Were Mexican pre-columbian civilizations urban or agrarian?
hello agrarian ! The traditional agrarian structures in Latin America have evolved over a period of several hundred years. They have their roots in Spanish (and for Brazil, Portuguese) colonial policy as well as, for some countries, in pre-Hispanic society. In some parts of the subcontinent quite elaborate agrarian structures existed before European colonization. This was particularly the case among the Incas in the Andes and the Aztecs in Mesoamerica. In fact, there are some surprising parallels between Incas and Aztecs as far as social structure is concerned. In both areas, the basic social and landowning unit was a localized extended kinship group known as calpulli among the Aztecs and ayllu among the Incas. Within these groups land was communal property, but it was periodically subdivided among its members and tilled on a family basis. Besides the cultivable area there existed common lands to which everybody in the group had indiscriminate access. These forms of basic communal tenu
