State And Land In Mendoza (Argentina): Rationale And Consensus On The Colonization Law Of 1951

Abstract

Until 1951, no colonization law existed in the province of Mendoza.
In order to deal with this, the provincial government
tried to address the problem holistically, laying the legal basis
for colonization in Mendoza’s territory. This paper aims to study
the law, including its main background and the legislative
treatment of the project to which it gave rise, and to detect
the interests and objectives of the provincial government in
this matter. This institutional design will be considered with
regards to the geographical, environmental, demographic,
and socioeconomic characteristics of the province, in order to
determine whether the agricultural policy in general and the
proposed settlement in particular suited certain peculiarities
of the provincial reality and sought to respond to the rural
sector, which was experiencing a crisis in both the agricultural
production and in the irregularities within the system of land
tenure. Finally, this paper attempts to understand how the
execution of the law demonstrates some of the first actions
taken by the government in order to train agricultural colonies
in different sectors of the province.

Keywords: State, colonization, Mendoza.