejido plot can be rented and even sold to other ejidatarios or avecindados from the same population nucleus; in order to be sold to a private party there needs to be a step through which the ejido gains access to full dominion. This process takes place in a general qualified assembly where, in the presence of a public notary and a representative from the Agrarian Attorney’s Office, 75 % of the ejidatarios need to attend and two thirds of the participants must be in agreement with the change.

Agrarian nuclei and their population

In México there are 31 873 ejidos and communities distributed in all the federal entities and located in 90.4 % of the municipalities that make up the country; there are 29 519 ejidos and the communities reach 2354. While the ejidos are located in all the states of the Republic, agrarian communities are found in 29 states (they do not exist in Baja California Sur, Campeche and Quintana Roo).

Of the ejidos, 4639 have opted for full dominion, which represents that close to 16 % of them are able to sell their farming plots legally (Table 2). According to this figure, little more than 84 % of the ejidos have not sold any of their parts; however, these data are inexact, since there is knowledge of several cases of plot selling in ejidos without full dominion to people outside the agrarian nuclei (^{Clichevsky, 2003}; ^{Olivera Lozano, 2005}). That is, to people who are not ejidatarios, owners or avecindados (the only ones authorized in article 80 of the agrarian law), so the prior figures refer exclusively to the ejidos that have sold lands legally.

Table 2 Ejidos and agrarian communities per state, surface, full dominion and municipalities without agrarian nuclei, 2013. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on ^{RAN, 2014}.

The agrarian nuclei are made up of 5 653 637 ejidatarios, comuneros and owners: the first two represent 74.5 % and the owners, 25.5 % of the total. Ownership of the plot rights among ejidatarios expresses a strong masculinity, since 80.2 % of the title-holders are men and 19.8 % women.

The distribution of ejidos and communities among the different federal entities is quite variable: in Chiapas, Michoacán and Veracruz the level of nuclei is high, for these three states concentrate 26.7 % of the country’s total; in eight states: Quintana Roo, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Aguascalientes, Colima, Distrito Federal, Tlaxcala and Morelos the level of ejidos and communities is low, for they only reach 4.7 % of the total; in the other 21 states, the level of concentration is intermediate since 68.6 % of the nuclei are distributed in these (Tables 2 and 3).

Table 3 Ejidos and agrarian communities per state and participation per sex in %, 2007. 

Source: INEGI. ^{Censo Ejidal 2007}.

Of the more than 5.6 million ejidatarios and comuneros, almost half (47.6 %) are grouped in five states: Estado de México, Guerrero, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas; inversely, in ten states: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Nuevo León, Aguascalientes, Colima, Querétaro, Puebla, Ciudad de México, Campeche and Quintana Roo, there is only 6.2 % of the agrarian subjects; 46.2 % of the ejidatarios and comuneros are distributed in the 17 other states (Table 4).

Table 4 Distribution of ejidatarios, comuneros and owners in México, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2007.

During the period from 1992 to date, and as a result of the end of the agrarian reform (1992) and of an intense program of regularization and titling of land tenure (Procede), the surface in social property increased by 40 % its number of owners or beneficiaries in just 23 years, by going from 3.5 million in 1991 to 4.9 in 2014. As consequence, the average number of owners per agrarian nucleus increased, and to the contrary, the surface per owner decreased, worsening the atomization and smallholding of social property (^{RAN, 2014}), which entails dangers of overexploitation of the land, erosion and unsustainable exploitation.

Infrastructure and means of production in agrarian nuclei

Concerning the productive infrastructure available to ejidos and agrarian communities in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Chiapas and Hidalgo, their agrarian nuclei show the lowest indexes in infrastructure and means of production. Likewise, it can be clearly seen how this zone is where the highest number of ejidos and communities converge, in addition to being the area where there is least infrastructure and means of production (irrigation berms, drinking troughs, wells, milking rooms, sawmills, tractors, vehicles and machinery) (Table 5).

Table 5 Infrastructure, tractors and vehicles functioning, and machinery for agricultural/livestock and forestry use in ejidos and communities, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2007.

There is another region made up of the states of Durango, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and Nayarit which, in contrast to the previous, expresses high indexes of infrastructure and means of production, above average. Likewise, Baja California Sur, whose level of agrarian nuclei and number of owners is low, is classified within these parameters, although it manifests the highest index in infrastructure and means of production.

By 2007 in México there were 4 210 830 ejidatarios and comuneros, in addition to 1 442 807 owners, of which 3 392 126 had a plot of their own, meaning that almost 81 % of them have this type of personal endowment. The highest degree of subjects with plots is seen in the states of Aguascalientes, Tamaulipas and Guanajuato since, in average, 94.6 % of them have individual endowment; while in Sonora, Durango, Distrito Federal, Yucatán and Quintana Roo the lowest point of subdivision is seen; less than two thirds of the ejidatarios and comuneros have an individual plot; in the 25 remaining states the situation is intermediate and homogeneous, since they group 87.8 % of the agrarian subjects and 85 % of the ejidos and communities (Table 6).

Table 6 Ejidatarios and comuneros with individual plots, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2007.

Cultivation surfaces

In México, 90.6 % of the agrarian nuclei have areas that are subdivided, whose surface covers 33 628 597 hectares, representing 31.7 % of its extension; that is, almost a third of the lands of social property are divided into plots. Of these, 56.4 % are destined to agricultural use, mostly under seasonal conditions, since only 11.2 % of the surface divided into plots have irrigation (Table 7).

Table 7 Ejidos and communities with subdivided surface, characteristics, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2009.

The ejidos and agrarian communities are smallholdings with an average plot surface of agricultural use per individual of 4.2 hectares and, if it were not enough, half of the ejidatarios and comuneros have their possession separated into two or more fractions, with cases existing where the endowment is divided into up to eight minuscule plots. In Estado de México, Guerrero and Oaxaca, the situation of the small areas of land becomes critical, since they are the states that concentrate the highest number of ejidatarios and comuneros and also agrarian nuclei.

In 19 states there is a high level of ejidos and communities with subdivided areas; in contrast, in Sonora, Durango, Distrito Federal and Quintana Roo, the level of agrarian nuclei with subdivided surface is low, while nine states: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Guerrero, Yucatán and Chiapas, present an intermediate level (Table 7).

With regards to the amount of subdivided surface, the highest level (between 61 and 90 % of the total of that surface) is concentrated in Veracruz, Tabasco, Tlaxcala and Colima; in opposition, the lowest level is located in Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Distrito Federal and Quintana Roo, where less than a fifth of the total area is subdivided. In the 22 remaining states, the agrarian nuclei that register an intermediate level of subdivided surface is located, between 20 and 60 % (Table 7).

It is important to point out that, for different reasons, not all the subdivided stretch is cultivated. In Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Morelos and Tlaxcala, the level of surface subdivided with agricultural use is high, for more than 88 % of the total of that area is destined to sowing; opposite of this, in Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Coahuila, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, the level is low because the maximum of surface subdivided with agricultural use is 34 %; in the 18 remaining states, the level is intermediate, that is, between 35 and 87 % of the subdivided space is used with agricultural aims (Table 6).

With regards to the subdivided surface with availability of irrigation in Sonora, Sinaloa, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Michoacán and Morelos, the level presented is high, between 21 and 50 %, while in Distrito Federal, Tabasco, Chiapas, Campeche and Quintana Roo, it is low, of no more than 3 % of the area; in the 21 remaining states between 4 and 20 % of the subdivided zone is irrigated (Table 6).

Areas of common use

In México, six out of ten ejidos and communities have non-cultivated grasses and pastureland or overgrown surfaces; same as in other parts of the world, in these zones there are strong erosion problems as a result of overgrazing and overexploitation of endemic plants and shrubs (^{RRI, 2010}); a fourth part of the agrarian nuclei present desertification processes in their areas of common use, situation which, related to the form of organization for the destination and exploitation of the land, leads to a deficient management of its main resource, land (Table 8).

Table 8 Ejidos and communities with non-cultivated grasses and surface of common use without vegetation, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2007.

The absence of or weak cooperation, resulting from the way of organization that is mostly centered in the nuclear family, does not allow implementing planned strategies of maintenance, restoration and conservation of endemic resources: due to the conditions of poverty, the families are centered mostly on their exploitation, but not in their restoration, or in controlling the use thinking of the future.

In Baja California Sur, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and Querétaro the ejidos and communities with uncultivated grasses, pasturelands or overgrown areas converge, states where more than 80 % of the nuclei have this type of plant coverage, thus showing the highest level in the zone, making up a region framed on the two sides by the Sierra Madre mountains and to the south by the volcanic nodes. On the opposite end, there are Distrito Federal, Veracruz, Puebla, Tabasco and Chiapas, which show a low level, since at least 43 % of the nuclei have this type of fields (Table 8).

In Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Querétaro, Hidalgo and Estado de México the level of ejidos and communities with surface of common use without vegetation is high, given that more than 38.5 % of the nuclei exhibit this characteristic. Inversely, in Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatán and Distrito Federal, the level shown is low, with less than 19 % of the nuclei showing spaces of common use lacking vegetation (Table 8).

Productive activities in the ejidos and agrarian communities

In 93.7 % of the agrarian nuclei, agriculture is practiced (fundamentally rainfed, since only 11 % of the surface is irrigated). Livestock production is developed in 82.3 %, parallel to the crops, while in addition to the agricultural and livestock tasks, 21.7 % are devoted to harvesting in the wild; there are 9.6 % of the agrarian nuclei that are only devoted to forest exploitation, and 0.7 % to other non-agricultural/livestock or forestry activities.

This analysis doesn’t refer to the volume of production, but rather it is centered on defining those agricultural and livestock activities to which most of the agrarian nuclei are devoted. In the ejidos and agrarian communities, 26 important crops are sown and they are devoted essentially to two livestock production activities: breeding and milking cattle.

In the first place, 70.4 % of the ejidos and communities are devoted to maize sowing as principal crop (51.9 % for human consumption and 18.5 % for fodder); the second is sugar cane, in 44.4 % of the nuclei; third, cultivated grasses, in 44 %; in fourth place, sorghum, 33.3 %; fifth, coffee, 29.6 %; sixth, lime and tomato, 25.9 %; in seventh place, alfalfa, bean and mango, 22.2 %; in eighth, melon, watermelon and apple, 18.5 %; in ninth, rice, cotton, barley, chili and orange, 14.8 %; in tenth, coconut, tobacco, banana and green tomato, 11 %; and in eleventh place, agave, avocado, cacao and grapevine, 7.4 %.

Out of the 2207 ejidos and communities with forestry activities carried out by most of their members, there are rudimentary activities of wood transformation only in 889 of them, standing out that 209 are devoted to carbon making; 109 to obtaining planks; and 96 to firewood exploitation (^{INEGI, 2007a}). There are 294 agrarian nuclei with sawmills, that is, 13.3 %. In contrast, there are 590 sawmills that are private property (Table 3), resulting in that although 80 % of the forests are in agrarian nuclei, only a third of the sawmills are located in them; likewise, 87 % of the ejidos and forest communities are devoted only to tree felling, without any other transformation (^{INEGI, 2007a}).

There are ejidos and communities that basically perform non-agricultural/livestock or forestry activities; thus, 741 agrarian nuclei (2.4 %) carry out fundamentally artisanal tasks; 860 (2.7 %) practice primarily fishing; only 509 nuclei (1.6 %) take advantage of their natural resources and historical heritage for tourism, while obtaining materials for construction (sand, gravel, stone, tezontle and marble, among others) is present in a higher number of nuclei, 1381 (4.4 %), but even so it is very low and on many occasions the exploitation is carried out by private businesses that have concessions from ejidos and communities, presenting indiscriminate extraction that in the long term affects the other local resources (Table 9).

Table 9 Ejidos and communities that perform non-agricultural/livestock or forestry activities, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2007.

The ejidos and communities that carry out artisanal activities (traditional products elaborated manually with local raw materials) are listed next: with a high level, Quintana Roo and Distrito Federal with nearly 85 %; inversely, there are Coahuila, Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Querétaro and Tlaxcala, with a maximum of 1 % of agrarian nuclei that make handicrafts (Table 9).

The agrarian nuclei that extract materials for construction are located at a high level (of 7 % to 11 %) in Baja California, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo; the level is low, up to a maximum of 2.2 % in Sinaloa, Nuevo León, Tlaxcala, Tabasco and Campeche; in the 21 remaining states the level of social properties that are devoted to this activity is intermediate (Table 9).

The Mexican territory as 11 222 kilometers of coast, of which 6638 km are located in 605 ejidos and communities that have lands with access to the sea (^{SRA, 2008}), which means that the social property has available more than half (57 %) of the Mexican coasts. Although this broad extension of coasts is available, México occupies the fourth place in volume of fishing in the American continent with a capture of 1774 tons, with the first three being Peru (6964 t), USA (4710 t) and Chile (4703 t) (^{INEGI, 2015}), when our country is above Peru and Chile in terms of the extension of their coasts. The problems that hinder the development of fishing activities in México are diverse; among them the deficiency in watercrafts stands out, as well as the insufficient port infrastructure and scarce financial supports from the government. This problematic is reflected in the negligible number of ejidos and communities whose main activity is fishing.

The ejidos and communities that carry out fishing activities, both at sea and in inland waters, are ordered as follows: in Baja California Sur, Nayarit and Tabasco the level is high, that is, between 6.4 and 15 % of the nuclei carry out these tasks; in contrast, in Coahuila, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato and Yucatán the level of nuclei is low, less than 1 % of them perform fishing activities. In the 24 states that have not been listed, the level is intermediate (between 1 % and 6.4 %) and, although 46 % of the entities do not have coasts, although less representative than at sea, fishing in rivers, lakes, lagoons, dams and canals is of great value for some regions of México because of its dietary and economic contribution. Sometimes fish or other aquatic organisms are bred (trout, bass, catfish, shrimp and prawn) to increase the productivity in the inland bodies of water; the agrarian nuclei of Veracruz, Hidalgo, Sonora and Tabasco stand out because of their aquatic activity (Table 9).

Of the ejidos and communities with tourism activity: Baja California Sur, with 12 % of the nuclei, and Distrito Federal, with 27 %, show high levels, while the low level is found in Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Veracruz and Tlaxcala, since only less than 1 % of the nuclei carry out this type of practice; in the 24 remaining states, between 1 % and 8.3 % are devoted to these services (Table 9).

Although they are few compared to the total, the nuclei that are primarily devoted to non-agricultural/ livestock activities have great potential because of their natural resources, knowledge and traditional knowhow that, if supported with financial backing and government or private training, could be taken advantage of for local development.

Environmental services, potential of ejidos and communities

Social property provides environmental services, mainly based on their forest wealth, and it has the potential to increase them, since more than 80 % of the biodiversity and natural wealth of the country is found in this type of lands; in addition, 15 584 ejidos and communities are settled on forest, rainforest and scrubland zones, which adds a surface close to 63 million hectares, so the social property is essential for the conservation and exploitation of biodiversity in our country (^{RAN, 2015}).

For the preservation and care of ecosystems there are three types of environmental services related to natural resources that the ejidos and communities have: conservation of biodiversity, carbon reserves in forests, rainforests and scrublands, and hydrological services.

Data from the National Agrarian Registry (RAN) show that 21 968 ejidos and communities (69 %) have some valuable ecosystem for the retention and capture of carbon: 9165 have forests; 11 965, rainforests; and 6 144 have scrublands. These agrarian nuclei have the capacity to retain carbon, which ranges from less than a ton to 19.2 million tons of carbon (^{Reyes et al., 2012: 36}).

Referring to the conservation of biodiversity, the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, CONABIO) has identified 265 areas in México that stand out for their rich ecosystems, comparatively larger than in the rest of the country and which, in addition, have a high potential for their conservation. These surfaces are catalogued as Priority Land Regions (152) and Priority Hydrological Regions (111), with the characteristic that in all of them there are ejidos and agrarian communities (^{Conabio, s. f.}). Thus, half of the Priority Land Regions are located in 6 592 agrarian nuclei and cover 25.7 million hectares, while 12 717 ejidos and communities, with 38.7 million hectares represent 48 % of the Hydrological Regions (^{Conabio, s. f.}). In terms of hydrological services, the data from RAN point out that almost all (99 %) of the 189 Potential Water Reserves of the country are found in 7 462 agrarian nuclei with 23.4 million hectares (^{CONAGUA, 2011}).

To gauge the importance that these environmental services can have in the social property, we should consider that there are 15 584 ejidos and communities that can be classified as with forestry potential because half of their surface is tree-covered, which results in an area of 62.6 million of hectares. Another more conservative criterion considers as forest the ejidos and communities with at least 200 hectares of forests, rainforests and scrublands, which adds a surface of 57.3 million hectares (^{Reyes et al., 2012: 33-34}). In any of the two scenarios, the surface is huge and the possibilities of offering environmental services are quite large.

Permanence and migration of young people from agrarian nuclei

The permanence of young people in their agrarian nuclei but, above all, their incorporation into some productive activity inside of them, is an important indicator that points to whether the economic situation is favorable or not for the young population that inhabits them. In 58.8 % of the ejidos and communities in México, most of the youth stays in them; however, only in 34.3 % of the units the young people become integrated to a productive activity. This situation has led to four out of 10 young persons (41.2 %) to abandon their agrarian nuclei in search of work, mostly beyond the northern border. Thus, 27.9 % of the ejidos and communities present migration of youth to the United States; 10.7 % to urban centers; and 2.6 % go towards rural areas, possibly as agricultural day laborers (Table 10), which clearly shows the low dynamism of agricultural/livestock activities and that the country does not offer sufficient work alternatives for the young population in the countryside.

Table 10 Ejidos and communities with permanence and/or migration of young people, 2007. 

Source: authors’ elaboration based on INEGI, Agricultural and Livestock Census 2007 and Ejido Census 2007.

The ejidos and communities with majority permanence of young people in their agrarian nuclei are distributed in the following way: the high levels of permanence are found in Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Estado de México, Distrito Federal, Tabasco and Chiapas. That is, between 76.3 and 87 % of the nuclei retain their young probably there are opportunities of employment because close to them. In contrast, less than half of the youth from ejidos and communities located in Zacatecas, San Luís Potosí, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Colima and Hidalgo remain in their nuclei, integrating a region in the central part of the country with less permanence of youth in ejidos and communities, in agreement with the great migratory tradition in that zone (^{Morett and Cosío, 2004: 39}); in the 19 remaining states the level present is intermediate, since between 47.9 and 76.3 % of the nuclei retain most of their youth (Table 10).

The ejidos and communities with young people who are integrated into some productive activity inside them are typified next: high level in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Campeche and Quintana Roo; that is, between 44.2 and 67 % of the nuclei have participation of youth in productive tasks; on the opposite end, the low level is present in Colima, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Querétaro and Baja California, for only in less than a fifth of the nuclei the young people become integrated into production. In the 22 remaining states there is an intermediate level; between 20 and 44.1 % of the nuclei retain their youth working in them.

The ejidos and communities with migration of young people to urban areas are divided in the following way; the level is high (24 to 17.9 % of the nuclei) in Sonora, San Luís Potosí, Baja California Sur, Hidalgo, Yucatán and Baja California; the level is low in Zacatecas, Nayarit, Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Morelos and Guerrero, since young people migrate to urban zones in less than 4 % of their nuclei, integrating a well-defined region in the center-west zone of the country; in the remaining 18 states the level is intermediate - between 4 and 17.5 % of the nuclei (Table 10).

The agrarian nuclei with youth migration towards rural areas are ordered in the following way; the highest level is present (3.3 to 6 % of the nuclei) in Veracruz, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala and Yucatán, states that offer day laborers, while it is lowest in Baja California Sur, Estado de México, Distrito Federal and Morelos (Table 10).

The ejidos and communities with youth migration to the USA are distributed according to the following relation: the level is high (above 41.9 % of the nuclei) in the states of Zacatecas, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Colima, integrating a well-defined region in the center-west with broad migratory tradition towards the US; in contrast, it is low in the states of Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Distrito Federal, Tabasco and Yucatán, for less than 9 % of the nuclei present migration of their youth towards the United States; the agrarian nuclei with intermediate migration are located in the 22 remaining states, that is, between 8.6 and 41.8 % (Table 10).

The ejidos and communities with youth migration to a country other than the US are numerically insignificant (17 in the whole country). The states where these nuclei are located are Hidalgo, Coahuila, Guerrero, Michoacán, Jalisco, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas and Veracruz, with barely between 0.1 and 0.2 %. This migration quite probably is directed to Canada as a result of the agreement in the matter in force since 1974 between that country and México, the Temporary Agricultural Workers Program (Table 10), and which annually sends around 21 thousand day laborers to Canada (^{STPS, 2015}).

In México, throughout its historical process, an unequal and heterogeneous development has taken place that has shaped regions with great socioeconomic contrasts. This dissimilar development keeps close to 20 % of its population in marginalization from income, employment, housing and education (^{CONAPO, 2015}). The conditions of marginalization are accentuated in rural zones, since due to an unequal distribution of resources there is a concentration of services, infrastructure, qualified staff and financial resources in the urban centers.

In the country three large regions are clearly defined with different degrees of marginalization: in the south and southeast it is recorded as very high and high; in the center and center-west a heterogeneous region is shaped with degrees of marginalization that range from intermediate to very low; in the north of the country, including the peninsula of Baja California, a region is shaped with low and very low degrees of marginalization.

Coincidentally, in the region of highest degree of marginalization, in the south and southeast, the ejidos and communities with lowest level of means of production are located (infrastructure, tractors, vehicles and machinery for agricultural/livestock and forestry use); although the relationship is not directly proportional, it does allow appreciating how the low level in infrastructure and means of production translates into another of the factors within the circle of marginalization. In the south and southeast regions is where the highest scale of ejidatarios, comuneros and owners settled in the states with highest degrees of marginalization are found.