Other land property forms than the private are often conceived as residues of the past, residues that paradoxically seem never to pass away. An example is the form of semi-communal land ownership of the agricultural communities of Chile’s Region IV. Using sociological and historical research methods, this study explores the origin and the emergence of this agrarian form during the last four centuries, through the community Canela Baja and the neighbouring latifundium El Totoral, as a contrasting case.

Having on one hand, the form of communal land as the common denominator, we have on the other the social aspects resulting from particular histories of the form. Therefore, a distinction between imposed and spontaneous forms is introduced. Confronting the case study with research results from other socio-political and material conditions, the study suggest that while some of the present communal ownership forms are the outcome of political decisions, others are of long historical processes. The imposed forms are not so much communities; rather reserves or homelands.

Differentiating it from both private property and the so called “tragedy of the commons“, communal land ownership is conceived as an institution of its own which in Chile shares the same historical origin in colonial land grants as private property. Since they have kept their territorial integrity permanently in an undivided form, the study suggest that these agrarian collectives have historically avoided their conversion into minifundium, being thus a resource management solution, which acted as a brake to land fragmentation. Thus, the communal form represents not only another historical pattern of development, but also another way of organising ownership and production than both the latifundium and minifundium.