Between 1988-2012, Mexico’s mining sector underwent a significant structural transition, which entailed a change from a joint-ownership model between the national government and domestic industry to a completely privatized model led by foreign exploration companies. In this process, mining production rose significantly, which weakened Indigenous community forms of agrarian organization and restructured the Ejido common land system. These reforms increased the relative power of investor rights in Mexico, despite the historically-significant political position of rural populations in the national government's power base throughout the 20th century. However, despite their marginalization, rural populations were able to block the total dismantling of the commons, which has led to a modern day scenario of widespread conflicts, where complex negotiations must occur between rural communities and mining companies that hold lease rights to the subsurface minerals on common lands. I refer to the endurance of the commons, and its enclosure by mining companies, as “parallel projects” of national land tenure.
Drawing on a combination of Historical Institutionalism and Political Ecology, I examine land reform processes and the introduction of new mining laws to help advance the sector's development. I explain the shifts in the influence of competing stakeholders as the sector began to dominate the countryside and create historically high profits in the country. The paper finds that, despite widely accepted narratives about land reform in Mexico during the democratic opening and the global diffusion of neoliberal economic policies of the 1990s, there are important institutional and policy legacies of the commons that have retained some power over the rise of mining capital throughout the country.
