Abstract

LOPERA MESA, GLORIA PATRICIA. Setting Possession by Dispossession. Land Inspections (visitas a la tierra) and the Creation of Indigenous Landholdings in the Vega de Supía, 1559-1779. Front. hist. [online]. 2020, vol.25, n.2, pp.120-156. ISSN 2027-4688.  https://doi.org/10.22380/20274688.819.

This article explores the role of land inspections (visitas a la tierra) in the creation of indigenous territories in a peripheral area of Nueva Granada known as Vega de Supía (present-day Riosucio and Supía, Caldas). It claims that whereas early inspections, such as Tomás López Medel's (1559), focused on Indian tribute and labor, the demarcation of indigenous resguardos only started during the second cycle of inspections. As exemplified by the 1627 Lesmes de Espinosa's territorial rearrangement in the Vega de Supía, inspections created dispossession by removing natives from, or setting boundaries on, the lands that they had occupied before. Yet, by setting up and writing down boundaries, these inspections made legible in colonial terms indigenous land rights, providing legal grounds to settle future conflicts over land. Thus, paradoxically, these inspections set up possession by dispossession.

Keywords : land inspections; resguardos indígenas; land rights; Vega de Supía; Anserma; Nuevo Reino de Granada.

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