MEXICO: Last of the Latitundios

In arid Sonora state, just south of the U.S. border, Mexico's Agriculture Minister Gilberto Flores Muñoz stood in the hot sun one day last week, read aloud a decree that expropriated a huge chunk of U.S. -owned property — the 400,000-acre Cananea Ranch. As thousands of peasants, swirling on the dry. sandy earth, shouted "Sonora for the Sonorans!". he raised the Mexican flag over the last of the great Mexican latifundios (big estates) and took it from the family of Texan William C. Greene, which had owned it for 58 years. The Sonora...