The
Comunidades of
Goa were a form of land association developed in Goa,
India, where land-ownership was collectively held, but controlled by the male descendants of those who claimed to be the founders of the village, who in turn mostly belonged to upper caste groups. Documented by the
Portuguese as of 1526, it was the predominate form of landholding in Goa prior to 1961. In form it is similar to many other rural agricultural peoples' form of landholding, such as that of pre-Spanish Bolivia and the
Puebloan peoples now in the
Southwestern United States, identified by
Karl Marx as the dualism of rural communities: the existence of collective land ownership together with private production on the land.