Social Property: Caring for Biocultural Heritage

August 11, 2022

Social Property: Caring for Biocultural Heritage

On December 23, 1994, during the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, the General Assembly of the United Nations resolved to celebrate the International Day of Indigenous Peoples every year on August 9. Today, a few days after this well-deserved anniversary, we celebrate the 476 million indigenous people - 6% of the world's population - who live in more than 90 countries on the planet and who protect 80% of global biodiversity (World Bank, 2022; (Nations, n.d.).

With this text, we decided to commemorate its importance and its transcendence, since in Mexico alone there are more than 25 million people considered indigenous, 68 languages not to mention their variants and more than 15% of the national territory under their possession and care (INPI, 2021). Although we will focus on naming those groups that have dedicated their lives to the care and conservation of our country's biodiversity, as well as the history that has allowed them to own and dispose of the land to carry out this objective, it is important to mention that even though indigenous communities contribute greatly in this regard, other social groups such as native peoples or land owners - who in the same way have experienced systemic oppression historically and have been responsible for keeping this country alive in an endless number of forms- they are also caretakers of land, knowledge, traditions and biodiversity.

1. Caregivers of the Earth

The way of life of the indigenous people in Mexico, the owners of the land and those belonging to indigenous peoples is largely understood by their relationship with the land. Land tenure, one of many forms of link with this resource, involves private or shared possession of a territory. Territory that, beyond being soil and vegetation, is identity. This tenure is divided into different types for our country. On the one hand, we have individual private properties, called small properties, and on the other, a more peculiar way of disposing of land: ejidos and agrarian communities. The last two are designated as social property or agrarian centers (NA) and are commonly inhabited by indigenous communities, native peoples and owners of the land; in most of their cases, not separately, but together, that is: sometimes indigenous communities are also an agrarian community, or sometimes they belong to an ejido; sometimes the original peoples are ejidatarios and other times, the owners of the land are considered indigenous. While these three terms are not synonymous, they intersect in a wide range of cases. For the rest of the lands that are not private or social, they may not belong to anyone or may be national land owned by the Nation. According to data from the National Agrarian Registry (RAN), there are 29,441 ejidos and 2,344 agrarian communities, which together represent 53% of the country's surface. That's right, according to Robles Berlang, ejidos and communities occupy 105 million of the 195 million rustic hectares in the country (Cruz and Silveria, 2017). This is, more than half of the national territory.

To better understand the relationship between caring for life - which is strongly linked to land ownership - and those who live and work the land extensively, it is imminent to return to the point of origin and study the changes in this tenure over time.

“Communal land exploitation is a phenomenon whose precedents are found in various parts of the world” (Chávez et al. , 2017). Several authors argue that contemporary peasant communities in Latin America have their historical origin in pre-Hispanic times, with the creation and planting of pastures for common use that alternated with the pastures of private properties when they remained at rest. On the other hand, in Spain, the Catholic kings allocated a portion of land for the leisure and entertainment of the vassals and for cattle to graze; this space was called Ejido (Ibid.). Hence, at the time of the Colony in Mexico, the place where the common cattle of the indigenous people could graze was designated in the same way.

Most of the untapped natural resources are found in socially owned territories.

Subsequently, the concept of ejido was introduced into the Mexican legal framework with the Act of January 6, 1915, to designate communally owned land destined to be cultivated or exploited with cattle according to their respective quality (Ibid.). However, with Article 27 of the Magna Carta of 1917, the Nation's domination of underground assets, which had changed with the liberal regime of the 19th century, was restored to the Nation. With this, a new agrarian system composed of three property models was implemented: public property, private property and social property, that is, ejidal and communal property (Pérez and Mackinlay, 2015). The word ejido appeared for the first time in the Mexican Constitution with the amendment to Article 27 in 1934, which introduced its current meanings.

From the moment of its creation and until 1992, the ejido and the agrarian community were governed by the same legal provisions and their operation was subject to the same rules. Its only difference came from its origin, because Los Ejidos are the “NA owners of the land that has been endowed to them or those that they obtained by another title” (Corey and Pires, 2017); and agrarian communities are the “NA” recognized as such, by Restitution of their dispossessed land and/or that guard the communal state”, the latter commonly dispossessed of indigenous communities or native peoples (Ibid.).

These lands had the following characteristics equally:

- Inalienability: it does not allow the domain to be transmitted;

- Intransferability: prevents the transmission of use and usufruct;

- Imprescriptibility: the possession of third parties cannot generate rights;

- Unattachability: it makes it impossible to offer land as collateral;

- Indivisibility: prevents the subdivision of land (Pérez and Mackinlay, 2015).

In other words, ejido and communal properties were left out of any trade.

However, since the reforms of 1992 - initiated under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari - Article 27 of the Constitution and the Agrarian Law (LA) changed, so that all the attributes of ejidal property ceased to be what we knew, with the exception of imprescriptibility. This means that ejidal property is currently alienable, transferable, encumberable and divisible. The most important mutation of the ejido was the right to freely dispose of the destiny of their lands, since now the LA allows ejidatarios to transmit the use and usufruct of land, to offer it as a guarantee, to contribute it to social capital, to convert it to full control, and so on (Ibid.). These changes allowed the ejidal plot to circulate freely in the market, thus introducing it to commerce.

Communal property, belonging to agrarian communities, was not left behind with this reform. Property law also underwent changes. Nowadays, communal property is -also- alienable by exception, imprescriptible, encumberable, transferable, divisible and convertible. In other words, unlike ejidos, community lands can only be alienated and privatized directly through their contribution to the social capital of civil or commercial companies (Ibid.). If they want to be transmitted in another way or privatized, they must first become ejidal property.

The main difference between ejidos and communities is that in communities the common areas belong to everyone and the plots are also the property of the community, they are only in the possession of the community member who works them. In the case of ejidos, the common areas belong to everyone and the plots belong to each individual and are titled in the name of each person. This was the most important change in ejidal ownership with the new agrarian legislation of 1992. (Pérez and Mackinlay, 2015).

This review of the origin, history and current situation of ejidos and communities in Mexico is relevant to understanding the problem that emanates from the different visions that exist with respect to what is meant by the value of land in Mexico, and exposes indigenous peoples, native peoples and owners of the land, as caregivers and protectors of life, both in Mexico and in the world. Let's see why.

2. Caregivers of Life

The Mixe anthropologist from Tlahuitoltepec, Floriberto Díaz, defines the community as “a territorial space, delimited and defined by possession; a common story, which circulates by word of mouth and from one generation to the next; a variant of the language of the People, from which we identify our common language; an organization that defines what is political, cultural, social, civil, economic and religious; a community system for the prosecution and administration of justice.” He also insists that “an indigenous or original community is not understood only as a group of houses with people, but people with history, past, present and future, who can not only be defined concretely, physically, but also spiritually in relation to nature” (Carlsen, n.d.). This vision offers us an understanding of why the care of the land by indigenous peoples, originators and owners of the land in Mexico is imperative, since it involves not only the home they live and seek, but also their identity.

Georgina Gaona Pando mentions that “it is in the ancestral lands where these groups [original peoples and indigenous communities] find the foundation and origin of their worldview, of their religious and symbolic practices, of their social and cultural organization, besides being the ultimate source of life and wisdom, it is the element that, in the last and most important instance, endows them with identity” (Gaona Pando, n.d.).

The author states that most of the untapped natural resources are found in socially owned territories. In addition, indigenous peoples, originators and owners of the land, defend collective ownership of land since they provide collective benefits to the entire community. And they understand that their job is to preserve and preserve it. So Gaona Pando explains that the dispossession of indigenous peoples' lands breaks with one of their main objectives, which is their transmission to future generations. It is important to highlight that the transmission of land involves the transmission of culture, traditions, uses and customs, and although perhaps not as obvious as the above, the transmission and preservation of the biodiversity existing in that territory. (Gaona Pando, n.d.).

“Since its inception, mankind has used flora and fauna in a variety of ways, such as food, drink, medicine, clothing, building materials and fuel.” This has resulted in the cultural diversity of the human species being closely associated with the main existing concentrations of biodiversity.

Most of the unexploited natural resources are found in indigenous and original territories, and in those that are exploited, there is a certain ideological predisposition to make sustainable use of them.

This is undoubtedly the case in Mexico, because at the national level, ecosystems and areas of high biological density are historically occupied by the various indigenous and native groups. For example, we can observe that the five states considered most biodiverse are Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacán, Veracruz and Guerrero, which contain half of the country's ejidos and communities. In addition, “a significant part of the cultivated plants that currently support the global food system was domesticated by the indigenous peoples of America.” In Mexico, 23% of the flora, equivalent to more than five thousand species, has some traditional use and there are more than 3,000 medicinal plants. Globally, the inhabitants of rural areas in the world are the ones who actually bring food to the table, since it is the peasantry - mainly composed of indigenous peoples, originals and, unfortunately, an enormous social group known as landless- the main supplier of food for more than 70% of the world's population, and they produce this food with less than 25% of basic resources: water, soil and land (Gaona Pando, n.d.; ETC Group, 2017).

On the contrary, the agro-industrial food chain then uses more than 75% of the world's agricultural resources, is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and provides food to less than 30% of the world's population (ETC Group, 2017). With this comparison, we can see that in general, native peoples, indigenous peoples and land owners have the appropriate wisdom, practice and philosophy to manage the world's natural resources. Based on this analysis, we can refer to the concept of biocultural diversity, which emerges from combining four evidences: on the one hand, the geographical overlap between biological richness and linguistic diversity; in the same way, the geographical overlap between indigenous or original territories and regions of high biological value. The recognized importance of many of indigenous and original peoples as the main inhabitants and managers of well-preserved environmentsand, finally, the presence of conservationism-oriented behavior among indigenous peoples, original communities or land owners, derived from their complex system of beliefs, knowledge and practices.

3. A stroke of reality, but also of hope

Reviewing the above, from the current situation of social property in Mexico to the irrefutable need to protect those who care for that social property, it must be said that the State's poor intervention in land management creates a problem both in the ways of life of communities and in the safeguarding of their natural resources. In article 27 of the Constitution, The Mexican State positions itself as the original owner of the lands of indigenous and original peoples, who are only beneficiaries of them, since the approval and design of the plans and projects carried out in them is reserved to the State. But this state process is often carried out through unilateral legal acts such as concessions and expropriations.

Expropriation in Mexico is defined by legal doctrine as the administrative act of the State that deprives a person of their property, either partially or totally, on the condition that there is a cause of public utility provided for in the Law and through the payment of compensation. Expropriation is problematic because it allows government authorities to dispossess communities and ejidos of their land, often for their own benefit and at the expense of the latter. A situation that today is more evident than ever in the country. Indeed, “the history of expropriation in Mexico has resulted in corruption and injustice for the country's indigenous communities” (Warman, 2019). This conflict is generated in part by a problem of information asymmetry, where the expropriating authority has more legal information to achieve its objective than the actor from whom the land is expropriated.

Taking up the fact that ejidos and communities occupy 105 million of the 195 million rustic hectares in the country, we can affirm that these lands are complex areas, in which the environmental, the social, the cultural and the economic come into direct contact. However, as mentioned by Gaona Pando, most of the unexploited natural resources are found in indigenous and original territories, and in those that are exploited, there is a certain ideological predisposition to make sustainable use of them. Although this is not an absolute reality, Mexico is a country full of social property with enormous intentions to care for and safeguard its resources and its home. In this text, we believe that the relationship and management of indigenous peoples and original communities, as well as of the owners of the land, with the land and with natural resources represents a field of opportunity, hope and potential to generate a significant and necessary change with respect to the relationship between humanity and nature, both for our country and for the world.

In the framework of commemorating the International Day of Indigenous Peoples and that we always seek to revalue their expensive work, we hope that this text will serve as an inspiration to contribute to managing a more resilient and sustainable world for all its inhabitants and, in the same way, to make visible the essential participation of these groups in maintaining life as we know it.

About the authors:

Elena is a contributor to the Toroto blog. He studied Political Science at the Universidad Iberoamericana.

Sandra is Executive Editor in Toronto. He studied biology at the UNAM. He loves to read and be in nature.

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