4 applicable norms of interpretation and pursuant to article 29(b) of the Convention — which precludes a restrictive interpretation of rights—, it is the opinion of this Court that article 21 of the Convention protects the right to property in a sense which includes, among others, the rights of members of the indigenous communities within the framework of communal property (…)”. This recognition is also part of several American legal systems. 13. When property is mentioned in connection with the rights vested in the members of the indigenous communities or the communities as such over certain lands —to which they furthermore attach traditions, traditions and beliefs, spiritual relations that transcend the mere possession and economic enjoyment— the meaning labeled should not necessarily be confused with the absolute ownership that is characteristic of ordinary civil law. The property rights of the indigenous people are different —and so it must be recognized and protected— from this other form of ownership created by the European law rooted in liberal ideology. Moreover, the forced introduction of the notions of property rights stemming from Roman law and received, albeit with variations, by the nineteenth-century law that took root in America involved an extensive process that plundered and dispersed the communities, the consequences of which can still be seen. 14. The property the indigenous groups had held and enjoyed under their own original Law were occupied pursuant to a second-generation legal system, imposed from overseas on the Indies. Subsequently, the third-generation legal system that flourished under the liberal ideology, dissuaded the indigenous claims even further, blurring them into the past. There would yet come the time of a fourth-generation law, the order deriving from agrarian reform and the recognition of the original peoples, which retrieved legal institutions from the old system and brought them into the present and the future system, simply in furtherance of justice. It was necessary to make up for the lost four hundred years in a very short time —with dubious results. 15. Thus, from the conquest on, the original population of America —who had formerly held sway over their territories and played the leading role in their own history— exited both their history and their rights over them; they roamed their old lands, now turned over to new lords, and fruitlessly claimed on their ancestral titles before new powers. Finally they became exiles, and as such watched the centuries go by, almost offhandedly. The damage caused to the groups and individuals was extremely severe and deep. At the heart of the cases filed before the Inter-American Court lies this phenomenon excluding the old forms of landholding and replacing them with new types of ownership, under the aegis of the Western concept of private property. 16. I am forced not to object to the use of the term ‘property’ to describe the rights of the indigenous peoples rights over the lands they have owned and over those the currently own, provided it be understood that, in the instant case, the property rights are “qualified”, that is to sxay it has unique characteristics, which correspond in some aspects to ordinary ownership, but differ radically from it in others. The idea of putting the indigenous form of ownership —i.e., the indigenous landholding under their particular customary law— on the same footing as that of the civil law also preserved under Article 21 of the Convention may prove extremely disadvantageous to the legitimate interests and lawful rights of the indigenous people. None of this would go on under a rigorous interpretation of the Pact of San