MODIFICATIONS BY BOLIVIAN GOVERNMENT 9 



Indians themselves. Two alcaldes de campo who regulate such 

 matters as the cultivation of fields, the distribution of water for 

 irrigation, the collecting and care of crops, and the rendering of 

 personal service complete the executive and administrative force 

 of the community. The jurisdiction of each of these officers is 

 coterminous with the individual community. Bandelier^ notes 

 the existence of a council of elders {principales), composed of 

 those who have served in the above capacities. He considers 

 that this council is the de facto government of a community, 

 though its operation is so silent and its deliberations so carefully 

 guarded that its existence is seldom even suspected. 



The republic, continuing colonial custom, exacts a land tax 

 from each comunario. The amount varies according to his 

 holdings, which in turn depend upon his relation to the various 

 classes into which membership in the community is divided. In v 

 a community there exist the following classes: originarios, 

 forasteros, reservados, and proximos. Sometimes the last three are 

 grouped together under the term agregados. Not all communities 

 contain all of these different classes. As the names are all 

 Spanish it is thought that they owe their origin to colonial times, 

 though it is known that some such system existed in the days of 

 the Incas. The Aymaras' use of their own term yanapaco to 

 describe one whose relation to the community corresponds to 

 that of the three last classes gives strength to the belief that they 

 may have existed under other names in ancient times. The 

 originarios are those who from the remote past have belonged to 

 the community and received their yearly assignment of lands. 

 They generally receive double the amount of land held by the 

 other classes. The agregados (including the three classes referred 

 to) are those who in more recent times have become attached to 

 the community, from outside the circle. Being allotted about 

 half the amount of land held by an origiiiario they pay about 

 half as much in land tax. While their contrihiicion territorial (as 

 the land tax is called) is from Bs. 3.00 to Bs. 5.00, the originarios 



9 Mr. A. F. Bandelier had collected materials for a work on the ethnology of the 

 Bolivian Indians. His widow, Mrs. Fanny Bandelier, very kindly placed these notes 

 at the disposal of the writer during the preparation of the present paper. 



