Poised to break: Liberalism, land reform, and communities in the Purepecha highlands of Michoacan, Mexico, 1800-1915

This dissertation studies the history of liberal land reform in Mexico in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It examines, in particular, why and how it came to happen in the meseta purepecha, a region located in central-west Michoacan and home to numerous indigenous communities. The dissertation traces the colonial origins of the reform under the Spanish rule and describes how efforts to turn long-standing indigenous corporate land rights into private landownership became the banner of liberal governments after independence. It analyses the communal land regime of the meseta communities, how it was intimately connected to the physical and environmental aspects of the region, how corporate land-rights worked in practice, and why they came into conflict with liberal land policies.;The work also explains why, despite repeated efforts to push its implementation, the reform did not come to fruition until relatively late in the nineteenth century. It argues that the enforcement of liberal land policies was the product of an unprecedented combination of historical circumstances, including a major political shift after 1867, a new fiscal policy affecting the lands in possession of indigenous communities, demographic pressures, the introduction of railroad lines in Michoacan, and the subsequent expansion of commercial forestry in the meseta. Communities, the dissertation shows, actively engaged land reform. Engagement, however, fluctuated over time and differed from one community to another---even from one community group to another. Local support or opposition to liberal land policies depended on existing disparities and rivalries between communities, community members, and other non-indigenous residents of the meseta (i.e. landowners, tenants, merchants, government officials).;The dissertation concludes that liberal land reform in the meseta brought about ambiguous results. It significantly modified land rights, but it did little to alter inequalities within communities and between communities and the larger Mexican society. It took place at the expense of comparatively underprivileged community members, did not represent meaningful improvements for a majority, and benefited for the most part the local wealthy--including some better-off community members.