Abstract

The article problematizes the existence and role of signs of possession in disputes over land rights and in sales agreements between small and medium peasants in a valley in central Chile. The study focuses on the period from 1820 to 1860, when land values increased and ideas and institutions related to land titling advanced. Land lawsuits, land sale deeds and the Agricultural Cadastres of the period were investigated. The documentation was analyzed from the theoretical and methodological framework of agrarian ius-historiography, focusing on the practices of access to simultaneous rights under the notion of dismembered domain. It is proposed that these factors led the actors to reformulate old land rights sharing agreements before the judicial instances of the territory. Litigants and judges interpreted a variety of actions as signs of possession that granted rights. At the same time, the emergence of a greater sensitivity to titling caused these signs to lose ground to evidence based on purchase titles.