Mexicos Land Certification Program: Rollout and Impact on Voting Behavior Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, Alain de Janvry, and Elisabeth Sadoulet April 2010

Mexicos First Land Reform Large land redistribution program ( ) Distributed over 100 million ha to 3.5 million families (>50% of Mexican territory) Strong restrictions to sales and rentals Within an ejido 3 types of land: Individual plots, communal lands and residential plots Over time restrictions became onerous: Illegal rental and sales markets, informal settlements, presence of posesionarios (non- ejidatarios who use land) Designed as a vote control mechanism by PRI?

Mexicos Second Land Reform (1992) Allowed rental, sales and sharecropping Established a national land certification program Procede ( ) Before certificates rolled out: – Agrarian tribunals (to solve land disputes) – Rural attorneys office – National rural land registry office – Established the figure of Assembly of Ejidatarios as a legally competent body to accept or reject Procede program, to determine land allocation inside the ejido, and to vote on transformation into fully private property

Procede Land Certification Program ( ) Had an office in every state Objective: Maximize number of ejidos certified and area certified Procedure: 1.Agent visits ejido authorities and offers program 2.Assembly of Initiation is summoned and vote is held to authorize Procede to begin (simple majority) 3.Procede goes to ejido to obtain contour of ejido, and interior partition (individual plots, common lands, residential plots) (Comparison to ejido creation documents) 4.Proposed division is presented and exhibited 5.All land disputes must be solved before proceeding: by agreement or in agrarian tribunals 6.Finalization assembly is held to authorize partition of ejido (supermajority) 7.Land Registry office produces certificates for all ejido: Individual certificates, common area shares, residential plot titles

Land Certified by 1993

Land Certified by 1994

Land Certified by 1995

Land Certified by 1996

Land Certified by 1997

Land Certified by 1998

Land Certified by 1999

Land Certified by 2000

Land Certified by 2001

Land Certified by 2002

Land Certified by 2003

Land Certified by 2004

Land Certified by 2005

Land Certified by 2006

Starting Date of Procede

Correlates of Start Date

Date Certificates Awarded

Length of Certificate Procedure

Ejido and Non-Ejido Votes

PRI Vote Share 1994

PRI Vote Share 1997

PRI Vote Share 2000

PRI Vote Share 2003

PRI Vote Share 2006

No Evidence for Vote Control

No Evidence for Reciprocity

No Evidence for Moving to the Right

Conclusions Mexicos second land reform was successful in providing land certificates to 91% of ejidos and comunidades Program was voluntary and accompanied by the creation of agrarian tribunals, agrarian attorneys, and a rural land registry Rollout was guided by efficiency concerns and in response to demand from beneficiaries Although poorer ejidos certified later, the program reached the vast majority of target population Opposed to what political scientists predicted: we do not find changes in voting behavior correlated to land certificates Procede shows that large scale land reform can be efficiently implemented without political backslash Future research questions: – Did titles improve production and productivity? How? – Did titles impact migration towards urban areas?