32 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 7 
within or near pine forests. By 1789 most of the 
buildings in Tarascan towns in the Lake and 
Sierra regions were roofed with shakes (map 18). 
Today in the towns bordering the Sierra the red 
Castilian tile has completely replaced tejamanil 
and is slowly penetrating into the Sierra towns.* 
THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE PUEBLO 
Tarascan settlements are fundamentally agri- 
cultural villages. They include not only dwellings 
arranged along streets and in house lots, but also 
the surrounding farm land. The land is the body 
of the pueblo, whose political and economic life 
revolves around land ownership and boundaries, 
crop planting and harvesting. 
Few records exist on the ancient Tarascan land 
system; most lands, however, were probably held 
in common. Each community owned surround- 
ing lands, the limits of which were determined by 
metes and bounds; the record and adjudication of 
pueblo boundaries were in the hands of the 
village chief, who apportioned agricultural plots 
to his subjects.44. As in many modern Indian 
areas of Mexico, the aboriginal concept of village 
lands and their established boundaries is indurated 
in the present political and economic structure of 
the Tarascan pueblos.® Such holdings in the 
Sierra include various types of land: monte, or 
woodland pasture on steep mountain slopes and on 
lava flows; cropland in basin floors (planes, t'pakua), 
on lower mountain slopes (/aderas, uandten), and 
in craters of cinder cones (joyas, t pakua-supiéu). 
In La Canada often the following lands are 
held by a given pueblo: irrigable alluvium on 
the valley floor, temporal lands and monte on the 
adjacent slopes, and hwmedad lands in the Sierra. 
In the Lake area types of land vary from pueblo to 
pueblo. Often small strips of irrigable vegetable 
plots are held along the lake shore; most towns 
hold temporal land on the lower slopes; those on 
43 Although used in most Spanish towns (except mining centers) in New 
Spain since the late 16th century, tiles began to appear in the Lake Patzcuaro 
district only in the late 18th century. In 1789 Patzcuaro was the only town in 
the vicinity with tile roofs (approximately 50 percent of the houses were 
roofed with tile, the remainder, with shakes). In the same year one house in 
Naranja boasted of a tile roof. (AGN Historia, vol. 73, ff. 285, 318.) 
44 A copy of an aboriginal land title (1519) of CheranStzicurin is extant in 
AQN Tierras, vol. 867, exped. 8. 
45 In many respects the native land system in central Mexico paralleled that 
of 16th century Spain. Farticularly was this true in regard to the concept of 
village holdings, 
the community. 
the western and southern shore often have fields 
in the Sierra. 
Two systems of land ownership—communal 
and private—prevail in most of modern Tarasca. 
Since the land reforms of 1915, the ejido, a third 
type of holding, has displaced most of the hacien- 
das around the margins of the Sierra. 
Since Spanish contact most of the Tarascan 
agricultural land has become private property of 
family heads. Even in the few remaining pueblos 
which claim complete communal ownership of 
their lands, a strong individualization of property 
has developed. The historical process of the 
shift from communal to private ownership is not 
clear. Late 18th-century documents on land 
disputes among the Tarascan pueblos indicate 
that at that time the communal system prevailed 
at least in the Sierra. The issuance of individual 
land titles may not have occurred until after the 
reforms of 1857. In the Sierra private land- 
holders (propietarios) often possess one or more 
plots in the plan, and still others on the less 
fertile laderas. Size of individual holdings varies 
greatly, since land is purchasable. Normal hold- 
ings average 2 to 3 hectares per family. Traces 
of the communal concept exist in the minds of the 
modern proprietors. Although legally possible, 
there is little desire to sell land to nonmembers of 
If such a transaction should 
arise, it usually must be approved by the town 
council. Consequently, pueblo lands are kept 
intact. Moreover, individual holdings, especially 
those in the plan, are rarely enclosed, for after 
harvest the fields are used as communal pasture.” 
Accordingly, the final date for removal of crops 
and the first date for planting in unenclosed lands 
of each pueblo is communally regulated. 
Vestiges of the ancient land system are retained 
in the special communal holdings found in most 
modern Tarascan villages. Five pueblos in La 
Cafiada—Tanaquillo, Acachuén, Ichdén, Tacuro, 
and Carapan—retain communal ownership of all 
lands, at least in name. Family heads are allotted 
one plot of temporal near the pueblo and another 
of humedad in the Sierra to the south and east. 
The individual allotments vary from 2 to 4 
46 The Tarascan town council is normally composed of the representante del 
pueblo and his committee of six. The representante deals with most internal 
affairs of the pueblo. 
47 Fences and ditches are used most frequently to divide cultivated lands 
from pasture and to separate individual holdings on the /aderas, or slope land. 
