Sugarcane Landscapes in Veracruz in the Decades of 1930 and 1940. The Dismantling of the San Francisco Sugarcane-based Agroindustrial Complex in Lerdo de Tejada

Abstract

For centuries, sugarcane has characterized the agrarian landscapes of Veracruz. In the 1930s and 40s, President Lázaro Cárdenas’ national-level policies supported projects that had already commenced their development in Veracruz, during a radical period in that state’s history. These included the establishment of cooperatives and the application of the national Agrarian Reform program. In an effort to gain a better understanding of the transformations that occurred in those years, this article presents a detailed analysis of the case of the dismantling of the sugarcane-based agroindustrial complex called San Francisco El Naranjal in Lerdo de Tejada. The decaying of the goals of the cooperative, the transformation of landscapes through forest-clearing and the expansion of sugarcane fields, and the conflicts between ejidatarios and cooperative members are some of the elements that allow us to comprehend the processes of change in that period, in both the territorial and social spheres.