Laguna District

Laguna District

[Span.,=lake], irrigated area in E Durango and W Coahuila states, N central Mexico. Originally a 900,000-acre (364,200-hectare) tract, consisting of large estates, the land was reapportioned (1936) under President Lázaro Cárdenas and distributed to Mexican farmers on the ejidoejido
[Span.,=common land], in Mexico, agricultural land expropriated from large private holdings and redistributed to communal farms. Communal ownership of land had been widely practiced by the Aztecs, but the institution was in decline before the Spanish arrived.
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 system. It was a successful experiment in agrarian reform until 1952, when a severe drought scorched more than half the district, turning 200,000 acres (80,940 hectares) of wheat and cotton fields into a dust bowl and obliging the government to take emergency measures to avert a famine. Settlement has continued there, but on a greatly reduced scale; water for irrigation comes from wells and from dams on the Nazas and Aguanaval rivers.