Un Archivo campesino como “Acontecimiento de Terreno”: Los nuevos papeles del Curaca de Macha (Alasaya).

The use of alphabetic writing and reading among Andean communities has its origins in the sixteenth century, leading to a form of textuality marked by the legal language of early modernity. This article presents the discovery of a section of an archive in the hands of the former Curaca (headman) of Macha (Alasaya, Chayanta Province, Potosí, Bolivia). I situate the recent administration of the Curacas of Macha in the twentieth century (c. 1938-1994), and present three examples of documentation held by them, including a local formulation of the "reciprocity pact" between ayllu and state (Platt 1982). Rural authorities used writing to communicate, not only with national authorities, but among themselves. I end with the transcript of an interview in Quechua with don Gregorio Carvajal in December 2013: he recites old Spanish notarial phrases used to give certificates of service ("obligatory turns") to those named "in full council" to be Collectors, Postillions, Rural Mayors etc. These phrases are compared with those used by his father in a certificate of service of 1939 (Historical Archives of Potosí), showing the existence of a common legal language shared by both. The paper shows the workings of a form of direct democracy, and practice of community, rooted in the Old Regime and in the pre-Hispanic, colonial and republican Andean ayllu.