Conceptual-methodological approach of the study cases

From the approach of the agrarian issue, we understand that the conflicts over land ownership express the contradictions of capitalist development in the agricultural sector, especially within the context of Latin America. The contributions by ^{Mançano Fernandes (2013}) in this aspect are key to understand the agrarian conflict based on three processes: territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization. This author points out that agribusiness is territorialized by appropriating the land occupied by peasants, promoting its deterritorialization and, at the same time, its reterritorialization through the route of the struggle over lands and public policies. The latter takes place while the peasants question the state organisms, reclaiming necessary infrastructure that allows them to live on the land (^{Mançano Fernandes and Barbosa Ramalho, 2001}).

In the processes of territorialization of the peasants new senses and new appropriations of territoriality are acquired. These “alternative senses of territory” are configured in the processes of political socialization experienced in the struggle over land, in the search for transcending the hegemonic aspects of “individual and private capitalist property”. Thus, sociality and territoriality are articulated in the community schemes of each experience, with their analysis and theorizing becoming vital (^{Bacallao Pino, 2014: p. 245}). These “tactics of political socialization” are closely linked to the strengthening “of the connection with the territory”. They are political socializations that are affirmed in “the concrete exercise of the struggle over the territory” and go against the “alienating character of the state policy”, becoming the foundational basis of a policy of autonomy (^{Gutiérrez Aguilar, 2011} in ^{Navarro, 2013}b: p. 165).

In this study we address the strategies of struggle deployed by agrarian social subjects that dispute their common pool patrimony and their territory with agribusiness agents. Therefore, we take up again the conceptual-methodological proposal by ^{Gutiérrez Aguilar (2013}), which from a critical perspective analyzes the struggle from the instability and the systematic display of its contradictions to elucidate its internal horizons, that is, the set of aspirations or longings that are not always coherent. This entails conceiving the struggle as “the set of poly shapes, aspirations and political practices that inhabit the social body, hidden and constrained by the dominant order, in uncomfortable ways” (^{Gutiérrez Aguilar, 2013: p.16}). Another fundamental element in this scheme is the term community schemes to denote the aspects on which the struggling actions are sustained. With this term, Gutiérrez Aguilar refers to the understandings, capabilities and relations of collective character in the daily reproduction of existence also crossed by tensions and contradictions (^{Gutiérrez Aguilar, 2013}).

Different theoretical aspects have approached the complexity of problems linked to common pool resource management. Among these, from the approach of new institutional economy, the contributions by Elinor ^{Ostrom (2000}) stand out, in the analysis of the self-organization problems that users of common pool goods face, centering on the existence of institutions that regulate the appropriation and management of the systems of common resources. Likewise, she defines them as a “system of natural or man-made resources, which is sufficiently large so as to make it costly, although not impossible, to exclude potential addressees of the benefits of their use” (^{Ostrom, 2000: p. 66}). From this approach it is argued that the persistence in time of these systems is grounded in these institutions, understood as the set of norms that regulate the behavior of their users in relation to access and use, such as the distribution of the benefits and costs derived from their exploitation.

For the purposes of this study we adopted a broader concept of the common pool resources, since under this term we not only designate material wealth under any form of collective property, but also the social relationships that are structured in a specific human group with regards to a patrimony in common, due to the shared interest in its conservation and expansion (^{Helfrich, 2008}). From this definition a meaning of common pool resources also stems as a political practice, insofar as impulses of struggle and resistance from various collectivities are recognized to contribute to the protection, recovery and expansion of a natural, social and cultural patrimony (^{Lafuente, 2008}).

A third key dimension in the analysis of these experiences is the modes of connection that happen both between state agents and peasants and also among the latter within the framework of the agrarian conflict over land. From the approach directed at the actor proposed by ^{Long (2007)} and from the concept of social interface, we identify disputes of interests and meanings around the management of common pool resources. Long maintains that from the analysis of the interfaces it is possible to elucidate “types of links and sources of social discontinuity, and also cultural and organizational means”, from which these spaces are reproduced and transformed (^{Long, 2007: p.136}).

Concerning the methodological approach, through the strategy of study cases we advanced toward a deep and holistic understanding of the community and livestock enterprises from the perspective experienced by the social actors involved. In the selection of the cases we considered the following criteria: a) they are two pioneer experiences, since after the implementation of this type of livestock enterprise based on the associative management of common pool goods in the locations of Santa Catalina and El Hoyo they were multiplied and currently nine community confinements are found directed at cattle production in these two departments (Figueroa and Moreno); b) their origin is linked to the conflict between occupant peasants with intent to own and entrepreneurs who hoped to evict them; c) a large part of the changes in the modes of managing the system of common use resources and the execution of livestock productive projects responds to technical proposals carried out by state extension workers who operated under the sphere of the former Agricultural and Livestock Social Program (Programa Social Agropecuario) (currently Ministry of Family Agriculture, Secretaría de Agricultura Familiar, which depends on the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Production and Fishing of the Nation, Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca de la Nación).

The field work was performed in a period spanning the years 2014-2015 and involved recording observations and individual and group in-depth interviews. In the exploratory phase of the study, the criterion that took precedence in the selection of informants was the accessibility to establish a relationship with some informants that could operate as porters, facilitating the contact with others and the possibility of broadening the spectrum of interlocutors. As we advanced in the field work, we decided on two procedures for the selection of interview respondents: on the one hand, snow-ball sampling, in order to rebuild the possible social relationship networks between them, and on the other, the saturation of information in relation to the analytical categories.

We interviewed occupant peasants with intent to own who resided at the moment of the research in both locations: Santa Catalina (Figueroa Department) and El Hoyo (Moreno Department). They are rural inhabitants, masculine and feminine, whose ages range from 30 to 60 years and who intervened in the defense of communal land during the conflicts over their ownership, who are (or were) members of the Directive Commission¹⁰ and partners in the peasant organizations that unite them, and also those inhabitants who have become associated to manage bovine livestock production. In addition, we interviewed four extension workers from the Ministry of Family Agriculture of the Nation (Secretaría de Agricultura Familiar de la Nación) (formerly Programa Social Agropecuario) who have eight to twenty years of service in their positions and intervene in the locations (or did so at some point in time), mainly during the conflicts over land and the implementation of the bovine productive enterprises that we analyze in this study.

In order to approach the study area comprised by the locations of Santa Catalina and El Hoyo, it should be highlighted that they share some sociodemographic, economic-productive and agroecological characteristics. They are both dispersed rural populations; Santa Catalina is located in the Figueroa Department, while El Hoyo is found in the limits of the Figueroa and Moreno Departments. According to the last National Population, Households and Housing Census, in 2010 the totality of the population in Figueroa resided in rural areas. With regards to the allocation of infrastructure of basic serviced, it should be said that a large part of the households, particularly in rural areas, are supplied by rainwater, rivers, canals or streams for human consumption, and use carbon or firewood to cook. While in the Moreno Department, 12.05 % of the households do not have electricity, in the Figueroa Department this figure goes up to 28.18 % (^{INDEC, 2010}). Santa Catalina and El Hoyo are places of difficult access, due to the scarce development of road infrastructure, since to gain access from the routes long distances must be travelled through dirt roads that during rainy days become impassable.

According to the census records from 2010, the population in the Figueroa and Moreno Departments present high levels of illiteracy, which reach values of 8.25 % (the highest at the provincial level) and 6.66 %, respectively; in addition, a large part did not complete the primary level of education (^{INDEC, 2010}). In Santa Catalina and El Hoyo there are only educational facilities that offer primary level and, therefore, those who want to continue their secondary and upper studies must go to the nearest urban zones, or else the provincial capital, which implies travelling long distances or else changing residence.

Inhabitants of Figueroa and Moreno are occupied primarily in activities linked to the agricultural, livestock, beekeeping and forestry production, and also to construction. In addition, an important component of the household earnings is social allotments (in concept of retirement, pensions and family allocations). The data from the 2010 Census reveal that the households in which at least one member receives a contributive pension represent 55.39 % of the total in the Figueroa Department, and 52 % in Moreno.

Although Figueroa and Moreno are departments where it is possible to differentiate zones with different productive profiles, in the locations where we focalize this research there are productive systems that combine livestock production with forestry activity, due to the lack of irrigation, the scarce precipitations (a mean that ranges between 600 and 700 millimeters annually), the high temperatures during a large part of the year, and the soils with low moisture retention that make difficult the development of agriculture in this zone of the semi-arid province. These agroecological conditions together with the insufficient productive infrastructure limit the productive yields in livestock production. Likewise, the persistence of forest management practices also influence the degradation of this resource from overgrazing (^{de Dios and Ferreyra, 2011}).

The origins of the struggle: conflict and negative to the dispossession of communal lands

The incursion of entrepreneurs into peasant properties of Santa Catalina and El Hoyo at the beginning of the 2000s drove the mobilization of the families to stop the eviction as a result of clearing and defining the boundaries of the surfaces of communal use. As a result of these conflicts, peasants were congregated to discuss, design and execute collective actions of self-defense and protest, displaying processes of political socialization around the struggle over land.

Santa Catalina, located in the Figueroa Department in the province of Santiago del Estero, is a rural population formed by around 24 peasant families, dispersed over a surface of 4535 hectares, which were devoted to raising bovine and caprine livestock, and also to forest extraction for the elaboration of poles. In 2003 a conflict began with two entrepreneurs who argued having proof of the ownership of dominion over those lands and advanced carrying out clearing to instigate the eviction of peasants. One of them remembers the conflict situations as follows:

Because just as the thrushes do to the bugs when other bugs want to take over the nest... well, that’s how we reacted when they wanted to take away our nest (...) the entrepreneurs had gone there to wait for them to evict them... they started to threaten them... threaten to run them over with their van. Peasant from the location of Santa Catalina (65 years old)

From that moment, the actions of defense and protest to stop the dispossession of communal use lands were planned in the midst of peasant-based organizations, such as: neighbor commission that united families of Santa Catalina and DUFINOC (United Delegates of Figueroa Norte Eleven Commissions, Delegados Unidos de Figueroa Norte Once Comisiones)¹¹ and inter-institutional organizational spaces like the Lands Board (Mesa de Tierras) of the Figueroa Department¹². The display of antagonism against the dispossession covered a broad spectrum of actions that combined the institutionallegal path and others of a disruptive nature. Within the latter type of actions, the participation of Santa Catalina peasants in blocking provincial routes No. 2 and No. 5 stand out, organized by different peasant organizations and others linked to the Social Pastoral of the Catholic Church with the objective of making visible the problematic over land ownership in the province. They were actions that arose from the conformation of alliances with the sectors most affected by the various forms of eviction from their lands in face of the violence inflicted, not only by entrepreneurs but also by state security forces that intervened in the conflicts. The peasants also had to face the penal denunciations made by entrepreneurs against them, accusing them of misappropriation of properties, action cataloged as a crime against patrimony according to the Penal Code of Argentina.

Likewise, the actions of resistance displayed through institutional channels were directed at counteracting the penal denunciations over misappropriation, but mostly at regularizing the precarious ownership of land and the recognition of ownership rights. Under the protection of the dispositions from the Civil Code of Argentina which regulate the acquisitive prescription in twenty years, the possessor peasants from Santa Catalina began the trial to obtain a favorable declarative sentence of dominion that would allow them to have the deeds to the lands¹³.

Within the framework of the conflict, and with the objective of gathering enough proof to account for ownership in the judicial process, the peasant families demarcated with perimeter wire fence the lands of community use and carried out the measurement and confection of the territorial map through a subsidy granted by the Registry of Candidates for Regularization of Land Ownership (Registro de Aspirantes a la Regularización de la Tenencia de la Tierra). Then, the registration of the property in the provincial registry (Dirección de Catastro) was made, and they began to collect the property tax of coownership. However, despite the effectiveness of the actions of collective resistance to preserve the lands in dispute, they still could not attain a definitive legal solution that guarantees avoiding potential evictions.

El Hoyo is a rural population made up of 65 families, dispersed over a surface of 10 000 hectares, located 168 kilometers away from the capital city of Santiago del Estero. In 2004 an extra-provincial enterprise burst into the lands of shared use and instigated the eviction of the families that resided there through the advance of bulldozers and threats with fire arms.

Indeed, organizational social processes were triggered that turned into the resistance against “the advance of bulldozers” to impede the clearing, and the quartering of men in black tents¹⁴ raised in the area of conflict south to the property. They also sought to stop the eviction through the legal path, requesting from the authorities of provincial justice that they intervene in the conflict, which happened through a cautionary action taken by the judge who ordered the cessation of activities by the enterprise until the situation of ownership of the lands in dispute was not solved.

However, within the framework of the conflict, the association of families was formalized by acquiring legal capacity, giving place to the creation of the Association of Communal Promotion El Hoyo (Asociación de Fomento Comunal El Hoyo). In the midst of the organization, the partnering peasants discussed and made decisions regarding the different dispute tactics in two directions: the actions of selfdefense directed at stopping the advance of the enterprise on their lands and, on the other, those directed at securing the ownership by enclosing the surfaces of common use and the execution of productive projects for the development of livestock activities.

The formation and the strengthening of territorial alliances with other peasant-based organizations and government agencies that provided legal, technical and financial counseling was key in both senses. Through these links, the association of communal promotion executed productive projects managed in an associative way. All these factors evolved into the conformation of “community livestock confinements”.

“The paddocks have been chosen, and that’s how we are going to do it there to defend the land”. Peasant from the location of El Hoyo (36 years old)

“the entrepreneurs would come from over there (the south); then, we could see that we would not have land anymore (...) and then we have made another paddock more than one kilometer and a half further over... of course, in order to own them we have made the paddocks ourselves”. Peasant from the location of El Hoyo (40 years old)

Stemming from the conflicts over land and the actions displayed in defense of this common good, we can see how among the peasants of Santa Catalina and El Hoyo a notion of “us” is starting to emerge. Their constitution as a collective subject in struggle, insofar as they perceive land not only as a resource but also as livelihood, since it has cultural, social and political dimensions (^{Paz and Jara, 2013}). Therefore, the negative to the dispossession in defense of “the common good” is the starting point of a process of struggle that is developing by broadening, widening and consolidating links of community nature.

Through these experiences of self-organization we identify the multiple forms in which insurgency is expressed, in face of the dispossession of “the common good”, from social protest and resistance camps against clearing to the prosecution of conflicts. These actions were crossed by processes of political socialization at different scales that implied the construction of territorial alliances through the connections established with other organizations of peasant base and representatives of public organisms¹⁵.

From this network of relationships, spaces for political socialization were configured in the sense described by ^{Mançano Fernandes (2009}), that is, spaces of communication, interaction-learning and struggle-resistance, given that knowledge of experiential nature is produced in these organizational areas, built from the collective experience of the struggle over land and around institutional and non-institutional procedures to avoid evictions in situations of conflict. The peasants of Santa Catalina and El Hoyo maintain that the contact with these organizations allowed them to redefine their strategies for struggle due to the information given in the meetings. These turn into instances of exchange of experiences, construction of knowledge and reciprocal learning in the peasant organizations that contribute to the development of sociality anchored in the negative to the dispossession of “common goods”.

Following ^{Navarro (2013}b), the struggling subjects display a broad battery of actions to make political pressure effective, by using institutional and legal channels, non-conventional and disruptive action, and even coordination of efforts with other social organizations. The experience of struggle over land of peasants in El Hoyo and Santa Catalina reflects the negative to the dispossession, as a first rupture with entrepreneurial power, but which does not end when the eviction is managed to be stopped.

The struggle is expressed in the daily action of peasant families through the re-edition of the management forms of common use natural resources with the establishment of livestock confinements. This is an issue that we will address in the next section.

The emergence of the struggle: productive enterprises based on the management of common pool resources

Before the conflicts with entrepreneurs began, Santa Catalina and El Hoyo were areas of peasant occupation without defined limits, where agriculture has scarce possibilities of development due to the strong restrictions for irrigation. The families were devoted to forest extraction for the fabrication of poles and carbon, and to extensive livestock production, taking advantage of the natural fodder offer available in the broad surfaces of common use forest and the labor of family workforce to control the paddock.

Stemming from conflicts and their links to other peasant organizations and state organisms, the objectives of the struggle were to secure the possession and improve their living conditions by enclosing communal lands and the execution of livestock productive projects. Therefore, the community confinements far from causing a dismembering of community social arrangements implied their re-functionalization with the implementation of “livestock confinements” of associative management.

These productive initiatives directed at the production of calves and their sale at weaning¹⁶ began to take shape and develop based on the links established between peasants and state technicians with the implementation of the Social Agricultural and Livestock Program (Programa Social Agropecuario) (currently Secretaría de Desarrollo Rural y Agricultura Familiar de la Nación). The technical proposal consisted in implementing a forest grazing system through the closing of plots destined to livestock breeding within the areas of community use. From the point of view of PSA technicians, its recommendations were supported by the productive potential of the zone, which resided in the ownership of livestock, forest and land, incorporating practices of forest grazing management from the implantation of pastures that allowed increasing the productivity of the paddock and attenuating the ecological costs of the livestock and forest activity. However, they maintain that the proposal derives from the learnings that arise from the experience of struggle over land. This is how one of the technicians, who works with peasants from both populations, manifests it, even before the conflicts:

“this proposal emerges, let’s say, from the struggle... from the path... let’s say... if you listened to me, in 2003, and it was a completely different position than the one I have today... and of many leaders” Technician from the Ministry of Rural Development and Family Agriculture of the Nation (Técnico de la Secretaría de Desarrollo Rural y Agricultura Familiar de la Nación)-Ex PSA-(42 years old).

Although the conflicts and enclosing of lands of community use in both rural populations began at the same time, the implementation of livestock confinements in each one had its particularities. In Santa Catalina, the changes in production systems and in the modes of managing common pool resources took place in a progressive manner. During a first moment, the examples from the neighborhood association rejected technical recommendations in defense of the livestock production on natural forest; for example, fodder management based on implanted grasses. The bases of the rejection against adopting this fodder practice was founded on an overestimation of the quality of Creole grasses, native to the forest over invasive and exotic grasses.

The links between peasants through their neighborhood association with technicians from PSA and DUFINOC were essential in the development of livestock enterprises. These social actors were executing units of different state programs of national reach, such as the Program for Rotatory Funds for Small-Scale Producers (Programa de Fondos Rotatorios para Pequeños Productores), the All Hands on Deck Program (Programa Manos a la Obra), and the Rural Area Development Program (Programa de Desarrollo de Áreas Rurales, PRODEAR), which provided technical assistance and granted credits and subsidies to small-scale agricultural and livestock producers. Therefore, on the basis of these links engendered before the conflict over land, the peasants of Santa Catalina managed to broaden their system of common pool resources through the purchase of 31 wombs from peasants in El Hoyo; livestock facilities (such as stock pens, sleeves, corrals and scales), and also the construction of water works (dams and canals) for the supply and distribution of water in their fields.

However, from the income obtained from the sale of animals of collective property, peasants from Santa Catalina could make the purchase of materials for the delimitation of breeding areas, the payment of the real estate tax of common lands, and the reimbursement of the credits granted within the framework of these state programs. Likewise, the conformation of livestock confinements allowed them to solve problems such as livestock theft and to have greater control of the paddock during periods of pregnancy and birthing, as well as contributing to the preservation of the forest.

In the area of the neighborhood association that nucleates the families within the community confinement, determinations about the use and management of these common pool resources are taken: in particular, the need to reorder the use of common lands and the mode of forest exploitation were suggested. In the first place, the closing of plots of collective property destined to cattle breeding was carried out, and also to the construction of a nursery. Secondly, the formulation of internal regulations that ruled the behavior of families inside the community confinement was begun, especially in the responsible use of common pool resources; a measure in this regard was to restrict the forest extraction for pole elaboration.

The conformation of community and livestock confinements in El Hoyo implied changes in the modalities of use and management of common pool resources. These changes took place suddenly and on the basis of connections established with technicians from the PSA who provided technical assistance, but they also facilitated the link with other national and provincial public organisms that execute national and provincial programs; PROINDER¹⁷ and PROCARNE¹⁸, respectively. During the implementation of these programs, peasants carried out the purchase of inputs and two breeding males of Brangus race¹⁹; the application of a sanitary plan for animals; the hiring of services of agricultural machinery for selective rolling (rolado) and sowing of pasturelands; and the acquisition of sleeves, stock pens and drinking troughs.

In contrast to Santa Catalina, not all members of the association for communal promotion in El Hoyo made the decision of becoming associated to produce calves. Initially two groups were established, integrated by 13 and 12 partners, respectively, who performed the closing of two plots; the first that covers 736 hectares, while the second has a surface of 44 hectares. The project of Sustainable Adaptive Experimentation (Experimentación Adaptativa Sustentable) implemented in the first area a forest grazing system that implied the selective rolling of forest species, the sowing of mega thermal varieties20²⁰ (gatton, cenchrus and grama rhodes), and the preservation of natural grasses. Likewise, the genetic improvement of the paddock was sought, through the purchase of two breeding males of Brangus race of community use, to service cows from each partner. They also applied a sanitary plan managed by the peasants themselves stemming from the counseling of PSA technicians. Through the PROCARNE Program, the partners from the first enterprise could acquire livestock facilities, such as sleeves, stock pens and drinking troughs for community use. This is how a partner reflects upon the improvements in production since this initiative was launched:

“We have improved the breeding after... well, we had pastureland that was different from what there was before naturally... and now we have in the paddock all the facilities (...) pens, troughs, and now we are starting to get water from the well”. Peasant from the location of El Hoyo (38 years old).

In the connections established with PSA technicians during the implementation of these state programs, not only were they allowed to increase their share of common resources, but this also gave place to the non-formal institutionalization of agreements with regards to the use and management of these goods of collective property among users. In a large part, these agreements are based on the technical recommendations for the sustainable management of the resources from the system, such as fixing a quota of animals per partner within the confinement in function of the capacity of animal load estimated. In addition, socio-organizational agreements were established between partners such as guidelines and work shifts for tasks related to the care of the paddock among men of the partner families, while women carried out tasks connected to management and output of projects in face of public organisms that provided financing.

The institutionalization of these arrangements was not a spontaneous process and free of tensions and conflicts between the peasant partners in the enterprises, as in their relationship with technicians and other state agents. In this aspect, the proposals by ^{Ostrom (2000}) are echoed, around the sustainability of systems of common pool resources in relation to the capacity of users to create their own mechanisms of communication and control in the exercise of the right to collective property and to ensure their protection. Therefore, the transgression of some agreements in relation to the exploitation of forest species within the community confinement in Santa Catalina and of grasses implanted in the plots of El Hoyo for grazing of the livestock, not only progressed into the degradation of common pool natural resources, but also generated frictions between partners of the enterprises.

Next, we address the struggles that take place in these mediation spaces and the contradictions generated around the use and management of common pool resources inside the community confinements, in order to understand the development of the struggles against the dispossession of “common goods” from its fluctuations and contradictory practices and visions regarding the governance of “common pool resources”.

Contradictions and (dis)agreements around common pool resources

In this section we specify the agreements around the management of common pool resources that were not fulfilled with the evolution of the experience, especially those that the partner peasants pointed to as fundamental for communal organization.

The implementation of livestock confinements produced modifications in the landscape and daily life of the communities implicated in the process. In Santa Catalina the main tensions took place around the breach of agreements described in the regulations of the Association. The conflicts were evidenced mainly around three axes: the payment of the real estate tax of the property, the availability of the livestock resource, and the distribution of the economic results obtained from the community sales performed.

In the first place, the payment from the real estate tax for the community confinement corresponded to all the families located in the confinement, which is why the payment would result from the earnings obtained from livestock production, especially from the sale of animals of collective property. Despite these agreements, a group of families from the community that were ancestrally devoted to the sale of poles and carbon, decided to take distance from communal livestock production in 2014, attempting to take up again their former productions, primarily the extraction of poles and, therefore, separating from the confinement and association of promotion. Thus, one of the inhabitants manifests the reasons that drove him to cease working collectively in the community field:

“all my life I have lived here; my parents and grandparents have lived here, and we have always lived off the forest, from making poles... at the beginning I did work setting up the wire (the enclosing of communal lands) because before people came from other places to take wood out of here, and I thought that with the wire that would end, that only we would be able to work here in the forest until one day they (his neighbors from Santa Catalina) told me that I could not go in anymore to take out poles from the field, and since then I moved away from it”. Peasant from Santa Catalina (62 years old).

According to the account by one the peasant leaders of Santa Catalina, this sector of five families that participated in the struggle against the dispossession share similar interests with the group; however, their productive projections after the implementation of the confinement were different. This group of five families of “carbon makers and lumberjacks” aspired to close the communal surfaces with the aim of “keeping the forest wood for their poles and carbons (...)”; when suggesting these initiatives to the community, they resolved from the Association of Promotion to induce them toward livestock production, relinquishing communal property wombs so they could perform individual management of this livestock, in face of the rejection to forest extractive activity.

Although the extension technicians and the groups of families that belong to Santa Catalina attempted to reconvert productively the carbon makers and lumberjacks, they continued without sharing the objectives of the Association of Promotion. Their way of rejecting this way of managing common goods in Santa Catalina was through ceasing to pay the real estate tax and requesting through lawyers their exit from the community confinement, asking for the portion of land equivalent from each one of the families. These last events generated disputes between different fractions of the community, attaining presently inconclusive results for both parties.

“we have agreed that the one who goes, goes alone, that the possession will not be divided... because nobody is chasing away the one who wants to leave... we have an agreement that says that, before we even began everything”. Peasant from the location of Santa Catalina (57 years old)

Since the implementation of the confinement, the collective objectives changed in relation to the context. During a first moment, the main objective was to ensure the possession in order to later perform productive improvements in the forest; currently, the individual viewpoints regarding community work and the possible use or exploitation of the forest are different and, therefore, the projections are also different. When dismissing the agreements of regulation of common pool resources, this generates internal modifications that lead some leaders to rethink their practices of communal management, especially at the moment of distribution of the benefits obtained from the production, preferring an individual return, and therefore, supplanting the original vision of obtaining a collective benefit from the confinement. It is at this point when the regulation of common pool resources is no longer based solely on the endowment or type of natural resource itself, but rather on subjective issues, such as commitment, responsibility, understanding each other.

“I wouldn’t like to make some purchase or sale of animals again by everyone as a group; if we buy again, we will divide between all of us what corresponds to each... but to continue socially as a group, not anymore... because I realize now that we are not made for that... we cannot work together because we are not responsible”. Peasant leader from Santa Catalina (65 years old)

The processes and mechanisms through which the struggles take place and materialize in time differ to the degree that the agreements established for the regulation of the appropriation of the common good are fulfilled or not. However, it is necessary to highlight that the community confinement in Santa Catalina provided the emergence of a set of social capabilities generated in the process of struggle, such as the construction of a new policy, as ^{Navarro (2013}b) calls the set of local actions interweaved in the search for collective benefits. This policy does not attempt to separate itself from the peasant action, since these acquired capabilities were fundamental to stop the dispossession through delay, or else, the direct standstill of the expropriation process of their common goods (^{Navarro, 2013b}).

The main disputes that took place in the community of El Hoyo had their central point in the productive agreements established for the management of the paddock and in the distribution of earnings from the production. This community confinement arose from a technical proposal in sync with the demands from peasants to ensure the ownership and to improve the production of livestock for internal consumption and for the market. In this process, the technician designated for the zone from the PSA played a prevailing role, who had broad experience in livestock production, and who when evidencing the productive potential that the Creole paddock has, coordinated a series of actions for the implementation of a forest grazing system that tends toward the production of calves in community.

When the extension worker from the PSA left after providing technical assistance, the producers disregarded the guidelines established in the origins of the experience, which tended toward performing sustainable use. The first agreement for the maintenance of the paddock was to sell the calves at weaning and for the resulting money from those sales to be used to introduce improvements in the confinement, thus avoiding the acquisition of more subsidies or credits. When the animals remained in paddocks beyond the period suggested, overgrazing took place, exhausting the pastures implanted at the beginning of the process of “adaptive experimentation”.

Another one of the disagreements in productive matters took place around the number of heads of livestock that each family placed in the confinement. The initial pact of equal number of heads for each family was increasingly violated, giving rise to a certain attitude considered by some as “opportunist”. That is, although the organization of the production and the endowment of resources were communitybased, the pursuit of results in production began to respond chiefly to individual objectives and not to the collective ones previously agreed upon.

The institutionalization of these arrangements undertaken with the aim of regulating the use of collective resources was subject to tensions within the community, resulting in opposing processes in both communities of Santa Catalina and El Hoyo. In Santa Catalina, the endowment of the livestock resource and the payment of the tax were the main issues that generated conflicts between the partners of the enterprise; instead, in El Hoyo the dissonance regarding the productive guidelines led to the exhaustion of one of the common pool resources. The conflicts were not isolated nor did they have a single corollary inside the community, but rather the role that the technicians carried out was central for the development of the experiences. In El Hoyo, the productive proposals were not designed by the peasants, but rather came from the technicians. Although the start of the struggle was centered on securing the possession, presently they have not managed to enclose the property of 10 000 ha completely. The vision of what is community in El Hoyo could be synthesized as: “the union to request resources that produce individual results”, contrary to another alternative long-term vision where the productive activities could result in benefits for the whole community.