Peasants move on to disputed farmland

Press, 29 November 1976, Page 8

Peasants move on to disputed farmland

NZPA-Reuter Culiacau, Mexico Droves of landless Mexican peasants have moved into disputed farm land, bypassing an agreement reached earlier between President Luis Echeverria and big landowners to avert violent confrontation. Backed by students, the peasants said they had turned down the agreement which ceded them 29,309 acres of rich Pacific coastal farms.

Eight groups of peasants, members of the Union of Independent Communal Land Fanners, continued to take over lands not covered by the agreement. A union spokesman said the peasants would not leave the lands until the area was included in the pact. The authorities reported

that small landowners, who feared that their land would be expropriated, had asked police for protection against the invading peasants. The earlier agreement was announced on Friday by Governor Alfonso Calderon of Sinaloa state shortly before a deadline set by 20,000 peasants who said they would occupy 195,390 acres in the rich Pacific coast arsa. Many were standing by with trucks ready to move into the disputed lands. Mr Calderon said the agreement did not mean that the peasant would not get the additional land they demanded, but he said this would be decided by the courts.

Last week the Government expropriated 215,000 acres of farmland in Sonora, which borders on Arizona, and distributed it to peasants. President Echeverria told

reporters on Saturday during the opening of an international bridge between Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, Texas, that the expropriation of the land in Sonora was legal. Asked why it was done during the last few days of his administration, he replied that the legal work took until then.

“We fought for the poor in Sonora because the population has increased a lot and because we have a law and a constitution which we wanted to apply in detail,” he said. The distribution of land to peasants is embodied in the constitution written after the 1910-17 revolution.

The expropriation and the threatened land seizure touched off a mid-week stoppage by businessmen in 41 cities in sympathy with the landowners.