ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the hacienda El Totoral and then with the agricultural community Canela Baja. The implication of the historical processes of these two forms of properties will turn out to have a decisive influence upon their future socio-economic development. The chapter explains the scarce, but intricate and contradictory information that exists about the origins of these properties, from which the structure of land tenure in the Canela commune was developed. The historical development process of these mercedes came to structure the land properties of the commune, constituting the large private property of the haciendas and the semi-communal land property of the agricultural communities. In contrast, the property of Diego Cortes, evolved from a single estancia at the end of the 1600s, and began to fragment into several properties, both through hereditary subdivision and sales. Slowly they begin to lose their original character of a private property, to form the semi-communal land ownership of the agricultural communities.
