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| Communities and collective usage of land resources in the Andes |
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Reference |
| Herve, Dominique, Riviere, Gilles, and Luz Pacheco. 1995. "Communities and Collective Usage of Land Resources in the Andes." Presented at "Reinventing the Commons," the fifth annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bodoe, Norway, May 24-28,1995. Link: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/archive/00003330/ |
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Rules for Management
of the Institution |
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(a) Boundary Rules |
| Spacial Boundaries: A part of the community land (aynuqa), is divided in as many areas as there are years in the rotation of land which is respected by every one. The remaining land (sayana) is used as natural pasture land or as cultivated plots in ownership near houses which are farmed by the family itself with private inter crops fallow.Social Boundaries: A native Aymara community |
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(b) Governance
rules |
| The running of long pastured fallowed culture is regulated by community rules. Land is used and controlled in two different ways: Aynuqa and Sayana. In aynuqa and sayana as well, plots are allocated with or without any title of ownership. The right to the land is conditioned by a series of duties and obligations. If plots are left unploughed, it is then considered as an offence to the community and the gods. The second series of duties consists in fulfilling a number of political-union duties (being a member of the agrarian union) or religious duties (being in charge of saints days, a churchwarden, a warden of the aynuqa, etc.) |
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(c) Resource Allocation |
| Traditionally, eldest sons, after they had married, would live for a varying period of time on their parents' sayana. The community would then allocate them vacant plots (puruma) to build a house and farm. The youngest ones would stay with their parents until they died and would inherit the house and sayana. The amount of land depends on the number of children in the previous generations: a man with no direct descendants transmitted his land to his brother's son According to a very old pattern, land transmission was bilateral; men received land from their fathers, women from their mothers. Today, this pattern is hardly practiced. |
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Conflict Resolution Mechanism |
| In aynuqa, where a more diffuse hold on land property could be expected, each family knows exactly the limits of its plots and respect other people's ones during the three years they are farmed. These limits become more indistinct over the ten year fallow. At the end, limits are rather unclear. This originates many conflicts. Some people do not hesitate to move boundary markers to get hold of orphans' or widows' plots. These conflicts are dealt with by local authorities, from day to day, and especially during the village meeting on Ash Wednesday. This meeting is still called Uraq katu -lit. "Distribution of plots" though this is more symbolical than real. |
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Problems Faced by Institution |
| 1) The rules of inheritance leave some farmers with no plots at all. It happens when sons were not recognised by the father, or to childless widows whose lands were taken back by the husbands' families when they died. 2) Farmed areas and ways of cultivating vary a lot amongst Aymara communities. In Pumani the richest "comunario" owns over one hundred hectares. On the opposite, several family heads have no plot at all. |
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Changes in the Institution over time |
| In the 1930's, fighters in the Chaco war (a conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay) native from the community, asked for extra land as a reward for joining in the defence of the national territory. The only stretches wide enough, access-free, were those located in two ahijaderos (ayjariru). Comunarios decided they would divide the whole ayjariru. Several families definitively moved to the new area without losing their old sayana.In 1952 the National Revolution has had many effects: agrarian reform, obligatory school for everybody, opening of colonising zones in lower tropical lands, setting of a new market for products and paid work in the main cities. The great 1983 drought has only increased migratory flux already initiated, either temporary or definitive ones, towards Bolivia and Argentina urban centres. Besides, many young people who had the opportunity of studying in town have not gone back to the community. These different factors added, people between 18 and 40 mainly live outside the community, attracted by the consuming society and by jobs considered as more prestigious. |
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Purpose |
| Collective regulation and use of fallow land resources |
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Country |
| Bolivia |
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