As Latin America oscillated between democracy and barbarism, the influence of the Mexican Revolution, especially its land reform, helped tip the region toward the first. For instance, land ownership in Chile had been organized since independence around a very Anglo, “absolutist” conception of private property. That ended in 1925, when Article 10 of a new constitution proclaimed that the “exercise of the right of property is subject to the limitations or rules which require the maintenance and progress of the social order.” The high countries followed, with mineral-rich Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia adopting a “social” definition of property rights. Peru’s new 1933 constitution held that private property could only exist if it was “in harmony with the social interest.” In Bolivia, veterans returned from the Chaco War tired of fighting Paraguay and ready to take on Standard Oil. Soon, nearly all nations, through edicts, legislation, and constitutions, embraced the idea that the right to property carried with it social obligations, that property was not something a person or corporation could possess in isolation but was instead a social relation. Land reform was at the center of most visions of progress. There could be no future without land reform. Nor could there be democracy.

— America, América by Greg Grandin