DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNITIES ii 



They have no written deeds, of course, but prove their ownership 

 by the testimony of their neighbors, particularly the older 

 members of the vicinity. Much of the community land has thus 

 passed out of the Indians' hands since that date. However, the 

 cohesion is so strong in these time-honored agrarian groups that 

 many of the so-called ex-commumties have as completely dis- 

 regarded the Republic's statutes as they did those of the Spanish 

 colonial authorities and continue to maintain their communal 

 ownership as in times gone by. 



Distribution of Surviving Communities 



The distribution of these still surviving communities is 

 determined largely by certain geographical factors. Location — 

 chiefly with respect to travel routes — the depth and character of 

 the soil, and climatic conditions are the influences that have been 

 most potent in the preservation or destruction of these "ex- 

 communities." 



Communal ownership is seldom encountered along the main 

 routes of travel, particularly the older routes. Here the land is 

 chiefly in fincas, free holdings, survivals in most part of those 

 great estates granted as encomiendas or repartiniienlos by the 

 Spanish Crown. Along the principal roads and railroads of today 

 there have grown up also many large farms of recent creation 

 composed of lands once held by community Indians but either 

 bought or "acquired by other means" by men of white or mixed 

 blood. It is in out-of-the-way corners of the country that 

 community lands are still found: among the mountains where 

 whites seldom penetrate, in secluded angles of the piedmont 

 slopes, among the isolated peninsulas that border Lake Titicaca, 

 on high, inaccessible ridges, and out in semi-desert wastes on the 

 open altiplano. 



As to soil, the Spanish sought that of the valleys, where, 

 either on the flat valley floors or upon the rich and well-watered 

 alluvial fans, most of the Bolivian farms are located. The 

 mountain ridges with their scantier and less fertile soil were left 

 to the Indians, as were also the salt-impregnated lands of poorly 



