One of the factors determining the way inhabiting develops in a culture is the question of how people understand the concept of family and lineage. The family structure is directly related to the living space, because this is the stage where the daily routine will take place and therefore unmistakeably it will represent these concepts. On the other hand the way that land is occupied, and particularly its distribution, will be directly linked to the idea of lineage.
Before the migration to the cities of the coast and the integration of the Aymara in the country's general social processes, the Aymara family was of an “extended type”
and included parents with their unmarried and married children. The latter ones brought in their respective households.
Currently, the predominant type of family among the Aymara people is of
“nuclear” form, with a father, a mother and unmarried children. However we can still
see that in some cases the family may become extended. That occurs for example when it includes elderly parents who take care of livestock or the agricultural land of the family in their community of origin on the high lands, while sons and daughters live elsewhere, mostly in cities. Also this is the case with a family that is installed temporarily at the home of a brother to start the migration cycle into the city. The family can also be fragmented, for example when one part resides in the rural community dedicated to farming activities and others members are in the cities. This is because there are school age or urban occupations that can contribute to the family finances.
The Aymara people form their families early. They achieve this by having the economic means through anticipated inheritance, gifts, or savings achieved through work.
According to the anthropologist Edmund Leach1, there are two types of marriage. The first type relates only to the desires of two people acting privately. The second is a systematically organized issue that is part of a set of contractual obligations between two social groups. Aymara marriage fulfils the second type.
Aymara traditional marriage (civil and religious) involves a preliminary stage of courtship, engagement and family pre-marital arrangements. It is still common to find a
"bride’s hand request" (“Sartaña”). In other cases, the couple run away to precipitate events and achieve earlier parental approval. This has sometimes been interpreted as a "capture of the bride", but is not so, because there is a mutual agreement. Secular and ritual activities of Aymara marriage revolve around the future harmony of the couple and their families, seeking the approval of the gods, and the allocation of the agricultural lands, livestock or the building and endowment of the home.
Among the Aymara people of the altiplano, where we can find more historic documents, lineages are “patrilineal”, as they establish descent through the paternal
1 Leach, E. (1976), Sistemas políticos de la Alta Birmania: estudio sobre la estructura social kachin, Anagrama. Barcelona.
side. We have to remember that a lineage is a one-lined descent group whose members are all considered descendants of a common known ancestor and can describe the bonds that unite them back to the ancestor (real or fictional) in an unbroken line of descent, citing all intermediate grades. So in the Aymara people’s case we see that the patrilineage consists of a variable number of families that are recognized as descendants of a common ancestor of the paternal line. This means that a line consists of one or more brothers with their unmarried children (both sexes) and married ones (but only males) with their respective families. Over time a patrilineage can be separated into two or more sub-lineages, which become independent patrilineages with a separation of territorial space controlled by each sub-lineage, which includes the grazing land needed for the reproduction of animals and, always, the house where they reside.
Among the Aymara of the altiplano such lineages operate within corporate groups, particularly regarding the grazing land tenure and certain marriage rules, such as the residence of the couple. We talk of a "corporate" lineage when it is provided with an authority structure, when it is an undivided unity confronting others groups, and when it involves a certain number of political, economic or ritual activities that are carried out by all members of the group or on its behalf, representing them.
Patrilineages normally operate as a unit that controls a specific territorial space including the grazing land needed for the reproduction of the livestock and the group of houses where they reside (the ranch). The use and transfer of the grazing land is resolved inside the patrilineage, only among the men, who establish the line of succession back to the original occupant (usually one member of the lineage who entered or participated in the registration of the property at the National Records Office).
A patrilineage also can be considered an exogamous unit, as men seek their female partners in other lineages. This means that women are the ones who are
"circulating". They must move to the residence of the husband, to the ranch and patrilineage lands to which he belongs. Lineage among the Aymara people also demands that a woman must live in the house of her husband’s family. This is until they are able to build a house on the same land, always that of the husband’s family.