Negotiated Legitimacy, Layered Legislation: Indigenous Communal Property, Liberalism, and State Formation in Bolivia

The structural abigarramiento of Andean societies, perceptively identified by René Zavaleta, profoundly complicated the relationship among state institutions, white and mestizo ruling groups—many of whom were, or aspired to become, hacendados—and Indigenous communities. In Bolivia, particularly, the uneven, non-linear process of state-building conditioned these relationships, preventing the definitive imposition of any single institutional or ideological model. This dynamic proved especially consequential in matters of land tenure and resulted in a republican legal framework marked by ambiguity and contradiction. Even the official liberal rhetoric, the initial liberalizing thrust immediately following independence was succeeded by years of continuity in Indigenous communal landholding in the Altiplano, times characterized by clashes, negotiation, and readjustment among political actors, until a decisive turning point emerged with the imposition of the exvinculación (the dissolution of communal landholding) between the 1860s and 1870s. Although part of the historiography has often portrayed this trajectory as a straightforward consolidation of elite forces aimed at overcoming Indigenous resistance to the dissolution of community and shared property, I argue that this narrative is teleological. In practice, alternatives to an idealized liberal regime of private property were articulated from multiple positions within the Bolivian political field. I examine one such alternative: emphyteutic tenure, debated during the presidency of José Ballivián (1841–1847) and subsequently referenced in public discussions for decades, through which it would shape the later exvinculación legislation. While this policy did not produce immediate practical consequences, it is essential for reconstructing a fuller account of the evolution of land tenure in nineteenth-century Bolivia—for the potential outcomes it envisioned, the influences it exerted, and its very existence as a legitimate political and legal possibility.