ABSTRACT
The history of the Espiritu Santo fundo can be divided into two parts: that which refers to the fundo while it was in the hands of different private owners, and that which refers to the comuneros' struggle to recover the land of the fundo. This Chapter aims to reconstruct the struggle for the land of the ex-fundo Espiritu Santo, a part of the agricultural community Canela Baja that was seized during the 1800s. This struggle serves to illustrate that the peasants are not passive recipients of 'modes of production' but real actors; that the peasantry can through local resistance, adaptive strategies and voluntary organisation, induce changes that affect their existence. The chapter provides a perspective that focuses on the dynamics of rural society where the peasants actively defend their land. In the collective memory of the present comuneros of the agricultural community Canela Baja, the incidents involving Espiritu Santo only started with the conflict with Amenabar.
