Evolution of Land Tenure and Farm Structure Patterns Under Agrarian Restructuring in the Chilean Countryside, 1965–1980

Abstract

This article provides a longitudinal farm-level analysis of land tenure transformation in Chile's Central Valley before, during and after agrarian reform. Unlike aggregate studies using national statistics, this research tracks 105 large haciendas across three political regimes using archival data. The analysis reveals that landowners initiated land redistribution through pre-emptive fragmentation, with 82.6% of expropriated farms representing subdivided estate fragments. This farm-level analysis demonstrates the active role of landowning elites in shaping redistribution outcomes. Transformation succeeded not through redistributing land to peasants but by dismantling institutional arrangements enabling elite territorial control. The military's ‘partial counter-reform’ demonstrates continued elite adaptation across political regimes. Military policies concentrated prime land and infrastructure among selected proprietors while transferring marginal lands to beneficiaries. The resulting agrarian structure represented neither restoration nor revolutionary transformation, but a contingent outcome shaped by state–elite interactions. These findings suggest measuring reform success through hectares redistributed misses crucial institutional transformation dynamics.