Where Water Meets the Land

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The parcels sit near a rocky cove on the Pacific Ocean south of the Tropic of Cancer. The Sierra Madre Occidental run to the north. The Sierra Madre Del Sur begin farther south. Whales and pelicans migrate along the coast. Deeper inland, in machete land, the guayavillo tree dominates the thicket, its steely wood limbs draped in moss. Eagles and hawks slice through an arroyo where orange, violet and chartreuse dragonflies hover in sungilded patches of jungle.

Standing in his kitchen before a stove, turning for the third and last time a corn tortilla that billows with air, Steven says, "I like the hot climate and ocean. I like to spend my life raising food and eating it. This is a good place to do it."

BUYING LAND IN MEXICO

According to Dennis John Peyton, an American licensed to practice law in Mexico and author of How to BuyReal Estate in Mexico , the Constitution of 1917 created three classes of land: private, public (national parks, indigenous communities, etc.) and social (the ejido system); it explicitly prohibited foreigners from owning land in restricted zones within 31 miles of the coastline and 62 miles of any Mexican border. A 1973 Foreign Investment Law clarified the conditions of foreign land ownership. Foreigners could purchase property anywhere in Mexico except in the aforementioned restricted zone; there, foreign nationals could hold property through a fideicomiso, or bank trust.

To this day a fideicomiso is the only way a foreign individual can legally hold title to residential property in the restricted zone. The mechanism is simple: A bank holds the trust deed for the purchasers or beneficiaries, who have the exclusive right to use and control the property - sell, lease, mortgage or pass on to heirs. At a cost of $350 to $1,000 U.S. to establish, plus an annual maintenance fee, trusts are granted for renewable 50-year terms.

That said, land that is part of an ejido can present complications. Since the 1992 agrarian reforms, each ejido has had the option to convert communal property into private property. The process involves surveying the ejido and deciding which tracts will be held and which privatized. The ejido then begins domino pleno, distributing title for individual tracts. Another process, called procede, moves the land from the social to the private category of land tenure.

To circumvent laws governing ejido lands, one practice has been to use preta hombres, or borrowed names. In essence, a Mexican citizen fronts for a foreigner, holding title in his or her name. Obviously this is a risky business. As Peyton points out, what happens if the Mexican citizen gets mad at you?

For land that has not yet been privatized, another strategy has been to sign a long-term lease with an ejido or ejidatario (member of the ejido). This practice has been used extensively in Baja California. However, leasing has drawbacks: Lease terms cannot exceed 30 years on ejido lands and ten years elsewhere; resale of improvements on leased land can be difficult; if you lease property from an ejiditario who is in the process of converting title from common to individual ownership, legal complications could arise.

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