Traces of dispossession? Sources and archives on the dissolution of the indigenous town of San Blas de Los Sauces, La Rioja, during the republican transition

Abstract

This article explores the history of the indigenous town of San Blas de los Sauces in La Rioja, from its creation as a reduction in the years after the Diaguita rebellion to its progressive dismantling as a corporation after the province’s political autonomy in 1820. During the transition to the republican order, the colonial safeguards that protected communal land tenure and the right to irrigation water lost validity, giving rise to the sale of hereditary rights to those who were indios tributarios or naturales. The colonial sources of the Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Córdoba and the republican sources preserved in the Archivo Judicial de La Rioja enable us to recognize the appropriation of communal lands by the family that controlled spaces of local power in colonial times and during the early republic, among other transformations.