A large estate It is a farm or rustic hacienda, with an area of more than one hundred hectares, that belongs to a single owner.. The word, as such, comes from Latin latifundium.
Latifundia, in this sense, implies the agricultural exploitation of large areas of land by a single owner, from which a large number of social conflicts have arisen.
For a rural property to be considered a latifundia, it must exceed an area of one hundred hectares, that is, be greater than the limits of a small property.
The latifundia, as such, gave rise to a system known as latifundismowhich characterizes the supremacy of a group, the landowners, over the rest of the population, especially the peasants, to exploit the land.
There is news of the latifundium since the times of the Roman Empire, when the victorious military elites divided up the land of the conquered territories.
This same scheme was repeated during the colony in Latin America, a consequence of Spanish domination over the territory, where the king granted the lands to a few people, and it persisted even in the republican systems of the new independent nations of the 19th century.
Nowadays, the term latifundia has a pejorative meaning, since it is considered a system that gives continuity to an inefficient use of land.
Furthermore, the concept of latifundia also acquired a political nuance, since it implies that a single person owns enormous land holdings, contravening the rights of the peasants.
Therefore, in more recent times, to solve the social problems caused by the large estates, various solutions have been tried, such as a change in the property structure (agrarian reform) or the modernization of land exploitation (land agriculture). market).
See also Agrarian reform.
Characteristics of the large estate
Large areas of land are owned by a single person. Waste of the productive capacity of the land (inefficiency and dispersed productivity). Labor in precarious conditions (underpaid and in deplorable working conditions). Little capitalization of what is produced, low competitiveness. .No or little use of technology to increase the efficiency of processes.
Latifundia in Mexico
The latifundia in Mexico began with the Spanish colony, when the king granted the lands to a small group of people loyal to the Crown for their exploitation.
In Mexico, both the latifundio and the latifundista system remained in operation during the colony and the Republic, and were, at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the great issues of social discontent that led to the outbreak of the Mexican revolution. In fact, one of the primary objectives of the revolution was to end landownership.
See also Mexican Revolution.
Latifundia and smallholdings
Latifundios and minifundios are rural properties that differ, fundamentally, in their size and the type of land where they are located.
The latifundio is more extensive, it can occupy hundreds or thousands of hectares, while the minifundio, as its name indicates, is considerably smaller.
Furthermore, they are distinguished in that the large estate is more typical of flat land, while the small estate is more common in mountainous areas with rugged relief.
See also Landlordism.