Negotiating Collective Land Rights in the Andes: Insights from contrasting trajectories on the Bolivian-Chilean altiplano, 1880s–1930s

Abstract

Abstract This article develops a historicising and comparative perspective on the transformation, formalisation, and negotiation of collective land rights in the Andean Highlands. It discusses and compares the trajectories of two highland areas situated across the Bolivian-Chilean border within the context of globally and nationally shifting frontiers of market and state integration since the late 19th century. The case studies demonstrate a striking divergence in the context of the breakthrough of liberal land legislation in Latin America. Communities in the Bolivian province of Carangas were able to resist privatising pressures, while communities of the Arica highlands, once annexed and incorporated in Chile after the War of the Pacific, adjusted to a more homogeneous regime that left little room for communal land relations. Despite the stark contrasts, this article questions simplistic dichotomic framings of the unchallenged “survival” of communal land rights in Bolivia versus complete “disappearance” of communal arrangements in Chile. Empirical archival and ethnographic data point to the social reconfigurations and creative strategies through which the community as a collective legal entity and daily practice transformed. The article sheds light on the causes and longer-term implications of these regional trajectories within the context of a globalising land regime.