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Schoenrich, Otto

"A Country with a Future"

The shares of the co-owners are
known as "pesos de posesion," "dollars of possession," corresponding
to the value given them at some remote period. The owner of any
undivided portion of such "comunero" property, though he hold only one
or two shares or "pesos de posesion," may enter upon and cultivate any
part of the land he finds unoccupied by other co-owners, and use
anything growing or existing thereon, except certain timber or unless
it be the result of the labor of other co-owners. That this peculiar
mode of enjoying the comunero property has not resulted in friction
and conflicts may be ascribed to the smallness of the cultivated
fields, the small population and the enormous expanse of vacant land.
For the prospective purchaser the doubts surrounding the title to
comunero lands are enhanced by the existence of fraudulent "peso"
titles and by the destruction of public offices where title transfers
should have been recorded. In recent years much division of comunero
land among the co-owners has been going on and such action is
facilitated by a law of 1911, but the importance of the matter merits
additional laws to cheapen and hasten the division.


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