United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 2001-09-10 monographic deposited born digital 68 p. GA 1.13:GAO-01-952 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952 P0b002ee180391d07 f:d01952 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-28 GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952 GAO-01-952 Grants International agreements International relations Land management Land transfers Treaties Mexico New Mexico Spain Other Written Product A01762 From the end of the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, Spain made land grants to individuals, towns, and groups to promote development in the frontier lands that now constitute the American Southwest. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, the United States agreed to recognize ownership of property of every kind in the ceded areas. Many persons, including grantee heirs, scholars, and legal experts, still claim that the United States did not protect the property of Mexican-Americans and their descendants, particularly the common lands of community grants. Land grant documents contain no direct reference to "community land grants" nor do Spanish and Mexican laws define or use this term. GAO did find, however, that some grants refer to lands set aside for general communal use or for specific purposes, including hunting, pasture, wood gathering, or watering. Scholars, the land grant literature, and popular terminology commonly use the phrase "community land grants" to denote land grants that set aside common lands for the use of the entire community. GAO adopted this broad definition in determining which Spanish and Mexican land grants can be identified as community land grants. GAO identified 154 community land grants out of the total of 295 land grants in New Mexico. Seventy-eight were grants in which the shared lands formed part of the grant according to the original grant documentation; 53 were grants that scholars, grantee heirs, or others believed to contain common lands; and 23 were grants extended to the indigenous pueblo cultures in New Mexico. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952/html/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952/pdf/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952.pdf GAO-01-952 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-952 Other Written Product GAO-01-952; El Tratado De Guadalupe Hidalgo: Definicion y lista de las concesiones de tierras comunitarias en Nuevo Mexico; Grants International agreements International relations Land management Land transfers Treaties Mexico New Mexico Spain