A number of scholars have analysed lynching in Latin America as a response to the recent upsurge in insecurity and crime in the region. This article turns our attention to historical and deeper socio-political undercurrents behind this practice. Drawing on several cases of lynching that took place in post-revolutionary Puebla, the article argues that, rather than signalling state absence, the occurrence of lynching expressed communities’ reactions towards a state presence that was perceived as intrusive and illegitimate. It furthermore shows that lynchings emulated the brutality and visibility of extralegal forms of violence perpetrated by public officials at the local level.

Land reform efforts during the armed phase of the Mexican revolution (1910–20) remain largely overshadowed by the more dramatic events of the period. Based on records held in the Archivo General Agrario in Mexico City, this article shows how villagers in different parts of Mexico negotiated their claims to land with various revolutionary regimes during the armed struggle, with particular attention to the local committees created to measure land boundaries, conduct village censuses and distribute land. These negotiations between agrarian officials and villagers laid the foundations for the first post-revolutionary national administration. The emergent federal agrarian offices doubled as a legislative branch of government, assumed quasi-judicial functions and restricted the role of municipal and state governments – qualities that would characterise Mexico's agrarian reform for the next 70 years. In highlighting the ways that early land reform efforts contributed to state formation, this article questions the current social science inclination to ‘decentre’ Mexico's post-revolutionary regime.