Mexican Revolution and Landed Oligarchy
Although the Revolution topple the landed oligarchy from power, it did not immediately change land distribution in the country. Carranza distributed 326,000 acres (132,000 hectares); Álvaro Obregón almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) between 1920 and 1924; and his successor, Plutarco Elías Calles, 7 million acres (3 million hectares). Nonetheless, in 1930 only 13.4 percent of cultivated land belonged to ejidos and communities. The remainder was private property, which still was concentrated in very few hands. Plots of less than 25 acres (10 hectares) numbered 614,700, accounting for 1.3 percent of Mexico's exploited surface area. There were 11,500 plots of more than 2,500 acres (1,000 hectares); these latifundia, which accounted for only 1.5 percent of the total number of properties, accounted for 82.8 percent of the exploited surface area. The 1,500 properties of more than 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares), 0.2 percent of the total number of properties, encompassed 54.5 percent of the exploited surface area. Not only had the concentration of landed property continued after the Revolution, but many of the Revolutionary chiefs had become the new hacendados, having appropriated properties directly or married into old families who sought to protect their possessions.

Nonetheless, the Revolution had destroyed the ancien régime. More important, it had taught the campesinos to use the weapons that still were scattered throughout the country, while Article 27 legitimated agrarian ferment. If the early Revolutionary forces had sought to topple the political regime, however, the new agrarian movements sought to force the government to live up to the promise of the constitution. During the 1920s, then, the countryside was overrun by agrarian movements, invasions of hacienda lands, and armed peasant groups. The mobilizations of agraristas, as they came to be called, were particularly intense in the states of Veracruz, Michoacán, Guerrero, Yucatán, and Tlaxcala, although Agrarian Community Leagues arose in almost every state in the nation. In 1924 the Liga Nacional de Comunidades ( National League of Communities) was organized under the leadership of the Veracruz agrarista Ursulo Galvin. Nonetheless, many agrarian leaders—most notably Primo Tapia of Michoacán—were assassinated by landowner "white guards" or by the army. In Veracruz campesinos organized agrarian guerrilla bands to defend their lands or invade the haciendas whose lands they were reclaiming.

In 1923 Adolfo de la Huerta led a political revolt against the administration of Álvaro Obregón, backed by most of the army. Obregón sought the support of the radical governor of Veracruz, Adalberto Tejada, and his armed agraristas in exchange for promises of land, which he only partially honored; the agrarista governor of Yucatán, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, was assassinated during the de la Huerta rebellion. In 1929, faced with a similar revolt led by General Escobar, President Emilio Portes Gil gave new but short-lived encouragement to land distribution to ensure peasant loyalty. It seemed that each military chief could count on campesino discontent to further his political ambitions, and military power struggles and campesinos' agrarian struggles seemed to be intertwined inextricably during those turbulent years.