Between Theory, Norms, and Practice: Vindicating emphyteusis in Argentina during the first half of the 20th century.

Abstract

For more than a decade, emphyteusis –together with other forms of "imperfect" property –has motivated the interests of historians studying the rural world. In Argentina, jurists and historians have directed their attention to this property law, suppressed among those that entered the Civil Code in 1869.  However, just as laws do not necessarily determine practices, the plurality of the kinds of experiences of humans with land is far more complex than a legal framework. The case dealt with in this article could be called, based on practice, a kind of "undercover emphyteusis." We refer to a type of property/possession, not always that different from tenancy over the long-term (near perpetual), that was based on theories that celebrated emphyteusis and the principles sustained by Georgists and those who defended land as a public good. The empirical terrain for this study is the province of Jujuy, in the extreme north of Argentina. Emphyteusis was practiced there in the XIX century, and after its official elimination, its spirit remained present within many laws proposed by Radicalism during the 1920s, and later by some Peronist politicians and functionaries in the 1940s