ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical struggles of indigenous communities in the Costa Chica to maintain their lands and identity in the face of shifting political and economic policies. It demonstrates that land tenure was an important aspect of the strategies employed in the struggle to secure land and to defend Amuzgo communities. The Ley Lerdo of 1856 had stipulated the dissolution of all communally-owned and other corporate lands, including those of Indian communities. The most visible targets of the Liberal project in the rural areas of Vicente Guerrero became the properties of the indigenous communities and the Catholic Church. The dominant official ideologies in the latter half of the nineteenth century, promoting the tenets of laissez faire capitalism, attracted the attention of merchants in the Costa Chica. The power of the rancheros as an interest group emerged from the chaos of the post-Independence period and the reforms of the second half of the nineteenth century.
