Título I. Generalidades

This Code has as its object to develop the constitutional principles concerning the organization, government, administration, and functioning of the municipalities and other local entities determined in this Code and the content of the competences corresponding to the municipalities with regard to the matters regulated by them.

The municipality is the basic unit of the territorial organization of the State and immediate space for citizen participation in public affairs. It is characterized primarily by its permanent relations of neighborhood, multiethnicity, pluriculturality, and multilingualism, organized to realize the common good of all the inhabitants of its district.

In exercise of the autonomy that the Political Constitution of the Republic guarantees to the municipality, it elects its authorities and exercises through them the government and administration of its interests, obtains and disposes of its patrimonial resources, attends to local public services, the territorial ordering of its jurisdiction, its economic strengthening, and the issuance of its ordinances and regulations. For the fulfillment of the purposes inherent to it, it shall coordinate its policies with the general policies of the State and, where applicable, with the special policy of the branch to which it corresponds. No law or legal provision may contravene, diminish, or distort the municipal autonomy established in the Political Constitution of the Republic.

The municipality may be divided into the following forms of territorial organization: municipal seat, village, hamlet, rural settlement, canton, neighborhood, zone, residential subdivision, lot division, urban or agricultural parcel division, microregion, rural estate, the indigenous peoples' own forms of territorial organization and such other forms of territorial organization as are defined locally within the municipality, as established in Article 22 of this Code.

Municipalities and other local entities serve the public interests entrusted to them and act in accordance with the principles of efficacy, efficiency, decentralization, deconcentration and community participation, with observance of the applicable legal order.

The competences of the municipalities are:

a)Own and

b)Attributed by delegation.

Own competences are all those inherent to their autonomy established constitutionally in accordance with their own purposes. Attributed competences are those that the Central Government delegates to the municipalities by means of an agreement and are exercised in the terms of the delegation or transfer respecting the power of self-organization of the services of the municipality, established in this Code.

The municipality, as an autonomous institution of public law, has legal personality and capacity to acquire rights and incur obligations, and in general for the fulfillment of its purposes on the terms legally established, and in accordance with its multiethnic, pluricultural and multilingual characteristics. Its representation is exercised by the organs determined in this Code.

The following basic elements make up the municipality:

a)The population.

b)The territory.

c)The authority exercised in representation of the inhabitants, both by the Municipal Council and by the traditional authorities proper to the communities of its circumscription.

d)The organized community.

e)The economic capacity.

f)The municipal juridical order and the customary law of the place.

g)The patrimony of the municipality.

The Municipal Council is the superior collegiate body for deliberation and decision of municipal affairs, whose members are joint and several and jointly liable for decision-making, and has its seat in the head town of the municipal circumscription. Municipal government corresponds to the Municipal Council, which is responsible for exercising the autonomy of the municipality. It is composed of the mayor, the syndics and the councilors, all directly and popularly elected in each municipality in accordance with the law on the matter. The mayor is in charge of executing and following up on the policies, plans, programs and projects authorized by the Municipal Council.

The municipalities may associate for the defense of their interests and the fulfillment of their general purposes and those guaranteed by the Political Constitution of the Republic, and consequently, enter into accords and agreements for the common development and the institutional strengthening of the municipalities.

Associations formed by municipalities shall have their own legal personality distinct from each constituent municipality, and shall be constituted for the defense of their municipal, departmental, regional or national interests and for the formulation, execution and monitoring of plans, programs, projects or the planning, execution and evaluation in the execution of works or the provision of municipal services.

Associations of Municipalities at the departmental, regional or national level shall be governed by the provisions of this Code and the statutes approved for them, but in any case, the municipalities comprising them shall be represented by the mayor or by whoever acts in his stead.