Cartographically reconstructing surveys of community land grants in New Mexico to support historical research and political discourse

Cartographic visualization of past changes in ownership and management of real estate provides a basis for historical research, decision-making, and political discourse. Surveys associated with land title deeds represent unique and legally valid geographic records of historical boundaries, including those of some Spanish-Mexican land grants in the American Southwest that are currently administrative subdivisions of state. Accurate representation of land grant boundaries that were surveyed during the nineteenth century is problematic due to imprecise instrumentation, error of record, and uncertainty in landmark location. This study assesses the utility of coordinate points from US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) “brass-cap” monuments (cadastral points) for cartographic reconstruction of three New Mexico land grant surveys that exhibit distinct geographic characteristics. Findings reveal discrepancies with respect to land ownership maps produced by the BLM and provide insight to decisions made during surveying. These reconstructed boundaries are also compared to boundary maps produced by the BLM, based on comparisons with the original surveys and relative to known boundary markers. This study highlights the practical importance and potential scholarly applications of reconstructing geographic boundaries of politically active community land grants in a contemporary context.     

Colonialism, Past and Present, in New Mexico

San Jose de las Huertas was established as a land grant community by the Spanish crown in 1765 and occupied for about 60 years. Many of its residents returned to the area after a brief respite, to found the village of Placitas, which exists today. Archaeological excavation at Las Huertas, documentary research and oral history from descendants of the original settlers reveal the shifting impact of different colonialisms, each accompanied by an image of modernity. Spanish demands were attenuated by distance and waning power. American impositions are more problematic, involving a new political economy, conflicts over land and water, as Placitas converts to a bedroom suburb of Albuquerque.     

Orphans’ Land Rights in Post‐War Rwanda: The Problem of Guardianship

In 1994, the Rwandan civil war and genocide produced thousands of orphans. Alongside the war, the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in Rwanda has produced a current population of about 300,000 orphans — many of whom are compelled to head households. These orphans urgently require land use rights, but many find that their rights to their deceased parents’ customary land holdings are denied or restricted by their guardians and others. Despite the legal protections for children that are guaranteed within Rwanda's laws, the reality is that many guardians do not respect orphans’ land rights and few orphans have sufficient access to administrative and legal forums to assert and defend these rights. In contrast to most accounts in the literature that discuss more generally the issue of African orphans’ land rights in the context of adults’ land rights, this article focuses on specific cases in which Rwandan orphans independently pursued their land rights. Ultimately, the article concludes that in Rwanda — and elsewhere in Africa — government officials should re‐examine their ideas about guardianship and grant orphans urgent attention as individuals and as a special interest group.     

汉代限田制说

张家山汉简《二年律令.户律》之受田宅律文,其实施对象是汉初军队系统的复员人员,而非全国人民,是"法以有功劳行田宅"精神的具体体现。此土地授予前属于国有,授予后即归被授者私有。"授田"与"授田制"是不同的概念,汉代虽然存在授田的现象,但并不存在战国授田制那种形式的土地制度。军功授田、民户自有的土地以及买卖而来的土地是汉初名田的三个来源。汉初,国家一方面承认民户对土地的所有权,同时对土地的转让、买卖和继承予以一定的限制,其方法是不同等级规定不同的数量限额,目的是维护既存的等级制度和抑制土地兼并。因此,汉代名田制是土地私有制基础上的限田制。     

Land,Life and Labour: Indo‐Fijian Claims to Citizenship in a Changing Fiji

Since the coup of May 2000 an estimated 24,000 Indo‐Fijians have left Fiji, the majority of them moving to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Those who remain in Fiji have faced increasing marginalisation as the government of Prime Minister Qarase has proposed significant reforms to both the administration of land and Constitutional arrangements of political representation. The situation has been further compounded through Qarase's recently proposed ‘Unity Bill’, which would grant amnesty to some of those responsible for the 2000 coup. These reforms are all part of an effort to ensure the ‘paramountcy’ of indigenous Fijians as well as to limit Indo‐Fijian participation in Fijian national politics. In this paper, I employ Greenhouse's concept of ‘empirical citizenship’ to analyse Indo‐Fijian responses to their political marginalisation in Fiji. After considering how national identities and sentiments of belonging are expressed in Indo‐Fijian discourse through the symbolic inter‐connection of the land and the Indo‐Fijian body, I argue that even if Indo‐Fijians are openly willing to recognize indigenous Fijian supremacy in national politics and the project of nation‐making, assertions of their right to live and labour on Fijian land constitute claims to ‘citizenship’ that are highly contestable in Fiji's current political climate.     

Making destiny manifest: United States territorial expansion and the dispossession of two Mexican property claims in New Mexico, 1824–1899

In the aftermath of the war of expansion against Mexico, the United States undertook a lengthy adjudication process of Spanish and Mexican property claims throughout the newly acquired territory. In New Mexico, nearly all Spanish and Mexican community land grants were either rejected by U.S. courts or were acquired by commercial interests during a period of intense land speculation. In addition to legal explanations of dispossession, most historical land grant research has emphasized the role of commercial speculators in the dispossession of land grants. The Santa Fe Ring, a loose affiliation of lawyers, politicians, federal and territorial officials and commercial investors, became a potent political and economic force in New Mexico during the 19th century. This article explores the adjudication and speculation histories of two Mexican property claims: the Petaca and Town of Vallecito de Lovato. The dearth of historical knowledge of the practices and tactics of land dispossession in specific New Mexico land grants continues to obscure the full story of U.S. territorial expansion and the history of the transformation in property relations. This article sheds new light on the extent and intensity of commercial speculation and the contribution of those efforts to undermine legitimate claims.     

Land tenure and rancho expansion in Alta California, 1784–1846

Popular writers and historians have viewed the rancho as a symbol of the halcyon days of hispanic California and often have overlooked the role of rancho land grants in changing the land tenure system of Alta California during Mexican occupance. This paper views the rancho as an integral part of a land tenure system under which considerable land was granted and examines the patterns of rancho land grants to 1846. The majority of rancho grants were less than six years old at the end of Mexican rule, but they were instrumental in introducing a new land tenure system which imposed a distinct order and design on the Alta California landscape. The land policies of Mexico have been strikingly persistent; rancho boundaries still constitute a prominent part of the modern landscape of California. As a settlement institution, the rancho was more than boundaries delimiting ownership of land, it was the primary means by which resources were distributed, organized and exploited. While the granting of land in Alta California was a distinctive practice, an investigation of how this land system came about and its impact on the land adds to our understanding of tenure practices in general and in particular provides insights into the way in which cultural and economic values are impressed on the land through land ordinances.     

The Purposes of Land Settlement in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1914: Drawing Paths through the Weeds

This article examines the programme of land surveying and registration that was undertaken by the British-led administration of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the period 1898–1914. The Legal Secretary, Edgar Bonham Carter, stated that programme was the most important project of his division in this period. Scholars have shown that the programme, known as land ‘settlement’, was used to build alliances with elites and to clarify title for European investors in the new irrigation scheme at Gezira. This article argues that, as such, the ambitions of land settlement were relatively limited. In many other colonies, and in Britain itself, politicians and administrators across the political spectrum saw the reform of private property in land as the key for addressing structural problems in agricultural labour. One might have thought that, the Sudan, land settlement might have provided a means of addressing the dependence on slave labour in agriculture. The article demonstrates that, except for a small number of administrators (including Bonham Carter), this was not the case. The general indifference to slavery itself carried through to an indifference to the transformative potential of land law. The article examines the proposals of this minority of administrators, and contrasts their views with the majority’s focus on land settlement as demonstration and opportunity to enhance state power.     

Settlement and land alienation in Western Australia: the shire of Denmark

The pattern of initial settlement in the Shire of Denmark in Western Australia is mapped using land registrations of the date of the first lease and first freehold grant. Settlement started near the main rivers before World War I and accelerated with Group Settlements of the 1920s. However, many Group settlers abandoned their land before 1940. Little development occurred until in-migration during the last 30 years. Local persistence of families was estimated from records of land tenure, rate books, electoral rolls, postal directories and interviews. The rate of persistence of families on each block varied considerably. Geographical expansion of holdings among successive generations of founding families reflects more general processes such as clone colonization in which, by mutual support and intra-family co-operation, families undertake short-distance migration to newly acquired—often abandoned—holdings. In this way, settlers have gradually created a continuously settled landscape in this once densely forested area of south-western Australia. Land alienation has occurred since 1900 in the study area of 217 surveyed lots, or ‘blocks’ which are, on average, 150 acres (70 hectares) in size. The geographical pattern of initial settlement comprised isolated sites, occupied in the wake of early lumbering, rather than a linear frontier.     

The Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani and Anglican Conflict in the Swan River Colony,Western Australia 1836–1838*

In 1835, the Western Australian Missionary Society appointed the Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani to establish a Moravian‐style mission in the Swan River Colony. The land grant essential for such a mission was not forthcoming from the government but Giustiniani established a small mission farm employing Aborigines at Guildford and started ministry among the settlers. This change of mission focus set the stage for conflict within the Anglican establishment of the colony, conflict which destroyed Dr Giustiniani's ministry. Giustiniani was well qualified and exerted himself to achieve the mission's objectives and many accusations made against him were essentially false; they reveal much about the prevailing culture and prejudices of the colony. He was defeated, however, because his ideas of church and mission differed from those of the colonial Church and society and because he did not conform to their expectations of the behaviour of a clergyman.     

Europeanization as Discontinuous Adjustment: A Düsseldorf Court's Impact on Land Development Practice

Within the Single European Market, rules govern the procurement of public works contracts and concessions. While recent judgments by the European Court of Justice indicate that these rules could have a considerable impact on future land development planning, there has not yet been widespread Europeanization of local land development practice. In Germany, however, the Oberlandesgericht in Düsseldorf (OLGD) has ruled that European public procurement rules must be followed in those cases in which the land sold forms part of an urban development plan. This has had a significant impact on German practice, with the number of official publications of tenders for land sales by German local authorities increasing from 3 in 2006 to 100 in 2008. This paper analyses the arguments that have been put forward by the OLGD and their impact on practice. We also reflect on how Europeanization as the application of European legislation in urban planning contexts not only constitutes a form of supranational intervention in local practices, but also depends on local agencies drawing on European-level powers in order to have an effect.     

Land Ownership Risk and Urban Development

Under certainty, unlimited duration of private ownership of land provides landowners with efficient development incentives. However, in cases of ownership risk arising from title mistakes, fraud, boundary encroachment, or adverse possession, the statute of limitations sets a limit on how long agents have to establish or defend an ownership claim. This paper demonstrates that such restrictions speed the pace of land development and systematically affect the development density according to site location in the urban land market. It also offers an explanation of why land owners prefer a time limit on the ability to defend their ownership. It shows that the value–maximizing statute varies across sites in the spatial market.     

Matching Rates and Mandates: Federalism and Children's Medicaid Enrollment

An important focus of the federalism literature has been on analyzing the responses of lower levels of government to the financial incentives of intergovernmental grant programs. But grant conditions and mandates are also important features of grant programs, and these have received considerably less attention in the literature. This article examines the implementation of federal Medicaid mandates during the 1980s and 1990s to explicitly compare the relative responses of the states to matching rate incentives and statutory mandates. Using individual-level information on program enrollment to measure policy implementation, the results indicate that the federal mandates led to large changes in children's Medicaid enrollment. In contrast, the effects of the federal matching rate were much more limited. Moreover, the statutory mandates not only raised the average level of enrollment but also reduced the degree of policy variation across the states. While the current pattern of federal Medicaid matching payments reduces policy variation to some extent, these effects are modest compared to the impacts of the mandates. Mandates are a more powerful instrument for national policymakers than the comparatively weak fiscal incentives provided by matching rates.     

‘The World is Our Campus’: Michigan State University and Cold‐War Home Economics in US‐occupied Okinawa, 1945–19721

Since the rape of a twelve‐year‐old girl by three American marines in Okinawa in 1995, a trope of masculinised domination and feminised subjugation has shaped many feminist discussions of US‐Okinawa relations. However, post‐war US domination in Okinawa has entailed far more complex dynamics involving gender and nation. This article examines domestic reformism that flourished in US‐occupied Okinawa where a group of home economists and home demonstration agents dispatched from Michigan State University (MSU) played an instrumental role in disseminating ‘scientific domesticity’. Following the land‐grant philosophy of educational outreach and self‐help, MSU home economists engaged in a series of domestic reform activities where they attempted to transplant notions and practices of ‘scientific domesticity’ and modernise and empower local women. Taking place amidst the intense militarisation of Okinawa under American rule, domestic reformism generated much excitement and enthusiasm among local women. By analysing how domesticity and militarism became intertwined in post‐war Okinawa, the article explores the complex links between domesticity, international educational aid, militarism and the cold war in the Asia‐Pacific region.     

“Rousers of the Rabble” in the New Mexico Land Grant War: La Alianza Federal De Mercedes and the Violence of the State

Abstract: This paper examines the patterns of state‐sponsored and state‐tolerated violence directed at a social movement organization in New Mexico known as La Alianza Federal de Mercedes during the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in the 1960s, Alianza mobilized a broad‐based movement of Chicano activists and Hispano land grant communities to advocate the return of lands they claimed had been stolen following the Mexican American War of 1846–1848. As a result, its leaders and many of its members became targets of law enforcement surveillance programs and counterintelligence operations. In this paper I examine the patterns of surveillance and physical violence directed at Alianza members. Confronted by Alianza's challenge to racial inequality and economic injustice, the state construed Alianza as a generalized, and racialized, threat to social order that required in response the use of coercive control and physical violence.     

Euratom and the IAEA: the problem of self-inspection

The IAEA was saddled with one burden at its inception, a burden that dogged it for many years afterwards. It was that Euratom, which had formally come into being in 1958, was authorised to implement its own safeguards, i.e. it was accorded the right of ‘self-inspection’. The first US director of the IAEA, Sterling Cole, fought a bitter battle to have this overturned, insisting that it undermined the core mission of the Agency and that it set an impossible precedent, and would trigger demands for a ‘Latinatom’ etc. This paper describes the circumstances that led the State Department to grant Euratom this privilege (a policy choice that is indicative of the deep investment that both J.F. Dulles and Eisenhower made in supranationality) and discusses the steps that Cole took to overturn it, to no avail.     

Land and languor: ethical imaginations of work and forest in northeast Madagascar

Since the early twentieth century, the practice of slash‐and‐burn agriculture by Betsimisaraka subsistence farmers of eastern Madagascar, and their reluctance to engage in wage labor processes, have been interpreted by French and other Malagasy people as symptoms Betsimisaraka laziness. Colonial officials’ idea of remedying Betsimisaraka laziness justified the imposition of wage work and forest conservation. The paper argues that colonial settlers, by conflating their vision of lazy labor and a victimized landscape, did not apprehend the co‐existence of an alternative work ethic which entailed a different time‐space orientation and social relationship to land. While scholars have analyzed the “laziness” of colonial subjects as a form of subaltern resistance to colonial domination, resistance alone does not account for the fact that under certain conditions Betsimisaraka people have also willingly partaken in wage labor. This article reveals how the labor and land ethics of Betsimisaraka farmers have actively contributed to the social and natural environments of capitalism.     

Ethnic Emancipation and Urban Land Claims: Disenfranchisement of the Ga of Accra,Ghana

Several Sub‐Saharan African countries have experienced an upsurge of land claims by various ethnic groups whose lands were acquired by both the colonial and the post‐colonial State through compulsory acquisition. Ethnicity has been used as the basis of emancipating some ethnic groups from perceived disenfranchisement and impoverishment caused by the State acquiring their land. In some cases such land claims result in violence that threatens the social fabric of these countries. An urban example of such a land claim has been made by the GaDangme Council (GDC) in Ghana. This paper assesses the land claim by GDC and argues that its claim of disenfranchisement is more a perception than reality. The paper also investigates why GDC perceives the Ga ethnic group as impoverished and disenfranchised. It concludes by providing structural and pragmatic ways for solving problems centred on Ga land acquisition by the State. Resolving the Ga case may provide lessons for other countries experiencing similar problems.     

Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial City

The racial and cultural politics of land and property are central to urban struggle, but have received relatively little attention in geography. This paper analyzes land struggles in Detroit where over 100,000 parcels of land are classified as “vacant”. Since 2010, planners and government officials have been developing controversial plans to ruralize Detroit's “vacant” neighborhoods as part of a program of fiscal austerity, reigniting old questions of racialized dispossession, sovereignty, and struggles for liberation. This paper analyzes these contentious politics by examining disputes over a white businessman's proposal to build the world's largest urban forest in the center of a Black majority city. I focus on how residents, urban farmers, and community activists resisted the project by making counterclaims to vacant land as an urban commons. They argued that the land is inhabited not empty and that it belonged to those who labored upon and suffered for it. Combining community‐based ethnography with insights from critical property theory, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory, I argue that land struggles in Detroit are more than distributional conflicts over resources. They are inextricable from debates over notions of race, property, and citizenship that undergird modern liberal democracies and ongoing struggles for decolonization.     

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda

In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land.