Colloque international “Les frontières de la question foncière – At the frontier of land issues”, Montpellier, 2006 1 Property Relations and the Concept of Community in the Central Andes of Peru Monique Nuijten, David Lorenzo and Pieter de Vries Rural Development Sociology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Development Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark Abstract In this paper we discuss land property relations in an indigenous Peruvian highland comunidad. We present the dialectic of the communal regime in which a disciplinary system of rules based on the ideology of equal access to land is combined with forms of exclusion, domination and what local people call ‘the slavery’ of the comunidad. We discuss how this regime links up with and resists governmental programs of privatization and titling of communal lands. In political and academic circles two opposing views about the comunidad in the Andean region can be found. On the one hand, many intellectuals and indigenistas see the comunidad as an institution that should have a certain room for autonomous governance and jurisdiction. In this view, much emphasis is placed on the notions of justice and equality that play a role in the organization of the comunidad. Elements that are always mentioned are: strict local rules and regulations, reciprocity, ceremonies and faenas (working parties). The presence of strong localized customs and normative systems has led some scholars to conclude that Andean comunidades have their own system of law, outside State law. On the other hand, a prevalent opinion is that the peasant comunidad forms a serious hindrance to agricultural development as its customary institutions hinder the free use of land according to market principles. It is in this latter line of thought that today registration and privatization of communal lands is implemented. In this paper we analyse local property relations and the effects of the privatization and titling programs in the Peruvian highland communities.