Forms of Land Ownership in Mountain Societies and Political Trajectories: the case of the Southern Andes from the Colonial to the Republican Period

GIL MONTERO, RAQUEL

Familles, parenté et formes d'appropiation de la terre dans les sociètès de montagne (XVIe-XXe siécles)

Lugar: Paris, Francia; Año: 2008;

Among indigenous people living in present-day northern Argentina and southern Bolivia, at the end of the colonial period, the proportion of tributaries with and without land rights was more or less equal. A century later, one finds almost no indigenous person with land rights in the first area, and many of them in the second one. The two neighboring areas belong to the same high-up mountain region in the Southern Andes. The republican period, starting in both areas in the 1810s and 1820s, is well known for its liberal reforms of property arrangements along the 19th century – but why did it produce such different effects on land ownership for these mountain dwellers on different sides of the modern international border? The article starts with a brief presentation of the study area and the documentary and historiographical basis. It then delineates the main developments of indigenous land ownership under the colonial regime and during the republican period. This will provide us with the starting point for a closer examination of the making of the border between the two states and its effects on property arrangements. Finally, we can try to identify the reasons for such different historical trajectories in such similar mountain environments.