Divided communities: Agrarian struggles, transnational migration and families in northern Mexico, 1910--1952

Agrarian reform is one of the most prominent outcomes of the Mexican Revolution. Through research in municipal and private archives in Mexico and in the United States, I examine peasant mobilizations and responses to agrarian reform policies in the northwestern states of Nayarit and Baja California, Mexico between the Revolution and 1952. By analyzing two states, this dissertation brings to light the complexity of agrarian reform and the transnational nature of labor that included indigenous people, Asians, repatriated Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and braceros. Current historiography overlooks these dynamics of agrarian reform. My re-periodization of Mexico's agrarian reform challenges enduring assumptions that the 1920s represented a time of inaction and that the 1940s necessarily signaled the beginning of the agrarian reform's demise and betrayal. Taking seriously the diverse gendered and racial dynamics of northern Mexico, I explore the divergent aspirations and opportunities of peasants during agrarian reform and the consequent divisions and solidarities that reform created. As a more comprehensive social history of agrarian reform, Divided Communities helps us understand real divisions that took place within and across rural communities along the lines of nationality, gender, and labor status.