Andean and Spanish Concepts of Land, Legality, and Justice: An Interpetation of Manuscripts from 1598-1796 found in Kaata...

FAIN: FT-13681-78

Joseph W. Bastien
University of Texas, Arlington (Arlington, TX 76019-9800)

To complete the interpretation of ethnohistorical documents entrusted to P.I. in Kaata, Bolivia. Manuscripts record a land battle from 1598-1796. P.I. began this work while he was an NEH Scholar-in-Residence at Tulane, 1976-77. 192 pages of the documents have been translated into English, present study will interpret the texts within Andean socio-cultural contexts. Spaniards regarded land as private property; Andeans maintained a symbolic relationship with the land. Land has symbolic meanings to North American Indians, too, and this study will lend to an interpretation of their contemporaneous struggle for it as a religious as well as a legal and economic endeavor.