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New Towns—A Major Change in the Rural Settlement Pattern in Highland Bolivia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Extract

During the period since the Revolution of 1952 and the later agrarian reform a new settlement type has been created in the northern Altiplano and the sub-tropical valleys of the Yungas of La Paz. New nucleated settlements have been built by the rural people, largely spontaneously, and they represent a break with the dispersed pattern of dwellings that was the characteristic form of rural settlement prior to 1952.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 Wolfe, Marshall, ‘Rural Settlement Patterns and Social Change in Latin America’, Latin American Research Review, 1, no. 1 (1966), 564Google Scholar, previously published as ‘Rural Settlement Patterns and Social Change in Latin America: Notes for a Strategy of Rural Development’ Economic Bulletin for Latin America, x, no. 1 (03 1965), 121.Google Scholar

2 The major political divisions of Bolivia are departments. Within each department are provinces which themselves are ranked (thus the capital of the province is also its first section and other towns are second, third etc. sections). Each section has a central area tributary to the urban centre and, beyond this, the rural areas are divided into cantons, each of which contains a village as its capital.

3 Wolfe, , op. cit. (1965), p. 18.Google Scholar

4 In La Paz practical assistance and invaluable advice were readily given by Roberto Gumucio and Celso Reyes of the Land Tenure Center Bolivia Project and also by the Bolivian National Agrarian Reform Service, including its then President Dr Joaquín Villanueva. I benefited greatly from the assistance at different times of Gumercindo Ayala, Mario Fernández and Fortunato Yupanqui as Aymara interpreters and field assistants. The field work was made possible by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation.

5 Pirenne, Henri, Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (London, 1936)Google Scholar, passim.

6 Berry, Brian J. L., Geography of Market Centres and Retail Distribution (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1967), p. 108.Google Scholar

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9 Clark, Ronald J., ‘Land Reform and Peasant Market Participation on the Northern Highland of Bolivia’, Land Economics, xiiv, no. 2 (05 1968), 153–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Clark erroneously refers to the new centres of commodity exchange as fairs which ignores the distinction in standard dictionaries and in other literature between local periodic markets, usually weekly in Bolivia, and large regional fairs occurring once or twice a year and lasting for several days, such as the fairs at Huari and Copacabana.

11 Clark, , op. cit., p. 168.Google Scholar

12 Buechler, Hans C., ‘Agrarian Reform and Migration on the Bolivian Altiplano’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1966), p. 79.Google Scholar

13 Patch, Richard W., ‘Social Implications of the Bolivian Agrarian Reform’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1956)Google Scholar, Heath, Dwight B., ‘A View from the Grass Roots: Peasant Syndicates among the Aymara of the Bolivian Yungas’, unpublished paper presented to the Conference of Peasant Movements, Ithaca, 1966Google Scholar, and Léons, M. Barbara, ‘Changing Patterns of Social Stratification in an Emergent Bolivian Community’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1966), p, 63.Google Scholar

14 Carter, William E., Aymara Communities and the Bolivian Agrarian Reform (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1965), pp. 60, 63Google Scholar; Warriner, Doreen, Land Reform in Principle and Practice (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 248.Google Scholar

15 In fact it was reported in August 1969 that difficulties had developed and delayed progress on building and the inauguration.

16 Clark, , op. cit., p. 167.Google Scholar

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21 Summarised briefly in Halpern, Joel M., The Changing Village Community (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

22 Members of a freeholding community are frequently divided into originarios, senior families whose ancestors are believed to have lived in the same community, and agregados, other families that were thought to have joined the community at a later period although often several generations ago.

23 Bowman, , op. cit. (1910).Google Scholar

24 Clark, , op. cit.Google Scholar

25 Sec, for example, Carter, , op. cit., pp. 86–7Google Scholar and Heath, Dwight B., Erasmus, Charles J. and Buechler, Hans C., Land Reform and Social Revolution in Bolivia (London, Pall Mall Press, 1969).Google Scholar

26 Sayres, op. cit., and also Preston, David A., ‘Pimampiro (Equateur), géographie d'une ville andine’, Cahiers d'Outre-Mer, xix (1966), 5572.Google Scholar

27 Informants were asked whether members of their community sowed Sani Imilla potatoes or had bought Corriedale rams and also in general if they grew any crops now that they did not before 1952.

28 Halpern, , op. cit., p. 125.Google Scholar

29 Wolfe, , op. cit. (1965), p. 33.Google Scholar