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The Evolution of Common­Field Agriculture in 
the Andes: A Hypothesis
Ricardo Godoy

Comparative Studies in Society and History / Volume 33 / Issue 02 / April 1991, pp 395 
­ 414
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500017072, Published online: 03 June 2009

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Ricardo Godoy (1991). The Evolution of Common­Field Agriculture in the 
Andes: A Hypothesis. Comparative Studies in Society and History,33, pp 
395­414 doi:10.1017/S0010417500017072

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The Evolution of Common-Field
Agriculture in the Andes:
A Hypothesis
RICARDO GODOY
Harvard University

Similar forms of subsistence and social organization have emerged in different

parts of the world in response to similar ecological, technological, and demo-
graphic factors. For example, moldboard plow agriculture evolved in many
places as the result of high population density, availability of large domestica-
ble animals, presence of wet and heavy soils, and such staples as wheat,
barley, rye, and buckwheat, which required extensive land preparation and
"considerable surface area to produce the food calories necessary to feed a
family" (Pryor 1985:732). Wolf long ago (1957) noted that the colonial expe-
rience had helped to promote the development of closed, corporate commu-
nities in rural societies of Mesoamerica and Indonesia.
Throughout medieval Europe—from Russia to the Iberian peninsula and to
the British islands—and in parts of the Middle East, North America, and the
Central Andes, a type of fanning known as sectoral fallowing or common-
field agriculture has arisen (Orlove and Godoy 1986). According to Thirsk,
common-field agriculture contains four key attributes (1964). First, the land
holdings of any one household lie scattered among unenclosed common
fields. Second, after harvesting and during the years when the common field
lies fallow, villagers have the right to graze their animals on the herbage
temporarily available on the arable land. Third, common rights extend beyond
mere grazing on the stubble: in common-field agriculture, villagers also enjoy
the collective right to gather peat, timber, and firewood from the common
fields. Finally, an assembly of cultivators regulates and supervises the uses of
the land, especially the periodic reallotment of parcels.
We still lack a well-defined pattern of the world-wide distribution of com-
mon-field agriculture. Asia, Africa, and India seem not to have engaged in it.
African cultivators rely on slash-and-burn-agriculture and on bush fallowing;
Asian cultivators, similarly, rely on slash-and-burn cultivation, growing

Many of the ideas developed in this paper originated from discussions with Bruce Campbell. He
is not culpable for any errors or omissions in the essay and must be credited with any of its
strengths. I am also indebted to an anonymous referee for CSSH.

0010-4175/91/2720-4331 $5.00 © 1991 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

395
396 RICARDO GODOY

palms, and irrigated farming. Indian villagers did not hold their lands in
common (Neale 1957:224), though village councils monitored agricultural
decisions (Maine 1876:122-4). Common-field agriculture in the Middle East
conforms closely to Thirsk's definition, though grazing on the harvest's after-
math may be unimportant (Coon 1951:186-7; Goodell 1977; Poyck 1962).
Outside of the Old World one finds common-field agriculture in the Central
Andes and in New England due, in part, to cultural diffusion from Europe. As
we shall see, Andean common-field agriculture has pre-Hispanic roots and
survives to the present. In contrast, because the ecological and the economic
conditions of colonial New England undermined common-field agriculture, it
disappeared in North America by the middle of the seventeenth century. The
ample virgin woods in colonial New England allowed the development of a
free-range system of cattle grazing instead of the more structured system of
pasturing on the commons. Vast expanses of land and the use of fish as
fertilizer made communal crop rotation and fallowing unnecessary and per-
mitted farmers to plant wheat, rye, or maize year after year in the same fields
(Walcott 1936).
In this essay I trace the evolution of common-field agriculture in the Andes
using admittedly fragmentary and scattered information.1 Although agri-
cultural historians have traced the evolution of common-field agriculture in
Europe, they have paid scant attention to it elsewhere. In the Andes, eth-
nologists have described contemporary forms of common-field agriculture,
viewing it as a reflection of a bucolic past, a well-adapted way of coping with
the exigencies and risks of mountainous environments. In this essay I move
away from an ethnological focus and instead emphasize the evolution of
common-field agriculture in the Andes as a response to the labor exactions of
the colonial government. Owing to the paucity of archaeological and eth-
nohistorical information, much of what is said here must be viewed as conjec-
tural, as a set of hypotheses.
In the Andes, as in medieval England, common-field agriculture
crystallized during a period of demographic collapse and heavy exactions of
labor. When labor shortages occurred, the increased demand for rural workers
during these periods created incentives for the Spanish Crown in the Andes to
coordinate local agricultural activities, arrange common-field systems, estab-
lish nucleate villages, and, in so doing, release scarce manpower for the
Crown, Church, and Spaniards. Faced with forced draft labor liabilities, peas-
ants probably saw in common-field agriculture benefits that would allow them
to weather more easily such impositions. For example, the pooling of herds to
1
The Andean common-field systems discussed in this essay are found in central and southern
Peru and in central Bolivia. The average elevation ranges from 3,000 to 4,100 meters above sea
level. See Orlove and Godoy (1986:175) for a descriptive analyses of contemporary common-
field systems in the Andes.
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 397

graze commonly on the stubble of arable land reduced the number of herders
needed to supervise animals, thereby allowing communities to increase the
supply of laborers to the outside world. Similarly, the setting aside of certain
fields for common agricultural use during the year made it possible for each
family to reduce the number of guards needed to watch over its fields. Be-
cause all villagers were planting crops in the same place, a few guards could
protect all of the community's planted fields.
Although labor shortages coupled with growing demand for workers pro-
vided general inducements for the Spanish Crown, local governments, and
peasants to develop common-field agriculture, the system also developed in
response to historical specificities. Spaniards introduced their own medieval
system of agriculture into the Andes during the mid-sixteenth century. The
early Spanish conquerors immigrated mainly from the provinces of Ex-
tremadura and Andalucia in which the two- and three-course systems devel-
oped fully. As we shall see, common-field agriculture in the Andes and in
medieval Spain display strong parallels traceable to the sixteenth century.

THE PRE-HISPANIC BACKGROUND OF ANDEAN

COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE
The archaeological record for Andean common-field agriculture is poor. The
undeveloped status of highland archaeology, the poor preservation of crops at
high altitudes, and the frequent destruction of archaeological evidence by
peasant agriculture explain our meager knowledge of pre-Hispanic highland
farming (Hastorf and Earle 1985:570). Ethnohistorical sources of the sixteenth
and the seventeenth century add little to our understanding. Chroniclers of the
colonial era left detailed accounts of lowland irrigated agriculture designed to
produce maize, a crop of political and religious importance during Inkaic
times, but they paid scant attention to highland agriculture (Murra 1960).
Despite the paucity of information, one can get glimpses of pre-Hispanic
highland agriculture and herding from archaeological and ethnohistorical
accounts.
At the time of the Spanish conquest, highland farming and herding in the
Andes probably formed distinctive, geographically nonoverlapping activities.
In the Jauja-Huancayo basin of the Mantaro River, once fields were planted,
they "were left for long periods while the people grazed their animals in
distant pastures" (Browman 1973:40, 1974:190). The complex problems of
coordinating two distinct activities, such as pastoralism and agriculture, with
their different work schedules probably militated against a system of com-
bined agropastoral production (Vincze 1980). Farming based on the Andean
footplow (Gade and Rios 1976) revolved around native staples, such as po-
tatoes (Solanum tuberosum), oca (Oxalis tuberosa), ullucus or papa liza (Ul-
lucus tuberosus), and quinua {Chenopodium quinoa). Crops of pan-American
398 RICARDO GODOY

distribution, such as maize (Zea mays), squash (cucurbita) and beans

(Phaseolus), were more prevalent on the coast and in the valleys (Lanning
1967:149).
People maintained soil fertility in the highland by allowing fields to lie
fallow instead of allowing their animals to graze on the stubble. Garcilaso de
la Vega wrote in the sixteenth century that highland Indians "only planted one
year or two when they were given other [plots] and then still others so that the
first could rest" (Garcilaso 1966:241-2, quoted in Murra 1980:7,20). We still
do not know whether the Inkas practiced crop rotation to maintain soil fertility
(Gade 1975:43-44). Rowe (1946:266) believed that yearly reallotments of
land may have been a means of enforcing crop rotation. Long periods of
leaving fields fallow and rotating crops among them lowers the incidence
of nematodes and decreases erosion (Mayer 1979), particularly if farmers
leave the natural vegetation on the fields (Felipe-Morales et al, quoted in
Guillet 1987:83). In some areas farmers left their fields fallow for thirty years
(Vazquez de Espinosa 1942:490). Except in the Collao, people did not apply
llama dung to rebuild soil fertility but used it instead as fuel (Murra 1980:49;
Garcilaso 1966:246; Vazquez de Espinosa 1942:490).2 Cultivators used fish
as a fertilizer around lacustrine environments, such as Lake Titicaca (Cardich
1987:37). The ethnohistorical evidence thus does not seem to support the
notion that "without the application of dung, fallow fields are not sufficiently
fertile to grow potatoes" (Winterhalder et al. 1974:100).
Cardich reports that the ancient Indians farming the lands next to highland
pastures in Junin, the Titicaca Basin, and in Huanuco (1975, 1980, 1987:27)
worked them intensively, often with irrigation, but did not open them up for
communal herding. To deal with the constant threat of low temperatures,
"plots were kept small . . . and were surrounded by fences or walls" (Car-
dich 1987:27). The small size of plots and the surrounding walls "created
microclimates much more favorable for the plants than open areas" but pre-
cluded grazing on the waste of the harvest (Cardich 1987:27).
In the highlands, llama and alpaca herds grazed primarily "in uncultivated
open grassland in zones marginal to agricultural activity" (Shimada and
Shimada 1985:20) rather than at lower elevations because herds kept in the
extreme highlands (puna) "are healthier, fatter, more finely fleeced, and
reproduce more rapidly" than herds kept at lower elevations (McCorkle
1987:67). Herds in the puna would have also benefited from supervision by
full-time specialists, whereas herds kept in farmlands at lower elevations
would have created problems in supervision for peasants (McCorkle 1987:69).
The absence of a labor shortage during Inkaic times simultaneously allowed
households to herd llamas and alpacas in the puna and to practice agriculture
2
Most llama dung in parts of the Bolivian highlands is still used for fuel rather than for
fertilizer (Carter 1964:24). Nevertheless, some varieties of potatoes will not grow unless farmers
fertilize them (Browman n.d.:4).
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 399

at lower elevations. Furthermore, this arrangement lowered the incidence of

theft, crop destruction from stray animals, and epidemics (McCorkle 1982,
1982a). Periodic movement of herds between highland pastures and lowland
agricultural fields was rare because "animals being trailed to remote
rangelands are more likely to consume toxic or lethal quantities of poisonous
plants" (McCorkle 1987:68). Evidently highland herds did not graze on the
stubble. None of the chroniclers seems to mention this, and such grazing was
unlikely to be widespread in highland farms because potato plants commonly
cultivated there do not leave much crop residue. There is also virtually no
archaeological record of osteo melitis, a gum-and-tooth infection caused by
stubble grazing (Jane Wheeler, personal communication). Llama and alpaca
herds seemed to have grazed almost exclusively on highland pastures, not
fallow agricultural fields, except perhaps when they traveled to or from the
lowlands transporting goods. As is true today, llamas on their way up and
down the mountains may have temporarily pastured on village farmlands and
weeds (Shimada and Shimada 1985:4). Only on the coast do we find archae-
ological evidence of animals grazing on the stubble of maize fields (Shimada
and Shimada 1985). In the north coast of Peru, people maintained llamas by
"grazing (them) in algarrobo forest, lush side valleys, canal and river bank
vegetation, and harvested fields and (by) feeding (them) in corrals on forage
brought in to them" (Shimada and Shimada 1985:22).
To attain food self-sufficiency, pre-Hispanic Indians, as early as Chavin
perhaps (Murra 1985:4-5), practiced agriculture and herding in different ecol-
ogies at different altitudes; and people from different zones specialized in
different activities and goods for exchange to reach their ideal of autarky.
Ethnic groups such as the Lupaqas, for example, included herders as well as
potato farmers, maize growers, coca cultivators, potters, and metallurgists
(Murra 1975, 1985a: 17-18). Households in one area specialized in the pro-
duction of selected goods, obtaining goods from other regions through ex-
change or through redistribution. The specialized division of labor within an
ethnic group and the exchange and redistribution occurring within the group
leads me to conclude, albeit tentatively, that highland farming and pastoralism
took place separately, with few links at the level of production.3
Lower-altitude farms were not subject to the prolonged fallow period of
highland farms because these fields were fertilized with bird droppings, llama
dung, fish, and night soil and were often irrigated (Garcilaso 1966:246-7;
Murra 1980:20; Julien 1985; Vazquez de Espinosa 1942:472). Although
lowland fields were more intensively farmed than highland fields, they were
not thrown open to communal grazing. Again, although these herds grazed in
the puna and transported produce back and forth between the two different

3
Herds would have still been important in agriculture, principally in cartage but not in
fertilizing fields.
400 RICARDO GODOY

zones, they were not explicitly brought by the peasants to graze or to fertilize
maize fields unless the highland harvest failed (Julien 1985:193).
With the emergence of the Inka empire came the intensification of agri-
culture, but it did not seem to bring highland farming and herding into closer
proximity. Like their predecessors, the Inkas faced a shortage of prime farm-
land (Means 1925) but continued to expand irrigation, ridge fields, and terrac-
ing into the higher ecological zones (Smith, Denevan, and Hamilton 1968;
Donkin 1979), and they offset the loss of soil fertility from more intensive
farming at lower elevations through the use of bird droppings and night soil in
the fields. Although the expansion of farmland reduced pastureland, it did not
seem to have led to communal grazing on stubble after harvest or to the
grazing of flocks on fallow fields. The shortage of pasture lands instead
compelled the Inkas to introduce herds of llama and alpacas into new
rangelands rather than to have these herds graze on farmlands (Murra
1980:93-94).
A diagnostic feature of common-field systems in Europe and the Andes has
been land reapportionment within the commons, a practice dating back to
Inka days, if not earlier. The state's interest in local agriculture was most
visible in the yearly reallotment of lands. Prior to the arrival of the Inkas,
periodic land reapportionment may have been a way of insuring that all
villagers obtained access to lands of different qualities (Murra 1980:29-30,
34). During the reign of the Inkas, true reapportionment of land gave way to
symbolic reapportionment. Lots left vacant by death or by marriage may have
been reallotted annually (Waman Puma 1980:223) among needy households,
but the so-called yearly redistributions were simply public confirmations by
the Inka or by local lords to the customary rights to parcels of households
(Murra 1980a:xv). The declining significance of periodic land reapportion-
ment may be traced to population pressure, shortage of land, and the emer-
gence of individual usufruct rights. The Inkas continued periodic land reap-
portionment to increase the peasants' household ability and willingness to
meet tribute obligations to the kings of Cusco. Finally, the Inkas divided the
communities' lands into three progressively larger sections destined, respec-
tively, for the Sun, the Inka, and the community (Mitchell 1980).4
Although agriculture and pastoralism probably did not overlap much in
space at the time of the conquest, highland Andean farming already contained
elements that would blend nicely with the common-field system of agriculture
imported by the Spanish conquerors: division of village lands into several
4
Periodic land redistribution may function to equalize people's rights of access to lands of
different qualities. The heavier burden of taxation imposed upon entire communities by central
governments or local lords, as happened in Russia from the eighteenth century onward, often
kindles "the peasant's preoccupations with equality" (Georgescu-Roegen 1969:77; Blum
1961:519-21; Seebohm 1905), encouraging villagers to continue the practice of periodic re-
distribution of land under the state's auspices. Periodic reallotments often continue well beyond
the end of servility (Georgescu-Roegen 1969:77).
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 4OI

great fields, reallotment of land, and state interest in local decisions. Much
remains to be learned about each of these three areas. Were the three great
fields subject to periodic fallow and rotation? Was land reapportionment effec-
tive or merely a symbolic gesture reaffirming households' right to manage
customary holdings? Did the Inka, in fact, play a decisive role or merely a
formal role in regulating fallow, leaving each community to decide its own
fallow cycle?

THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF ANDEAN

COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE
When the Spaniards arrived in the Central Andean highlands in the sixteenth
century, they entered an area that was not an agrarian tabula rasa but one with
a farming system that included nucleated villages (Thompson 1968:116-7;
Murra 1980:29), tripartite division of lands, simple technology, and periodic
reallotment of parcels. This native farming resembled that in medieval Spain,
with its nucleated villages, reallotment of parcels, and communal grazing
grounds.
The conquerors brought farming traditions from many parts of Spain to the
Andes. The first wave of Spaniards arriving in the Central Andes came mainly
from the southwestern provinces of Extremadura and Andalucia, and they
were soon joined by Spaniards from other poor regions of the peninsula,
principally from Castille, Le6n, Galicia, and Asturias (Foster 1960:30). This
latter group also included those who had first been attracted to Extremadura's
economic prosperity from less prosperous parts of Spain (Vassberg 1978:50).
What kind of a common-field farming system was found in Spain at the
time of the conquest? The answer is complex. Spain, like England, had many
types of such systems (Vassberg 1974:398; Foster 1960:58-59). The follow-
ing elements seem to have characterized Spanish common-field agriculture on
the eve of the conquest.5 First, like most European common-field systems,
village agricultural lands in Spain were divided into two, three, or four types
of common fields, known as either hojas, tablas, turnos, or as suertes (Klein
1920:21; Weisser 1972:38; Behar 1986:194-5). The village council only
opened the commons for use by family heads. Farmers kept herds of animals
for draft power, meat, dairy products, wool, and leather. Village herds—
usually sheep, hogs, and cattle—grazed on the stubble (known in both medi-
eval Spain and in the Andes today as rastrojo), a widespread practice in
Europe and in Spain, where it was known as derrota de mieses (San Miguel
1956; Altamira y Crevea 1890:153; Blum 1971; Costa y Martinez 1944:372;

5
In this essay I am only concerned with Spanish common-field agriculture. There were other
forms of land husbandry prevalent in Spain at the time of the conquest, including irrigated
farmland, privately managed fruit orchards, hog raising, enclosed pastures to raise horse (de-
hesas) or oxen (dehesas boyal), kitchen gardens (huertos), and communal woodlands open for pig
raising.
402 RICARDO GODOY

Bloch 1966:198-205). Villagers proscribed animals, such as pigs and goats,

from entering fallow fields because such animals could damage crops (San
Miguel 1956:96). As Vassberg states:
The custom of the derrota required every possessor of a field after the harvest and
every possessor of a meadow after it had been cut to open his lands to the animals of
the general public. The entire territory of a municipality then became a continuous
pasture open to all the livestock of the town, and perhaps those of neighboring towns
as well, until planting time, when individual rights to the soil were reestablished
(1974:386).
In addition to village herds, the transhumant pastoralists' flocks of merino
sheep had the right to graze on fallow fields in the south of Spain during the
winter each year until they could return to their northern pastures in the
spring. Such herds formed part of the Mesta, or sheepowner's association.
Founded in the mid-thirteenth century, the Mesta quickly grew in importance.
It became the backbone of Spain's thriving wool industry and reached enor-
mous power under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella by the end of the
fifteenth century. Even at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the
Mesta's power began to fade, it persuaded the Spanish Crown to ensure that
fallow fields would remain open to transhumant herders (Klein 1920:320).
Although the derrota may be an example of the "ancient servitude of rural
property for the benefit of the stock industry" (Cardenas 1873:11,276, quoted
in Vassberg 1974:387), the practice attracted peasants. The derrota allowed
farmers with scattered holdings to release their animals to feed on the weeds
and stubble left after the harvest rather than to graze animals exclusively on
the farmer's own land. The practice of common herding lessened the need for
guards or to keep animals in the stable during the winter months (Vassberg
1974:387).6
The second shared element between the common-field system in the Andes
and that in Spain consisted of sowing wheat during the first year (farmers
considered barley, oats, and rye less important alternative crops) and legumes,
such as chick peas and broad beans, during the second year. Farmers allowed
fields to regenerate nutrients during the third year before cultivating them
again (Weisser 1972:38). Peasants in Extremadura left fields in fallow for four
or five years (Foster 1960:59) or perhaps as much as eight to ten years
(Vassberg 1978:51). Although villagers in some areas had permanent rights to
use plots within the common fields, most received a specific plot for tempo-
rary use through the widespread system of drawing lots to make random
assignments of those plots allocated to each village head for use within the
common field (Altamira y Crevea 1890:270).7
6
For an even-handed treatment of the conflict between Mesta herders and representatives of
local herding organizations and farmers, see Klein (1920: ch. 6).
7
Costa at the end of the nineteenth century found about fifty villages in Zamora that practice
random plot allocation within the common fields (Costa, quoted in Foster 1960:67). "In that
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 4O3

Third, a municipal or village council composed of family heads regulated

the uses to which land could be put; enforced grazing rights; punished mis-
creant cultivators or herders; oversaw compensations for crop damage; levied
penalties for rustling, changing brands, or killing another person's stock; and
carried out periodic reallotments of land within the common field opened for
agricultural use (San Miguel 1956:93-94, 100; Vassberg 1974:394-6; Bishko
1952:503; Behar 1986:197).
Common-field agriculture disappeared over much of Spain beginning with
the reign of Philip II (1556-98) in the later Hapsburg period, when the
government, anxious to raise revenues, compelled peasants to either make
large cash payments to the Crown or lose their lands. Fiscal policies led to the
disappearance of public and semiprivate lands to which the Crown had claims
(Vassberg 1975). Entailment also resulted from the growing demand for agri-
cultural products (mainly wine and olives rather than wool) for export to the
Americas, which had been proscribed from producing these goods (Whitaker
1929:10). Increased demand for wine and olives encouraged Spanish peasants
to privatize their scattered holdings to intensify agricultural production for
exports. The growth of population also undermined common-field agriculture
in Spain. The sixteenth century was a period of intense demographic growth
in Spain (Weisser 1972:59). Population growth forced farmers to expand their
use of arable fields at the expense of transhumant pastoralists (Vassberg
1980:479). The breakup of the commons thus began in the sixteenth century
but continued well into the nineteenth century, when it culminated with the
disentailment acts (Behar 1986:192-3). Still, common-field agriculture lin-
gers on today in scattered communities across Spain (Fernandez 1981; Behar
1986; Foster 1960; Freeman 1970:35-36; Arguedas 1968; Weisser 1972:38).
What the Spaniards brought to the Andes was the belief and the experience
that herds of animals (mainly cattle and sheep) could and should systemat-
ically graze on the stubble after harvest of crops on arable land and in fallow
fields. The Spanish Crown had sanctioned this belief for centuries as as-
sistance to Mesta herders who provided much of the rural wealth and tax
revenues for Spain as the backbone of Spain's wool industry. The Spanish
Crown sided with transhumant pastoralists to allow them to graze their flocks
of sheep on the fallow fields and balks of sedentary agriculturalists. The
monarchs and local governments tried to protect community property and
common grazing rights, particularly in southwestern Spain, in which public

region the distribution was for two or three years, according to whether the complete cycle of
rotation was two or three years. Each citizen, including the priest, carpenter, schoolteacher, and
veterinarian, received two or three plots within the section under cultivation that year, so that
good, average, and poor land would be equally distributed. . . . The names of each group of plots
forming a unit were written on slips of paper, along with the names of the men who had last
worked them. These slips were mixed in ajar, and a box of ten or twelve or the men in turn, drew
out their lots for that year" (Foster 1960:67). Random reallotments of land in the Iberian penin-
sula may date back to the tenth century (Vassberg 1974:396).
404 RICARDO GODOY

forests had served as favorite grazing grounds for herds of hogs. Hog raising
represented the most important and widespread economic activity for the
people there and explained the prosperity of southwestern Spain (Vassberg
1978:51). Forests provided pasture, firewood, lumber, hunting, fishing, and,
above all, acorns for hogs. The monarch and local governments carefully
protected woodlands and severely punished offenders (Vassberg 1978:52;
1980:481).
When Spain conquered the Andes, "it was considered natural that the
institution of public ownership, like others of the Castilian motherland, should
be transplanted to the New World" (Vassberg 1974:400). These same rights
were, to various degrees, transplanted to America. The Spanish conquerors,
for example, tried to legislate the old Castilian Mesta in the New World, but
the Crown's attempts in Santo Domingo and Mexico to introduce sheep mi-
grations were "frustrated by the absence of favorable geographic conditions
and by the greater attraction of other industries, notably mining" (Klein
1920:9). Nevertheless, the introduction and rapid spread of cattle and sheep in
the sixteenth century (Robertson 1926:10-13; Crosby 1973:94) did increase
the value of pasture in the Americas (Donkin 1979:110), forcing the Spanish
Crown to pass laws ordering communal stubble grazing (Chevalier 1953:6;
Simpson 1952:4-5). In Mexico, for example, the Crown and local authorities
explicitly placed fallow and recently harvested fields at the disposal of cattle
ranchers; but whereas in Medieval Spain the right to graze on stubble had been
a means of insuring that the poorest of society would gain access to extra
pasture, in the Americas that practice had exactly the opposite effect: It
allowed already influential herders and cattlemen to invade the lands of peas-
ants. In fact, it was the Spanish settlers in the New World, drawn mostly from
the poorer strata of Spanish society, who lobbied the most intensively in the
New World for legalization of stubble grazing rights. These same people had
lost these rights in Spain to wealthier landowners and now wished to insure
this minimum subsistence for themselves in their new homes (Chevalier
1970:86). Writing about colonial Mexico, Chevalier observed that

In accordance with the Castilian custom, stubble fields were by royal decree open to
common grazing, "once the harvest is gathered in." From 1565 on, all deeds issued by
the viceroys bore this clause. It seems to have been observed in the sixteenth century,
inasmuch as landowners were obliged to remove their fences after harvest time
(1970:57).
With the arrival of the Spaniards, highland agriculture and herding in the
Andes were drawn closer together. Former ethnic groups that had controlled a
variety of different ecological niches found themselves suddenly "amputated"
(Murra 1985:18) from access to different ecologies and their leaders. This
amputation encouraged the development of common-field agriculture in two
ways. First, it made the Indian community take on a greater responsibility in
decision making. Post-Hispanic Andean communities assumed some of the
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 4O5

tasks that had previously been in the hands of broader collectivities, such as
the state or the ethnic group. These tasks included the punishment of offend-
ing herders, the maintenance of irrigation ditches, and the like (McBride
1921:7-8). Second, the amputation forced households to become more self-
reliant by producing, or attempting to produce, goods previously produced by
specialists elsewhere. With the establishment of landed estates, communities
were forced to practice agriculture and pastoralism in more restricted areas
because they had lost control of the valley fields and, in the highlands, of the
range lands (Dew 1969:40). The system of agropastoral production became
geographically compressed (Brush 1977). Cut off from their warm valleys and
highland pasture grounds, and perhaps from some of their best tuber fields as
well, Andean peasants retreated to their nucleated community to cultivate a
variety of products and raise indigenous and European animals which had
previously thrived elsewhere in the kingdom. European ovines and cattle
fared poorly in the highlands and had to be raised at lower altitudes in
conjunction with farming.

THE COLONIAL BACKGROUND OF ANDEAN

COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE
The demographic decline in the Central Andes following the arrival of the
Spaniards induced the Crown to reorganize village life to maximize the supply
of laborers to the silver mines of Potosi and Huancavelica. Cognizant of the
lessons learned during the Caribbean conquest, when Indian populations col-
lapsed due to injudicious management, the Crown in the Andes sought to
guard the reservoir of cheap laborers for the mines. To achieve this aim,
Charles V banned the use of forced Indian laborers in mining as early as 1542
(Cole 1985:3). The Crown actively opposed private European intromission
(Assadourian et al. 1980:74-5), ruled through native lords, and granted Indi-
an communities the right to control a minimum amount of land (Grieshaber
1979:110).
To stabilize the supply of miners, to lower labor costs, to increase tax
revenues for the Hapsburg administration (Barnadas 1973:253-54), and to
jump-start silver mining, Viceroy Toledo (1568-81) established the forced
draft labor system (mit'a). Toledo agreed to supply mine owners with mit'ayus
and mercury in exchange for new private investments in refining. Toledo
modeled the mit'a after cruder forms of forced-draft labor in Peru (Bakewell
1984:59; Cole 1985:9). The initial blueprint envisioned tributaries laboring in
the mines every seven years. Although they would work every third week,
these mit'ayus could find other employment when not on duty. The early
charters of the mit'a contained provisions to attract workers (Bakewell
1977:65). These provisions included payment of a weekly salary, compensa-
tion for the round trip to Potosi (which could take a month each way),
segregated living quarters, and overseers to prevent the mistreatment of
4O6 RICARDO GODOY

mit'ayus by Spaniards (Cole 1985:14). Under the Spanish dominion, as under

the Inka dominion, the labor tribute fell on corporate communities, not indi-
viduals (Crespo 1970:473-4; Parry 1966:188-9; Malaga Medina 1972:611-
2). The Crown appointed local rulers, kurakas, to supply mit'ayus or, in their
absence, to pay mine owners a silver equivalent for each missing tributary
(Platt 1978).
Native brokers initially delivered levies successfully because they cushioned
communities from harsh exactions. As in pre-Hispanic times, they collected
surpluses in good years and redistributed them in lean years. They attempted to
maintain harmony within the community by insuring "that the benefits of living
within their pueblos outweighed the obligations" (Cole 1985:15). This mode of
incorporation sheltered Indian households from direct dealings with the state
and safeguarded them in years of dearth (Godoy 1986).
Despite the Spanish Crown's meritorious intentions and its benign custodial
checks, the mit'a fell into disarray sparked by the demographic collapse of the
Central Andes. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus chipped away at the
indigenous population from early contact days until the eighteenth century;
the use of tributaries bottomed out in the seventeenth century or perhaps
earlier (Dobyns 1963:493-515; Smith 1970:453-64; Shea 1976:157-80). As
the mit'ayu population plummeted and the Crown delayed conducting census
to lower quotas for the mines, the remaining tributaries were called on to work
in the mines more often than in the past. The dwindling tributary population
had to absorb the increasing incidence of mit'a obligations, as well as the
growing requirements to help corregidores and priests in transport, agri-
culture, and other activities.
As the labor services increased, Indians fled to haciendas, coca farms in
Cochabamba and the Yungas, cattle ranches in Tucuman, and textile mills in
cities (Sanchez Albornoz 1982). These occupations offered mit'ayus higher
income than mining (Cole 1985:123) and security from the mit'a, Spanish
officials, and local lords (Sanchez Albornoz 1977:92-95; Cobb 1977). Other
Indians escaped to join rural communities as unregistered landless laborers or
as peons, if they stuck it out. Known as forasteros or kantu runas, these
village Indians also remained exempt from mit'a duties.
As Tandeter (1981) observes, a migration on the scale of the mit'a must
have had major repercussions for the accumulation and reproduction of the
communities being exploited, the more so as these heavy labor demands
coincided with a prolonged and massive reduction in population. The shortage
of taxpayers led kurakas to gradually substitute cash for labor in paying
tributes (Cole 1985) and induced Indians to adopt cash cropping, often wheat
and barley, using a mixture of indigenous and Spanish cultivation practices.
In the face of population decline and increasing labor demands, the Crown
reorganized the structure of indigenous communities to achieve more efficien-
cy in the deployment of laborers. In the 1570s Toledo resettled the Indians in
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 407

nucleated villages to facilitate control, religious instruction, and tax collection

(Cole 1985:2; Malaga Medina 1974). To control crop theft and rustling and to
coordinate irrigation activities (Gade 1970:3-4; Malaga Medina 1974:17),
Toledo ordered the communities to have systematic elections of field guards
each year from among their members, a well-established Iberian medieval
farming practice with Inkaic antecedents (Murra 1980:91; Behar 1986:248-
50). Other administrators were more explicit about recommending the plant-
ing of community fields, especially in Moquegua and in Sama (Gutierrez
Flores 1970:45; quoted in Julien 1985:199-200). Spanish officials may have
regulated the length of time fields were fallow (Carter 1964:26) and ordered
communities to use the Mediterranean scratch plow with oxen in those places
where the land allowed (Gade 1975:39).
The Crown continued the practice of yearly reallotments of land and under-
took periodic censuses for "the sole object" of ensuring that each tribute
payer still had a farm of "minimum size" to live on. A formula allowing
about "nine acres for the support of a family of five persons" was used (Rowe
1957:182). The name often given to the common fields in medieval and
contemporary Spain and in the Andes—suerte, or luck—derives in part from
the random-like nature in which parcels within the common fields may have
been originally granted in Europe and are still granted in some Central Andean
communities (Arguedas 1968:14; Fbnseca Martel and Mayer 1986:6). Forty-
four percent of indigenous communities in highland Peru still redistribute
land, though probably not in a random manner. Common fields in the two
areas are often called turno (Godoy 1986a: Table 1), a word probably derived
from the medieval farming practice in Spain, still present today, in which
households take turns managing the herds of the entire village in the great
common field (Behar 1986:203; Freeman 1970). In the Central Andes, turno
applies not only to periodic herding obligations (McCorkle 1987:65) but also
to the rotation of political posts, religious celebrations, and the like.
Probably both the influence of the Spaniards and the perception of advan-
tages by community members explain the crystallization of common-field
agriculture during the colonial period. The Spaniards both introduced and
created demand for wheat, a crop that could be comfortably cultivated in the
higher, cooler ranges of the Andes. Those Indians with experience in grazing
llamas and alpacas could throw open their wheat and tuber fields so that herds
could feed on the stubble and, in the process, fertilize fields. Prior to the
arrival of the Spaniards, stubble grazing probably had not been an important
aspect of farming because South American camelids were well adapted to the
tough, coarse, bunch grasses of the highlands or to the moister plants of the
highland bogs (Wheeler 1988). With the introduction of European animals,
stubble grazing, and perhaps foraging as well, became important (Guillet
1987:91; Gade 1975:85). The crops themselves—wheat, barley, rye, tubers—
now generally grown in Andean common fields could tolerate casual grazing
408 RICARDO GODOY

in a way that other more intensive agricultural activities could not have sup-
ported. Wheat, barley, and rye were also lucrative crops to grow given the
Spaniards demand for bread. The new animals introduced by the Spaniards—
ovines, goats, pigs, and cattle—fared poorly in the highlands and probably
had to rely heavily on stubble grazing, fallow fields, and lomas (slopes) at
lower elevations (Rostworowski de Diez Canseco 1981:14, 45, 47, 54). Be-
cause llama and alpacas had virtually disappeared by the end of the sixteenth
century (Flores Ochoa 1977; Wheeler 1988), European animals were probably
the major grazers of agricultural fields.
The Spaniards encouraged common-field agriculture to achieve both more
efficiency in the allocation of scarce labor and to free a greater share of a
rapidly disappearing work force for labor services. Village nucleation sim-
plified administrative and ecclesiastical tasks and the communal management
of herding and agriculture, and the periodic reallotments of land in the com-
mon field freed and strengthened a larger share of the work force for outside
obligations. Common-field agriculture may have also helped peasants facing
heavy tribute liabilities and depopulation (Gade and Escobar 1982:438). For
example, the use of common fields permitted a savings in outlays for fencing;
the reduced number of guards needed to watch over the fields and stock of all
villagers allowed economies of scale in such supervision; and the practice of
pasturing in common saved "individual families the burden of constant super-
vision of pasturage or of hiring it out to be done" (Fernandez 1981:41). As
Fernandez observes for contemporary Asturias,
as the derrota has disappeared from most rural zones in Asturias, the care of the cattle,
the day in and day out responsibility of shifting them around between the widely
scattered meadows, has put a real burden on families—la esclavitud de las vacas (the
enslavement of cattle) as it is called (1981:41).
In addition, because common-field agriculture allowed the herds to be located
closer to the village rather than on the highlands, the herders could reduce the
amount of time and effort it took them to travel between their homes and the
herds. Village councils could also save information and transaction costs by
resolving questions over when and where to plant, where to pasture, and how
to till. This integration of pastoralism and farming allowed the herders to
assist households in carrying out agricultural tasks. McCorkle (1987:67) notes
that in the contemporary community of Usi in Cusco, Peru, peasants prefer
common-field agriculture over specialized year-round puna herding because
the former makes herders available for agricultural tasks. As McCorkle notes,
the maintenance of permanent herders in the puna syphons off valuable family
labor, creating incentives for peasants to keep their animals close to their
agricultural fields:
The real constraint here is . . . labor. Villagers verbalize one part of this problem by
reference to the many dangers of the remote punas; most notably, they cite attacks by
 COMMON-FIELD AGRICULTURE IN THE ANDES 409

puma and murderous rustlers. . . . These, they say, are what necessitate that unique
feature of Usino estancia (permanent highland pasturing) operation: an adult's nightly
hike up to the ranch day in and day out across the year. This constitutes a significant
drain on family labor resources and aggregate caloric reserves. Or, as one man prag-
matically phrases it, "Most people just don't want to do all that walking" (1987:70).
And finally, there were advantages in periodically reallotting land among the
have-nots so all could bear an equal share of the tribute burden.
It is not a mere coincidence that common-field agriculture attained its most
complex form and survived the longest in the same area in the Andes that
faced the heaviest labor-tribute liabilities during the colonial era: the highlands
of Pasco, Junin, Lima, and Huancavelica in Peru down through the highland
belt to the Titicaca basin, and thence to the highlands of La Paz, Oruro, and
Potosi (Orlove and Godoy 1986:187). And to the extent that labor continues to
be a binding constraint to greater production in the Central Andes (Guillet
1980; Orlove 1977; Martinez Alier 1973), the incentives that created com-
mon-field agriculture in the sixteenth century may also account for its
survival.

CONCLUSION
One observes three denominators in the development of common-field agri-
culture in the Andes. First, as in England (Campbell and Godoy 1986),
common-field agriculture in the Andes is associated with a fanning system in
which fallowing occupies a central place, either as a source of herbage or as a
means of maintaining fertility and preventing soil deterioration or both. Fall-
owing enables easily impoverished soils to reestablish their fertility in the face
of intensification. In those parts of the Andes (such as the valleys) in which
herbage is available from alternative sources (either natural or produced) and
in which soils are less vulnerable and soil fertility can be maintained in other
ways, common-field agriculture has not developed.
Second, Andean common-field agriculture is associated with relatively
moderate population densities. Common fields are either absent or imper-
fectly developed in both the most populous and the most sparsely settled
areas. In the Andes common rules and regulations reached their fullest devel-
opment only during the postcontact phase of population decline, for the great-
est dividends accrued then from the pooling of scarce labor and organization
of basic farming tasks in common. In England, too, common-field agriculture
crystallized during a period of population decline (Campbell and Godoy
1986).
Finally, Andean common-field systems are associated with state societies;
they are unknown in tribal societies. The initiative for the systematisation of
cropping and grazing practices and institution of corporate village commu-
nities originated with the Spanish Crown rather than with the peasants. The
motive for intervening in this way was not altruistic: It stemmed from a desire
410 RICARDO GODOY

to appropriate labor and produce from the countryside. Common-field sys-

tems have attained their clearest expressions in the Andes in the area that
faced the heaviest tribute liabilities to the mining centers during the colonial
era. Although common-field agriculture may have originated from imposi-
tions from above, they have an enduring quality. Once created, Andean com-
mon-field systems and the corporate communities that govern them have
tended to be self-perpetuating.

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