Precolumbian Land Systems by R. Douglas Cope

Contents

Introduction

[00:00:00] Precolumbian land systems were quite complex. The Western distinction between public and private property really did not hold for indigenous communities. There was a variety of corporate land. For example, there would be land set aside where everyone would have access if they needed it. There would be land which people would work in order to support the local ruler, the “cacique” or the “batab.” There would be land that would be worked to support the local temple. In a case where the community had been conquered by, let’s say, the Aztecs, then a certain amount of land would be worked collectively in order to pay the community’s tributes.

The majority of land was held by individual households, but still was not private property as we understand the term. They usually could not alienate the land. It would be passed on to their children, but in some sense it still belonged to the larger community. Land sales had to be approved by the town council. They would interview people and they’d make sure that the person that this land was being transferred to would handle it correctly. So it was still a corporate decision. In Precolumbian times you could not dispose of the land to someone outside the community. If, let’s say, you had no children and the parents die, then the land reverts to the community and is reallocated by the authorities. This is not necessarily an egalitarian system. Some families might have much more land than other families. And the nobles also had access to land that commoners did not. So it’s not necessarily an egalitarian system but it’s also not a system in which people own land in our Western sense of the term. So, even before the Conquest, you have this very powerful tradition of land belonging to communities. And this is one of the reasons that Indian communities were quite successful in defending their rights to land over the colonial period.

The Colonial Period I

[02:00:00] The tendency is to assume that the Spanish come in, they conquer the Indians, and they take the Indians’ land. And that’s true, if you think about it in the very long term—let’s say four hundred years. But what’s remarkable really is the ability of indigenous peoples to hang on to much of their land for three hundred years, throughout the entire colonial period.

Now, much of what I said about the Precolumbian community is still true in the colonial system. You still have this set system of corporate landholding. And yet there is a tendency over time for indigenous communities to sell land to the Spaniards. And in many cases there are even Spaniards moving into these communities, intermarriage. In some cases indigenous communities turn into “mestizo” communities. Still, despite the fact that these communities are under a great deal of pressure, what tends to predominate is some sort of arrangement or understanding between indigenous communities and Spanish “haciendas.”

It’s very important to understand that the countryside in the colonial period is not really dominated by haciendas, which I think is a popular notion. Instead it’s a shared landscape. Now there are a number of reasons for this. One is that it was in the interest of the Spanish Crown to maintain indigenous communities. Indigenous communities provided tribute. Also, [the Spaniards] wanted to limit the power of the early “conquistadores.” If they allowed them to simply absorb these Indian communities, they would have become too powerful.

The Colonial Period II

[03:34:00] There’re other factors operating as well. One is that the early Spaniards weren’t that interested in taking land over. The dominant fact of the first century after Conquest is that there is a massive indigenous population decline, on the order of ninety percent in a century. So, land is not a problem. Spaniards obtain land, but their real concern in the first fifty years or so after the Conquest is getting labor.

In central Mexico, it’s not until the 1570s that there’s any concerted effort to start obtaining land. And that has to do with the development of a more Europeanized economy with the discovery of silver mines, where it now becomes necessary for Spaniards to take production into their own hands. The number of Spaniards is growing, the number of indigenous people is shrinking, it now becomes necessary for Spaniards to set up their own haciendas. So there is an expansion of Spanish landholding beginning in the late sixteenth century. But there are limits to how far this goes, because the market demand is not that great and transportation is expensive. If you have an hacienda, basically your market is limited to the nearest Spanish town. You don’t have a lot of incentive to rapidly expand your landholdings.

Spaniards do obtain land through a variety of different ways: they get grants from the government that are called “mercedes.” They purchase land from indigenous communities. There’s also a variety of chicanery involved in this. For example, Spaniards will sometimes rent land from indigenous communities, and then later claim that they purchased it. In some cases, the Spaniards simply go into an area that no one is farming and squat, and then later on claim that they own the land. And because the crown by the seventeenth century is quite impoverished, it’s willing to grant a legal title to this land in return for a fee. So yes, Spanish landholding is increasing, yet it is a very slow, uneven process.

Indian Resistance

[05:35:00] The other factor you have to consider is that the Indians did not just lie down and let this happen. There was a good deal of resistance. The Indians were very smart about using the Spanish legal system to defend their land claims. I don’t want to say that the Spanish legal system necessarily favored the Indians because I don’t think it did. The Spaniards were likely to have better legal advice, to understand Spanish legal conventions more, and so in most cases they would win—but not always. Sometimes, the Indians would win. They could also, by using the legal system, simply block Spanish takeovers for long periods. Sometimes these cases would run on for literally decades.

But relations between indigenous communities and haciendas were not always conflictual—there was cooperation. Most haciendas had a relatively small full-time labor force, and they depended on seasonal labor for planting and harvesting that they recruited from local indigenous communities. So they would get their labor, and the Indians who went to work on the estate would get money—wages—that they could then use to pay their tribute. So, as long as there was enough land to go around, then if not amiability, there could at least be cooperation between the two institutions.

Until at least the second half of the seventeenth century, there’s no generalized conflict over land. But what happens after 1650 or so is that the indigenous population is expanding, and the rest of the population is growing even faster. The population of Mexico doubles between about 1740 and 1810. So by the eighteenth century, for the first time, you do have generalized conflict over land because there’s no longer enough land to go around. And that’s when there’s more and more conflict between indigenous communities and Spanish communities.

It’s not in the “hacendado’s” interest to destroy the indigenous community because that functions as his labor reserve. Even if he wants to, the communities can go to court. They can use the Spanish legal system to resist. To go back to where I began, what’s remarkable is the ability of indigenous communities, with some loss, to maintain their landholdings and, therefore, to maintain the communities themselves, for a very long period of time.

After 1821

[07:58:00] Now, what happens after the colonial period is that there’s a change economically, and there’s a change, of course, in the state. And let me take the second one first.

After 1821 in Mexico, the royal authorities are no longer there. Instead the state is being largely run by people who have the same agenda as the hacienda owners. Indigenous peoples can no longer look to the state as their defender, or even as some sort of impartial arbiter. Instead, the state becomes their enemy. You see individual states first, and then later the national government, passing laws to privatize indigenous land, which in turn makes indigenous peoples very vulnerable to losing their land. This liberal program for breaking up indigenous communities takes quite a while to implement.

In the early National period there’s an economic downturn in Mexico. So the elites are actually weakened. This is a period in which there is in some ways less pressure on indigenous communities in an economic sense. The state is trying to enforce these new dictates without actually having the power to do so. This is one reason why the 1840s and 1850s are a great age of indigenous rebellion, the Caste War in the Yucatan being the best example, because you have a weak state, which is nevertheless attempting to interfere with these communities.

This changes in the late nineteenth century, when there is an economic upturn. Because of technological changes, and especially because of the railroad, it now becomes possible to sell to a much wider market. Now “hacendados” have much more incentive to expand their landholding. If you expand your land, you do it by taking land away from indigenous communities, and then they can become your labor force. And in Mexico, especially the period in which Porfirio Díaz becomes president, beginning in 1876, you now have a strong state that will back you up. So this is then the period in which finally, after all of this time, the indigenous communities are dispossessed on a massive level.

If you look at the very long run then you do see a process of dispossession, but the remarkable thing is that it really accelerates in the second half of the nineteenth century. It takes that long. And when we think of this portrait that many people have of Latin America, where the countryside is dominated by haciendas and the indigenous people are peons on estates, that is a much more accurate picture for, let’s say, 1890 then it is for 1790, or 1590. So, it’s a very long and uneven process, and exploitation of indigenous peoples is in many ways more profound in the nineteenth century then it ever had been during the colonial period.

A Yucatan Example

[10:50:00] In Yucatan there’s a huge henequen boom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Maya communities in the henequen area of Yucatan are dispossessed on a large scale. They are then forced to become the worker on the henequen estate. And, indeed, they are reduced to something pretty close to slavery. This is possible because the state government is in the hands of the henequen owners.

In fact, the most important, powerful, wealthy henequen producer and exporter is actually governor of the state. They set up a regimen in which there is no legal recourse for indigenous people, in which people are forced to go on the estate—they can’t leave it without a pass. The henequen planters are actually able to buy and sell workers along with the estate. So you have now the combination of powerful economic incentive and you have a state that is no longer in any way on the side of indigenous peoples.