ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with small-scale cultivators who are actively engaged in "the production of commodities by means of commodities." In the region of the Morelos highlands, land has become a commodity, but actual sales of land are limited, and one does not find a process of land accumulation in the hands of a few owners. The chapter explains that class differentiation is blunted because market production is carried out in a context of risk and uncertainty where multiplex social ties are needed. The higher parts of the Morelos state, where most Indian villages were located, rarely received irrigation. The case of Morelos is hardly paradigmatic of the Mexican (or Latin American) historical formation. For instance, it is difficult to apply the hacienda/plantation conceptual dichotomy to Morelos big landholdings: they "coexisted with indigenous communities whose claims to land and water were buttressed by pre-Hispanic custom and colonial law" and later by revolution and modern agrarian legislation.
