Witnesses, Spatial Practices, And a Land Dispute in Colonial Oaxaca

Abstract

At approximatety eight o'clock in the morning on the 22nd of June, 1719, Don Gaspar Agüero de los Reyes y San Pelayo, thealcalde mayor(Spanish magistrate) of the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, prepared to depart on horseback from the town square of the Zapotec pueblo of San Juan Juquila toward four disputed parcels of land. Standing with him in the square were the cabildo officers of San Juan Juquila and San Juan Tanetze, who had been engaged in a legal battle over the land for four years. Their lawyers stood with them. Juan Tirado, a district interpreter, and court witnesses (in lieu of an official notary) translated and notarized the proceedings. From his perch on the back of his horse, the alcalde mayor read the legal decision in the dispute, which the interpreter translated for the benefit of the Zapotec officials. The auxiliary judge, who rendered the decision in the case from the distance and comfort of the diocesan seat of Antequera, had ordered that the land in question should be divided equally between the two pueblos. The lawyer for the cabildo of Tanetze voiced his official protest and vowed to appeal the case to the Real Audiencia. The alcalde mayor registered the protest. Then, he addressed another group of men who had been waiting in the wings: Juan de Yllescas, Andrés Ramos, Juan Baptista, Pedro Hernandes, and Nicolas Santiago, all natives of the Zapotec pueblo of San Miguel Talea, and all of whom had testified in an earlierprobanzaon behalf of the pueblo of Juquila. Through his interpreter, the magistrate swore them in as witnesses and ordered them to guide the group to the disputed territory, identify the parcels of land and their borders, and determine where they should be divided. From this point on, the Zapotec witnesses took the lead and proceeded toward the disputed territory along the Camino Real, with their “faces pointing south.” In this manner, the legal ritual of boundary marking (amojonamiento) began.

Problems of Disputes/Conflicts over Land Acquisition towards Development for Public Interest in Indonesia

“…Home (2020) states that the need for shared values in resolving land disputes in sub-Saharan Africa is related to the development and use rights for small groups, the traditional authority, and customary societies as well as development rights by the state or through concessions to developers and corporations, as well as the possibility of settlement through peaceful solutions. Several other studies also highlight legal and administrative processes as well as socio-political dimensions as solutions for peaceful land dispute resolution in various countries (Kobusingye et al, 2016;Santiago, 2017;Unruh, 2001;Rose, 1992;Childs, 2001;Yannakakis, 2008;Sakai, 2002).…”

Del uso práctico de los papeles

“…Hacerlos hablar, así sea a través del mismo lenguaje empleado por el poder, es el principal objetivo. Para el caso del imperio español, se ha buscado sobre todo rescatar la manera como los pueblos de indios y los africanos esclavizados se presentaron a la justicia y utilizaron el aparato judicial a su favor, ya sea para defender su libertad o para defender los intereses de sus comunidades (Premo, 2017;Premo y Yannakakis, 2019;Ruiz Medrano y Kellogg, 2010;Yannakakis, 2008). En cierto sentido, se podría decir, una perspectiva de subaltern studies encuentra soporte en la historia legal.…”

The archive in the field: document, discourse, and space in Mexico's agrarian reform

“…Indeed, as most recently noted by Yanna Yannakakis, there existed in Mexico a long tradition of taking oral testimony from witnesses in cases of land disputes. 36 This was not a practice that Olivares had to justify or explain to his superiors: they had ordered him to collect precisely such testimony. Such interactions with, or dependence on, campesinos in supposedly technical activities suggests that we revisit what have come to be fairly common ideas about agrarian reform bureaucrats (and bureaucrats more generally) in Mexico.…”