Publication by Gartrell Group Principal Bryce Gartrell, 1996

Land Tenure and Cadastral Issues in Nicaragua

by Bryce Gartrell, MSc., University of Maine at Orono, 1996

1. Abstract

This paper synopsizes Nicaraguan history as it relates to the emergence of contemporary land tenure relations and cadastral issues throughout the country. A detailed report on formal titling and land records updating initiatives is integrated with a discussion of many of the current problems and challenges that must be overcome if these initiatives are to succeed in bringing security, efficiency, and equitability to the Nicaraguan real property system. Finally, a response to conclusions drawn by Nicaraguan land tenure system scholars and program implementors is offered together with several suggestions for improvements to contemporary agendas. Some matters of future concern are also addressed.

2. Historical Background

The history of land tenure in what is today called Nicaragua traces back through more than two millennia of conquests and cultural conflicts. A quick overview of the general patterns of land use, ownership, and land-related conflict that emerge over this long historical trajectory do much to explain the status of land tenure in Nicaragua today as well as some of the challenging issues which must be faced in the future.

Nicaraguans who identify themselves as Sumo Indians are today considered members of the country's indigenous population. In a somewhat broader historical context, however, neither the Sumos, the Moskitos, the Rama or the Nahuas Indian population groups are indigenous to the Nicaraguan area, but are immigrants from various locations in the Caribbean and from Mexico. The Moskito Indians, whose presence in the Nicaraguan territory dates back some 2,000 years, were some of the earliest arrivers in Nicaragua, but their dominance over the territory was subdued by the Chortegas Indians whose territories and power were later retrenched by the Nahuas Indians who invaded from Mexico. The Nahuas were able to control the greater part of Nicaragua through the period of its "discovery" by Admiral Christopher Columbus who stepped ashore on September 12, 1502. In each of these successive usurpations, the general trend was clearly that foreign powers would be attracted by the potential of valuable land -- in some cases the fertile valleys and gold-bearing hills were the object of desire, in others the volcanoes were of interest for their religious significance (Ruis, 1984, p.8) -- and they would crowd local landholders from areas of interest through political infiltration or, more commonly, through brute force. There have been few significant deviations from this trend in the most recent 500 years of Nicaragua's history.

Nicaragua was claimed as property of the Royal Crown of Spain in 1523 by two visiting conquistadors from Panama. Although many of the first Spaniards in Nicaragua demonstrated a keener interest in gold, parrots, and local women than in Nicaragua's other bounties, it was not long before its other land-related qualities gained the admiration of Europeans. According to Spanish tradition, the Crown's interests in Nicaragua were partially re-distributed through Royal Land Grants which were intended to "strengthen the King's claim to the new world by attaching subjects to the land and by establishing precedent to his claims to the colonial territory through the exercise of property transfer powers"(Barr, 1985, II.A.1). In a good number of cases, these Royal Grants also strengthened the powers of their recipients, many of whom were Catholic missionaries who rose as lords of their new dominions by simultaneously baptizing, enslaving, and unburdening Nicaraguan Indians of their traditional ties to their homelands. Often, bundles of rights and privileges in addition to land ownership would accompany Royal Grants; these might have included rights to extract work from and tax Indian populations, to use water and forest resources, and to receive governmental appointments, military commissions, or public income (Barr, 1985,II.A.1). In cases where Grant recipients made use of their territories and the convenient labor forces of recently dispossessed Indian populations, agricultural estates -- pre-cursors to the large plantations, or fincas, that would later form the economic base of many Latin American countries -- were developed, typically in the environs of larger cities which were the seat and symbol of imperial power in Spanish colonies throughout the Western Hemisphere (Burns, 1991,p.2).

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, that coffee and fruit plantations would spread across nearly all the best agricultural lands, their owners chasing subsistence-level smallholders from their properties only to later welcome them back as practically landless agricultural laborers. During the Spanish colonial period, Grant properties were recorded by the Crown but were frequently neglected in Nicaragua, oftentimes because their recipients were content to live in the cities on resources associated with offices and appointments that were included in their Grant. And although Royal Grants were extensive, they were far from comprehensive. Consequently, traditional systems of land tenure were able to persist in many parts of Nicaragua with relatively few disruptions, despite the proclaimed conversion to colonial status and Spanish ownership. Rural indigenous populations lucky enough to escape enslavement or conscription enjoyed virtually unrestricted access to land, which was, and in some cases continues to be, subsistence-farmed in a communal fashion while being held in individual plots (Powelson and Stock, 1990,p.342).

Among the defining features of Nicaraguan geography are a vast network of rivers and lagoons coursing inland of the eastern seaboard and converging about the estuary of the San Juan River in the southeastern corner of the country. Through history this water system and an extensive range of mountains forming its western border have served to effectively sequester substantial portions of the eastern coastal territories from the socio-political turbulence of mainland Nicaragua, including much of the violent upheaval which occurred during the Sandinista Revolution. The barrier-effect of the lagoons has functioned in two ways, however. Isolated as it was from inland Spanish strongholds, the central and southern Atlantic coast was attractive to the English in their competition with Spain for the Latin American colonies and the promise of empire expansion that they held. The San Juan River, which forms Nicaragua's southern border, was of particular interest for its potential as a western passage canal system that ships might use to travel between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In 1625, a large section of the Nicaraguan coast was designated the Protectorate of Mosquitia and claimed as property of the British Crown. While historical evidence suggests that Mosquitia was a protectorate in name but little else, its remoteness from Spanish-held territories and its association with Britain were of considerable consequence in determining the nature of coastal land tenure forms, many of which have persisted into the modern era. Because the British impact on the coastal area was minimal and Spanish imperialism was focused elsewhere, the inhabitants along many parts of the Nicaraguan coast were able to determine for themselves the means by which they would assign and divide interest in real property. As these inhabitants were mainly Moskito, Sumo, and Rama Indians who had lived there for centuries, and also exiled, freed, or escaped Black slaves who had come by way of Caribbean trade routes, the systems of land tenure along Nicaragua's Atlantic coast have largely remained, until quite recently, informal, locally-determined, and communally-based, to serve the needs of subsistence-level agrarian and fishing communities (Christian, 1985, p.297).

The single greatest legacy left by the Spanish in terms of land relations in Nicaragua was the introduction of separate social classes. Early into the colonial period, distinct socio-economic strata emerged in Nicaraguan society. Typically, white-skinned people who had been born in Spain were at the top of the ladder; Whites born in Nicaragua were on the next rung, followed by Mestizos (children of Spaniards and Nicaraguans) and dark-skinned Indians and Blacks on the Atlantic Coast. Even as the Spanish empire receded into the twilight of the eighteenth century and the significance of Royal Grant records greatly diminished, the rigidity of the class structure introduced during the colonial period continued to determine who had access to power, money, and perhaps above all, land. Bands of powerful patriarchs of Spanish descent rushed in to fill the vacuum left by Spain's abated presence in Nicaragua, and all through Nicaragua's relatively short-lived attempts at sovereignty during the 1800's, these patriarchs were the ones who amassed huge plantations and land-related resources, expanding on the class-based model of property distribution which was introduced through the Royal Grant system.

Romanced in varying degrees by Enlightenment ideals and almost universally by the financial incentives of international trade, the Nicaraguan upper-classes sought to transform Nicaragua from its status as a loosely affiliated constellation of city-states to a Europeanized nation-state. This was to be accomplished through the development and expansion of export markets and thus depended on increases in domestic agricultural inputs (coffee, lumber, and fruit being among Nicaragua's most marketable resources) (Barraclough, 1994, p.16). Pressures from foreign investors, particularly Americans, also increased markedly throughout the 1800's. Foreign interests combined with the ambitions of the outward looking upper-classes entailed monumental changes in the status of landholdings among the characteristically inwardly-oriented, agrarian lower echelons of Nicaraguan society. As Nicaragua proceeded through a conflicted period of independence and then slowly, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, re-formed into a puppet state manipulated by the American government, lands were progressively consolidated into plantations, and traditional communities were transformed into landless labor forces to support the agricultural operations. Among the many difficulties suffered were the deaths of more than 7,000 people in a war that broke out in 1881, when the aristocracy assumed the vast expanses of communally-held Indian lands for lumbering and coffee plantations (Ruis, 1984, p.33). Descendants of those who had been fortunate enough to escape domination under the recipients of Royal Grants were almost universally forced into labor arrangements in support of plantation operations, or squeezed into areas of diminished agricultural value where their agrarian lifestyles and traditional cultures were strained all the more.

The brutal, American-allied Somoza regime, which extended through several generations from 1936 to 1979, continued in the tradition of the American government's and investors' most flagrant abuses of Nicaragua's proclaimed national sovereignty and Enlightenment ideals. By the time the Sandinista Revolution had brought about the Somozas' collapse in 1979, more than 52 percent of Nicaragua's total area was owned by 4 percent of Nicaraguan families, to say nothing of the significant foreign holdings in the country (Oyanguren, 1996, p.1).

The Sandinista Revolutionaries envisioned themselves as the banishers of Yankee imperialism and its deep entrenchment in Nicaraguan society and politics. After prevailing in their long struggle against the Somoza government, they undertook a panoramic restructuring of the country, a crucial element of which was a large-scale redistribution of property. All of the Somocista (Somoza sympathizers) lands, which themselves represented a full half of Nicaragua's arable property, were confiscated and nationalized. Nicaraguan banks were nationalized as well, and a great number of mortgage debts which pre-dated the Sandinista government were excused. Other properties were confiscated simply because the property was desired by a government office, or because the owners had left the country for more than six months (often this was shortened to three months if it was rumored that they had fled to the United States). In total, more than 5,000 urban properties and 5,200 rural properties were affected. In the vast majority of these cases of land redistribution, no new formal titles to property were provided, and no updates were made in the ownership records of the Registry of Properties which had the function of recording property transfers. By the end of the Sandinista government's tenure, many owners of record had not maintained effective possession of their property for more than ten years (Caceres, 1994, p.32).

Although coastal inhabitants had been fortunate enough to remain on the periphery of much of the conflict and upheaval associated with the Sandinista Revolution, the Sandinistas required their participation in the new society they intended to create. The Indian and Black settlements along the coast had for years farmed in communal fashion, though they tended to divide their land parcels and harvests on an individual level. In many senses, they would have seemed to operate in conformance with the Sandinistas socialist agenda of cooperative, communally owned farms where harvests would be shared according to need. However, the Sandinistas insisted on reforming the coastal dwellers' customary system of tenure so that it would more closely resemble the experimental models of cooperative farming which the State was implementing elsewhere. These attempts were met with strong resistance, and in order to accomplish land reforms as they had envisioned, the Sandinistas had to adopt harsh tactics reminiscent of many of the previous regimes to which they had been opposed. Many coastal Indians and Blacks were relocated to settlement villages, their lands were taken over, and their local institutions of buying, selling, and lending were forbidden (Powelson and Stock, 1990,p.344-353).

Since 1990, when the Sandinistas were defeated in national elections and President Violeta Chamorro took office, there have been significant efforts to resolve disputes over properties in Nicaragua and to undertake the updating of land records. In October of 1996, Dr. Arnoldo Alemán was elected as President, and his administration has identified as priorities the resolution of property conflicts and the immediate titling of all properties of legitimate beneficiaries of the Sandinista redistributions and social reforms. Nicaragua is clearly still recovering from the great civil unrest of its recent past. These formidable challenges must surely be met if Nicaragua's sundered social structure is to be reformed into an equitable framework that may protect its citizens from the tyrannical abuses of property interests which have characterized the country's long history.

3. Current Political Structure

When he was elected as President, Dr. Alemán became the head of the executive branch of Nicaragua's government. There are also legislative and judicial branches among which the duties and functions of governing are constitutionally divided. The majority of the responsibilities of recording, administering and maintaining information related to real property are held by the following federal ministries:

INETER, The Nicaraguan Territorial Institute, is a multi-faceted ministry which falls under the umbrella of the Ministry of Construction and Public Works and oversees a wide range of operations related to the national cadastre. Included within INETER is the Division of the Department of Geodesics and Cartography which is responsible for the national geodesic survey and the generation of a cadastral map. Although INETER functions on a national level, the main focus of its activities are now on an urban titling pilot project being undertaken in Managua, the capitol city.

INRA, The Nicaraguan Institute of Agrarian Reform, gathers, distributes and maintains information on rural properties from 16 regional offices. The type of work done by the INRA does overlap in some ways with the work done by INETER. The INRA is currently engaged in a large-scale, long-term rural titling program financed by the World Bank.

OTU, The Office of Urban Titling, is part of the Vice-Ministry of Finance for Property. It files Certificates of Cadastral Surveys for individual land parcels and prepares transfer deeds which are, in turn, filed in the Registry of Property, or Registro (Strasma, 1996, p.6).

OCI, The Office of Quantification of Indemnization, is an agency which was formed to help determine the amount of compensation due to non-Somocista landowners whose properties were confiscated and redistributed during the Sandinista land reforms. Their valuations are usually carried out following positive court rulings about the legitimacy of compensation claims.

4. Current Projects

Presently, INETER is engaged in a urban titling pilot project in the city of Managua. A significant portion of the project is being funded by the Interamerican Development Bank, and the Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin has been commissioned to provide consulting, technical assistance, and training services. Private surveying firms from both Nicaragua and other countries are performing the actual field surveys. As of 1996, the Interamerican Development Bank had committed $450,000 in grants to the project with the goal of titling 45,000 urban plots at an estimated cost of $10.00 per plot (Strasma, 1996, p.5).

In cases where disputes and plot conditions do not prevent or delay the issuance of formal titles, the basic titling procedure is being conducted in the following manner:

* Proceeding from a network of recently established first order control points, INETER personnel define the perimeter of a working area with GPS instruments

* Private surveying contractors gather field data and verify coordinate readings listed on existing cadastral maps. The use of orthophotos and GPS equipment is emphasized in efforts to reduce surveying expenses. All new and existing cadastral and survey data is converted to the same geodetic grid (WGS 84).

* Survey data is used to update cadastral maps depicting individual parcels.

* INETER then issues a Certificado de Linderos, or statement of boundaries (McKenna, 1997, p.3) and a Certificate of Cadastral Survey for each parcel.

* These are filed by the OTU which then issues a deed to transfer the parcel to the present owner.

* The Registry of Property records the deed, and a title is made available to the official parcel owner. The title holder is then "free to build, improve, mortgage, sell, rent or otherwise dispose of the property" (Strasma, 1996, p.6).

There are several recurring situations which have obstructed the smooth and time-efficient delivery of titles in this project. One is that a large number of informal settlements and squatter communities have sprouted up in areas that planners had zoned for public spaces and facilities. The government isreluctant to provide title in such cases, when public interests are clearly at stake. Forced relocations can introduce additional problems of homelessness, unrest, and compensation-related issues.

Another problem has been that the surveyors initially contracted were not sufficiently knowledgeable in the use of GPS technologies to provide survey data of acceptable quality to support INETER's needs. And even when used properly, GPS instruments and aerial photographs were often not proving to be widely useful and efficient because of environmental conditions (overhead structures, obscuring foliage) encountered.

By far the greatest stumbling block for the titling process, however, has been in the realm of dispute resolution. In cases where owners of record have refused to sign "quitclaim" deeds and accept state compensation bonds for confiscated property, the government and the titling process are put in a difficult situation. On one hand, extant Sandinista laws favor the titling of redistributed property to low-income beneficiaries who do not own other houses/parcels and who have continually occupied their present domiciles since October of 1990 (Strasma, 1996, p.2). However, if widespread dissatisfaction with the compensation and re-titling procedures continues to exist, then the security of title and its associated benefits will remain dubious. Furthermore, the current budgetary constraints of the Nicaraguan government practically rule out the possibility of increasing compensation offers.

INRA is presently engaged in a rural titling project with similar goals and procedures but much greater scope than the urban titling program pursued by INETER. INRA's project, which was begun in 1993 under the Chamorro administration, is financed by a long-term loan from the World Bank. The objective for its initial phase is to effectively title more than 700,000 hectares of redistributed lands (Oyanguren, 1996, p.2). One of the principal differences between the rural and urban programs is that titles provided to rural holders have significantly more restrictions on what kinds of activity they permit. Titled beneficiaries of agrarian reforms require INRA permission to dispose of their properties within five years of the title's delivery, except in cases where they choose to "return (their property) to its former owner, to pledge it to a credit-granting entity, or to contribute it to a cooperative" (Strasma, 1996, p.6).

The rural titling program has encountered some challenges of a slightly different nature than those met by INETER. Due to the scale of the project, the volume of parcel and housing data being handled is much greater than in INETER's program. The inefficiency of the Registry of Property, which has traditionally recorded every single record, by hand, in a Registry Book, was highlighted early into the project. It has also been observed that non-standardized forms have contributed to the Registry's deficiencies in handling high volume record processing.

Another major difficulty in rural titling is related to the conflict that arose between the Sandinista government and some of the indigenous Indian and Black communities which were coerced and often forced into adopting different, formalized tenure practices. In many instances, reversions to traditional practices have taken place in these communities since the Sandinistas defeat, and the inhabitants exhibit an unwillingness to adopt new methods for defining ownership interests in property after their past experiences (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 1994, p.4).

5. Judiciary Issues

At present the legal system is clearly the weakest link in the formal titling process and must be significantly bolstered and transformed to accommodate and protect emerging real property interests.

The laws most relevant to both the urban and rural titling programs are Sandinista laws number 85--houses, number 86--lots, and number 88--rural land (Strasma, 1996, p.5). According to the general guidelines established by these laws, occupants of parcels or buildings confiscated by the State qualify as legitimate land reform beneficiaries if they can demonstrate continual residency since October 1990, and if they do not own other property. Occupiers wishing to secure their interests file property claims which are reviewed by a specially established adjudicatory office. If the proper conditions are deemed to be met, the filers then receive what is called a "solvencia," the enabling document for the surveying and deed recording processes.

Claims to confiscated or appropriated lands and buildings can also be filed by people to whom they formerly belonged. In cases where state confiscated properties are in question, successful claimants are entitled to compensation in the form of 15-year State bonds at values determined by the OCI. By signing a "finiquito," or a Quitclaim deed, the claimants cede their interests in the property to the state and become immediately eligible for compensation. If occupants do not qualify for "solvencias," or if the property in question has not been confiscated by the State, the adjudicators will typically find with the claimants and order the evacuation of the present occupiers.

Although some adjudicatory functions are handled by a specially created administrative office, a large number of property claims are referred to the courts, which are notoriously slow to produce rulings and often unable to guarantee their enforcement. The ineffectiveness of the legal system, and the courts particularly, can be attributed to a wide variety of causes. Some of the most prominent problems are that police forces often operate in a relatively independent fashion, instead functioning as "the long arm of the law" and they may or may not enforce evacuation orders and other rulings; activists often prevent the police from executing court orders; judges are poorly compensated for their work; the courts, and indeed, the whole Nicaraguan Judicial branch of government is lacking in financial and political resources (Strasma, 1996, p.4).

A further legal and economic quandary arises in the many instances when owners of record refuse to cede their interests to the State, or when they will not accept compensation at the level or according to the terms offered by the State (for example some may demand on-the-spot cash reimbursement). In 1994 and 1995 the Carter Center spearheaded two major conferences among representatives of several different interest groups. Among the products of these conferences were a number of compromises called the Montelimar Agreements which were codified in Law number 209 including provisions that permit the state to convey freehold titles to "solvencia" recipients even in instances when owners of record have refused to settle with the State (Strasma, 1996, p.3). While these provisions would seem to offer considerable promise in dealings with recalcitrant title holders, they have yet to be deemed constitutional by the Nicaraguan Supreme Court and have not been generally applied.

6. Financial Issues

Although there has been widespread dissatisfaction on the part of dispossessed titleholders with the property assessments provided by the OCI, the Nicaraguan government's financial circumstances restrict the possibility of increasing reimbursement amounts. During the Alemán campaign, figures in the neighborhood of $500 million (US) were offered as the requisite amount to settle unresolved claims. In addition to an estimated $600 million already spent, this would require a total of more than a billion dollars to settle redistribution claims. Considering that the Nicaraguan Government's annual operating budget is less than a billion dollars, and that development agencies and organizations are unwilling to donate money for the compensation of former land and homeowners (Strasma, 1996, pp3-4), this places considerable constraints not only on the State's latitude in settlement offers, but also on their approach to and use of updated record systems. Certainly a good amount of income can justifiably be generated through taxes on properties where ownership rights have been contested or are otherwise unclear. However, many of the poor for whom confiscations and redistributions were ostensibly carried out remain in poverty, and if the Government becomes over-reliant on property tax revenues to finance the completion of its titling programs, it may cancel out their intended social and economic benefits.

Another financial concern that overlaps with the legal system's fragility is the inefficiency of procedures required for the recovery of loan collateral and the uncertainty that exists with regard to liens. In addition to the courts' notorious sluggishness in providing summary rulings, Nicaraguan law is quite unclear on the subjects of lender repossession of pledged collateral and bankruptcy (Lubrano, 1995, p.4).

7. Institutional and Educational Issues

During their governance, the Sandinistas initiated broad national educational and Spanish literacy campaigns which were lauded by many outside observers as a great benefit to the Nicaraguan poorer classes, and as effective means for increasing the level of human capital available to the national economy and development interests. Many of these programs have continued under the ensuing administrations, although they have not, in all cases, been admired as much by native Nicaraguans as they have been by foreign observers. Particularly among Atlantic coast Indian communities, there has been significant resistance to the programs which many feel to be disrespectful of traditional Indian culture and heavily laden with political intent (Powelson and Stock, 1990, pp342-344). Many Indians have expressed little interest in learning Spanish or in joining national agendas. As these educational programs have been instrumental in communicating the processes of and reasons for titling programs, the areas where the educational programs have been spurned are likely to have less well-informed populations with regard to land reform and titling agendas.

In cooperation with World Bank consultants, some officials of the INRA rural titling program have recently begun integral studies of existing land tenure systems among inhabitants of the Atlantic coast. These may help titling program designers and implementors gain an appreciation for the priorities, customs, and user needs of indigenous Nicaraguans so that national inclusionary efforts will be met with more gratitude than reluctance. Adjudication teams supervised by consultants and officials from any of 16 regional INRA offices are also increasingly emphasizing education relative to the updated titling systems as part of their efforts.

Many of the deficiencies encountered in both INRA's and INETER's programs are both educational and technical in nature. In addition to insufficient GPS data recording and processing skills on the part of the first survey crew hired by INETER (they have since received further training), and antiquated recording techniques used by the Registry of Property (now in the process of conversion to microfiche records), there are communication barriers and significant redundancies in records and practices that exist among the various offices of both ministries. For instance, it has been found that many of the Managuan settlements which INETER's surveyors discovered on publicly-zoned territories were comprised of ex-soldiers and rural emigrants who had been promised lands by INRA people as they sought to sort out problems encountered in the countryside. A number of technical innovations have been proposed for and are in various states of implementation in both ministries. It is hoped the necessary reconfiguration and retraining associated with the development of digital LIS/GIS databases will augment cooperation and communication between the many offices within these ministries.

Beyond these relatively minor efforts at educational and institutional improvements, however, Nicaragua's modernizing cadastre and registration system needs the support of more global improvements such as an extensive evaluation of the technical and professional expertise available in Nicaragua to provide policy, to determine and write specifications for contracts, and to provide program management and supervision (McKenna, 1996, p.3). Once these institutional analyses have been performed and needs identified, further efforts to motivate staff, reduce bureaucracy, and create more user friendly administrative systems must be undertaken. These will only be effective within an improved legal and financial system that has undergone a similar process.

8. Conclusions and Future Concerns

In general, the literature consulted in preparation for this report suggests that representatives from both INETER and INRA and their respective consultants from the World Bank and the Land Tenure Center have been thorough and judicious in their approaches to formal titling efforts in Nicaragua. The operations and priorities discussed comport well with what most scholars and practitioners in the international development community currently promote in terms of implementation concerns and "best practices" in land tenure systems modernization programs. Particularly, the growing emphasis on the need to solicit participation from local community activists in both rural and urban titling programs, and the recognition of the primary importance of resolving property and compensation disputes -- and all the legal and political changes that this will entail -- indicate that these efforts are on the right track to establishing a more sustainable, equitable, and user-oriented cadastre and registry than Nicaragua has yet known.

This being the overall case, there are several points worthy of review that pertain to issues of technical and institutional improvements. Reflecting on cadastre and land registry modernization efforts, John McKenna, a Senior Resource Planner for the World Bank, suggests that the development of a "bare bones" or simple cadastre that may later be expanded into a more complete system necessarily "implies the reconstruction of the cadastre at least twice and possibly more times with an end result that costs are extremely elevated and the type of format of information might well not be that which was initially required" (McKenna, 1996, p.1 ). This advocacy of "doing it right the first time" and all the associated costs in terms of training, consulting, and technical investments seems highly questionable in light of the widely held and growing belief among land tenure scholars and practitioners that making do with existing systems and technologies, when possible, and prioritizing modernization efforts is often more realistic in terms of budgetary constraints, and is often more effective than total, immediate overhauls of existing cadastres and land registry systems. The Registry of Property's deficiencies in handling high volumes of records is clearly one instance where technical and institutional updating was absolutely required. But given Nicaragua's financial constraints, do these kinds of changes need to be made across the board, in all places touching upon the cadastral and land registration system? Is it truly more expensive to postpone some technical and institutional improvements? Is it not possible to introduce certain flexibilities in existing offices and functions that prepare for future needs and changes?

Another concern which may be of considerable consequence to Nicaraguan development strategies is the degree to which Nicaraguan laws and procedures governing secured transactions correspond with those in other countries with which Nicaragua maintains important economic links (Lubrano, 1995, p.4). A high level of agreement could encourage the extension of across-border credit and competition among international financial service providers. Although this could pose some difficulties since Nicaraguan banks are presently State-operated, it might also provide many incentives and opportunities for land market development which could benefit both private citizens and State finances. Given Nicaragua's history with foreign investment, international collaboration is surely a prospect to be broached delicately, but one that must probably be broached none-the-less.

Despite Nicaragua's excessive, uncoordinated, and often opaque bureaucracies, the INRA and the INETER, which both maintain a number of regional offices, are fairly de-centralized ministries, and this bodes well for future access concerns, especially if streamlining of intra- and inter-agency functions and data sharing can be affected. If conclusions from ongoing studies of user-needs and Nicaragua's existing tenure systems can be put to practice through these ministries, and supported by steady improvements in the financial, technical, educational, and political resources of the country, then the benefits of formal titling may be realized. However, unless definitive and enforceable resolutions to the present conflicts over property and compensation can be reached, these benefits will remain nothing more than speculation.

9. References

Barr, M., 1985, Comparisons Among Land Records of the European Colonies and Other, Improved Systems Used in Developing Countries, Water and Urban Development Department of the World Bank.

Barraclough, S., 1994, The Legacy of Latin American Land Reform, NACLA Report on the Americas, Nov-Dec 1994 v28 n3.

Burns, E.B., 1991, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua 1798-1858, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Caceres, S., 1994, Rural Latin America: Wrestling with the Global Economy, NACLA Report on the Americas, v28 n3.

Christian, S., 1986, Revolution in the Family, Random House Publishers, New York, New York.

Lubrano, M., 1995, Strengthening the Legal and Institutional Framework for Secured Transactions in Latin America, BCSD Latin America - The World Bank Seminar, Miami, Florida.

McKenna, J.R., 1996, Modernization of Cadastres and Land Registries in Latin America: The Experiences of Paraguay, Brazil and Nicaragua, International Conference on Land Tenure and Administration, Orlando, Florida.

Oyanguren, A.F., 1996, Resumen de la Presentación del Instituto Nicaragüense de Reforma Agraria (INRA), International Conference on Land Tenure and Administration, Orlando, Florida.

Powelson, J.P. and R. Stock, 1990, The Peasant Betrayed, The CATO Institute, Washington, D.C.

Psachoropoulos, G. and H.A. Patrinos, 1994, Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America, Finance & Development, v31 n1.

Rosenthal, G., 1996, On Poverty and Inequality in Latin America, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Summer-Fall v28 n2-3.

Ruis, E., 1984, Nicaragua for Beginners, Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative Ltd., New York, New York.

Strasma, J., 1996, Titling Beneficiaries of Urban Reform in Nicaragua, International Conference on Land Tenure and Administration, Orlando, Florida.

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