Ceremonies of Land Possession, Differing Expressions between K’Iche’ Maya Municipalities and Spanish Colonial Officials in Highland Guatemala

Measurements for land possession differed between Indigenous justices in native communities and Spanish colonial officials. These “ceremonies” for Indigenous peoples in the Western highlands of Guatemala often included a walking of the border markers with the involved parties, a naming of the bordering neighbors, and several witnesses from the Indigenous town council of each municipality. The highland Maya, like the K’iche’, held certain geographical features as sacred. For Spaniards, they measured with a length of rope and had a different form of expressing possession. These differing styles would come into conflict when in the mid seventeenth century Spanish colonial officials demanded a recounting of possession from each property holder across the Spanish empire in the Americas called composición de tierras. This process was supposed to allow Spanish colonial officials to assess whether lands were baldias y realengas, unused and unoccupied, or whether lands were owned by either individuals or the Indigenous community. They were attempting to assess which lands could be sold to interested outside parties like Spaniards, mestizos, mulattos, or negros. Indigenous peoples began to produce more and more land documents to prove possession and Spaniards sometimes produced conflicting land documents. This paper argues the different ideas associated with land possession and the ceremonies and measurements used to assess property ownership.