Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE LAND REFORMS
OF ARTIGAS, 1815
A
s a popular military leader, José Gervasio Artigas had to renounce
the property interests of his own class—for Artigas was a Creole
landowner himself—in order to voice the demands of his followers. In
the Río de la Plata, the free blacks, mulattoes, and mestizos who made
up the insurrectionary forces had come from the least privileged of
colonial society. Therefore, they longed for a redistribution of one of the
basic economic assets that had reinforced their low status: the owner-
ship of land. Artigas addressed these concerns during the brief time he
controlled Montevideo, the capital of the Banda Oriental in 1815. These
attempts to transform rural workers into middle-class landowners
never went into effect, because a Portuguese invasion from Brazil forced
the popular forces of Artigas to vacate the territory known today as
Uruguay. Nonetheless, the proposed reforms articulated some of the
objectives of the popular classes during the long struggle for indepen-
dence. The 1815 proposals of Artigas said in part:
For now the Provincial Mayor and other officials under him will dedi-
cate themselves to promoting vigorously the well-being of the popula-
tion of the Campaign, for which they will inspect in each one of their
respective Jurisdictions the available land, and the Subjects worthy of
this act of grace, and with precaution, let the most miserable become
the most privileged. Therefore, free Blacks, Sambos of this class,
Indians, and poor Creoles, all can be favored with the good fortune of
an estancia (cattle estate), if with their work and their honorable man-
hood, they advance their own happiness and that of the Province.
. . . Poor widows with children will be likewise favored. Married
people will be preferred over single citizens, and the latter over any
foreigner.
. . . Properties available for redistribution are all those of people
who have fled to exile, of bad Europeans and worse Americans who
so far have not been pardoned by the Chief of the Province so that
they could possess their former Properties.
. . . The Government, the Provincial Mayor, and other subordinates
will keep watch to make sure that the land recipients do not possess
more than the designated size of land grant [1.5 × 2 leagues].
. . . The land recipient can neither alienate nor sell these lots nor
contract any debt on them upon pain of nullification, until the formal
regulation of the Province in which it will deliberate over what is
advisable.
Source:
Street, John.
Artigas and the Emancipation of Uruguay
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), pp. 376-379.
