The Sale of Mayan Property through the Tribunal de Indios. Yucatán (1750-1821)

By analyzing documental traces of the last sixty years of colo­nial rule in the Yucatan península, this article describes the cir­cumstances in which private Mayan lands were sold through he Tribunal de Indios. This context reveals the power of Indian cabildos (councils) over the town lands and over the transfer of lands among Indians or between Indians and Spanish, Criollo or Mestizo grupos, which were not controlled by the Tribunal. The evidence of this process of Mayan land privatization suggests that towards the mid-eghteenth centruy, the right to private property had gone beyond the small grupo of Mayan high classes. This evidence also reveals that the idea of Indians embracing an essentially communitarian notion of land characterized the regime, not the cabildos or the Indians in general