The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

Owners and Fences 73
Often these common lands were called indivisos because they could
not be divided, use-rights being inherited from generation to generation
without partition so that by 1900 hundreds of households could
claim usage. From the early 19003 onward local newspapers contain
reports and official notices of the partition of such lands. Typical
was the indiviso "Bolo de Escobares," in which around 440 "owners"
were involved. It was located just to the north of the Puerto Tejada
area and was valued at 40,000 pesos. The newspaper El Comercio
announced to the "sharecroppers" of this indiviso on 16 June
1904 that lots from twenty-five to one hundred hectares were now
on sale. Inalienable land became alienable. Land became a commodity
as never before, and what peasant could pay? Peasants had customarily
exchanged land by buying and selling improvements—the
mejoias—not the land itself. But now, secure ownership required
purchase of land, and few could afford that. At the same time the
large landowners were rarely in a position to pay for the improvements.
Thus, both parties became locked in conflict. Increasingly,
one finds advertisements for barbed wire. It had been introduced
into the valley in the late 18705 together with new types of grass.
Small wonder that one of the more common advertisements in
newspapers around the turn of the century reads: "The most useful
book ever published in Colombia is The Household Lawyer." And,
as Phanor Eder noted in 1913, "Cattle prices are going up continually.
Profits are large."
Tomas Zapata talks of the indivisos.
Indiviso land consists in this. When the discoverers found
America the land was then guarded by the Indians that were
here in those times. Then the discoverers began to take their
lands, because all the poor people were held by them as slaves.
All the poor class were enslaved by the people who took the
land. This owner would have that land over there, and another
owner would have another portion of land over there, and another
owner would have another portion of land over there,
and there was still a lot of land without any owners at all.
Thus they uprooted those who were here first, the Indians, but
never got round to selling all the land that remained. They just
sat content with their arms folded and a lot of land that they
possessed was never sold and it became impossible to sell it.
This is what they called an indiviso, and such land could never
be alienated. They also called these lands comuneros-, that
was the land where you and I, and he, and someone else and
someone else, and so on, had the right to have our animals.