QUIROGA: a MEXICAN MUNICEPIO BRANTD 



17 



However, there is a piece of land just south of 

 Zirandangacho by the Arroyo del Salto which is 

 sometimes referred to as the Rancho de Saa 

 Diego. At any rate, in 1603 Baltazar Dorantes 

 de Carranza (commissioner for the congregating 

 of Indians) and Francisco de Soria (royal scribe 

 for the distributing of lands) reassigned lands to 

 the Indians of Zirandangacho (Sanambo is not 

 mentioned) within lands owned by Alonso de 

 Caceres of Valladolid (the area now known as La 

 Teneria). Apparently the Indians did not gain 

 actual possession of these lands, because in 1681 

 we find that (a) the Pueblo de Cocupa complained 

 that it did not have the "500 varas utiles" to 

 which it was entitled by law, (6) the land titles 

 of Santa Fe were found to be valid, and (c) a sur- 

 vey was made with a measured cord and allot- 

 ments were made in the lands "that had belonged 

 to Alonso de Caceres." ' 



The allotments made in 1681 to activate the as- 

 signments of 1603 were measured with a doubled 

 hemp cord of 50 varas length under the personal 

 supervision of Captain Alonso de Alcocer Dabalos, 

 alcalde mayor in the province of Michoacan. 

 However, the area was measured as a unit and 

 not into the individual parcels mentioned in 1603. 

 Those parcels had varied from 1 by 40 brazas up 

 to 3 by 40 brazas, depending upon the size of the 

 family. At maximum this was less than a tenth 

 of an acre per family. Also, to give Cocupao the 

 equivalent of the land to which it was entitled, 

 1,300 varas were measured south from Cocupao. 

 The village of Cocupao was still dissatisfied. In a 

 petition of 1682 to the audiencia, Cocupao re- 

 peated that it did not have the "500 varas utiles"; 

 that the 1,300 varas to the south were in exhausted 

 or swampy ground; that northward it possessed 

 only 250 varas along the highway to Teremendo; 

 that to the east there were no lands because of an 

 arroj^o, hiUs, and swampy land; and that there 

 were only 200 varas to the west. Later in the year 

 the audience ordered that "500 varas utiles por 

 todos cuatros vientos" be given to Cocupao, as 

 well as effective occupation of the lands assigned 

 at the time of the 1603 congregation. Evidently 

 the recorded assignments, allotments, measure- 

 ments, etc., of the previous 79 years had not re- 

 sulted in the actual acquisition of land of any 

 description whatsoever. Finally on August 14, 



1 See Land-Measurements Units, pp. 17-19. 



1682, the alcalde mayor had the measurements 

 made "to the four winds" with a cord of 50 varas 

 in the presence of witnesses from Cocupao, Santa 

 Fe, Tzintzuntzan, and a representative of Alonso 

 Rodriguez (the renter of the Hacienda de la 

 Teneria which had been established in the lands 

 that formerly had belonged to Alonso Caceres). 

 It is of interest that one of the two Spaniards who 

 handled the measiiring cord was a Manuel Ponce 

 de Rueda who was a member of the Ponce family 

 which owned the lands immediately to the east of 

 Cocupao, but that there was no mention made of a 

 representative of the eastern neighbor. Fhst 

 Mere measured 1,380 varas southward to an arroyo 

 (Arroyo del Salto) which was the boundary with 

 Tzintzuntzan. Next were measured 100 varas 

 north from the last house in Cocupao to the vicin- 

 ity of the little village of San IVIiguel Cutzaro. 

 Finally (there was no attempt to measure toward 

 the east) 370 varas were measured westward, 

 which carried somewhat into the territory of 

 Santa Fe. In total Cocupao was given 1,850 of 

 the 2,000 varas to which it was entitled. On the 

 same day Santa Fe petitioned the audiencia to 

 reexamine its titles and to restore the lands given 

 to Cocupao, and shortly the lands on the west side 

 of Cocupao were returned to Santa Fe. Conse- 

 quently, at the end of the seventeenth century the 

 pueblo of Cocupao had practically no lands to the 

 east or west, a slight amount of slope land to the 

 north, and nearly all of its farm land to the south. 



LAND-MEASUREMENT UNITS 



When the Spaniards entered Michoacan they 

 found the Tarascans employing a number of units 

 of linear and areal measurement. The names and 

 values of only a few of these can be reccered 

 from the colonial hterature. A basic linear unit 

 was the pirimu (pirimucua, perimo), which is 

 given variously as 1 vara and 1 braza of Spanish 

 equivalence. The tzitacua (cord or rope) was a 

 piece of land 20 brazas wide and of varying length. 

 A larger area was the paracata (UteraUy butterfly). 

 The Spaniards brought with them a variety of 

 units of measurement, any one of which varied in 

 its accepted value according to what part of 

 Spain the user came from. Commonly the 

 Spanish crown and the Mexican audience, in their 

 land regulations, used these measurement terms 

 without defining them. With the passage of 

 time the various units gained specific and common- 



