ABSTRACT
The extraordinary concentration of land in Mexico in 1910—1 per cent of the population owned 97 per cent of the land; 92 per cent of the rural population were landless—was probably then the highest in the world. In North-west Mexico, where land was in greater supply than labour, landowners employed a debt slavery system to control the labour available. La Laguna, an irrigated basin amid the aridity of northern Mexico, is the country's major cotton-producing region. Mexican economists increasingly realise need for 'reforming the land reform' in order to free ejidatarios and other peasants from the effects of uncontrolled market forces and to give the increasing number of landless labourers a better living. If the social results of Mexican land reform were highly positive initially but are problematic in the long run, economically the reverse holds. The dual farm size and tenure structure that resulted from the land reform has probably served the economic development of the country rather well.
