It's been 25 years since Maria Gonzales left her family's four-acre farm in Mexico to make a life in the United States.
Even as she worked and raised a family in Los Angeles, she dreamed of one day returning to that small plot of land in Jalisco where her father planted corn and wildflowers grew.
But after her parents died, she got word that a stranger had taken hold of the land. Local officials told relatives that her family no longer had a claim to it.
Gonzales, 56, who is living in the U.S. without permission, didn't want to risk going back to Mexico to resolve the dispute herself. "They're taking advantage because we can't be there," said her husband, Ezequiel Becerril, 56, who is also in the country illegally.
Last week, Gonzales took the first step to reclaim the land with the help of a Mexican government program that assists immigrants in the U.S. who are having problems with their property back home.
Large numbers of Mexicans have land rights because of a series of agrarian reforms enacted after the Mexican Revolution, when many peasants were granted privileges to farm parcels of communal land known as ejidos.
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http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-land-rights-20150305-story.html
