“Desde el Tiempo Del Ynga [Since the Time of the Inka]”: Indigenous Land Tenure and Use under the Inka and Spanish in the Andes

Indigenous people of the Andes began using the Spanish colonial legal system not long after the initial invasion of the conquistadors (1532 - 1533 for central Peru). Within one generation, Andean communities were engaged in a myriad of litigation against Spaniards as well as neighboring Indigenous groups. In many of these documents, Andean litigants describe how they had been in possession of the land at issue "since the time of the Inka" or even "since time immemorial." They detail how land use changed from Inka to Spanish dominion. They also describe how boundaries were marked and offer hints about environmental changes that followed the invasion of European people, plants, animals, and customs into the region.

In this presentation, I will describe my use of digital mapping, spatial analysis, geographical text analysis, and other techniques to trace and map changes in land use and tenure as found in this Indigenous land litigation and titles. Focusing on the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, I analyze this change across the imperial reign of two empires: the Inka and Spanish.

The Andes offers a fascinating case study of the effects of colonialism and the Columbian Exchange on Indigenous land tenure. Perhaps more importantly, Indigenous land documents also record Andeans’ creative responses to these changes. I will examine these changes and responses while employing spatial analysis to show how the resilience of Indigenous land tenure varied tremendously across the Andes. Finally, I will conclude by exploring to what extent the region’s vertical topography and the continuity of many pre-Hispanic landholding traditions meant the Andes followed a unique trajectory in the Americas.