WHAT IS LATIFUNDISMO? - HISTORY - 2025

The latifundismo is that state of the economy in which a large amount of land is under the control of an owner or a minority of owners. In other words, it can be said that there is latifundismo when a person or a reduced group of people owns portions of land that have an enormous extension, which are commonly known as farms, estates or, even more, haciendas.

Although in the 21st century there are still vast estates that are under the dominion of rich landowners, in past times this proportion of large landowners tended to be higher in various parts of the world, since no agrarian reforms that were efficient enough to satisfy the needs of the peasant population. The latifundismo, in this way, constituted a serious problem that generated crises and revolutions.

The fight against latifundismo was thus a succession of critical events that led to continuous clashes between social classes, political elites and economic interests, which could not put aside the natural resources that sustained the wealth of the landowners and with it the source of his power.

The State, regardless of its color in the spectrum of ideologies, was in charge of designing outlets for this labyrinth. Each outing had a different result; in some cases it was good, in another it was bad.

Consequently, the agrarian reform caused the latifundistas to lose power, but not their capital, their money accumulated over the years.

To this was added another no less important problem, which was that of the smallholding, which caused not a few to question whether it was really adequate for the lands to be distributed equitably among all, that is, to the people, or only among those who knew how to work them.. In this way, the minifundio came to be branded as a miniature large estate.

This entire chain of events generated an extensive debate and research among scholars about what latifundismo itself is, its causes, its consequences, and how it should be adequately addressed, so that regrettable scenarios that mourned are not repeated. to humanity.

Likewise, the analysis of the economic and political implications of latifundismo as a problem has served as the basis for making known its links with hunger and poverty of the peoples.

Definition

There is a unanimous agreement that the latifundio obeys its etymology, which comes from the Latin latus (that is, broad, broad, extensive, if literal translations of the term are not used) and fundus (fund, possession of rural land), emerged in the mid-seventeenth century to express what in Spanish was known as a very large hacienda, so much so that it had colossal proportions, far beyond the size of a normal farm, with small plots.

Now, what is controversial is the precise or estimated amount of land that a peasant must have in order to be considered a latifundista. However, the figures, which have been calculated with more or less precision and taking into account the most studied cases, indicate that it takes about 200 or 250 hectares for a farm to go from being a smallholding to a full-fledged large estate., as long as the owners of those lands are reduced.

Difference between latifundio and minifundio

The latifundio and the minifundio can be the target of confusions that must be clarified. In the first place, the minifundio works with small lands that are not suitable for a large-scale exploitation.

In other words, a tiny farm is not in itself a large estate because it does not have abundant resources that can be used. In sum, the smallholders do not have enough hectares to grow crops and raise livestock in numbers that allow them to subsist adequately.

On the other hand we have that the latifundistas can work comfortably, since the agricultural space is immense and there is no shortage of resources. However, the latifundista, unlike the minifundista, does not exploit all of their lands but only a portion of them, which is why a large number of their estates remain idle and unused.

Furthermore, the landlord has more money and therefore more power to buy goods and services that are inaccessible to the smallholder.

Add to this one last but important detail: productivity and labor. While the smallholders produce little and do not always have servants for agricultural work, the largeholders have a more far-reaching production and have at their disposal the presence of employees who ease the responsibilities of the landowners: the laborers. In more remote and harsh times, they were the slaves.

History and causes

In the twentieth century, it was achieved that in many parts of the world latifundismo was eliminated through agrarian reforms, that is, through the distribution of extensive lands that were owned by few landowners into the hands of peasants, who were looking for means to get out of poverty by having greater amounts of arable areas that were also suitable for livestock.

This type of claim was sought a lot in countries of Spanish America, such as Mexico.

Venezuela, in fact, wanted the same agrarian achievements, since in the 19th century it was seen how the landowners had land and wealth to the detriment of the peasants who worked them.

Not surprisingly, the Creole latifundismo of those years brought with it the rise of caudillismo, several civil wars and slavery that was difficult to abolish, although it was replaced by the peonage system, that is, the peons who worked a lot in the field in exchange for a low salary.

As has been seen, the struggles that reduced landlordism or eliminated it at its roots were often framed by ideas that clashed with the claims of the large landowners, whose power was represented as belonging to capitalism, which had to be fought through revolutions or politics of socialism.

In more recent years, agrarian reforms have been seen as the most suitable means for the distribution of wealth in the countryside.

However, it should be noted that these liberating intentions and this economic situation placed in the hands of a few rich people are not entirely new; rather, they are old. It is no secret that between the 16th and 18th centuries, that is, the time of Spanish colonization in America, there were wealthy families and religious orders whose lands covered important parts of the provinces in the viceroyalties. Lands that, of course, they inherited from their descendants.

The Middle Ages also stood out for a related medium of latifundismo that is known as feudalism. It is well known by historians that the Middle Ages meant for Europe an era of constant conflicts over territories whose value was measured by the natural resources that could be extracted from it, if the evident military strategic value of its time is set aside. Feudalism, then, made the lords of the fiefdom have extensive lands worked by the serfs of the gleba.

It is also known that there were very clear antecedents of latifundismo in the Ancient Age, specifically in Rome and surely in Greece. The presence of numerous slaves and serfs in the crops of the territory conquered by the Roman Empire and the small number of chiefs who administered it - the patricians, that is - undoubtedly suggests that their civilization anticipated the footsteps of powerful men like Porfirio Díaz.

However, Asia was not far behind. The most illustrative case is found in Japanese feudalism, which closely follows the European one, overcoming cultural, historical, social and geographical differences. For centuries, the country of the Rising Sun had vast territories controlled by clans of rival families that benefited from the agricultural work of numerous peasants who extracted the fruits of the lands. This situation did not change until the Meiji Restoration, which began in 1868.

These examples and periods to which reference has been made show that latifundismo has the same essence and the same basic ideas, regardless of the place and culture in which they appear. On many occasions, the possession of much land in the financial coffers of the same landowner has staggered before the forces of society and the economy thanks to which countries have been transformed.

In addition, it is summarized based on historically documented and studied examples that latifundismo can arise in various ways. In short, a landowner can accumulate a lot of land by:

• Marriage ties between the children of the landowners
• Installation of ecclesiastical missions, such as that of the Jesuits who had a farm in Santa Lucía (Mexico) between 1576 and 1767.
• Legal or illegal appropriation of land, for the purchase of land or for spoils of war.
• Violence, invasion and looting of indigenous ethnic groups or rival landowners.

Political and socio-economic consequences

Latifundismo has not gone unnoticed in the eyes of critics, who have often seen it as a vehicle of capitalism in the agrarian sector.

But putting aside the judgments of the theorists, some Marxists and others liberals, it remains to explain in what sense a country is affected when its lands are divided according to the principles of latifundia. Historical cases such as those already described serve to better understand this panorama from a political and socio-economic perspective.

In the foreground, there have been few times that economic and political power have been in direct relation to social influence. In this aspect, latifundismo implies that the landowner has an immense accumulated capital. In other words, the latifundista, being the owner of large estates, has by definition an astronomical amount of money that can be used to obtain benefits from the State, that is, public positions and privileges that others do not have.

Additionally, the landowner, being a very wealthy person, has absolute control of their territories under conditions that allow them to be outside the public powers of the State; In other words, whoever owns the land is not only a landowner, but a ruler with authority who enjoys a certain autonomy.

This in itself is what the feudal lord of medieval Europe, the Latin American warlord of the 19th century, and the Japanese daimyo of the Tokugawa Period have in common.

It should also be said that political and civil rights were reduced, due to the fact that the elections were census; Only the person who met the socio-economic requirements specified in the laws of the nation could vote, for example the Constitution.

Often, the latifundista was one who was in a position to generate sufficient income with which he had access to vote and could also run, for example, for the post of mayor.

Land tenure, therefore, had a lot to do with obtaining citizenship. Whoever was a citizen had a voice and a vote in government affairs. But in nations where there was no law other than that of the feudal lord or the daimyo, sovereignty did not reside with the people, but with the nobility.

In this way, the political elite, which came to power through landlordism, is the one that actually made the decisions that led their countries in different directions.

From economic and political divergences originate social divergences. Landlordism has undoubtedly been a symptom of political backwardness and socio-economic inequality, since it indicates that the population is structured in hierarchies that go according to the money they produce.

The lowest strata often correspond to the peasants, day laborers and workers, or in short the laborers who worked the land of the landlords.

This socio-economic division has always brought up debates about the distribution of wealth, poverty and the right to property, since in latifundismo the laborer works land that is not his own, but that of the landowner, who belongs to him. true the one that profits with the earth.

For many years this reality has been the cause of social outbreaks in which they have wanted to increase the benefits of the peasants.

Latifundismo vs. agrarian reform

Through the agrarian reform it has been hoped that the distribution of the lands would be done in a more just way.

Thus, the peasant would be the owner of the parcels that he sows or the cattle raised, and therefore of the financial income that comes from agricultural activity. The landlord, therefore, would no longer have the territorial monopoly of his estates and therefore his capital with which he has obtained his wealth for generations would be diminished.

In the United States, for example, these reformist discussions have encountered obstacles with local landowners, who see in this reform a means to attack private property and with it their economic freedoms.

Not in vain this has been the reason why in the 19th century the Confederate side rejected the abolition of slavery until its defeat in the American Civil War. Something similar happened in Venezuela with the Conservatives after the Federal War.

Finally, the struggle between large landowners and agraristas ended up being more favorable for the latter. The need to promote social equality through more equitable economic policies achieved a greater democratization of the countryside, because the landowners lost their political supremacy and with it their preferential treatment as citizens.

Japan is one such case where reforms of this nature brought the feudal regime of the daimyo to an end.

However, the scope of the achievements of the fight against landlordism has been questioned. In particular, it has been suggested that the "mega-neo-latifundio" has appeared in Peru, which between 1994 and 2015 has experienced an increase in large landowners, which despite owning only 3.7% of the agricultural units have in their possession 84.2% of the surface corresponding to farmland.

The smallholdings, in contrast, control 67.9% of the agricultural units, but their surface barely reaches 3.5% of the farmland.

In other words, in Peru the smaller-scale farmers are still the least powerful, while the larger-scale ones still remain at the top, since their territorial extension and therefore their production capacity is greater. Latifundismo, therefore, has evolved in new ways.

References

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