Lerdo law

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The Lerdo Law (Spanish: Ley Lerdo) was the common name for the Confiscation of Law and Urban Ruins of the Civil and Religious Corporations of Mexico, part of La Reforma. It targeted not only property owned by the Catholic Church, but also properties held in common by indigenous communities and transferred them to private hands. Liberals considered such corporate ownership as a major impediment to modernization and development in Mexico. Drafted by Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, it was signed on 25 June 1856 by President Ignacio Comonfort, but its language was ambiguous, needing subsequent clarifications.^[1][2]

Its objectives were to create a market in rural real estate and incentivize development; create rural middle class, improve public finances of the state, and revive the economy by eliminating restrictions on freedom of movement. Properties were to be sold to private individuals, which was expected to stimulate the real estate market and to generate government revenue by a sales tax. Much property held by the Catholic Church was urban and exempt from confiscation. The impact was felt most by indigenous communities, now forced to break up holdings held in common that had allowed communities to retain control of their land. The rural poor lacked the funds to buy property and pay the transfer fees. Most purchasers were large landowners or foreign investors, which further concentrated land ownership. Religious groups and their civil corporations were prohibited from purchasing land sold under law unless for strictly-religious purposes.^[3] Implementation of the law was disrupted by the War of the Reform (1858–60) and the French Intervention (1862–67), but resumed with the defeat of the French invaders and their Conservative allies in 1867. Implementation resumed after that, but not until the regime of Porfirio Díaz was the impact felt significantly.^[4]

It was one of the Reform Laws, which sought to establish the separation of church and state, the abolition of ecclesiastical privileges (fueros); and the secularization of registration of births, deaths, and marriages, which gave rise to the Civil Registry.