22 INDIAN COMMUNITIES OF BOLIVIA 



If we allow three persons for each Indian who paid the 

 contribucion territorial — the basis which is probably most cor- 

 rect for the sedentary tribes of the highlands — we find the 

 Indian population living on community land in these de- 

 partments to have been about 500,000. The census of 1854 

 gave the total Indian population of the five departments under 

 consideration as 796, 004.^*^ Since the different censuses taken 

 show that the Indian population on the plateau does not vary 

 rapidly we may accept that figure as approximately correct for 

 1877. This would indicate that about 67 per cent of the highland 

 Bolivian Indians were living in communities. 



Extent of Community Holdings 



The contents of the tupu, or measure of land, assigned to each 

 Indian seems to have varied considerably. In pre-Conquest and 

 early colonial times, we have seen that this measure was equal 

 to i}4 Spdimsh fanegas, or 2.4 acres. But according to the decree 

 of President Acha (dated Oruro, February 28, 1862), upon which 

 Melgarejo's decree of 1866 seems to have been based, a tupii is 

 specified to contain 2,000 square varas, or 15,456.8 square feet 

 (0.35 acre). In declaring that the comunarios should henceforth 

 possess their holdings rent free, Ach4 specified that each 

 originario should receive three tiipus of good or irrigated, or 

 six tiipus of poor or unirrigated land: that the forasteros (evi- 

 dently including all the agregados) should receive two or four 

 tiipus, according to the quality.-^ This assignment no doubt was 

 intended to include the usual proportion of fallow land but not 

 the pasture and was intended to represent approximately the 

 extent of tillable land corresponding to each individual in the 

 common holdings. While the former size of the tupu (2.4 acres) 

 may have been that employed in Inca times, the latter (0.35 

 acre) is probably a more accurate measure of the holdings today. 

 It gives us a basis upon which to calculate, approximately at 

 least, the amount of community land in the different provinces 



-" Carlos Bravo: La patria boliviana: Estado geografico (Series: Biblioteca 

 Boliviana de Geografia e Historia), La Paz, 1894, P- nS. 

 21 Coleccion oficial de leyes de Bolivia, La Paz (n.d.). 



