The Bolivia Reader: History, Culture, Politics 9780822371618

Citation preview

T H E L AT I N A M ER IC A R E A DER S Series edited by Robin Kirk and Orin Starn, founded by Valerie Millholland

THE ARGENTINA READER Edited by Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo

THE BOLIVIA READER Edited by Sinclair Thomson, Rossana Barragán, Xavier Albó, Seemin Qayum, and Mark Goodale

THE BRAZIL READER Edited by Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti

THE CHILE READER Edited by Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Thomas Miller Klubock, Nara Milanich, and Peter Winn

THE COLOMBIA READER Edited by Ann Farnsworth-­A lvear, Marco Palacios, and Ana María Gómez López

THE COSTA RICA READER Edited by Steven Palmer and Iván Molina

THE CUBA READER Edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff

THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC READER Edited by Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, and Raymundo González

THE ECUADOR READER Edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler

THE GUATEMALA READER Edited by Greg Grandin, Deborah T. Levenson, and Elizabeth Oglesby

THE LIMA READER Edited by Carlos Aguirre and Charles F. Walker

THE MEXICO READER Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson

THE PARAGUAY READER Edited by Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson

THE PERU READER, 2ND EDITION Edited by Orin Starn, Iván Degregori, and Robin Kirk

THE RIO DE JANEIRO READER Edited by Daryle Williams, Amy Chazkel, and Paulo Knauss

T H E WOR L D R E A DER S Series edited by Robin Kirk and Orin Starn, founded by Valerie Millholland

THE ALASKA NATIVE READER Edited by Maria Shaa Tláa Williams

THE BANGLADESH READER Edited by Meghna Guhathakurta and Willem van Schendel

THE CZECH READER Edited by Jan Bažant, Nina Bažantová, and Frances Starn

THE GHANA READER Edited by Kwasi Konadu and Clifford Campbell

THE INDONESIA READER Edited by Tineke Hellwig and Eric Tagliacozzo

THE RUSSIA READER Edited by Adele Barker and Bruce Grant

THE SOUTH AFRICA READER Edited by Clifton Crais and Thomas V. McClendon

THE SRI LANKA READER Edited by John Clifford Holt

The Bolivia Reader

This page intentionally left blank

THE BOLI V I A R EA DER H istory , C ulture , P olitics Sinclair Thomson, Rossana Barragán, Xavier Albó, Seemin Qayum, and Mark Goodale, editors

Duke U niversity P ress   Durham and London  2018

© 2018 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-­f ree paper ∞ Typeset in Monotype Dante by BW&A Books, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-­i n-­P ublication Data Names: Thomson, Sinclair, editor. | Barragán R., Rossana (Barragán Romano), editor. | Albó, Xavier, [date] editor. | Qayum, Seemin, editor. | Goodale, Mark, editor. Title: The Bolivia reader : history, culture, politics / Sinclair Thomson, Rossana Barragán, Xavier Albó, Seemin Qayum, and Mark Goodale, eds. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018. | Series: The Latin America readers | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018008253 (print) lccn 2018009532 (ebook) isbn 9780822371618 (ebook) isbn 9780822371359 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9780822371526 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh : Bolivia—History. | Bolivia—Civilization. | Bolivia—Politics and government. Classification: lcc f 3321 (ebook) | lcc f 3321 .b 674 2018 (print) | ddc 984—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008253 Cover art: Locals on motorbike riding past mural, Tarata, Cochabamba Department, Bolivia. The mural was commissioned by the Comité Pro-Tarata, a group in Virginia. Photo © 2016 James Brunker, Magical Andes Photography. 

This page intentionally left blank

This page intentionally left blank

produced with a grant from Figure Foundation publication of the global nation

This page intentionally left blank

To the memory of Olivia Harris, Ruth Volgger, and Martha Cajías To Isaiah, Dara, and Romana A la vida

This page intentionally left blank

We need to walk in the present with the past before our eyes and the future behind our back. [Qhip nayr uñtasis sarnaqapxañani.] [Hay que caminar por el presente mirando el pasado por delante (con los ojos, nayra) y con el futuro atrás (a la espalda, qhipa).] —​­​­­Aymara saying popularized by Andean Oral History Workshop (thoa); translated by Sinclair Thomson The project of the future is made from pieces of the past. [El proyecto del porvenir está hecho con los pedazos del pasado.] —​­René Zavaleta Mercado, “Reflexiones sobre abril,” El Diario, 11 April 1971, reproduced in René Zavaleta Mercado, Obra completa I, edited by Mauricio Souza Crespo; translated by Sinclair Thomson

Contents

Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1

I  First Peoples and the Making of Andean and Amazonian Space 13 Myth of Inka Origin at Lake Titicaca, Bernabé Cobo 17 The Myth of Tunupa, Oral Tradition 20 Guaraní Creation Myth, Oral Tradition 22  Verticality and Complementarity, John V. Murra 27 Peopling the Empire, Pedro Cieza de León 34 Workers in the Fields of the Inka, Mitimaes of Cochabamba 38 Settlement and Landscape Transformation in the Amazonian Lowlands, Francisco Javier Eder 41

II  States and Conquests in the Andes  45 Conquest by the Inka, Pedro Cieza de León 49 “Our Natives Were Well Governed,” Mallkus of the Qaraqara-­Charka Federations  52 The Myth of the Chullpas and the Emergence of the Sun, Oral Tradition 55 A Spanish Vision of the Conquest, Anonymous Author from Cuzco 57 An Uru Vision of the Conquest, Daniel Moricio 65 A Guaraní Vision of the Conquest, Oral Tradition 69

III  The Rich Mountain  71 Tales of Potosí, Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela 77 Imperial Panoply in the Baroque City, Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela 88 The Good Wife, Juan José Segovia 90 Cacique Nobility and Heraldry, King Felipe IV of Spain 96 Trade with Potosí, A Trader’s Diary 101 Mining and the Mita, Pedro Vicente Cañete y Domínguez 105 New Worlds, Jesuit Worlds  109 Echoes of the Missions, José Lorenzo Justiniano Noe Noco 113

xiv  Contents

IV  From Indian Insurgency to Creole Independence  115 Death to Bad Government, Anonymous Pasquinades 119 The Siege of La Paz, Sebastián de Segurola 122 An Unbearable Yoke, Tupaj Katari and Sebastián de Segurola 127 The Specter of Justice, César Brie and Teatro de los Andes 130 The Creole Cry of Freedom, Anonymous 133 Debate over Spanish Sovereignty, Anonymous 135 Guerrilla Patriots, José Santos Vargas 141 Frontier Confrontations, Argentine Military Official 146 Farewell, Juan Wallparimachi Mayta 149 Inventing Bolivia, Simón Bolívar 152

V  Market Circuits and Enclave Extraction  161 A Conspiracy of Commerce, The Villager 165 The Argument for Free Trade, La Época  170 The Silver Patriarch, José Avelino Aramayo 175 Transforming the Property Regime, Two Lawyers from La Paz 181 Disentailment and Its Discontents, Government of Bolivia 184 Integration of the Lowlands, Geographic Society of Santa Cruz 188 Dreams of the Railroad, Ignacio Calderón 193 Integration of the South, Lieutenant Colonel Angel Rodríguez  195 The Tin Baron, Augusto Céspedes 200

VI  The Nation and Political Fragmentation  207 The Peru-­Bolivian Confederation, Bolivian and Peruvian Authorities  211 In the Forests of the Yuracaré, Alcide d’Orbigny 214 “Are You Not Equal?,” Manuel Isidoro Belzu 220 Cosmopolitan Taste, Juana Manuela Gorriti 222 War and Peace on the Frontier, Treaty between the Settlers of Salinas and the Toba Indians 225 A Tenuous Alliance, El Noticioso  228 Egalitarian Revolution, Andrés Ibáñez 232 The War of the Pacific, Andrés Lizardo Taborga 234 The God Man, Juan Ayemoti Guasu 239 An Aymara Command, Pablo Zárate Willka and Manuel Willka 243 Social Darwinism in the Courtroom, Bautista Saavedra 245 “The Slow and Gradual Disappearance of the Indigenous Race,” Government of Bolivia 251

Contents  xv

VII  The Nationalization of Natural Resources  257 The Problem of the East, Rafael Chávez Ortiz 261 A Woman’s Realm, Various Authors 268 Everyday Life on the Hacienda, Marta Colque and the Andean Oral History Workshop 272 Landlord Counteroffensive, Eduardo del Granado 274 “Land to Those Who Work It,” Government of Bolivia 278 The Catavi Massacre, Víctor Paz Estenssoro 287 Mines as Cemeteries, Sergio Almaraz Paz 294 Mine Madness, René Poppe 298 The March to the East, Wálter Guevara Arze 302 A Beggar on a Chair of Gold, United Nations Mission of Technical Assistance 311 The Condemnation of Coca, United Nations Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf  315 The Blood of the Nation, General Alfredo Ovando Candia 318

VIII  Revolutionary Currents  323 The Laws of the Land, Santos Marka Tola and the Caciques-­Apoderados  327 Resurrection of the Race, Franz Tamayo 331 A Voice for Women, Adela Zamudio 337 A Woman’s Work, Federation of Women Workers 339 The Business of War, Tristán Marof 346 The Ayllu-­School, Elizardo Pérez 351 Front Lines, Oscar Cerruto 357 Leaving for the Front, Alberto Ruiz Lavadenz 363 The Death of Servitude, Francisco Chipana Ramos 365 Trotsky on the Altiplano, Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers 371 Nation vs. Anti-­nation, Carlos Montenegro 376 The Sudden Upheaval, British Ambassador John Garnett Lomax 383 The People versus the Rosca, Juan Lechín 387 “They Fought without Holding Back,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara 389 History Redeemed  390 Requiem for a Revolution, Sergio Almaraz Paz 392 Iconoclast and Prophet, Fausto Reinaga 399

IX  Dictatorship and Democracy  407 Cold War Strongman, General René Barrientos Ortuño 411 A Continental Vanguard, Inti Peredo Leigue 416 The Call to Armed Struggle, Anonymous 423 xvi  Contents

An Aymara in the Ranks, Eusebio Tapia Aruni 425 Under a Waning Moon, Ernesto “Che” Guevara 429 The Gospel of a Guerrilla, Néstor Paz Zamora 434 The Military-­Peasant Pact, General Hugo Banzer Suárez 437 In the Name of Katari, Aymara and Quechua Peasant Organizations 439 Urban Underworld, Jaime Saenz 447 We Need to Be Organized Too, Domitila Barrios de Chungara 452 A Strike of the Conscience, Father Luis Espinal 460 The Dictatorship on Trial, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz 468 All Saints Massacre, Blanca Wiethüchter 477 Narco-­Dictatorship, René Bascopé Aspiazu 480 Labor and the Return to Democracy, Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers 486 The Crisis as Method, René Zavaleta Mercado 490 Horizons of Memory, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui 494 Travails of the Migrant, Luis Rico 499

X  Neoliberalism and Lowland Ascendancy 503 “Bitter Medicine,” Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada 507 In the Name of the Nation, Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers 514 Farewell to Llallagua, Yolanda Santiesteban 517 The Workers Disperse, Women Miners from Siglo XX Mine 520 Pushing Privatization, World Bank 526 Privatization Bolivian-­Style, Wall Street Journal  529 Make Your Dream a Reality, Cochabamba Travel Agency 534 A Leaf in the Wind, Eduardo Mitre 536 “For Sale” Signs  538

XI  Competing Projects for the Future 541 Song for the Flowers, Elvira Espejo Ayca 547 Indian Theology, Aymara Catechists 552 The Long March, Alex Contreras Baspineiro 555 In the Time of the Pachakuti, Felipe Quispe Huanca 563 Radical Regionalism, Camba Nation 575 Fiesta Power  581 Flaws in the System, Abraham Bojórquez 584 A Day of One’s Own, Manuel Monroy Chazarreta 587 The Cultural Life of Coca, Alison Spedding 589 The Coca Commodity Circuit, Noah Friedman-­Rudovsky 592

Contents  xvii

The Coca War, Testimony of Chapare Peasants 597 Even the Rain, Oscar Olivera 603 Water Is Not for Sale, Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life 608 Like a Bird, Etelvina Ramos Mamani 613 The Gas War, Neighborhood Council of Villa Santiago II, El Alto 615

XII Pachakuti? 623 Brother and Comrade, Evo Morales Ayma 627 Deepening Divisions  633 Foot Soldiers of Camba Nationalism, Youth Union for Santa Cruz 636 Reclaiming the Capital, Félix Llanquipacha 639 A New Social Contract, Bolivian Constitution of 2009 642 Living Well, David Choquehuanca 646 Rights of Nature, Legislative Assembly of the Plurinational State of Bolivia 650 Standoff in the Beni, Communications Committee of the Eighth Indigenous March 653 “Creative Tensions,” Alvaro García Linera 662 The Wages of Development, Marco Octavio Ribera Arismendi 667 A Final Offering, Xavier Albó 673   Suggestions for Further Reading  679 Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources  687 Index 699

Acknowledgments

This book has been long in the making. Perhaps the slow motion was unavoidable for such a broad survey of Bolivian history, territory, economy, politics, and culture, spanning from the mythic dawn of time into the early twenty-­fi rst century. In any case, it would not have come into being without the generosity and responsiveness of many Bolivian and Bolivianist colleagues, and it reflects collective knowledge and debate that has accumulated over decades. Though it would be impossible to enumerate all the direct contributions as well as the subtle influences from our colleagues, the volume definitely represents the harvest of a collective labor. We are grateful to the writers, scholars, journalists, artists, photographers, activists, archivists, and publishers, or their family members who have kindly provided material. We would like to acknowledge those who went out of their way to lend a hand or who had sustaining roles in the project. The following list reflects only a sliver of the larger set of friends and compañeros de ruta with whom we shared the delights and travails of the work as it unfolded over so many years. From the volume’s inception, Brooke Larson, James Dunkerley, and Laura Gotkowitz have been important interlocutors. For all manner of help—​bright ideas and inspiration, tips and leads, shared resources, constancy and follow-­ through, over and above the call of duty—​­we are grateful to Emily Achtenberg, Vicky Aillón Soria, César Brie, Magdalena Cajías, Martha Cajías, Pamela Calla, Jenny Cárdenas Villanueva, Verónica Cereceda, Alex Contreras, Ben Dangl, Enzo de Luca, Clark Erickson, Ada Ferrer, Noah Friedman-­Rudovsky, Leonardo García-­Pabón, Luis Gómez, Greg Grandin, Jenny Gruenberger, Forrest Hylton, Tom Kruse, María Lagos, Jill Lane, Zulema Lehm, Panchi Maldonado, Pablo Mamani, Pedro Mariobo, Javier Medina, Ximena Medinaceli, Carlos Mesa, Ramiro Molina Rivero, Ricardo Montero, Juan Carlos Orihuela, Lola Paredes, Michela Pentimalli, Tristan Platt, Hernán Pruden, Pedro Querejazu, José Antonio Quiroga, María Soledad Quiroga, Fernando Ríos, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Hugo Rodas Morales, Martín Sivak, Carmen Solíz Rada, Carlos Soria Galvarro, Mauricio Souza, Hugo José Suárez, Luis Tapia, Miguel Urioste, Barbara Weinstein, Fabián Yaksic, and Gabriela Zamorano. Our thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for Duke University Press for their encouragement and helpful suggestions.

xix

Alison Spedding played a central part in the project as she provided the great majority of the translations. We also want to acknowledge that she contributed to many of the notes in the book, as well as suggesting sources on coca and other themes. We are also grateful to Jean Friedman-­Rudovsky, Adriana Salcedo, and Rachel Nolan for their translations, and to David Klassen for his assistance with transcriptions. We thank Bill Nelson for his production of the map. It was a delight to work with Ana María Lema in the final stages, as we tracked down contacts and sought to obtain permissions in Bolivia; her resourcefulness and astounding network of connections around the country were of great benefit. We want to thank Duke University Press, the University of Lausanne, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Humanities Institute at New York University for their support in financing the translations and other editorial assistance. At Duke University Press, we are grateful to interns Farren Yero, Jesús Hidalgo Campos, Matt Broaddus, Camila Moreiras, Eleanor Mullens, and art editor Christine Riggio for their sustained efforts. We were fortunate to have editor Valerie Millholland’s support and energy in getting the project off the ground in the beginning. We are deeply grateful to editor Miriam Angress for her kindness and guidance, her patience and prodding, her oversight and minute scrutiny of a complex project over the long haul, and to Christi Stanforth for her careful attention in the final stage.

xx  Acknowledgments

Introduction

The land we call “Bolivia” today has long elicited contrasting visions of history, territory, society, and the future. Despite the steady rhythms of everyday life, public affairs frequently reveal oscillating moods and clashing perspectives, notes of fatalism and triumphalism, even apocalyptic and utopian expectations. In the 2010s, the Bolivian government stirred sharp national debate by announcing plans to build a highway in the Amazonian lowlands of Cochabamba and the Beni. The highway would slice through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (tipnis) and, in the view of many indigenous communities as well as environmental scientists and conservationists, the project would bring grave harm to local livelihoods and damage rich but fragile ecosystems. Local indigenous leaders warned: “To open this highway presents a threat to the peoples inhabiting the tipnis, because of the loss of natural resources and all the biodiversity that supports the culture and life of the Moxeños, Yuracarés, and Chimanes, who have lived in our territory since before the creation of the country.” 1 Still, the government’s promises of development and modernization appealed to peasant coca growers on the agricultural frontier, lumber and ranching elites in the lowlands, hydrocarbon firms with an eye on subsoil resources, as well as South American development planners seeking easier transport from the Amazon to the Pacific Ocean. President Evo Morales Ayma—​­Bolivia’s first head of state to claim indigenous ancestry—​­objected to protests against the project, arguing that infrastructural development will lift indigenous communities out of poverty. President Morales exclaimed: “I don’t understand how the brothers and sisters can oppose the integration of Bolivia.” 2 Polarized views are most strikingly on display during Bolivia’s recurrent periods of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary struggle. In October 2003, a dramatic indigenous and popular insurrection in Bolivia toppled the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. A wealthy mineowner and leader of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) who was applauded by the U.S. government and international financial institutions for his neoliberal policies, Sánchez de Lozada warned in a bitter op-­ed piece published in the Washington Post after his downfall: “Bolivia could become the Afghanistan of the Andes, a failed state that exports drugs and disorder.” Two years later, Evo Morales drew international attention when he was elected president by 1

an overwhelming majority of the population. In December 2005, Morales declared, “Beginning tomorrow, beginning next year, the new Bolivian history gets underway.” 3 At his inaugural address in January 2006, he expanded on what he meant, looking back to Spanish conquest and subsequent centuries of colonialism: “From 500 years of resistance, to the take-­over of power for 500 years . . . , [with] Indians, workers, all sectors bringing an end to injustice, bringing an end to inequality.” 4 In a prior revolutionary moment, when the reactionary president Ma­ merto Urriolagoitia turned power over to a military junta in 1951 in order to prevent his opponents from governing after they won the national election, he claimed it was to “save Bolivia from the danger of falling under the yoke of Nazi-­fascism now in league with communism to break the democratic tradition.” 5 When Urriolagoitia’s opponents, the mnr, seized power through a popular insurrection the following year, the trade-­union leader Juan Lechín saw the moment as a redemption of past indigenous glory: “Today the people have taken command of their own destiny, and have given America a lesson for all time demonstrating that the unconquerable spirit of the heroic race that six centuries ago extended its civilization to the furthest reaches of the eastern lowlands lives on in the ranges of the altiplano.” 6 A generation earlier, writing on the eve of the disastrous Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–35), the Bolivian writer Franz Tamayo expressed his own ambivalent sense of Bolivia as both an abject society and a heroic one. He captured this duality in his reference to “our paradoxical and stupendous state today: an undeniably great territory and great race, and yet also an unending history of misery, impotence, and despair.” 7 More than rhetorical excess, such expressions suggest an underlying “struc­ture of feeling,” in the phrase of the British cultural critic Raymond Williams, that is marked by tension and polarity. The clashing views arise out of deep class, ethnic, and geographical divisions, as well as recurrent periods of crisis and transformation in the country. One of the foremost aims of The Bolivia Reader is to help understand these tensions of outlook, experience, and expression, as well as their sources. In international perspective, Bolivia has usually been overshadowed by its South American neighbors Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. (Its other neighbor, Paraguay, remains no less obscure.) But for those foreigners who have trained an eye on the country, or actually visited it, Bolivia incites strong responses. In the early seventeenth century, Spain’s great silver mines at Potosí were the envy of all Europe. Don Quixote put them on a par with the treasures of Venice, though the riches of both, he averred, were insufficient to requite the noble services of Sancho Panza. In the mid-­t wentieth century, the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas admired the vista of the highland capital of La Paz, a broad basin of earthen tones opening up before the imposing Mt. Illimani (over 21,000 ft., or 6,438 m), as “perhaps the most beautiful 2  Introduction

and impressive spectacle that modern American man can offer in the New World.” 8 On the other hand, foreigners have dismissed Bolivia as a quintessentially backwards place. According to one account, apocryphal yet widely repeated, when Queen Victoria learned of an insult to her diplomat in La Paz, she pronounced, “Bolivia doesn’t exist,” using a chalk x to cross out the country on a map.9 Bolivia is also frequently imagined as a remote badlands or backlands, a place where outlaws and revolutionaries go to meet their deaths. In the popular Hollywood film, the eponymous characters Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid announce, “Wherever the hell Bolivia is, that’s where we’re off to.” Even more iconic is Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s martyrdom at the hands of the cia-­assisted Bolivian Army after his visionary yet failed guerrilla campaign of 1967. The photograph of his bullet-­r iddled body lying on display in Vallegrande, a small colonial-­era Bolivian town, became a virtually sacred image of one of Latin America’s most influential revolutionaries. There has long been a perverse fascination with the exotic Bolivia. Guidebooks invite the world’s adventure travelers to gaze at Bolivia’s poverty, geographical oddities, and cultural otherness. A visit to the cooperative mines at Potosí is described as a descent into Hell. The high plateau in southwestern Bolivia is “unearthly” and “a blinding white expanse of the greatest nothing imaginable.” Although “rumor has it that a road more terrifying . . . exists somewhere in Zanskar or Bhutan,” the route from La Paz to the Yungas is labeled the most dangerous in the world.10 The Bolivian Amazon is “the lost world” (an association that began with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel of that name). These superficial depictions may tell us more about the preoccupations of foreign observers than anything else, but they have served both to draw people to Bolivia and to keep them away. Bolivians themselves have also expressed acute ambivalence about their country. Beginning in the colonial period, authorities and elites cast the Amazonian lowlands as a static and remote periphery, as well as the great hope for future prosperity and development. Where many travelers and writers have found the Andean highlands a melancholy landscape inhabited by sullen natives, others perceived in it a telluric power of nature that infused vitality into the ancestral population. The student of Aymara civilization Antonio Villamil de Rada even surmised that the splendid highland valley of Sorata must have been the actual location of biblical Eden. After the civil war of 1899, the sociologist Alcides Arguedas diagnosed Bolivia as a pueblo enfermo (sick society), while liberal intellectuals anticipated an imminent capitalist modernity and Indian leaders conceived of the possibilities of national “regeneration.” Where Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada imagined a failed state, Evo Morales announced Bolivia was leading the way toward a “new era” for Latin America’s peoples. Other indigenous intellectuals envisioned a momentous pachakuti, an upheaval and transformation of Andean time-­space, in the first years of the twenty-­fi rst century. Introduction  3

The country appears to some Bolivians as a fragmented jumble of ethnic and regional pieces that fail to fit together as a national ensemble. The Bolivian political theorist René Zavaleta Mercado described the society as a set of heterogeneous and ultimately incoherent elements which he termed lo abigarrado, meaning a clashing combination of colors or disorderly pile of things. But Andean cultural metaphors can point the way to a more positive reading of Bolivia’s internal differences. Ancient Andeans, for example, learned to harness a wide array of resources from the different ecological zones of a challenging geography, so as to sustain large populations and sophisticated civilizations. In indigenous textile aesthetics, differing elements are patterned and woven together into an aesthetically appealing fabric. In the traditional ritual combat known as the tinku, both the conflicting and complementary aspects of the indigenous life-­world are brought together in a moment of spectacular cultural performance. Just as the point at which two tributaries join to form a river is also called a “tinku,” here two halves of a community, or ayllu, come together on the field of battle to shed fertilizing blood and express their essential interconnection. Through such ecological, aesthetic, and ritual metaphors, it is possible to reimagine indigenous and nonindigenous forces or highland and lowland spaces as coexisting in complementary and productive tension. In the context of Latin America, Bolivia stands out for its large indigenous population, its regional fragmentation, its economic underdevelopment, and the weakness of the state. In these respects, Bolivia is either singular or a prime example of phenomena found elsewhere in the region. Each of these issues is subject to misrepresentation or cliché. The foremost stereotypes reduce Bolivia to a land of primitive (or pristine) Indian tradition unchanged since the time of the conquest; a land of inhospitable mountain climes; a land of economic backwardness and malfeasance; a land of political instability. This book seeks to dispel such clouds of stereotype while illuminating these issues more fully. From before the arrival of Spaniards in the 1530s down to our own time, the southern Andean highlands have been one of the most densely populated indigenous regions anywhere in the Americas. Republican elites saw this as a brake on modernization, and anticipated the decline of the indigenous population with national development and integration. The 1900 census confidently asserted, It is necessary to state that for a long time a noteworthy phenomenon has been underway in Bolivia: the slow and gradual disappearance of the indigenous race. . . . In little time, following the progressive laws of statistics, the indigenous race will be if not completely erased from the scene of life, at least reduced to a minimal expression. The reader will appreciate that this may be to the good, considering that if there

4  Introduction

has been a retarding cause in our civilization, it is due to the indigenous race, essentially refractory to any innovation or to any progress, given that it has refused and refused tenaciously to accept any customs that have not been transmitted by tradition from its remote ancestors.11 Over the course of the twentieth century, a range of conditions seemed to fulfill the prophecy: the stigma attached to being “Indian,” the rise of class-­based political movements with their emphasis on a new “peasant” (campesino) identity, state efforts to promote homogeneous citizenship, urbanization, the deepening of market relations. Yet a hundred years after the 1900 census, social scientists were astounded to find that 62 percent of the population identified itself as Aymara, Quechua, Guaraní, or from another indigenous group. This proportion made Bolivia—​­ahead of Guatemala and Peru—​­the most indigenous country in the Americas.12 The racial prophecy had not come to pass. Despite the myth that Indians are resistant to innovation—​­“invincible misoneists” in the words of the Bolivian ethnologist and eventual president of the republic Bautista Saavedra (1921–25)—​­indigenous peoples have been adapting to historical change over centuries. In so doing, they have continually transformed themselves, their communities, and the rest of society. Indigenous peoples in the region have seen empires—​­Tiwanaku, Inka, Spanish—​­come and go, and learned to negotiate state pacts that guaranteed substantial autonomy for local communities and ethnic federations. They learned to absorb the new religious impositions of their conquerors—​­the solar cult of Cuzco as well as Christianity—​­in order to accommodate multiple and powerful sacred forces. Indigenous peoples have seen market systems arise—​­first in land and other fixed commodities, then in labor—​­and learned to engage in them so as to sustain themselves. After independence from Spain in 1825, an elite minority of creoles, people born in Bolivia but of mainly European ancestry, controlled the levers of political, economic, and cultural power, while the indigenous majority remained in its subordinate position. Elites rationalized this order with new scientistic theories that reconstituted colonial racial assumptions about Indian inferiority. In the first part of the twentieth century, some creole and mestizo (mixed-­race) artists, writers, and social scientists generated a movement known as indigenismo, which adopted a more sympathetic outlook toward Indians—​­whom they saw as the downtrodden descendants of once great civilizations—​­and sought to integrate them within the nation. By midcentury, nationalists also voiced the optimistic view that Bolivia’s indigenous and European inheritances had joined together to overcome past antagonisms and create a common mestizo cultural identity. As in neighboring Peru and Mexico, these currents of indigenismo and mestizo nationalism were generally paternalistic and homogenizing projects to usher the nation into the modern world. Introduction  5

During the heyday of class-­based politics in the mid-­to late twentieth century, indigenous and peasant communities usually mobilized as rural auxiliaries within the national trade-­union movement. In that period, mineworkers stood at the vanguard of the Bolivian Workers Central (cob), one of the most powerful trade-­unions in Latin America. In the late twentieth century, indigenous intellectuals and political leaders developed new indianista and katarista movements—​­the latter named after the colonial-­era indigenous rebel Tupaj Katari—​­that criticized what they saw as profound structures of internal colonialism in Bolivian society and called for new forms of political representation. At the start of the twenty-­fi rst century, ethnic politics assumed a central role in the national arena. Indigenous forces based in the countryside but also in the city took the initiative in powerful popular and nationalist movements such as that which overthrew Sánchez de Lozada of the mnr and brought Morales of the Movement to Socialism (mas) to power. Regional fragmentation is a critical feature of other countries as well; however, Bolivia’s exceptional topography and regionalist political antagonism do make it stand out in the Latin American context. Bolivia is not only an Andean country, as it is often portrayed. But as in other Andean countries, the spinal column of Bolivian territory is its spectacular cordillera ranges and a high plateau—​­or altiplano—​­that since the earliest phases of human settlement has been the main seat of political power in the area. This is the setting for the contemporary departments of La Paz, Oruro, and much of Potosí. Offsetting this highland Andean space, the vast lowland Amazon basin has been the site of limited colonization in the departments of Beni and Pando. Santa Cruz too was long a frontier area, yet it has seen impressive population and economic growth since the mid-­t wentieth century. Mediating between highlands and lowlands is a zone of fertile and ecologically diverse intermontane valleys, known by the Aymara and Quechua loanword yungas. Cochabamba has been a breadbasket for the highlands since the time of Inka colonization in the fifteenth century, as well as a nexus for interregional circulation. The temperate valleys of Potosí and Chuquisaca have also always been closely bound up with the Andean axis. Tarija spans out from similar valley terrain into the southeastern plains of the Chaco, bordering on Paraguay, and to the Andean district of northern Argentina. Bolivia’s coastal swath on the Pacific was annexed by Chile during the War of the Pacific (1879–82), making it and Paraguay the only landlocked countries in Latin America today. The highly uneven mountain and valley terrain along with the large swaths of scantily settled lowland territory have posed great obstacles to national and economic integration until the present. These conditions have also shaped the increasingly sharp regionalist identities and political tensions in the twentieth and early twenty-­fi rst centuries. If the ethnic or racial split between Indians and q’aras (an Aymara term commonly applied to non-­Indians) has led some observers to speak of “two Boliv6  Introduction

Altiplano Andean ranges Valleys and yungas Eastern lowlands Political capital Judicial capital

BR A Z I L

Cobija

N

NDO P A ND

EN I B ENI B R AZIL

PE R U

Trinidad LA PAZ

Lake Titicaca

El Alto

La Paz COCHABAMBA Cochabamba

SAN TA CR UZ Santa Cruz

Oruro ORURO Sucre Potosí POTOSÍ PACIFIC OCEAN

CH IL E

CHUQUISACA PAR AGUAY

T A R I JA Tarija 0 0

100 100

200

200 mi 300 km

A R G EN T I N A

Map of Bolivia.

ias,” this phrase has also been used to describe the regionalist divide between highlanders and lowlanders. In this quasi-­racial folk classification, Collas (taken from the Inka term for people living in Qollasuyu, the southern Andean quadrant of Inka state territory) and Cambas (originally a term for lowland Indians and mestizo peasants that was recast to refer to all people born in the Santa Cruz region) are seen as distinct peoples. As Santa Cruz came to rival La Paz, its residents voiced increasing criticism of state centralization, and regional elites even threatened secession. After the recent discovery of major reserves of natural gas in the area, the departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, and Pando formed a bloc known as the Media Luna (because of the area’s crescent-­moon shape on the map), which pushed successfully for greater decentralization of power and regional autonomy. During the first decade of the twenty-­fi rst century, fierce regionalist battles over economic resources and development policy raised the prospect of civil war. Introduction  7

In the twentieth century, Bolivia ranked among the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, its discouraging economic indicators for income, standard of living, health, and education rivaling those of Haiti. Despite the familiar image of poverty, the bitter irony is that Bolivia has always possessed abundant reserves of natural resources highly valued in international markets. The Rich Mountain at Potosí was once the Spanish Crown’s greatest treasure, and at the height of the silver fever, the city burgeoned into one of the most populous and thriving in the world. During World War II, Bolivian tin provided 49 percent of world supply, and the mining magnate Simon Patiño was reputed to be one of the world’s wealthiest men. With the collapse of the tin market in the 1980s, Potosí no longer exported anything other than its own impoverished mining and agricultural laborers, who migrated to the cities and lowlands of Bolivia or abroad in search of low-­wage jobs. Potosí ended up the poorest region in the poorest country on the continent. This riches-­to-­rags story is a prime example of what dependency theorists saw as the “development of underdevelopment,” an effect of the colonial and neocolonial integration of peripheral regions into expanding global markets since the sixteenth century. In Open Veins of Latin America (1971), Eduardo Galeano wrote, “Condemned to nostalgia, tortured by poverty and cold, Potosí remains an open wound in the colonial system in America: a still audible ‘J’accuse.’ ” 13 After 1952, when the first social revolution in postwar Latin America brought the mnr to power, Bolivia experimented with state capitalism to maintain sovereign control over natural resources and foment national economic development. This period brought a reduction in social inequality and, even at the height of corrupt military rule, significant state revenues, yet no structural solution to poverty. In 1985, at a time of rampant inflation and plunging prices for tin, the mnr reversed course dramatically. Bolivia was one of the first countries in which a civilian government applied an orthodox model of shock treatment, and thereafter sought to end state management and open the country to direct foreign investment through economic restructuring. After the initial success with monetary stabilization, this internationally touted neoliberal experiment failed to deliver on promises of economic reactivation and employment. With inequality and disenchantment growing, the “Water War” in Cochabamba in 2000, a revolt against the privatization of the local water supply, and the “Gas War” centered in El Alto in 2003, an uprising against multinational control of the country’s natural gas reserves, opened a new phase in Bolivian history. These insurgent movements after 2000 put Bolivia at the forefront of popular efforts around Latin America to move away from the reigning neoliberal economic model. After 2003, there were more positive economic signs. The growth rate ticked upward, due especially to high international commodity prices, while poverty and inequality rates declined, thanks to redistributive policies under 8  Introduction

the mas government. Nonetheless, some observers questioned the sustainability of this progress, given that the country had gone through numerous boom-­and-­bust cycles historically and remained dependent on global commodity markets. Analysts and civil society groups also drew attention to the social and environmental costs of the extractive industry driving the boom and to entrenched levels of poverty and income disparities that could only be overcome through structural change, including shifts in the model of economic accumulation, environmental and fiscal policy, and the property regime. Perhaps no foreign stereotype is harder to shake than the idea of Bolivia’s chronic political instability. Converting all changes of government, whether constitutional or not, into “coups,” the cia World Factbook erroneously asserted, “Bolivia, named after independence fighter Simón Bolívar, broke away from Spanish rule in 1825; much of its subsequent history has consisted of a series of nearly 200 coups and countercoups.” 14 Yet state institutions have been weak arguably since the colonial period and certainly throughout the republican era. Mariano Melgarejo (1864–71) symbolizes the long line of caudillos bárbaros (barbarous strongmen) and de facto authoritarian rulers since the nineteenth century. According to legend, the capricious tyrant Melga­ rejo even named his horse a general and then obliged the foreign diplomatic corps to pay honors to the newly inducted military authority. Nonetheless, the state has at times enjoyed widespread legitimacy, most notably in the revolutionary period after 1952. The cliché thus affords a measure of truth, although it provides no way to understand the durability of certain pacts between social forces and the state or its stewards, the lasting achievements of the revolution of 1952, or those of the nearly forty years of post-­authoritarian civilian government. A common historical pattern in the Southern Cone countries has been the rise of consolidated “populist” and social-­democratic governments in the mid-­t wentieth century, followed by authoritarian regimes in the latter part of the century, followed by democratization processes and civilian governments enjoying substantial popular legitimacy by the 1990s. In contrast, in the northern Andes, there were more commonly oligarchic liberal or conservative governments that blocked populist and social-­democratic reform projects through the mid-­t wentieth century, and did not subsequently experience dictatorship, yet which devolved into states with scant popular legitimacy facing serious crisis by the late 1990s. Bolivia is anomalous in that it features both patterns. Like the Southern Cone countries, it experienced a process of national-­popular reform (culminating in the 1952 revolution), only to be followed by recurrent authoritarian regimes (from the 1960s to early 1980s) and a return to democracy thereafter. Still, midcentury reform processes were only partially successful, and military rule involved a limited scale of violence, while democratization in the 1980s and 1990s remained relatively forIntroduction  9

mal. Like Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela to the north, the state has enjoyed only superficial legitimacy and ultimately remained vulnerable to social unrest. Bolivia’s major political transformation from the neoliberal government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to the left-­leaning nationalist government of Evo Morales in the twenty-­fi rst century again exposed the weakness of the state. Yet it also revealed how new efforts to negotiate a political community with broad-­based legitimacy drew on a potent collective memory of earlier national-­popular moments. While the mas government faced opposition from its inception in 2006, it nonetheless had unexpected durability. In September 2015, Morales broke the record for the longest continuous term in office of any Bolivian leader. The Bolivia Reader introduces the country to those who are unfamiliar with its history and geography, its politics and culture. At the same time, it seeks to demystify, to challenge stereotypes, to afford a deeper insight into the country’s singularity and complexity. For those who wish to extend their knowledge, it indicates paths for further exploration. The purpose is to understand the land called “Bolivia” more on its own terms, with the sharp internal differences that entails. The aim is to hear Bolivian voices, expressed in diverse, sometimes clashing idioms. The Reader takes a historical approach, tracing major processes from Andean antiquity through Inka and Spanish conquest, nearly three centuries of colonial rule, nearly two hundred years of the Bolivian republic, up until our own charged historical present. The book is also organized thematically, with its different parts focusing either on issues of territory and economy or on politics and culture. Parts I and II—​­on early societies and conquests—​­look at these issues prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Parts III and IV—​­on the fortunes and misfortunes of Spanish colonialism—​­examine these issues from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth. Parts V and VI—​­on the trials of sovereignty—​­cover the issues approximately from 1825 to 1920. Parts VII, VIII, and IX—​­on nationalism and revolution—​­cover the period from 1920 to 1985. Parts X, XI, and XII—​­on new visions and new divisions—​­ranges from 1985 up to our own time. The volume privileges primary sources, which give readers the opportunity to engage directly with materials produced in the historical period in question. The sources selected include classic works essential for any basic familiarity with Bolivia, as well as unfamiliar items that provide fresh perspectives. Almost all are here available in translation for the first time. The sources employed include myth, popular song, poetry, fiction, theater, photography and visual art, maps, chronicles and travelers’ accounts, journalism, testimony and memoir, legal, administrative, and diplomatic documents, political discourse, historiography, ethnography, theology, and social theory.

10  Introduction

Indigenous intellectuals in the Andean Oral History Workshop cite the Aymara phrase “Qhip nayr uñtasis sarnaqapxañani” [We need to walk in the present with the past before our eyes and the future behind our back], alluding to the past as a key point of reference as we move into an unknown future.15 Similarly, the Bolivian political theorist René Zavaleta Mercado once remarked, “The project of the future is made from pieces of the past.” He stressed the importance of learning lessons from the revolution of 1952 to see what was to be done in his own time, two decades later. We might imagine those pieces of the past in different ways—​­say, as the missing parts to an unfinished puzzle or the building blocks for an entirely new construction. Yet Zavaleta seems to have had in mind a more jagged image. He referred to the revolution of 1952 as a “mirror of fire,” and hence his pieces (pedazos) would be closer to the shards of a shattered mirror.16 There are numerous examples in The Bolivia Reader of historical actors drawing on their notions of the past to frame their actions and future aims. The primary sources in this volume are themselves pieces from the past that we may take up for our own purposes, as fragments in whose reflection we can see ourselves and envision the future behind our backs. Notes 1. Resolución del XXIX Encuentro Extraordinario de Corregidores del Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure Autónomo de los Pueblos Indígenas Moxeño, Yuracaré y Chimán, Comunidad de San Miguelito, 18 May 2010. 2. Mattia Cabitza, “Una carretera aleja a Evo Morales de los indígenas del Tipnis,” bbc Mundo, Bolivia, 18 August 2011, http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2011/08/110818_ bolivia_tipnis_carretera_cch.shtml. 3. Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, “The Best Choice for Bolivia,” Washington Post, 13 November 2003. For Morales’s comments after winning the election, see “Anti-­US Leftist Clinches Bolivia Election,” Reuters, 18 December 2005. 4. For his 2006 address, see Evo Morales Ayma, Discurso inaugural del Presidente Evo Morales Ayma (22 de enero de 2006: Palacio Legislativo) Texto bilingue: Aymara—​­Castellano (La Paz: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Cultos, 2006). 5. For Urriolagoitia’s statement, see “Junta Rule Called Temporary,” New York Times, 17 May 1951, 15. 6. For Lechín’s speech, see El Diario, 9 April 1952, special edition. 7. Cited in Carlos Montenegro, Nacionalismo y coloniaje, su expresión histórica en la prensa de Bolivia (La Paz: Ediciones Autonomía, 1943), 241. 8. José María Arguedas, “La ciudad de La Paz” (1951), in José María Arguedas, Señores e indios: Acerca de la cultura quechua, ed. with a prologue by Angel Rama (Lima: Calicanto, 1976), 59. 9. Eduardo Galeano, “The Country That Wants to Exist,” Progressive, 30 November 2003. First published in Página/12 (Buenos Aires), 19 October 2003. 10. Deanna Swaney, Bolivia: A Lonely Planet Survival Kit, 3rd ed. (Hawthorn, Australia: Lonely Planet Press, 1996), 193, 267, 272, 348.

Introduction  11

11. Oficina Nacional de Inmigración, Estadística y Propaganda Geográfica, Censo general de la población de la República de Bolivia según el empadronamiento de 1 de Septiembre de 1900, vol. 2 (Cochabamba: Editorial Canelas sa , 1973), 36. 12. New demographic data since 2012 are up for interpretation, as the introduction to part XI notes. 13. Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971; repr. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 31. 14. See “The World Factbook,” Central Intelligence Agency website, last updated 17 July 2017, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-­world-­factbook/geos/bl.html. 15. Aymara saying popularized by Andean Oral History Workshop (thoa ). 16. René Zavaleta Mercado, “Reflexiones sobre abril,” El Diario, 11 April 1971.

12  Introduction

I First Peoples and the Making of Andean and Amazonian Space

The seventeenth-­century chronicler Father Bernabé Cobo summed up the myths of origin among Andean peoples from Quito in the north to Qollasuyu in the south: “Each nation claims for itself the honor of having been the first people and says that everyone else came from them.” He noted, “Using their imagination, each nation told their story in a different way.” He added that each saw humanity originating in its own territory: “Each nation wished to place creation somewhere within its own lands.” 1 Such myths thus encapsulated not only native peoples’ notion of their beginnings, but their vision of the space they had inhabited since the dawn of remembered time. In many origin stories, both in the Andes and the Amazon, the lineage founders and culture heroes were the first to demonstrate their peoples’ collective knowledge and technology. Thus, the mythical Guaraní twins from the southeastern lowlands displayed the hunting and warfare skills so valued by their descendants. These primordial ancestors were also seen to have shaped the features of highland and lowland landscapes. Hence, as the transgendered figure of Tunupa journeyed down the aquatic axis of the southern Andes, he drifted across Lake Titicaca, opened up the Desaguadero River, and later her breast milk filled the white expanse of the Uyuni salt lake. For scholars, the origins of human settlement in the Andean region date back at least 11,000 years. As the glacial period came to an end, people moved into the high-­mountain regions and began to domesticate crops and camelids and to convert the challenging environmental conditions of the Andes into the staging ground for flourishing societies. The environmental variations within a relatively limited geographical transect could be dramatic: from the altiplano (or high plateau, at an average elevation over 12,000 feet above sea level), the eastern cordillera (with peaks reaching to 21,000 feet) dropped steeply down into the subtropical Yungas valleys to the east and then into the lush foothills that spilled into the Amazon basin, while the equally imposing western cordillera slid into the coastal desert along the Pacific. Key among the Andean adaptations to the extreme topographical and 13

climatic conditions was the “vertical integration” of dispersed settlements that obtained access to diverse resources at different elevations. As the ethno­ historian John V. Murra and the Bolivian scholar Ramiro Condarco Morales independently showed, native polities accumulated impressive surpluses of wealth and redistributed them efficiently among large populations using Andean strategies for discontinuous territorial control, complementary production zones, and nonmarket forms of exchange up and down the vertical architecture of the cordillera. The first great civilization in the southern Andean territory that is today Bolivia was Tiwanaku, which grew from a small polity just south of Lake Titicaca more than 1,500 years ago into a metropolis and ceremonial center sustaining a population of perhaps 125,000 residents and a greater hinterland of a quarter million people. Farmers used raised-­field (sukakollo) agriculture, ingeniously suited to the altiplano’s extreme temperature fluctuations, for crop yields far superior to those obtained by peasant agriculturalists today.2 Tiwanaku’s vast political, religious, and trading system reached from the lake district down into the valleys of Cochabamba and the tropical lowlands to the east, and to the desert valleys and oases along the Pacific coast to the west, in what is today Chile and Peru. After Tiwanaku declined sometime around 1100 of the current era, there proliferated a multiplicity of ethnic federations or chieftainships that sparred over territory and called on the support of the lightning gods of war, metals, and prosperity. From among them, the Inka people based in Cuzco arose to establish a vast new polity spanning from what is today southern Colombia in the north down to northern Argentina and central Chile in the south, making it the largest territorial state in the world at the time. Like other regional ethnic federations in the southern Andes, the Inka claimed descent from the earlier civilizational matrix at Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca. In the imperial version of their origin myth, the Inka asserted that their ancestors had first emerged in the lake district before subsequently migrating north to Cuzco. The Inka state—​­k nown as the Land of the Four Quarters, or Tawantinsuyu —​­expanded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the domain it named Qollasuyu, the southern quadrant of Tawantinsuyu, which included contemporary Bolivian territory. The Inka drew on older Andean strategies for relocating populations and modifying landscapes for production, and southern Andean space and economy were profoundly transformed by their massive colonization efforts. The colonists (known as mitimaes to the Spanish) came from different regions in Tawantinsuyu and fulfilled different functions: military, administrative, agricultural, and artisanal.3 Under the Inka Wayna Qhapaq, for example, state management turned the fertile valleys of Cochabamba into the granary of Qollasuyu. Scholars estimate that early human settlement in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands likewise goes back more than 11,000 years. There followed successive 14  First Peoples

waves of migration by mobile peoples that occupied the territory from the humid tropical savanna feeding into the Mamoré River basin, a tributary of the Amazon, down to the dry plains and scrub forests of the Chaco region, in the Pilcomayo River basin, a tributary of the Paraguay River in the south. For example, the Guaraní, a warrior culture from one of the three principal language families in South America, followed river routes as they sought out new territory, sometimes expressed in their mythic search for the “land of no evil.” When they reached the Chaco, they fused with the already established Chané people, the southernmost extension of the diaspora of Arawak-­ speakers who had migrated across the Amazon basin from the Caribbean. They subsequently received the name of Chiriguanos, though today they prefer to be known simply as Guaraní. As the origin myths express in their own imaginative terms, the ancestors did in fact fashion the human geography of the tropics. In the late twentieth century, geographers and archaeologists have significantly recast our understanding of lowland indigenous societies prior to the conquest. Though these societies were long viewed as simple nomadic groups, new research demonstrates that resourceful human domestication of diverse Amazonian environments gave rise to larger and more prosperous populations—​­as in Mojos, or in the Baure territory and along the Guaporé River described by the Jesuit Francisco Javier Eder in the eighteenth century—​­with complex political organization and impressive scientific and technological achievements, especially in the taming of the wetlands. From these and other developments in the region emerged legends about cities of splendor and wealth deep in the Amazonian interior—​­El Dorado or Paitití—​­that fired the imagination of Spanish conquistadors. Yet the effects of European invasion and disease contributed to the collapse of the large and complex societies that had inhabited the Amazonian lowlands and that left the impressive remains recently rediscovered by contemporary scientists. Notes 1. Father Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, ed. and trans. Roland Hamilton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 11, 12, 18. 2. For example, canals between the elevated platforms of topsoil captured the intense energy of the highland sunlight to heat the water surrounding the raised fields, thereby forming a warm and humid microclimate that protected the crops from damage when temperatures dropped in the chilly evenings. 3. The Quechua term was mitmaqkuna.

First Peoples 15

This page intentionally left blank

Myth of Inka Origin at Lake Titicaca Bernabé Cobo

In the Andean highlands, there were as many different origin myths as there were native peoples. Each ethnic group sought to establish its importance through such stories, by claiming to be the first people to appear in the world. Many accounts told of primordial ancestors emerging from local points in the landscape, such as caves and springs. Yet Lake Titicaca and the area around Tiwanaku acquired an exceptional prestige for people not only in the Collao region but more broadly in the southern Andes.1 Given the power and civilizational achievement of Tiwanaku society, many peoples considered the lake to be the “navel of the world” and a site of tremendous spiritual and political power. The Inka themselves sought to lay claim to the symbolic prestige of the lake region. As they grew from being simply one more local ethnic federation into an expansive imperial force in the southern Andes, they likewise revised their myth of origin: a modest tale of having emerged from a cave in the Cuzco area became one in which their ancestors first appeared through divine intervention on an island on Lake Titicaca and thereafter migrated to Cuzco. Bernabé Cobo (1582–1657) was a Jesuit chronicler and natural historian who drew on earlier Spanish accounts and his own research to write a monumental treatment of the New World. He first served at a mission in the lakeside town of Juli and traveled throughout the Charcas district, then later held university positions in Peru and Mexico. While his rendering of Andean society and religion prior to the conquest was not sympathetic, he assumed that the similarities between Andean beliefs and his own—​­such as those concerning the Creator God, the flood, and the original human couple—​­showed that Indians had a crude intuition of what he took to be Christian truth. The whole basis of any religion and divine worship hinges on a knowledge of the first cause, whether it be the true cause or some false or imaginary one, from which men believe that they originated and on which they depend for their preservation, and it also hinges on an understanding of the final state that awaits them after this life. . . . All of the Indian nations of this Kingdom of Peru agreed that man’s beginning was followed by a Universal Flood in which everyone perished except a very few who were saved by the Creator’s 17

divine providence in order for them to repopulate the world. On this point they are very confused because they do not distinguish the creation of the world from its restoration after the Flood had passed. Some place Creation before the Flood, but the majority confuse Creation with the Flood and the restoration that came afterward. Thus they trace man’s beginning to those who were saved from the waters of the Flood. With regard to who those people may have been and where they escaped from that great inundation, they tell a thousand absurd stories. Each nation claims for itself the honor of having been the first people and says that everyone else came from them. . . . Without mentioning the Flood, some say that there was a Creator of the Universe who created the sky and the earth with the diverse nations of men that inhabit it. They say that after having put all the things he created in order and making sure that each one had its own proper place, he went from Tiaguanaco up to heaven.2 Others deny that this happened at Tiaguanaco, and they say that the Creator stationed himself in a high place and from there he made man and the other living creatures. However, there are as many opinions about where this place may be as there are provinces and nations in this kingdom. In fact each nation wished to place creation somewhere within its own lands. The inhabitants of Collao are divided into two opposing views. Some hold that creation happened in Tiaguanaco; others place it on the Island of Titicaca, which is located on the great Lake Chucuito [Titicaca]. Actually, both places fall within the Diocese of Chuquiabo.3 . . . The other fables that they have on this subject place the origin of man at about the time of the Flood. On the subject of the Flood these Indians had ample information. However, the only explanation that they give for the Flood is that it was caused by the will of Viracocha.4 In addition, they were convinced that since the world was brought to an end by water at that time, it would certainly come to an end again due to one of these three causes: hunger, pestilence, or fire. With respect to the Flood, there are considerable discrepancies about the exact place where the waters first receded and man began to populate and about who restored the human race. But since they are so much in the dark and deluded on this matter, lacking any other basis than the one they give for other matters pertaining to their religion, each one makes up whatever happens to suit his fancy. Some hold that when the waters started to recede, the first land that appeared was the Island of Titicaca. They state that the Sun hid there while the Flood lasted and that as the Flood got over, the Sun was seen there before it was seen anyplace else. Other nations indicate that these things happened in other places, and each one imagines all sorts of foolishness. Almost all of them agree that all the people and all things created perished in the Flood because the water covered the highest peaks in the world. Therefore, nothing remained alive except one man and one woman who got into a drum that floated on the water without sinking. As the water decreased, the drum came down at Tiaguanaco. 18  Bernabé Cobo

Others say that after the Flood, in which everyone perished, in Tiaguanaco the Creator used clay to form all the nations that there are in this land; he painted each one with the clothing to be used by that nation, and he also gave each nation the language they were to speak, the songs they were to sing, as well as the foods, seeds, and vegetables with which they were to sustain themselves. This done, the Creator ordered them to go down beneath the earth, each nation by itself, so that they could emerge from there at the places where he ordered them to do so. Some of them were to come out of caves, others out of hills, springs, lakes, tree trunks, and others from still other different places. Thus, each province started to worship their place [of origin] as a major guaca because their lineage had originated there.5 In addition, they held their earliest ancestors to be gods, and they put images of them in the places mentioned above. Thus, each nation dressed in the clothing that they painted on their guaca. In addition, they say that after having begot their offspring, those same men in the same places as before changed into a variety of things, some into falcons, condors, and other birds and animals. For this reason, each nation’s guacas and idols were shaped like different objects, birds, or animals. Other nations believed that in the waters of the Flood everyone perished, except for some people who were able to escape by going into caves, up trees, or on top of hills. Only a few escaped, and they repopulated the world. Since they were saved in those places, each place was designated a shrine. Moreover, they put idols of stone, silver, and other metals there to commemorate those who escaped, and each idol was given the name of the one whom they boasted about being their ancestor. They adored these idols like their parents and protectors, and each nation offered sacrifices to them of the things they used. Notes 1. The Collao district extends from the northern part of the lake down into what is today the region of La Paz. 2. Tiaguanaco is an older spelling of Tiwanaku. 3. Chuquiabo is the native term for La Paz, also sometimes called Chuquiago. 4. Viracocha was a creator deity worshiped by the Inka and other Andean peoples. 5. Guaca, also spelled huaca or wak’a, refers to a sacred object, place, shrine, or embodied spirit in the Andean landscape.

Myth of Inka Origin at Lake Titicaca  19

The Myth of Tunupa Oral Tradition

Tunupa is among the oldest gods of the people of the southern Andean and Qollasuyu region and is associated with the creative and destructive forces of fire and volcanoes, thunder and lightning. In the classic version of Tunupa’s story, an elderly male figure travels from the north to the south of Lake Titicaca. He is imprisoned, then cast away on a raft on the lake. As his raft drifts, it opens up the Desaguadero River, on which it then floats farther south, giving distinct features to the Andean landscape. The version recounted here, based on Ramiro Molina Rivero’s contemporary ethnographic research among indigenous people on the southern altiplano, reverses Tunupa’s gender and generational identity. In the southern reaches of the Desaguadero River, Tunupa becomes a beautiful young woman, associated with the Uyuni salt lake, who is caught up in fraught relations with the masculine sacred forces of the surrounding volcanoes. After fleeing from her abusive marriage with a jealous old mallku (native lord) incarnated in the Asanaques mountain, she travels with her children, along the way shaping the Andean landscape of the region and defining the historical territory of the Quillacas, Asanaques, Aullagas, Uruquillas, and Sevaruyos-­Aracapis federations. Her activities represent Andean women’s daily domestic routines, which involve food storage, preparing and cooking quinoa, and feeding and caring for children.1 The surrounding mountains, imagined as fierce young warriors and powerful chiefs, attempt to conquer Tunupa for themselves, but they fail. Today, the mythic heroine Tunupa has taken the shape of a graceful volcano overlooking the Uyuni salt flat. It is said that one day Asanaques married Tunupa, and they had several children. Asanaques was an old man with a white beard and was the head mallku of the region. Tunupa was a beautiful young woman who wore twelve brightly colored polleras and twelve petticoats.2 Old Asanaques was very jealous of the beautiful Tunupa, and he caused the young woman great suffering. And so one day, after much suffering, she decided to flee to the coast. At the time, Tunupa and Asanaques had a fight, and Asanaques began to hit her. Tunupa cried for help, and her sister Chullasi, who lived on the other side of the lake near Orinoca, came to her defense. In order to defend her sister Tunupa, Chullasi flung a stone with a 20

slingshot at Asanaques’s head, wounding the mallku forever. It is for this reason that the mallku is found to be leaning toward where the sun rises, and the stone that wounded him, called Pacukahuna, can still be found in the pampas near the road. Tunupa took advantage of Asanaques’s injury to leave him, leaving behind her children Wilacollo, Huatascollo, Huari, and Sevaruyo (Fat Mountain). In her journey to the coast, Tunupa peed in the pampas of Aguas Calientes, where today one can still find thermal bath springs. Then, flying through the pampas on a condor, Tunupa decided to rest and made a bonfire to cook, thus forming the mountains of Santa Bárbara and San Juan Mallku, where the current town of Quillacas would later be founded. Heading west the next day, after crossing the Márquez River, she left behind one of her sandals, now known as the small hill Sato. She decided to rest on the other side of the river, making her temporary residence in the locality of the mountain Pedro Santos Willka, at whose feet the town of Pampa Aullagas is located. Heading south near Tambillo, Tunupa excavated the earth to construct a bowl to hull the quinoa for the rest of her journey. Continuing southward, in a town called Jayu Cota, she dug up the earth again, this time to leave her milk for her youngest son, who was following her. This place is now a salt flat of reddish color. Farther on, she left behind a child with chicken pox, calling him Salvino, the name of a mountain that has many holes in it. She continued her journey until arriving at the Uyuni salt lake, where she lost sight of Asanaques. In this region, she met two handsome young men—​­Cora Cora and Achacollo [Big Mountain]—​­whom she befriended and who convinced her to stay in the area. The two young men soon fell in love with Tunupa. Her beauty also attracted the attention of well-­k nown and powerful mallkus such as Tata Sabaya and Aconcagua. Some say that Sabaya sent his army to conquer and steal Tunupa but failed in his attempt. Meanwhile, the two young men had begun fighting each other for Tunupa, and a war broke out. With a large catapult, Cora Cora wounded Achacollo’s heart, causing great bleeding. For this reason, today that mountain appears completely dry. But Achacollo also struck a blow to Cora Cora, wounding him in the bladder and opening many holes. This mountain today has several streams coming from its interior. Thus, both of them died for Tunupa’s love, and from that point on, Tunupa stayed in the region.

Translated by Jean Friedman-­Rudovsky Notes 1. Quinoa (Chenopodium spp.) is a high-­protein crop, native to the Andes. 2. Polleras are full, pleated long skirts worn by indigenous women.

The Myth of Tunupa  21

Guaraní Creation Myth Oral Tradition

The cyclical creator myth of the Two Twins is, along with various others, common among diverse Guaraní groups. The Guaranís’ religion is based much more on words than on rituals, so much so that some of the first missionaries came to consider them “atheists.” The myth of the Two Twins was discovered only at the beginning of the twentieth century and, since then, it has been recorded in many parts of Tupi Gua­ raní territory, ranging from the Atlantic coast to the Bolivian cordillera. This version was compiled by Víctor René Villavicencio Matienzo in 1989. The twins are seen as the mythic heroes who gave a distinctive Guaraní identity to the natural world as well as to the social and cultural order. Wandering far and wide, they mastered the hunting techniques needed to survive and developed the Guaraní warrior ethos. Their relationship with the dangerous and powerful tiger family is both intimate and charged with conflict. They come to know death through the loss of their mother, and sustain an ongoing search to encounter their lost father.

I Our elders told us these things: It was said before that a woman named Inámbu lived in an old ranch. She was very beautiful. Her mother and father were proud of her because she was so beautiful. Every day at sunset her mother washed and combed her beautiful hair in a pauro [spring] that flowed behind their house. One day her parents thought it was time for their daughter to marry, and they prepared a feast. All the young pretenders were invited to the party. All kinds of birds and animals were invited to the party. Among the animals were Tatú Tumpa [armadillo god], Aguara Tumpa [fox god], Ñandú Tumpa [rhea god], Ururuti [great bird], and others as well.1 That afternoon, because it was getting dark, Inámbu put on a beautiful tipoi [dress]. Her hair was worn in a braid. Then her parents instructed the girl to serve the kangui [fermented corn beer or chicha] so that the youth could better appreciate her beauty. The party improved as night fell. At the end, some became drunk. The oka [open-­ air gathering space] was full of joy. It had become a party, what we call arête

22

[annual corn-­harvest feast, when all drink chicha and dance in a circle].2 It was said that people from all over always went to the arête. But Inámbu did not like the party very much and went inside the house again. Then her parents told her that she could not do that, because one must not bore the guests. In that way, they managed to convince Inámbu to return to the oka, and she sat there looking around. All the youths were secretly aware of Inámbu. In one corner of the oka were Tatú Tumpa and Aguara Tumpa. The two wanted to know and befriend Inámbu. Tatú Tumpa told Aguara Tumpa that he would be with Inámbu and could woo her. Aguara Tumpa refused to believe him. Finally, the two made a bet. Tatú Tumpa burrowed a hole in the ground until he reached where Inámbu was sitting. Tatú Tumpa got along well with her. Then Tatú Tumpa came back through the same hole to where Aguara Tumpa was. Aguara Tumpa wanted to do what his companion had done. Aguara Tumpa tried to enter the hole, but because it was a small hole, he got stuck. In the end, Tatú Tumpa had to pull him out by his tail. After the party, they say, Tatú Tumpa started to visit Inámbu in the evening. Inámbu used to go to the pauro behind her house at that time, and that is where Tatú Tumpa visited her. And she would remain for some time behind the house. Inámbu’s mother became suspicious and spoke to her daughter. She said, “With whom are you behind the house in the evening?” Inámbu replied, “Mother, I’m with nobody.” The mother did not trust her daughter. Then she said to her daughter, “Surely you are meeting with some man.” The girl denied that she was with any man. One afternoon, while Inámbu’s mother bathed her daughter, she looked at the girl’s nipples and saw that they were black. Then the mother asked her daughter, “With whom are you going out in the afternoons?” She replied, “With nobody.” Again, the mother said, “You are lying to me. You are with a man.” At that very moment, the girl’s stomach began to grow. Then the mother was scared and became angry with the girl. When her father found out, he felt sad and told his daughter about all his efforts to provide her with everything she had. Inámbu became the shame of her family. Her parents accused her of making them look bad in front of their community, and said that they would be subject to the comments of their neighbors. In the end, they hit Inámbu and threw her out of the house. And they said, “Now go and find the father of those children.”

II The woman came out crying from her home where she had lived until then. She came out and began to walk through the mountains alone with no one to

Guaraní Creation Myth  23

help her. While she was walking, her children spoke to her from her womb. They said to her, “Why are you crying, mother? What happened to you?” Upon hearing them, she became happy. So the children showed her from the womb the way to reach their father, Tatú Tumpa. These children already knew everything by then. As the mother walked, the children played and sang. When their mother passed a place where there were flowers, they told her to pick some and put them on her chest. They passed through many places with flowers, so the children were ceaselessly asking for more flowers, until their mother was tired and said, “I do not know where to put one more flower. Why do you ask me for flowers? Can you not see I’m tired of carrying flowers?” From that moment, the children, who were twins, did not speak again to their mother. The mother wanted to talk to her children, but they were silent and did not speak again. The poor, tired woman lost hope and said that it was useless to live. So the mother began to wander through the woods until she found the trail of the tiger. She came upon an old tigress who told Inámbu that those who walked on that path were only seeking death. Those going down that road had no hope because they died there. The old tigress invited her to her house to eat something. In the old tigress’s house, the tigress gave the mother something to eat and told her to leave soon because at any moment her own children, the tigers, would arrive. For now, it would be better to hide the woman because it was time for the tigers to arrive. Then the tigress hid the woman in the loft of the house to keep her safe.

III When the tigers arrived, they did not bring anything to eat. They were hungry. One of them lay on the floor and suddenly a drop of the woman’s breast milk fell on him. He wondered where the drop came from. The old tigress said it was nothing. But her son insisted and looked into the loft and found the woman. All the tigers said, “We’re going to eat her.” Thus, they killed the woman together. The old tigress grabbed the belly and began to eat and found two twins. Her children told her to eat them, but she replied that she would eat them later. Instead, the old tigress hid the twins in a pitcher. Thus, the old tigress raised the twins. The twins grew up fast. And one day the twins asked the tigress to make them bows. The tigress made some bows with songo arrows, especially to kill birds. But the tigress warned the twins that they could only go to the West and never to the East. Thus, the twins went to wander in the mountains. They took their arrows, and just by pointing them to the trunk of a tree, they caused all the birds in it to die. They soon brought many doves for the tigress to eat. 24  Oral Tradition

When her children arrived, they saw that there was plenty of food and asked their mother how she had obtained so much food. The old tigress replied that she had prepared some traps and that she had hunted with them. And this happened many times, until finally the children asked their mother about the origin of the dead birds.

IV She decided to tell them the truth, asking them not to be angry. Then she presented the twins to them and told the tigers, “These are your little brothers.” The tigers were stunned to learn that the twins were the ones who hunted so much and so well. The tigers accepted the twins and told their mother, “How beautiful our brothers are. They can teach us how to hunt.” The twins agreed to teach the tigers how to hunt. Soon they were going to hunt to the West. The twins could catch everything that was on a trunk that had been hit by one of their arrows. By contrast, no matter how hard they tried to kill a bird, the tigers could not. Thus, the months passed and the twins and the tigers were killing many birds.

V One day the twins, who were growing up, wondered: “Why does the old tigress not want us to go to the East?” And after talking it over, they went to the East, where they found a tree full of birds. Everything was beautiful. They took their arrows and pointed them at the tree. Almost all the birds fell, except the talkative parrot, the ayuro that stayed and started talking to the twins. The ayuro told them the whole story about their mother and how the tigers had killed their mother and, even worse, how the woman’s children, the twins, had helped the tigers to ruin the mountain. They had killed the birds without regret. Thus, the ayuro could not understand what evil the birds had done to the twins that would cause them to kill so many. After the twins received the arakuaa [advice, wisdom] from that bird, they planned to kill the tigers. When they went back home, the children were sad, and the old tigress and her sons noticed that something had happened to the twins. However, the twins took the tigers to a place where there was a river and started to cross. One of the twins had built a raft to cross the river. And the tigers that were following them entered the river thinking that it was shallow. While the twins crossed the river on the raft, the tigers tried to cross by swimming, but the current was strong and took them to the deepest part where almost all the tigers drowned.

Guaraní Creation Myth  25

VI One of the tigers that had two heads noticed that the twins wanted to kill the tigers and escaped. The twins started to follow the tiger. In that area lived a woman with a large skirt. She was seated, and the tiger came and hid under her skirt. After that the twins arrived and asked the woman if she had seen a tiger with two heads. The woman said she had not seen any tiger. The twins went on. When they were a little bit farther, they heard the cries of a woman asking for help because the tiger was eating her. The twins returned quickly and found the woman seated. They asked her what had happened, and she said nothing happened, there was no tiger. This happened three times. In the end, the twins said that if she screamed for help, they would not return and did not care if the tiger ate her. And they left. They say this woman is the moon. When the tiger eats the moon, an eclipse happens. It is said that the twins are still walking around the world searching for the tiger, to kill him, and looking for their father. It is said that the twins have reached as far as the sky in their search.

Translated by Adriana Salcedo Notes 1. Guaraní spirituality encompasses the natural world. Tumpas are tutelary spirits that represent and protect the essence of wildlife species. 2. Arête is now associated with Carnival.

26  Oral Tradition

Verticality and Complementarity John V. Murra

The Andean mountains were long considered colossal physical barriers, their altitude and rugged landscape being seen as serious obstacles to human development. Nevertheless, Andean civilizations creatively converted these apparently adverse topographical and climatic conditions into advantages that ultimately permitted the development of large populations and prosperous local and regional economies. A fundamental contribution of Andean studies has been to analyze and explain both political and environmental-­management systems in a region marked by geographical and ecological extremes. Key strategies deployed by Andean civilizations and peoples were the occupation and use of different altitudinal ecological zones and varying microclimates. Two scholars independently developed a conceptual framework to understand these Andean systems: Ramiro Condarco Morales, from Bolivia, and John V. Murra, who was born in the Ukraine but taught in the United States. The following passage by Murra explains how adaptation to the heights and the cold, along with the mastery of crop cycles, allowed Andean populations in the highlands to flourish. It also reflects his concept of the “vertical archipelago,” a spatial strategy of highland groups to access dispersed lands at lower elevations in other ethnic territories.

The Conquest of the Heights There is no doubt concerning the early and greatest achievement of Andean man: the systematic knowledge and use of the altiplano, a unique achievement in the history of agriculture. Mountain settlements exist on other continents, for example in Tibet and the Himalayas, where there are populations that permanently occupy ecological zones at 4,000 meters above sea level. On studying their precolonial history, we realize that in Asia human settlement at such heights is much more recent than in the Andes. The population which manages to maintain itself there—​­such as the Sherpas, known above all as guides for mountaineers who wish to climb the snow peaks of the region —​­is very scarce. In a notable contrast, the most populated zone of the Andes was precisely the altiplano around Lake Titicaca and the Charcas region to its south. Here the high densities of population are ancient, although we

27

cannot yet assign dates for this demographic achievement with the desirable precision. Many agronomists and other experts have difficulty in understanding why such densities of population were located at altitude and persist there to this day. As Mauricio Mamani observes, in the eyes of the city dweller the altiplano appears inhospitable. . . . The explanation, not so evident at a first glance, begins by reminding us that before the Industrial Revolution, in agrarian societies, a large population was always a sign that the ethnic group or the chiefdom had achieved a high level of productivity. The long tale of modern history, which reveals how this capacity was lost over the centuries of Spanish colonialism and the creole republic, is the tragedy of the Andean world. What remains of the earlier knowledge of the environment, together with the technical and management methods which to this day allow us to benefit from the altiplano, are pale reflections of what they were. The free Aymara people of the past possessed an intimate knowledge of the altiplano’s natural resources, its climates and diverse calendars (both state and ethnic or local), its fauna and flora. Although their ethnoclassifications carefully distinguish the wild from the cultivated, they used both all year round. They knew that the maximum altitude limit of any cultigen varied according to the cyclical variations in climate, as has been shown by the Peruvian agronomist and archaeologist Augusto Cárdich. In addition, modern botany, which no longer excludes the study of cultivated plants, indicates that throughout Aymara history there were continual efforts to increase the maximum altitude at which tubers,1 plants of the lupin family such as tarwi, or high-­a ltitude grains such as quinoa (jupha in Aymara) and qañawa could be harvested. There is ample evidence of experiments that produced hybrid varieties which, although bitter-­tasting, elevated the “roof ” of edible cultivars beyond 4,000 meters above sea level. At such a height, cultivators reached their tinku [meeting, encounter, joining together, in Quechua] with Andean herding—​ ­the result of the domestication of native camelids—​­using the immense pastures of the puna [ecological level above 4,000 meters]. Today, when llamas and alpacas are at risk of disappearing, it is difficult for us to conceive the size and extension of the herds before 1532.2 Speaking of the animal wealth of an Aymara ethnic group during the first decades after the European invasion, a Spanish provincial governor claimed to have “heard of an Indian who is not a chief, but an important man who is don Juan Alanoca of Chucuito, who owns more than 50,000 head of livestock.” [. . .] In the census of “rich Indians” carried out in the region only seven years later, no individual appears any more with such a quantity of camelids; this time, the maximum declared was 1,700 head. It is, however, probable that the criteria used by the governor and by the herders to determine what was meant by “owning” diverged a great deal. What does seem certain is that the first European arrivals were amazed by 28  John V. Murra

the quantity of camelids they encountered in Aymara territory. “The herds that the natives of this province own is the main property in it . . .” stated the already mentioned Melchior de Alarcón, who in 1567 had already lived illegally for more than a decade in the region, at times acting as a notary but mainly as a merchant. This control of llamas as beasts of burden and alpacas as wool producers, combined with that of hundreds of varieties of tubers and high-­a ltitude grains, begins to offer us a first explanation of the high population density.

The Conquest of the Cold The second achievement of the free Aymaras of the past was to domesticate and make use of the cold. In other latitudes, for example in the Arctic, people endure it and can survive; in the Andes they took one more step, which allowed them to transform the cold into a positive, creative factor. Andean hands took advantage of the strong climatic contrast that takes place every day on the altiplano, between tropical heat in the daytime and winter cold at night. Although the Aymara lived, and most of them still live today, in fully tropical latitudes, at night the height of their territory seems to deny this. There are populated zones on the altiplano where frost may be present two hundred and fifty or more nights a year. In a manner without precedents in the world of high altitudes, Andean people learned that cold could be a benefit and not just something to put up with. The secret consisted in discovering that any animal or vegetable tissue, exposed to the frequent switch between tropical sun and freezing darkness, could be transformed into nutritive food products which could be stored for years without rotting. This occurred both at the household and at the state level. Ch’uñu is the generic name that many people give to processed tubers, although each plant is transformed into various foodstuffs, each with its own use, form of preparation, and a separate name. Ch’uñu cannot be made outside the puna zone. Ch’arkhi is the equivalent in animal products; it can be made from fish, bird, or animal flesh. In recent centuries, the process has been extended to the flesh of animal species imported from Europe.3 In centuries of greater liberty, the varieties of these conserved products and the uses for which they were destined were more important than they are today. They not only compensated for damages due to droughts and other natural or human disasters, but also constituted reserves available both to local ethnic groups and to the state. They filled thousands of storehouses constructed in such a way and in such places that they took advantages of minute differences in exposure to the sun, to the wind, or to humidity. Those which were constructed by the state or by regional lords along the roads could provide food for porters and armies, for the drovers of llama caravans Verticality and Complementarity  29

that linked diverse territories and geographical zones, for the priests of diverse cults on their way to provincial sanctuaries. Incidentally, they are the only explanation for the feats of [conquistador Diego de] Almagro and the other plunderers of Chile and Tucumán (now the north of Argentina), who, in the first years of the Spanish invasion, crossed thousands of kilometers of uninhabited territories without a halt. Since initiating the study of Andean history, we have learned to read the “reports of services” of the Aymara lords (the Charka, the Qhara Qhara, the Karanka, the Killaka) who accompanied the adventurers and taught them that they could rely on the storehouses all along the royal highway. The intimate knowledge of such varied environments and the mastery of the cold were the first two steps that Andean people took on their way to civilization. The dates when these achievements took place have not been determined. Archaeologists affirm that thousands of years have passed since the domestication of camelids; it is probable—​­they say—​­that different populations achieved it more than once, in different places and times. As for plants, in the Huamanga region there is evidence of domestication more than ten thousand years before the present; tubers, the basic food source, are difficult to recover archaeologically, and we do not yet have a firm date, but no one doubts that they have been used intensively for millennia.

Highlands and Lowlands The possible continuities between Andean tubers and rainforest agriculture, which at first glance appear so distant, were suggested many years ago by the man who organized Peruvian archaeology, Julio C. Tello, and the geographer Carl Sauer; they have been recently reiterated by Donald Lathrap. All along the cordillera of the Andes, the rainforest (or Antisuyu, in Quechua) has been and is the source of contacts between riverbank dwellers, some of them from distant lands, even from Mesoamerica. The fact that the majority of the Andean alimentary and agricultural complex is autochthonous does not imply the absence of foreign influences, some early and formative, others late and exotic. The Aymara knew the yunka [semitropical valleys] and the tropical forest; the lack of wood on the altiplano prompted journeys to the east [toward the Amazonian lowlands]. The Pacific Ocean and its riches, to the west, were less than ten days’ walk away. Hence, we find in the Aymara agricultural and ceremonial complex pan-­A merican plants, such as corn; it was not an important source of calories, but its use as a sumptuary good, for the military, and for hospitality in the form of chicha [corn beer] was universal. The climatic conditions of the altiplano are not favorable for corn, but if we locate it in its own Andean ethnocategory, where it is classified along with fruits, flowers, leaves, and other garden plants, we recognize its importance. Even in the 30  John V. Murra

twentieth century, some inhabitants of the Titicaca region walked dozens of kilometers to procure in Amantani tiny cobs of reddish corn, of great ceremonial value, which ripened on some islands in Lake Titicaca, at 3,800 meters above sea level, where the lake water creates a milder climate. The multiplicity of cultivated plants is impressive not only for their number, but also for their adaptation to a varied geography. Some species, such as quinoa or potatoes, appear in hundreds of varieties, selected to ripen at different altitudes, although puna potatoes are always preferred for seed; other cultivars are specialized in very particular pockets and microclimates. Nobody knows how many plants were cultivated before the invasion; some think the total was more than a hundred species. If we add to this the ample use of dozens of fresh and sea water yuyu [aquatic weeds, in Quechua], collected without being cultivated, we have a notable pre-­European nutritional and productive repertory. Beyond such efficiency in mixed farming, characteristic of all the Andean region, in the classic Aymara territory there was a third dimension, indispensable to understand its high population and great productivity. Apart from possessing a particular knowledge of each plant and its adaptive possibilities, from very early on the Andean hunter-­gatherers and later the farmers have organized their occupation of space in such a way that each ethnic group guarantees its regular access to several natural environments. Traveling from one mountain to another, rising and descending, within a few hours or at most in a few days, one could enter zones with very different climates and agricultural possibilities, which also happens in the Pyrenees, the Himalayas, or any other mountainous zone. What was specifically Andean was the efforts of the Aymaras (and also of many Quechuas) to accumulate in the hands of one and the same ethnic group all the resources and settlements that its young people and eventually its soldiers could defend. The Aymara kingdom or chiefdom of the Lupaqa (Chucuito), whose political and demographic center was located on the southwest shore of Lake Titicaca, controlled settlements very distant from this core, both in the humid yunka of the Amazonian slopes and in the arid yunka of the Pacific coast. This geographic reach of the Lupaqa is the best known of all the Aymara chiefdoms. It should not be supposed that other chiefdoms of this language group, such as the Pakaxa, the Wisijsa, or the Charka, followed an identical pattern of settlement. For example, it is probable that not all of them had settlements on both sides of the mountain chain. Even among the Lupaqa, the subdivision of the Pomaata (Pumäta) did not have access to coca fields on the eastern slopes. The agrarian calendar of tubers allowed the free Aymara to take advantage of the multitude of climates that were nearby. Given that the cycles of other crops (coca, hot peppers, fruit, corn) and gathered resources (guano, fish, yuyu) follow rhythms different from those of high-­a ltitude tubers, there Verticality and Complementarity  31

is plenty of “free” time, used by the peasants to travel away—​­moving higher up or lower down—​­without risking the harvest of their basic foodstuffs.4 The German scholar Jürgen Golte has described such cyclical alternations between one and another zone in the present day; before the European invasion, when the population was much greater and the chiefdoms controlled territories much further from the centers of power, the peripheral settlements could be permanent and not seasonal. This was the case of Nina Chuqi and Maman Willka, the two lords of the Karanka. They had their “tilled lands” and most of their subjects around Turco, on the altiplano in what is now Bolivia. Others of their people controlled various hamlets on the puna, where they pastured their camelids. Lower down than Turco, in territories which today are part of Chile, Nina Chuqi and Maman Willka had subjects living in valleys which produced corn; in the “yungas [yunka] of the sea,” such as Sabasta or Codpa, they had gardens of fruit and coca. Finally, at the mouth of the Lluta River, where the city of Arica is today, the Karanka settled “their” fisherfolk. Measuring the distances between Turco and its peripheral settlements, we see that the territory of one ethnic group could cover hundreds of kilometers. What is specific to this Andean and Aymara pattern of population is its “spotted” [salpicado] character, as the sixteenth-­century colonial documents call it: the occupation of the space between Turco and Arica was not exclusively Karanka. Other Aymara groups, for example the Pakaxa and the Lupaqa, also had settlements in the same valleys of Lluta, Azapa, or Camarones. Each ethnic group controlled its “islands” of people and resources that were intercalated with those of its neighbors, forming an “archipelago” on dry land. Moreover, there is reason to believe that in some cases they could share the same settlement. Tensions and struggle for local hegemonies on the periphery may appear inevitable to a twentieth-­century observer, but in many parts of the Andean region there is evidence of multiethnic occupation. In a well-­documented case, the valley oasis of Codpa (today in Chilean territory), we know that more than five ethnic groups from the mountains had permanent colonies settled there. The historical and archaeological verification of this complementarity is urgent so as to understand how the highland chiefdoms shared access to distant resources, hot pepper and coca gardens, guano deposits, or forests. Ecological complementarity goes beyond the efficient use of the altiplano or the mastery of the cold, mentioned above; it also involves an economic, political, and ideological organization. Although many details of how such systems functioned still evade us, it is already obvious that each ethnic unit, as it accumulated access to diverse products, experiments, and agrarian technologies, was able to diversify the risks implicit in each of the Andean environments. Beyond such a defensive purpose, we can also perceive opportunities that would allow for the massive storage of a multiplicity of re32  John V. Murra

sources, and eventually the emergence of dense populations and chiefdoms or kingdoms such as those which the Inka and the Europeans encountered on the altiplano. We do not yet know when this ecological complementarity arose. Transhumance, the oscillatory up-­and-­down movement, according to the seasons, which archaeologists have registered very early on in Andean history, may well have been a simple and preliminary stage in the process. It is probable that the use of resources in several climatic zones on the part of a sole society, via permanently settled colonies, was achieved before the Inka.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Principally potatoes were grown, but also other species, such as oca, isaño, and papalisa, virtually unknown outside the Andes. Potatoes include both the “sweet” varieties from which the potatoes cultivated in Europe and the rest of the world derive (which can be cooked and eaten as they come from the field) and the “bitter” varieties, which can be cooked and eaten only after being freeze-­dried. 2. The disappearance of camelids may have seemed probable in the 1970s or even later, but since the 1990s herds have grown due to biodiversity conservation efforts and increased demand for llama and alpaca products, especially wool and meat. 3. The Andean word ch’arkhi was apparently loaned into English as “jerky.” 4. Guano refers to the accumulated dung of sea-­bird colonies on the Pacific coast, a superb organic fertilizer, as well as to the dung of camelids and other domestic ruminants.

Verticality and Complementarity  33

Peopling the Empire Pedro Cieza de León

Andean space was profoundly transformed by the waves of colonization organized by successive Inka sovereigns. Inka state coordination involved intensive grain production and the redistribution of surpluses, new territorial administration, and the massive movement of people, known as mitmaqkuna in Quechua or mitimaes in Spanish, to colonize new areas. These colonizing groups came from different regions and fulfilled diverse functions—​­political, military, agricultural, and artisanal—​­in the Tawantinsuyu realm. Known as the “prince of Peruvian chroniclers,” Pedro Cieza de León (1520–54) visited the Upper Peruvian district of Charcas in 1549. He travelled through the Lake Titicaca region and on to Potosí, taking down testimony about the provinces from older Spanish conquistadors. He supplemented his information by interviewing Inka nobles in Cuzco and was generally sympathetic to Inka perspectives, as this extract from his chronicle suggests. His general account of mitimaes applies well to the southern Andes, and he includes specific examples of lowland frontier colonization taken from the territory of Qollasuyu.

How the Mitimaes Were Established, and of the Different Kinds of Them, and How They Were Highly Esteemed by the Incas In this chapter I wish to describe that which appertains to those Indians called mitimaes, for many things are related concerning them in Peru, and they were honored and privileged by the Incas, being next in rank to the Orejones (nobility), while in the History which they entitle Of the Indies, it is written by the author that they were slaves of Huayna Capac.1 Into this error all those writers fall who depend upon the relations of others, without having such knowledge of the land concerning which they write, as to be able to affirm the truth. In most if not in all parts of the provinces of Peru there were and still are these mitimaes, and we understand that there were three classes of them. The system was greatly conducive to the maintenance, welfare, and peopling of the empire. In considering how and in what manner these mitimaes were stationed, and the nature of their services, my readers will appreciate the way in 34

which the Incas understood how best to order and regulate the government of so many regions and provinces. Mitimaes is the name of those who are transported from one land to another. The first kind of mitimaes, as instituted by the Incas, were those who were moved to other countries, after a new province had been conquered. A certain number of the conquered people were ordered to people another land of the same climate and conditions as their original country. If it was cold, they were sent to a cold region, if warm, to a warm one, where they were given lands and houses such as those they had left. This was done that order might be secured, and that the natives might quickly understand how they must serve and behave themselves, and learn all that the older vassals understood concerning their duties, to be peaceful and quiet, not hasty to take up arms. At the same time, an equal number of settlers was taken from a part which had been peaceful and civilized for a long time, and sent into the newly conquered province, and among the recently subjugated people. There they were expected to instruct their neighbors in the ways of peace and civilization and in this way, both by the emigration of some and the arrival of others, all was made secure under the royal governors and lieutenants. The Incas knew how much all people feel the removal from their country and their home associations, and in order that they might take such banishment with good will, they did honor to those who were selected as emigrants, gave bracelets of gold and silver to many of them, and clothes of cloth and feathers to the women. They were also privileged in many other ways. Among the colonists there were spies, who took note of the conversations and schemes of the natives, and supplied the information to the governors, who sent it to Cuzco without delay, to be submitted to the Inca. In this way all was made secure, for the natives feared the mitimaes, while the mitimaes suspected the natives, and all learnt to serve and to obey quietly. If there were turmoils or disturbances, they were severely punished. Among the Incas there were some who were revengeful, and who punished without moderation and with great cruelty. The mitimaes were employed to take charge of the flocks of the Inca and of the Sun, others to make cloth, others as workers in silver, and others as quarrymen and laborers. Some also were sculptors and gravers of images; in short, they were required to do such service as was most useful, and in the performance of which they were most skillful. Orders were also given that mitimaes should go into the forests of the Andes to sow maize and to cultivate coca and fruit-­trees. In this way the people of the regions where it was too cold to grow these things were supplied with them. The second class of mitimaes were those who formed garrisons under captains, some of whom were Orejones, on the frontiers, in forests east of the Andes. For the Indians, such as the Chunchos, Moxos, Chiriguanos, and others whose lands were on the slopes eastward of the Andes, are wild and Peopling the Empire  35

very warlike.2 Many of them eat human flesh; and they certainly came forth to make war and destroy the villages and fields of their neighbors, carrying off those they could capture as prisoners. To guard against this evil, there were garrisons in many parts, in which there were some Orejones. In order that the burden of war might not fall upon one tribe, and that they might not be able quickly to concert a rising or rebellion, it was arranged that the mitimaes should be taken from provinces that were conveniently situated, to serve as soldiers in these garrisons; whose duty it was to hold and defend the forts, called pucaras, if it should be necessary. Provisions were supplied to the soldiers of the maize and other food which the neighboring districts paid as tribute. The recompense for their service consisted in orders that were given, on certain occasions, to bestow upon them woollen clothing, feathers, or bracelets of gold and silver, after they had shewn themselves to be valiant. They were also presented with women from among the great number that were kept, in each province, for the service of the Inca [monarch], and as most of these were beautiful they were highly valued. Besides this, the soldiers were given other things of little value, which the governors of provinces were required to provide, for they had authority over the captains whom these mitimaes were obliged to obey. Besides the frontiers already mentioned, they maintained these garrisons in the borders of Chachapoyas and Bracamoros, and in Quito, and Caranque, which is beyond Quito to the northward, next to the province called Popayan, and in other parts where it was necessary, as well in Chili, as in the coast valleys and the mountains. The other manner of stationing mitimaes was more strange. The system of planting captains and garrisons on the frontiers, although done on a large scale, is no new thing, for there are not wanting other governments who have adopted a similar policy. But the other manner of colonising was different. In the course of the conquests made by the Incas, either in the mountains, or plains, or valleys, where a district appeared to be suitable for cultivation, with a good climate and fertile soil, which was still desert and uninhabited, orders were at once given that as many colonists as would be sufficient to people it should be brought from a neighboring province with a similar climate. The land was then divided amongst them, and they were provided with flocks and all the provisions they needed, until they had time to reap their own harvests. These colonists worked so well, and the king required their labors to be proceeded with so diligently, that in a short time the new district was peopled and cultivated, insomuch that it caused great content to behold it. In this way many valleys on the coast and ravines on the mountains were peopled, both such as had been personally examined by the Incas [monarchs], and such as they knew of from report. No tribute was required from the new settlers for some years; and they were provided with women, provi-

36  Pedro Cieza de León

sions, and coca, that they might, with more goodwill, be induced to establish themselves in their new homes. In this way there were very few cultivable lands that remained desert in the time of the Incas, but all were peopled, as is well known to the first Christians who entered the country. Assuredly, it causes no small grief to reflect that these Incas, being gentiles and idolaters, should have established such good order in the government and maintenance of such vast provinces, while we, being Christians, have destroyed so many kingdoms. For wherever the Christians have passed, discovering and conquering, nothing appears but destruction.3 Notes 1. Cieza is referring here to the Spanish chronicler Francisco López de Gómara. 2. Cieza refers here to ethnic groups in the eastern and southeastern lowlands of what is today Bolivia. Chunchos is a generic Inka term for eastern lowlanders, considered to be savage. Moxos refers to Indians in the region today known as the Beni. Chiriguanos refers to the indigenous people who today call themselves Guaraní. 3. Cieza’s somber final note about the devastating effects of the Spanish conquest shows the influence of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.

Peopling the Empire  37

Workers in the Fields of the Inka Mitimaes of Cochabamba

The valley of Cochabamba was perhaps the richest agricultural region in the highland Andes before the Spanish conquest. One of the most revealing sources for understanding Inka systems of territorial control and demographic relocation comes from a legal dispute in 1556 between the caciques and Indians of the Paria region in Oruro and their rivals from the Sipesipe region in Cochabamba, both of whom claimed lands in the valley. The documents show in intricate detail the profound transformations wrought by the Inka rulers Tupac Yupanqui (1471–93) and especially Wayna Qhapaq (or Guayna Capac, 1493–1527), the last great Inka ruler before the Spanish conquest. Wayna Qhapaq relocated local residents to the eastern frontiers in order to devote the lands in the central valley of Cochabamba to large-­scale, intensive production of corn. Five primary grain farms (called chácaras in these extracts), such as Yllaurco and Colchacollo, were allotted to 14,000 colonists “of many nations,” such as the Collas, Soras, Quillacas, Carangas, Charcas, Qaraqaras, and Chichas. Most would have been seasonal corvée workers performing their labor turns, or mita, under the supervision of their own lords, here termed caciques, but also under the general authority of two Inka governors. Each chácara was divided into quarters, and each quarter subdivided into strips of land, called suyos in Quechua. Almost all the impressive surpluses were claimed by the state and exported by llama caravan for redistribution, with a small share preserved for the local field hands. The tambo, or way station, in Paria was the key storage site and transportation link on the royal road to Cuzco. Witnesses noted that many mitimaes took flight and sought refuge back in their altiplano homelands during the tumultuous time of Spanish conquest in Cochabamba. [The Indians in the Illaurco fields] were asked to declare their suyos [strips of land] and chácaras [fields]. They said the Inca Guayna Capac had distributed them[,] . . . and they said all the corn that was harvested in this chácara of Yllaurco and in the bordering suyos was taken to Paria and from there to Cuzco under Guayna Capac’s orders. Asked where the Indians who cultivated these chácaras and suyos came from, [they said] they came from their lands to cultivate because of their mitas, and they knew there were some mitimaes who lived in Chujlla who were put there by the Inca, and Carangas and Soras in Tacata; and that at present, 38

there are four of the Soras[,] . . . and as for the Carangas in Chujlla, [there are] as many as forty Indians with their women, sons, and girls. Asked if there was more land in this valley that the Inca took for himself in order to distribute, they said that right at the border of the chácara of Yllaurco, the chácara called Colchacollo they know belongs to Guayna Capac and that he distributed it to Carangas Indians and others in this way. The aforementioned chácara was divided in half by the Inca, who split it across the middle and made four quarters of it. One toward the Moxos mountain range, . . . and the other next to it. He did the same above, in the half of the chácara [allotted] to the Soras in the following way: He entrusted and assigned the first [suyo], for the benefit of the captains of Guayna Capac, to Colla Indians called Capalancas, Indians native to Paucarcolla who came from their land to cultivate this suyo by mandate of the Inca, and who they say returned to their lands at the time that the Spaniards arrived. The second [suyo] to the Lupaca Indians of Chucuito who came to cultivate his lands, and who returned to their lands at the time that the Spaniards entered this valley. The third to Pacajes Indians of Callapa who came from their lands to cultivate the suyo and returned to them at the time the Spaniards entered in this valley. The fourth to Indians of Pocopoco, Collas of Chuquicache, who they say left for their lands and that only one remains, who is called Alonso and is very old and who was present together with this respondent. The fifth suyo to Colla Indians of Tiaguanaco who like the others came from their lands as the others did to cultivate this suyo and only two young men are left of them and the rest all went to their lands. The sixth—​­there are Colla Indians of Caquiavire in another suyo who came from their land to cultivate and there are only one or two of them who live in Michoma. The seventh and eighth were to be sown for the Indians who cultivated these plots so as to sustain them. The ninth to the Sora Indians of Sipesipe. The tenth to the said Indians of Sipesipe. The eleventh to the Casaya Indians of Paria. The twelfth to the Sora Indians of the said district [repartimiento] of Paria. The thirteenth to the section [parcialidad] called Chio of the Soras district of Tapacarí. The fourteenth to the section of Malconaca, Sora Indians of Tapacarí. The fifteenth to the section of Machocavano of Caracollo, Sora Indians. The sixteenth suyo to the section of the Araycabana of Caracoles with which the said suyo comes to an end. . . .

Workers in the Fields of the Inka  39

In the chácara of Colquepirua, jurisdiction of the city of Oropeza in the Cochabamba valley, on the 26th day of the month of February of 1574: His lordship Francisco de Saavedra Ulloa, inspector general to whom is assigned the inquiry about the lands that in this valley of Cochabamba were given out by the Incas, who were lords of this kingdom, to the Caranga and Quillaca caciques and Indians, together with lord Diego Núñez Bacán, Inspector General, before me, Joan de Arratia, visiting scribe, said that in compliance with what he was commanded, they had made inquiries and obtained information about the said lands. In addition to this information, all the caciques and Indians who assembled for the inquiry had together declared the distribution of lands that the Incas made in a registry that accompanies the said inquiry. .  .  . Thereby, it appears that Tupa Inca conquered the valley and removed from their birthplace the Indian natives whom he found in it who were Cotas and Cavis and Sipesipes. He transferred the Cotas and Cavis to Pocona and Mizque and gave them lands there, and assigned lands to the mentioned Sipe­sipes in the valley and put some Indians of this province to cultivate certain fields that he had there. Later Guayna Capac made a general distribution of all the lands of this valley for himself and had fourteen thousand Indians from many nations cultivate the fields.

Translated by Adriana Salcedo

40  Mitimaes of Cochabamba

Settlement and Landscape Transformation in the Amazonian Lowlands Francisco Javier Eder

The account of the native Baure people penned by the Jesuit missionary Francisco Javier Eder (1727–72) expressed a conventional scorn for the presumed indolence of the natives with whom he met. Yet Eder was also impressed by the evidence he saw of their capacity for ingenuity, organization, and industry. The extensive linear causeways (which he deemed “bridges”) and adjacent canals were huge environmental engineering efforts that allowed the transportation of goods and people despite the challenges of seasonal flooding. Eder marveled that the massive and numerous earthworks and palisades for military defenses of settlements were on a scale comparable to that of Europe. But by time of his writing, Eder was a witness to the abandonment of the large-­ scale constructions, which would have required substantial maintenance from large populations under centralized political authority. The Baure myth recounted by Eder perhaps suggests the inquiries into the natural world undertaken by an earlier indigenous civilization in the region, as well as conflicts between the laboring population and its governors.

Of the Ancient Works of the Indians

Building of Bridges There is no better place to know the extent of every person’s capacity for reasoning than when a sudden danger or need arises: only this could sometimes persuade the Indians to resort to their intelligence, shaking off that innate negligence that is stuck to the marrow of their bones. The reader should recall . . . where I have talked about the floods: there he would have seen that all the savanna is covered by water for most of the year, so that one can only cross it by canoe from one island to another. Since most of these peoples do not have canoes, due to their laziness or ignorance of how to make them, but they still find it necessary or enjoyable to visit their close friends from time to time (mainly to drink), they built a kind of bridge with soil excavated from both sides, which remained above any floodwaters; its width was sufficient 41

Research in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands in recent decades has contributed to breakthroughs in Amazonian archaeology. Studies suggest the existence of sophisticated hydraulic, agricultural, and transportation systems that transformed landscapes and were capable of supporting large-scale, prosperous, and urbanizing societies prior to the arrival of Europeans. In collaboration with the archaeologist Clark Erickson, the agronomy students Julio Arce and Juan Carlos Rea designed experiments at the Beni Biological Station Biosphere Reserve to understand raised-field technology, which is of pre-Columbian origin, and its potential for sustainable agriculture. Courtesy of Clark Erickson, photographer.

to allow two of our carriages to travel together. With these bridges they also managed to store the first rains of the year in the ditches left by the excavated soil and in the summer, when the savannahs are dry and almost burned, to retain a sufficient amount of water there to transport their corn and other necessities via those channels. The Baure made great use of these bridges, which can be found everywhere, although nowadays these are rarely used both because of the abundance of canoes and because bridges fell out of use and broke with the passage of so much time.

Fortification of Channels They also had a kind of fortification against the ethnic group called the Guarayo: the latter, who to this day have refused to submit to the yoke of the faith and are accustomed to eating human flesh, during unending wars looted other populations of the pagan Baure, with the sole purpose of capturing the largest number of Indians, especially youth whom—​­once taken to their lands—​­they would gradually sacrifice. They offered the head and the 42  Francisco Javier Eder

hands to their chiefs; the rest was eaten by the people. They kept the skulls as drinking cups. Having terrorized the entire region, the Guarayo got the Baure to promise to deliver a certain number of boys and girls every year: but not even then were [the Baure] safe from [the Guarayos’] frequent and unexpected attacks. Thus, in order to solve their problems in another way, [the Baure] decided to surround their islands with trenches (that exist to this day and that demonstrate the large population that must have been there at that time). I visited islands whose circumference reached three miles and that were surrounded by two or three trenches. These trenches are so wide and deep that they can be compared with those of Europe. They piled up the soil by excavating the walls of the trenches, forming a wall with a very steep incline that was difficult for men to climb. In this way, they made it harder for the enemy to assault them.

Some Other Works I came across two or three savannas at higher elevations than the others and that for that reason were not flooded during certain years, nor could they therefore be navigated freely with canoes: they were adapted for navigation by excavating their lands. In ancient times they also had wells, mainly when the river was far away. Indians often told me many things which I would not dare to classify as true or as fantastic, and therefore I do not bring them up here. One of them is what they tell about one of their arama [chiefs] who, wishing to find out where the sun, moon, and stars are and what matter they are made of, as well as what the bowels of the earth contain, ordered that the land be excavated and that simultaneously trees be gathered to build a tower; the diggers could not proceed due to the boiling waters, while those who were busy cutting and piling trees, overwhelmed by the effort of the labor, allegedly killed the arama, who was responsible for the work. Whoever wants to believe it, let him believe it!

Translated by Adriana Salcedo

Settlement in the Amazonian Lowlands  43

This page intentionally left blank

II States and Conquests in the Andes

The southern Andean myth of the rise of the sun narrates a new historical time associated with the emergence and spread of powerful political overlords and expansive “state” polities, both Inka and Spanish. In this account, the rising sun broadcast the light of civilization throughout the Andean world after a time of darkness associated with a primordial society, prior to the Inka, which today we can recognize as a reference to Aymara-­dominated political federations. That spreading light was also imagined as a devastating fire, in a vivid image of political conquest by one people who acquired supremacy over others. Different Andean peoples in fact engaged with conquerors and state formation in different ways, and their particular historical experiences with the Inka state would shape how they subsequently related to Spanish domination. Prior to the Inka, the Tiwanaku state religious cult drew from earlier Andean models to convey its power, as is evident from its use of the ancient iconography of a staff-­bearing deity (see the Door of the Sun photograph in this part II introduction).1 Many of its impressive features—​­including solar worship, architectural style, vertical ecological organization, use of mitimae settlers—​­would later be replicated by the Inka who sought to claim the spiritual and political prestige associated with Tiwanaku. After Tiwanaku’s downfall, there ensued a period known to archaeologists as the “late intermediate” period—​­that is, in between the Tiwanaku and Inka state phases—​­from around 1000 to 1450 ce. Later Andean peoples remembered it as the “time of the warring people” (awkaruna timpu in Quechua). These “warriors” comprised regional federations, numbering around a dozen in what are today Bolivia’s Andean highlands and valleys, that vied for regional power without any one among them exercising hegemony. When the Inka ethnic group began to expand out of the Cuzco basin and to conquer southern Andean territory, the groups it subdued in the name of its solar deity would later be associated with the Chullpas—​­mythic peoples, linked to the abandoned tombs that still dot the altiplano, who were destroyed with the emergence of the sun. The Aymara-­speaking federations that succumbed to Inka advances were 45

The Door of the Sun is a monumental icon of spiritual power at the center of the sacred capital of Tiwanaku, which reached its height around the tenth century of the current era. It features a deity whose head emits solar rays and who brandishes staffs of authority in both hands. The deity is accompanied by a suite of condors bearing their own staffs. Courtesy of Pedro Querejazu, photographer.

incorporated as the district of Qollasuyu within the vast Inka territory of Tawantinsuyu. Within Qollasuyu, there were two internally diverse macroprovinces, arranged according to a north-­south division, each of which had undergone a distinctive conquest experience. The federations in what became the macroprovince of Collao—​­from Lake Titicaca down through what is today the La Paz region—​­put up stiff resistance, but were vanquished by the Inka’s superior military force. Those federations further south in the macroprovince of Charcas—​­encompassing what is today Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, and Potosí—​­were more willing to negotiate accords that secured for them privileges and benefits under the Inka. Their lords later claimed, for example, that the Inka rewarded them with exemption from mitimae service. Inka state administration also preserved an earlier Aymara political-­territorial division between the highland zones of Urqusuyu and the lower valley zones of Umasuyu. This west-­east division carried with it various symbolic associations according primacy to the Urqusuyu groups—​­seen as masculine, wild, mountain peoples—​­over the Umasuyu groups—​­seen as feminine, domesticated, water peoples. Within the broader boundaries of Collao or Charcas, Urqusuyu or Umasuyu, there were individual provinces, some of which were new Inka administrative units and some of which were based on older ethnic federations.2 46  States and Conquests in the Andes

Within each province, there was a capital as well as subordinate component groups. This nested hierarchy, preserving internal dualism at each level of segmentation, continued down to the microcommunity level of the ayllus. According to the ideal principles of Inka statecraft, each province held 10,000 or even 20,000 vassals, and each unit had its own governing lord. But the distinctive circumstances of local organization and the political processes of conquest led in fact to more complex realities on the ground. At the time of Spanish conquest in 1538, Andean peoples in Qollasuyu put up fierce initial resistance. Yet the Spaniards astutely played different ethnic federations against each other, and alliances with Indian allies—​­such as Paullu Inka who accompanied Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro from Cuzco into the southern Andes with five thousand Pukina-­speaking warriors from Hatun Qulla, an ethnic territory north of Lake Titicaca—​­proved crucial to Spanish success. In the aftermath of military defeat, some indigenous lords, especially those in the southern region of Charcas, sought to renew the strategy of a pact with the ruling state power that they had previously worked out under the Inka. In exchange for delivering various forms of tribute—​­which included turning over to the Spaniards a portion of the great Porco silver mine, formerly reserved for the Inka Wayna Qhapaq—​­the lords expected special standing and benefits. By the time Peruvian viceroy Francisco de Toledo was consolidating Spanish colonial government in the region, in the 1570s, the lords had drawn the frustrating conclusion that the new authorities were not upholding their end of the bargain. Nonetheless, the long-­standing political pattern would continue to play out in the new postconquest Spanish context: in the southern region of Potosí, communities often attempted to enter into pacts with the state in order to stake their claims; in the northern region of La Paz, they were inclined toward more open contestation and conflict. On the margins of the Andean highlands and highland valleys, other, smaller ethnic groups in the lowland valleys sometimes allied with the powerful Andean federations to fend off lowland groups perceived as fierce and uncivilized. For example, under Inka auspices, the Qaraqara and Charka federations fought alongside “bow-­and-­arrow Indians” against the Guaraní, dubbed Chiriguanos by the highlanders in the sixteenth century.3 In the early colonial period, Spanish authorities continued to use Andean warriors to subdue the fearsome Chiriguanos, who carried out regular raids against Spanish settlements in the borderlands of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, and Tarija. In the nineteenth century as well, the Bolivian government sought to extend its territorial control in the borderland regions by defeating unsubdued lowland indigenous groups. The Guaraní in the Chaco region were not finally defeated until the Massacre of Kuruyuki in 1892. Thus, during periods of Inka, Spanish, or Bolivian rule, the highland-­based state made recurrent efforts to expand its presence in the lowlands, and the conquest of native groups who resisted those efforts was an ongoing process on the frontier. States and Conquests in the Andes 47  47

Notes 1. The staff-­god motif seems to have its roots in the Chavín cult in northern Peru in the Early Horizon period (800–200 bce ). 2. These provinces were known as señoríos (chieftainships) and sometimes naciones (nations) in Spanish, or wamanis in Aymara and Quechua. The high-­ranking lords and governors were known as kurakas in Quechua, mallkus in Aymara, and as caciques by the Spaniards, the latter term borrowed from the Taino people in the Caribbean and applied throughout Spanish America. 3. The “bow-­and-­arrow Indians” were the Chicha, Chui, and Yampara peoples.

48  States and Conquests in the Andes

Conquest by the Inka Pedro Cieza de León

For more than a century, Inka territory spread far beyond its home base in Cuzco, reaching north and south along the mountain chain of the Andes. As Pedro Cieza de León’s chronicle attests, the Inka combined military might with symbolic and material enticements to win over the regional Aymara federations in Qollasuyu. To local authorities, they offered gifts of gold and finely woven tunics. They gave Inka brides to Aymara lords, thereby sealing through kinship new political alliances. Local religious worship was respected while also absorbing it within the overarching Inka cult of the sun. Local populations stood to benefit from a negotiated pact with the new ruling power, since Inka largesse could mean new livestock, enhanced irrigation, or agricultural improvement. Such Inka strategies provided a degree of imperial stability that violence alone could not have secured, and were the object of admiration for some of the Spaniards who arrived in a new phase of conquest.

Which Treats of the Order Maintained by the Incas, and How in Many Places They Made the Waste Places Fertile, by the Arrangements They Made for That Purpose One of the things for which one feels envious of these lords is their knowledge of the way to conquer the wild lands and to bring them, by good management, into the condition in which they were found by the Spaniards when they discovered this new kingdom. I often remember, when in some wild and barren province outside these kingdoms, hearing the Spaniards themselves say, “I am certain that if the Incas had been here the state of things would be different,” so that the advantage they were to us was well known. For under their rule the people lived and multiplied, and barren lands were made fertile and abundant, in such manner and by such admirable means as I will describe. They always arranged matters, in the commencement of their negotiations, so that things should be pleasantly and not harshly ordered. Afterwards, some Incas inflicted severe punishments in many parts; but formerly, it is asserted on all sides, that they induced people to submit by great benevolence and friendliness. They marched from Cuzco with their army and 49

warlike materials, until they were near the region they intended to conquer. Then they collected very complete information touching the power of the enemy, and whence help was likely to reach them, and by what road. This being known, the most effective steps were taken to prevent the succor from arriving, either by large bribes given to the allies, or by forcible resistance. At the same time forts were ordered to be constructed on heights or ridges, consisting of circles with high walls, one inside the other and each with a door. Thus if the outer one was lost, the defenders could retire into the next, and the next, until refuge was taken in the highest. They sent chosen men to examine the land, to see the roads, and learn by what means they were defended, as well as the places whence the enemy received supplies. When the road that should be taken and the necessary measures were decided upon, the Inca sent special messengers to the enemy to say that he desired to have them as allies and relations, so that, with joyful hearts and willing minds they ought to come forth to receive him in their province, and give him obedience as in the other provinces; and that they might do this of their own accord he sent presents to the native chiefs. By this wise policy he entered into the possession of many lands without war. In that case, he gave orders to his soldiers that they should do no harm or injury, nor commit any robbery or act of violence; and if there were not sufficient provisions in the province, he ordered that it should be sent from other parts. For he desired that his sway should not appear heavy to those who had newly come under it, so as to know and hate him at the same time. If any newly conquered province had no flocks, he ordered that so many thousand heads should be sent there, to be well looked after, so as to multiply and supply wool to clothe the people; and none were to be killed for eating until the lapse of a certain number of years. If, on the other hand, they had flocks, but needed some other thing, a similar course was pursued to supply the want. If the people lived in caves or thickets, they were led, by kind words, to build houses and towns on the more level parts of the mountains; and when they were ignorant as regards the tilling of their land, they were instructed, and the method of making channels to irrigate their fields was taught to them. In all things the system was so well regulated that when one of the Incas entered into a new province by friendly agreement, in a very short time it looked like another place, the natives yielding obedience and consenting that the royal governors and mitimaes should remain with them. In many others, which were conquered by force of arms, the order was that little harm should be done to the property and houses of the vanquished; for the lord said, “These will soon be our people, as much as the others.” For this reason the war was made with as little injury as possible, although great battles were often fought, where the inhabitants desired to retain their ancient liberty and their religion and customs, and not to adopt new ways. But during such wars the Incas always had the mastery, and when the enemies were vanquished, 50  Pedro Cieza de León

they were not destroyed; on the contrary, orders were given to release the captives and restore the spoils, and allow them to retain their estates. For the Inca desired to show them that they should not be so mad as to revolt against his royal person and reject his friendship; rather they should wish to be his friends, as were those in the other provinces. In saying this to them, he gave them beautiful women, pieces of rich cloth, and some gold. With these gifts and kind words, he secured the good-­w ill of all, in such sort that those who had fled into the wildernesses returned, without fear, to their houses, and all cast aside their weapons; while those who saw the Inca most frequently, looked upon themselves as most fortunate. All were ordered to worship the Sun as their god. Their own customs and religious usages were not prohibited, but they were enjoined to conform to the laws and customs that were in force at Cuzco, and all were required to use the general language of the empire. Having established a governor, with garrisons of soldiers, the army then advanced, and if the new provinces were large, it was presently ordered that a temple of the Sun should be built, and women collected for its service, and that a palace should be erected for the lord. Tribute was collected, care being taken that too much was not exacted, and that no injustice was done in anything; but that the new subjects were made acquainted with the imperial policy, with the art of building, of clothing themselves, and of living together in towns. And if they needed anything, care was taken to supply it and to teach them how to sow and to cultivate their lands. So thoroughly was this policy carried into effect, that we know of many places where there were no flocks originally, but where there has been abundance since they were subjugated by the Incas; and others where formerly there was no maize, but where now they have large crops. In many provinces they went about like savages, badly clothed, and barefooted, until they came under the sway of the Incas; and from that time they have worn shirts and mantles, both men and women, so that they always hold the change in their memories. In the Collao, and in other parts, the lord gave orders that mitimaes should go to the mountains of the Andes1 to sow maize and coca, fruits and edible roots, for each town the quantity that was required. These colonists, with their wives, always lived in the places where the crops were sown and harvested, and the produce was brought from those parts, so that the want of it was never felt. And no town, however small, was without these mitimaes in the valleys.

Note 1. That is to say, that colonists were sent from the cold and lofty plateau of the Collao to the warm and deep valleys of the Andes, where maize and coca can be cultivated. There was thus an exchange of products between the cold and the more genial regions. [Note in original.]

Conquest by the Inka  51

“Our Natives Were Well Governed” Mallkus of the Qaraqara-­Charka Federations

In the aftermath of the Spanish conquest, the hereditary lords, or mallkus, of the Aymara-­speaking Qaraqara-­Charka federations appealed to the Spanish Crown to recognize their claims to special benefits and privileges, arguing that they had enjoyed favor under the Inka and that the Spanish monarch should grant them similar standing. Drawing on Andean and Iberian references, they proclaimed a model for the proper ties of reciprocity between an imperial state and its loyal vassals, and smoothed over the differences between the former Andean overlord and the new Spanish one. The lords made their case in 1582, after the crucial period (1569–81) in which Viceroy Francisco de Toledo was laying the institutional foundations for colonial society in the Andes. Though Toledo had to negotiate with native lords, for example to consolidate the mita (forced labor draft), he sought, with some success, to undercut their influence over the indigenous population. The lords nevertheless fought back and in this case maneuvered in the Spanish court to defend their presumed traditional rights. The voluminous Charcas Memorial, excerpted here, is a highly political document, and in numerous details, it simplifies the more complex arrangements of government at the local level, in order to make them more easily understandable to the authorities back in Spain.1 Nonetheless, in its extensive historical accounting, the document provides an illuminating outline of the relations between the Aymara kingdoms and the Inka prior to the arrival of the Pizarros and Almagros, as well as of the political contest thereafter. We four nations are the Charcas and Caracaras and Chuis and the Chichas, different in our costumes and customs; we were soldiers since the time of the Incas Yupanqui [Pachakuti], Tupa Inca and Guayna Capac, and Guascar, and when the Spanish entered this land they found us in possession of it.2 And so these four nations, as is universally known, were soldiers from the time of the aforementioned Incas, exempt from direct and indirect taxes, and from all other taxes and personal services, such as herding and pasturing, and doing labor-­services by turn [mita] in the court of the great city of Cusco, and being quarrymen, weavers of quality [cumbi] and standard cloth, workers

52

in the fields, stonemasons and quarrymen, people accustomed to transport mountains from one place to another with their bare hands, as previous generations did in the time of the Incas, as is universally known, and many other things;3 and we were not dancers or clowns, accustomed to sing songs before the Incas in honor of their victories, as when we four nations triumphed and were victorious against the Chachapoyas, Cayambis, Cañaris, Quitos, and Quillayçingas, who are natives of Guayaquil and Popayán.4 And if we the said four nations made some featherwork, clothing, and other things such as weapons, it was only for ourselves, and with the permission of the said Incas. And we enjoyed this privilege so that all the people of our four nations should go to war in splendid attire, when they went to conquer the tyrants of the Chachapoyas, and those of the other nations mentioned above, and the same too when they were at the frontiers and in the fortresses built against the Chiriguanos.5 This is why these four nations were all exempted by the said lord Incas from all direct and indirect taxes and tributes, as is universally known.

In our province of the Charcas, before the Incas and after them, there used to be great natural lords of 10,000 vassals, and others of 8,000, and others of 6,000, and the said lords and knights were superior to the other chiefs and lords in each nation. And so one was for the Charcas, and another for the Caracaras, and another for the Chuis, and another for the Chichas, each different in nation, customs, and costume. And so each of these lords used to have eight deputies, and ten of a thousand Indians, and four principals of each ayllu of five hundred and one hundred Indians, and four heads in each ayllu, each in his nation of Anansaya and Urinsaya.6 And according to this order the Incas governed. And all of us were lords of our subjects and natives, and our natives were well governed. And these were the customs found by the Spaniards and by His Majesty. And now in this General Visitation which has been carried out by order of don Francisco de Toledo, previous viceroy of these kingdoms, we have been deprived of all the authority and lordship that we held over our subjects and vassals, as though we were not their natural lords, just as the dukes, counts, and marquises are in Spain; and this means we have received great deprivation and damage. Wherefore we beg Your Majesty very generously to do us the favor of ordering us to be compensated, for thus we will receive benefit and grace, by issuing your royal provisions and privileges, conceded by the Catholic kings of Spain to the knights and gentlemen of the kingdoms of Spain.

Translated by Tristan Platt

“Our Natives Were Well Governed”  53

Notes 1. For example, contrary to the testimony in the second part of this selection, there was not always one lord per territorial unit, nor the idealized decimal number of tribute-­paying vassals in their jurisdiction. The document was written with the help of a member of the Audiencia of Charcas, the Spanish court of law based in today’s city of Sucre, who sympathized with the cause of the Indian population. 2. The reference is to the Inka sovereigns who ruled successively in the Andes prior to the Spanish. 3. The lords overstated their claim not to have performed labor services, as other documentation shows that Qaraqara-­Charka mitimaes contributed to the Inka’s corn production in Cochabamba. 4. The lords were boasting of their role in the Inka conquests of other ethnic federations in what is today northern Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. 5. The Chachapoyas and other enemies were here described as “tyrants” in order to defend the legitimacy of the Inka rulers with whom the Qaraqara-­Charka lords were allied. The military services performed by the Qaraqara-­Charka nations included defensive campaigns against the invasions of the Guaraní warriors on the southeastern borderlands of Inka territory. 6. The division of each community into Anansaya and Urinsaya (in Quechua) moieties was a form of social, symbolic, and territorial dualism that was generalized in the southern Andes under Inka state administration.

54  Mallkus of the Qaraqara-­Charka Federations

The Myth of the Chullpas and the Emergence of the Sun Oral Tradition

The following story about the cataclysmic transition from an older time of darkness to a new solar age relates in mythic form the historical emergence of the state and its solar religious cult. It tells of the defeat and demise of earlier peoples, which are conflated symbolically as “Chullpas,” and can be read as a myth of conquest corresponding to the political expansion of the Inka in the southern Andes in the fifteenth century. The material remains of these earlier societies are evident, as the story notes, in the pre-­Inka tombs (chullpares) scattered about the altiplano. The small pockets of Uru peoples are also considered “remnants of the Chullpas” by the surrounding Aymara groups, whose ancestors reconstituted themselves under Inka state auspices. The Uru Chipaya, Uru Morato, and Iruitu groups are small communities that still populate the aquatic axis from Lake Titicaca down to Lake Poopó. They are distinguished from Aymara communities by their distinctive Uru Chipaya language as well as by forms of dress and their reliance on riverine and lacustrine resources. For their Aymara neighbors, the Urus are primitive peoples—​­associated with shadowy, watery realms of the Chullpa ancestors—​­f rom the time prior to the emergence of Andean civilization. The myth is found in many communities that once formed part of Qollasuyu. This version is a synopsis by the anthropologist Tristan Platt, based on his fieldwork in the modern Quechua-­speaking community of Macha, in northern Potosí.1 In the old days [ñawpa pacha], there was the “unquiet time” [inkyitu tyimpu] of the Chullpas, who lived under the Moon. At this time, humans changed shapes with animals or birds. [To this day, an animal or bird, seen suddenly at dusk, may give people a fright, and they may ask, “Was that a Chullpa?”] There was a Chullpa couple called Mariano and María [condor and frog]; there were only these two names. They ate lots of quinoa and cañahua [a crop related to quinoa] and qalapurqa [gruel cooked with three hot stones, still eaten today]. Their animals and plants were wild varieties of the ones we know today: their chicken was the tinamou [p’isaqa], their dog the fox [atuq], their cat the puma, their llama the vicuña; their potatoes and quinoa were 55

wild varieties of those we now cultivate. Their writing was the weaving of designs. We can still see their terraces on the hillsides, their churches in the rocks, their cemeteries and their burial towers, also called chullpas. One day they were told the Sun was going to rise in the West. So they built their houses with the doors facing East for protection. But the Sun rose in the East, and its burning rays shriveled them up, except for a few who jumped into the water and saved themselves. These survived to become the Chipaya of Lake Coipasa, who call themselves the “water people,” but whom the Aymaras of Huachacalla call the “Chullpa leftovers”; others became the Chunchos, native peoples of the rivers that descend to the Amazon. The division [of Aymara-­speaking societies] into two moieties, Alasaya and Majasaya, was brought by the Inka, children of the Sun.

Translated by Tristan Platt Note 1. This version of the myth incorporates two details of versions found in other regions. The reference to the “Chullpa leftovers” comes from the Chipaya area, studied first by Alfred Métraux. The reference to the Chunchos is from the Quispicanchis region of Peru, studied by Pablo Sendón.

56  Oral Tradition

A Spanish Vision of the Conquest Anonymous Author from Cuzco

Many accounts of the Spanish invasion of the Americas suggest that the contest between “conquerors” and “conquered” was decided quickly due to the natural superiority of Spanish arms or ingenuity. The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, for example, described the conquest in the valley of Cochabamba as a brief and uncomplicated affair whose outcome was more or less a foregone conclusion. But this account, by an anonymous author who accompanied Hernando Pizarro from Cuzco on his expedition into Qollasuyu in 1538, reveals that the campaigns in the southern Andes were more protracted and the Spanish forces more vulnerable than we might have thought. For those who participated in the battles, the outcome was by no means predictable. Among the features that stand out in this account are the size and strength of the indigenous resistance that combined local ethnic mobilization with Inka military leadership under Tisuq. But ultimately decisive were the political divisions between the Cochabamba forces and other indigenous peoples that had submitted to Pizarro, and the crucial collaboration of Paullu Inka who commanded thousands of native troops answering to Pizarro. After this, Indians from Hatuncollao, a province that after the war and the siege of Cuzco had made peace with him, went to Hernando Pizarro asking him to help them, because Cariapaxa, lord of the province of Lupaca, was making war on them, because they were friends of the Christians, calling himself son of the Sun and saying that as such everyone had to obey him. [They said that] they had done all they could to defend themselves, but if he did not help them it was impossible to carry on since [Cariapaxa’s people] were very warlike. This Cariapaxa had lands fifty leagues from Hatuncollao. Hernando Pizarro set out on the road to go there, with the people he took with him and some foot soldiers who later went after him. The enemy Indians, knowing that he was coming, began to retreat and he followed them for two days as fast as possible, and as he saw that it was an error to exhaust all the horses, he sent Gonzalo Pizarro to follow them with thirty horsemen, telling him to ride all day until he caught up with them. He did so, and hurried so much that, although [the enemies] were a long way ahead, he caught up with them the next day and fought with them with such brio that, being 57

unable to resist him, they turned their backs on the Spaniards and fled, and he pursued them. One Spaniard diverged from the rest, and because it was hilly country they lost sight of him, and as his horse tired the Indians laid hands on him and took him away. Gonzalo Pizarro, when he returned, saw that a Christian was missing, and Hernando Pizarro sent Captain Diego de Rojas with another thirty horsemen to find out what had become of him and to pursue the Indians so that they did not regroup. The captain found some of them crossing the river that drains Lake Titicaca, which is a great lake that measures sixty leagues. Very great rivers run into it and only one drains it. He fell on those who had not crossed and scattered them, and from those who were captured it was learned how they had laid hands on the Christian and sacrificed him in a shrine that they had on the other side of the Desaguadero River. In this Desaguadero, they had a bridge made of rafts of totora, which is a kind of reed, tied together, and fearing that the Christians would come and search for them they untied it. The captain, seeing no way to continue attacking them, remained there. Hernando Pizarro came calling all the land to peace, greatly favoring those who came [to submit to him] and on the contrary, punishing those who were rebels; and on arriving at the Desaguadero he ordered rafts to be made, and by chance found there a light wood which is suitable for that, which Guainacaba [Wayna Qhapaq], a previous Inca, had carried there on the shoulders of Indians from more than three hundred leagues away, to make the rafts on which he used to sail into the lake to enjoy himself on their feast days. And with that wood they made a big [raft] which Hernando Pizarro boarded with almost fifteen or twenty men, and a similar number climbed onto the reed rafts, and he ordered the rest to stay on horseback, because he feared the five thousand friendly Indians who were with him, who had joined him from Hatuncollao and from the towns he was pacifying, so that they would not have a chance to play some trick [on the Spaniards]. When they started to cross, throwing [the rafts] into the water, the Indians on the other side came to the bank to defend it and stop them landing, and they fired so many arrows and sling-­stones that those who were rowing, in order to shield themselves from the many stones and darts that rained on them, stopped rowing, and the force of the current carried the rafts downriver, with such speed that the Spaniards could not control them. Hernando Pizarro did all he could to make the Indians row to land, but the arrow shots and stones were so many that they could not succeed, and in complete disorder they were carried downstream. Some of the Spaniards who remained on horseback on this side of the river, seeing Hernando Pizarro in such danger and the plight he was in, leapt into the water thinking that they could save him, and with the weight of their armor the horses could not swim, and eight horses with their riders were drowned and never seen again; since the Indians saw this, they redoubled their efforts in such a 58  Anonymous Author from Cuzco

way that the other [Spaniards] rushed to return to the bank, nearly drowning. Hernando Pizarro landed with all those whom he had taken with him, although most of them had arrow and slingshot wounds. The enemies were so proud of this victory that they shouted out to Hernando Pizarro, asking why he did not cross [the river]. Being so desirous to avenge the dead Spaniards, that same afternoon he ordered more logs of that light wood which Guainacaba had ordered to be brought, as I said, and they brought them to him the next morning, and he had two big rafts made and put them in the lagoon which is next to the mouth of [the river which] drains [Lake Titicaca], so that the current would not wash them away once again, and ordered the Indians to make rafts for themselves. Hernando Pizarro with forty Spanish foot soldiers boarded one of the rafts and Gonzalo Pizarro and Alonso de Toro with their horses boarded the other, and he told them to follow him and in no way take to land until he should have won it, so that the horses would not be killed. Hernando Pizarro ordered that when the Indians saw that he had landed they should launch their rafts in the river, because the Indians ought not to cluster round the place where he disembarked, but rather spread out all over; and Gonzalo Pizarro, to avoid the horses being shot with arrows, should remain behind until [Hernando] had landed, as I have already said. The Indians, seeing them come, charged with all their fury at the point where [Hernando] was to disembark, to defend it and stop him landing, and began to shoot arrows with great speed and the slingers threw many stones, so much that it seemed as if it were hailing. When Hernando Pizarro arrived close to the bank and saw the land, with all his determination he leapt into the water, which came up to his chest, and the rest, seeing him in the water and in such danger, ashamed [to be left behind] jumped in the same, and he ordered the raft to return for the horses that had remained on the other side, and meanwhile they went on fighting until they reached the land, hand to hand with the enemies. With the latter defending and the former trying to take it, it was a thing to see. At this point Gonzalo Pizarro arrived with his comrade, and the two horses were more than a little help. The friendly Indians launched so many rafts on the river that the enemies had to divide their forces to defend the land all along [the river] and could not prevent them from climbing the bank and making them turn away and flee. The wooden rafts returned at great speed to bring the horses across. Since they were at the mouth of the Desaguadero, the lagoon was much narrower. Meanwhile the Spaniards fought on foot, and since they were armored, [the enemies’ weapons] could not touch them, and they went from side to side receiving few wounds. Carrying on in this way, the horses and the friendly Indians arrived, with whom [the enemies] were scattered. They pursued them for three leagues, since the land is very flat, and there was great mortality among their opponents, and the Indians who were captured were punished, for having A Spanish Vision of the Conquest  59

sacrificed the Christian. After that, all the peoples of this province came in peace, and those who had remained behind were at peace as well. Hernando Pizarro received them very well, giving very good treatment to those who came in such a way that they summoned others. The Indian warriors who remained after this defeat went to join the natives of the province of the Charcas, who are very bellicose people, and they gathered in a strongly defended pass at the entrance to the said province. Hernando Pizarro was pacifying the whole province of Collasuyo and the province of the Carangas and the Suras without meeting resistance, and he treated very well those who came in peace and gave them jewels. The Indians were very happy with this, recognizing the difference in the treatment he gave them in peace with that in war, and thus he was greatly feared and loved among them. All the lords of these provinces said to Hernando Pizarro that since at the entrance to the province of the Charcas many warriors had gathered, they begged him to do away with them once and for all, because if they were not overcome, they would destroy and kill all of them for having given obedience and made peace with him. Hernando Pizarro answered that he would die before he abandoned them, that he wanted to go with them and do that which they begged him to, and that they should be quite assured that being in peace with him no one would harm them. With this that Hernando Pizarro said to them, they were very happy. After that there was a fork in the road in the said province, leading to a valley which they call Cochabamba, which has great abundance of food, and his people were somewhat short of that, and at the entrance to the said valley, which crosses very rough land, the said Indians set out to defend it. They defended the pass for five days as it is very rough, which put him in dire straits for lack of food, and in the end he fought with them and scattered them, and the friendly Indians pursued them, because since the land was very mountainous the Christians could not follow them. So they went into the valley, which is very fertile, and all the people of the Charcas get their food there, because the mountains [where they live] are sterile and in that valley there is very great abundance [of food] and everything that is sown there produces very well. Hernando Pizarro went down to the already mentioned valley, and that day letters arrived about how the governor [Francisco Pizarro] was in this city [of Cuzco], and was coming to see him and calm the land, and on the way he ran into the captains whom Hernando Pizarro sent to discover and settle, and gave all of them his dispositions ordering and charging them to work hard in the service of Your Majesty to procure the growth of this land and of the holy Catholic faith. Hernando Pizarro, given that his people were scattered and tired, was unable to turn back and leave with them. He left Gonzalo Pizarro to remain there as captain of all of them and stay in the valley until he had gathered all the friendly Indians, and his people had recovered from their past labors. He said that that land seemed to him to be very rough 60  Anonymous Author from Cuzco

and mountainous, and leaving would be much tougher than entering, and that [the people of that] province were more bellicose and energetic than any other, and he suspected that they would take the passes and, if it should turn out so, leaving would be very difficult. And if he should come to know that they had gathered and blocked the passes before him, [Gonzalo] in no way should leave but rather stay in the valley, which is flat land and abounds in provisions, and he should place himself in the town called Cotabamba, which is in the middle of said valley, and collect a lot of food there, because if many Indians attacked him he would not be able to collect it. He said [to Gonzalo] that he should let him know if they surrounded him, that he would rescue him, and if after forty days he had not received any letter from [Gonzalo], he would deduce that he had been surrounded and could not write to him; he should procure a good defense and be certain that [Hernando] would come to rescue him. And so he left with just seven horsemen, since all the land was at peace, speaking graciously to the people, saying farewell to them, and likewise to Paulo Inga, who was the captain general of the friendly Indians. He came through the land which had made peace with him, and all the way he was well received and served by the Indians until he arrived in Cuzco, which was a hundred and thirty leagues away, and there he found the governor, and they met with brotherly love. All the [Spanish] people in Cuzco rejoiced at his arrival, and complained that he had surprised them, because they had planned a great festival to receive him, and he apologized, saying that they knew his character. And it is so, that on the last days of a journey he rode night and day so as to take them unawares and not have them [make a great ceremony to] receive him. Gonzalo Pizarro did as Hernando Pizarro had told him, so he went to the town of Cotabamba, and then heard that the passes had been taken and a great number of people were coming to besiege him, and it was impossible for any Spaniard to leave [the valley of Cochabamba]. He collected a great deal of food and sent Indian messengers to inform Hernando Pizarro, and although some were captured, his letter nevertheless arrived [in Cuzco]. He remained still, since it seemed to him great madness to want to leave, and the Indians, seeing that he did not move, decided to go to surround him and attack him in the town. They would have been about twenty thousand [given that they had gathered in a short time, they would not then have been more, although each day from then on all people joined them from all the neighboring provinces] and they attacked the Spaniards, who would have been up to forty horsemen and thirty foot soldiers, from four directions. Gonzalo Pizarro organized them, together with five thousand Indians he had, in such a way that they could help each other, and so they fought for a very long time without [either side] gaining the advantage. It seemed to Gonzalo Pizarro that it was time to make every effort to scatter [the enemies]. He went for them with great A Spanish Vision of the Conquest  61

energy, killing and wounding many. The [enemies], although some of them stood fast, in the end, seeing the destruction he wreaked on them, turned their backs and fled, leaving four Spaniards and twelve horses wounded and a great part of the friendly Indians dead. But they were left so terrified that they dared no more approach the town, but instead placed themselves on all the roads and passes by which they presumed he would leave, to have the Spaniards thus surrounded until they could gather a grand quantity of people and go for them. To get to work on this they informed Tico, who was the Inga’s captain general in that province and a very great enemy of the Christians, and when he heard, in a short time he gathered forty thousand Indians, and came with them approaching Cotabamba, holding it to be very certain that as soon as he arrived the Spaniards would not be sufficient to defend themselves.1 The latter, at this time, went out every night to attack the Indians who surrounded them, and Gonzalo Pizarro always stood out among the rest in such a way that after a few [sorties] he already had many of [the enemies] dead. The letter which Gonzalo Pizarro wrote arrived here [in Cuzco] at a time when Hernando Pizarro, having consulted with his brother, the governor, as to what was convenient, was already en route to go and relate everything to Your Majesty. Seeing the need in which Gonzalo Pizarro found himself, he then left the next day in a great hurry with the people he took with him [from Cuzco] and others who joined him on the road, in all up to forty-­five horsemen. The governor left after him, but the townspeople made him come back, saying that the Inga was nearby and that was sufficient reason not to leave Cuzco in any way, but rather he should give orders to conquer [the Inka]; and as it seemed to him that they were right and that Hernando Pizarro was sufficient [to rescue Gonzalo], he turned back after two days’ journey.

Hernando Pizarro, after setting off from [Cuzco], traveled with such speed that in a short time he arrived at Paria, which is a valley twelve leagues from Cotabamba, and as the warriors knew where he was, believing that he would enter the valley by the royal road where there are very difficult passes, they placed more than twelve thousand Indians in them. Hernando Pizarro made great efforts to find out where all the warriors were before entering [the valley of Cochabamba] and knew that they had taken the road and it was impossible to get through according to the way [the troops] were disposed. He agreed to leave [in Paria] fifteen horsemen who were the most exhausted, and with the other thirty rode that day and all the night, and encountered the captains and warriors who were coming from the Charcas, who were fifteen leagues away from Cotabamba. He could not go without being noticed by the spies, who gave notification when he was three leagues away, and startled and without waiting for the others, [the warriors of Charcas] left.2 When those who were 62  Anonymous Author from Cuzco

in the garrisons of all the passes near Cotabamba heard that the captains had fled, they abandoned their posts. When Hernando Pizarro heard this, he sent for the fifteen horsemen he had left behind, and met up with them. The entire garrison of twelve thousand Indians who were on the royal road, seeing that the Spaniards were among them and their captains had fled, retreated to the mountains in great disorder, and there was room for Hernando Pizarro to meet up with Gonzalo Pizarro. Their good efforts had been enough not to suffer a disaster, because if all the [enemy] people who were coming had arrived, there would have been no way for them to escape death. Five days later, fifty Spaniards arrived on foot and on horseback sent by the governor to rescue them. Hernando Pizarro left the valley together with them to go to a province which is called of the Anfaraes, which is a region of the Charcas.3 Along the way the chiefs came out [to meet them] in peace. Since they treated them well, Tico and all the rest of the Inga’s captains came in peace. This amazed everyone, since this Tico had been the best vassal that the Inga had, but the good treatment which they gave them put an end to all fear and he decided to come to Hernando Pizarro. He brought with him many captains and chiefs who revealed the secrets of gold and silver mines. Those of silver are so good that pure silver is extracted from them. On seeing such riches, it seemed to Hernando Pizarro that it was not good to abandon that province and because it seemed to him that it was good to learn more, on that day he left in that place the people he brought so that they could found a town, and the Christians would take advantage of it, and the income of the Crown would increase, and also because being abandoned it would soon rebel once more. In this way he left much order in all the land. With all those who wished to do so taking [possession of] the mines, Your Majesty was assigned the best of them, which is said to have been of Guainacaba, from which it is thought that Your royal income will be greatly increased.4 Hernando Pizarro came to this city [of Cuzco] and brought with him Paulo Inga and Tico with many people, to go and conquer the Inga. It is believed that, once he is surrounded, he cannot escape from being killed or taken prisoner, with which the land will be reformed, because until this is done everything is in suspense.5

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The anonymous author treats Tico—​­actually Tisuq, a captain sent by the Inka faction still holding out against the Spaniards in Cuzco—​­as the foremost military leader, yet in fact local lords were the ones with the power to mobilize their communities. In Cochabamba, tens of thousands of warriors from the seven “nations” of Charcas province united under the leadership of the Charka federation lord Kuysara to fend off the Pizarros’ invasion.

A Spanish Vision of the Conquest  63

2. It is not clear if “the others” refers to other groups of Indian warriors who were separated from the Charka contingent, which did not give them time to meet up before they left, or if the author means that the Charka commanders did not wait for the “other” army—​­that is, Hernando Pizarro’s troops—​­to catch up with them and give battle, but preferred to retreat without resisting. 3. “Anfaraes” refers to Yamparaes, part of the present-­day department of Chuquisaca. 4. This is the rich silver mine of Porco, near Potosí, which belonged to the Inka Wayna Qhapaq. 5. This passage refers to Manqua Inka (1516–44), who had first been placed on the Inka throne as a puppet ruler by Francisco Pizarro and later repudiated Spanish authority, attacking Cuzco and finally taking refuge with his court in the remote Vilcabamba valley. His half-­brother Paullu Inka had allied with the Spaniards and played a crucial role in the military campaigns and negotiations to subjugate those indigenous federations as yet unconquered.

64  Anonymous Author from Cuzco

An Uru Vision of the Conquest Daniel Moricio

Urus are one of the most ancient groups in the southern Andes, linked fundamentally with the exploitation of lacustrine and riverine resources through fishing and hunting. They are known as “men of the water” and as the survivors or “leftovers” after a calamitous historical transformation. Thus, their Aymara neighbors see them as beings who are associated with a lack of civilization and a pre-­baptismal era. The testimony of the Uru Murato elder and leader Daniel Moricio tells of his ancestors’ encounter with the Spaniards, whom he refers to almost indistinctly from the Aymara and Quechua. The conflation of the Spaniards with these Andean indigenous groups may be attributed to the unequal, conflictive, and submissive relationship that the Urus have had historically with the Aymara and Quechua and to the alliance between the Spaniards and the other Andean groups in the suppression of the early seventeenth-­century Uru revolts. The overlap of oro [gold] with “Uru” is at the center of this interpretation of the conquest, seen as a process that took place over many years. As the testimony notes, for fifteen to sixteen years the Urus would run away and hide in the reed beds of the lakes. A series of events explains their “discovery”: the loss of their hunting and survival instrument, the liwi, or sling; the introduction of alcohol which led to the surrender of their treasures and the relinquishment of their symbol of political authority, the golden staff of rule; and the baptism of their governor with the name of San Felipe de Austria, in honor of King Philip III of Austria. The name was also given to the city of Oruro on its founding in 1606. Moricio’s memories of the Urus’ defense of their lands around Lake Poopó recall the struggles of another legendary Uru leader, Toribio Miranda, who was linked to the cacique-­apoderado movement of the early twentieth century (see Santos Marka Tola and the Caciques-­Apoderados, “The Laws of the Land,” in part VIII). Moricio recalls that the Urus paid pounds of gold to the land inspector José de la Vega Alvarado for their titles. The scribe of this legendary inspector had the last name García Morato, and from him the Urus of Lake Poopó took their own “last name” as Uru Moratos or Muratos. Before the Spaniards and the Quechuas arrived, the Urus didn’t know other people because the Urus didn’t have clothes, the Urus were naked, without 65

clothes. .  .  . ln those days there were other people like us, tribes, but they didn’t live in the lake, they were of the forest. [The Urus] said, “We were from the time when the judgment occurred, when the flood came.” . . . When the floodwaters came, Noah had saved himself with his four men and four women, eight families from the forest. An ancestor of the Urus was saved along with two young women whom he had taken. . . . Our ancestors were saved from that judgment. . . . That’s why Toribio Miranda used to say, “We’re the leftovers from the judgment, leftovers of the lake” (juysu puchu, quta puchu).1 The brothers from the forest are “leftovers from the judgment, leftovers of the forest” (juysu puchu, monti puchu). Noah is the ancestor of the Forest Leftovers. Noah isn’t our ancestor. That’s why people say “leftovers from the judgment, leftovers of the lake.” We’ve always been the oldest ones. . . . The Urus didn’t even have names, they hadn’t been baptized. . . . The Urus who didn’t have names had been living in the hills, in Puno in Peru. . . . A few years later they learned how to enter the reed beds.2 . . . It was after that that people went into [the reed beds,] but which of the three was it, Aymaras, Quechuas, or Spaniards? . . . Thus they went in and they took [the Urus with them,] with deceit, with barter, with foodstuffs, until they were finished off. But why did the Urus have so much gold? Why didn’t they give it away, why did they want it? Nobody knows, not even the researchers even now. . . . One night, two or three years later, they’d all gone to Lake Titicaca where there was empty land. So they lived there in peace for a couple of years or a year and a half in the reed beds. [Other people] arrived there as well, looking to take away the gold from the Urus. After that about eighty or seventy families stayed on in the reed beds. . . . After that they came down the Desaguadero River towards the south, eating waterweeds and other Uru foods. . . . After fifteen or sixteen years, they arrived at an empty hill. . . . They lived there with lots of gold, rich, in peace. . . . After that they named a governor who would govern all the Urus. . . . At that time there was already a little town of the Spaniards or the Aymaras and Quechuas; the Urus didn’t know that there were people who existed from those places. . . . Some Urus went as far as the shores [of Lake Poopó] to hunt flamingos every day. Some lived on dry land, others in the reed beds. The Spaniards or Aymaras and Quechuas had arrived there as well, but I think [they were] Aymara immigrants. . . . People say there was more gold in that hill [where the Urus lived]. Perhaps they produced it before? I don’t know much, the researchers must know. . . . After that that governor used to oblige them to bring food. . . . But the Urus didn’t have any kind of names, they weren’t baptized. After four or five years, people say, there was no food any more. . . . So they were forced to go hunting . . . One of our ancestors [abuelos], due to bad luck, that time he went to the west side at four [in the afternoon] . . . and he lost his liwi, his bolea66  Daniel Moricio

dora.3 . . . So our ancestor was looking for his liwi . . . In a short while people saw him . . . so . . . those who had found the liwi said, “How is it that he has a pure gold liwi?” So at about ten or eleven [in the morning] the next day, our ancestors arrived on a big raft, but they say there was no one there. When they reached the shore and got down to look for the liwi. .  .  . Right then people appeared, who had been hiding. How would they have talked to each other? [Our ancestor] didn’t speak Spanish, they say he spoke a language, pukina, but they say our ancestors didn’t speak pukina but [another language called] chholo. . . . So they had a chat, they conversed. A while later, maybe they ate lunch. I think they must have got hungry and they invited our ancestor Oro [to have] a cup of tea or coffee with bread. Our ancestor wasn’t used to drinking [tea or coffee]. . . . When he tried it, it was sweet, really delicious. . . . After that they said, “We’re going to give you these bits of food.” When he reached the hill, where [the city of] Oruro is [today], the Urus were there. There he told them what he had come across—​­he said [at first I thought they were] animals—​­but they are people, he said, but their body is quite different . . . hairy. . . . So then they wanted to cook everything together, sugar, noodles . . . but after that, one thing at a time. . . . Two weeks later, he went back again since he had an appointment. . . . When he turned up again they had made friends and they gave him singani [white brandy]. Our ancestors without knowing [what it was] drank it [as if it were water]. . . . In five or ten minutes they were drunk. . . . So being drunk they talked and took them to the hill [where the Urus lived]. They arrived there with the Spaniards who had clothes. That’s how the Spaniards or the Aymara migrants saw [the hill where the Urus lived]. Every night the Spaniards, the Aymaras worked on wood for a boat, to bring more foodstuffs. When they finished it, they also carried hundredweights of gold [in the same boat]. . . . The anthropologists must know who extracted that gold from our ancestors, the lawyers or the university students must know something. . . . So they made our poor ancestors suffer for several years without baptizing them. . . . After that, they wanted to confiscate the great big, thick gold staff from our ancestors. . . . By then [the Urus] were obliged to obey the orders of the Aymaras or the Spaniards and so, by force, the Spaniards gave them a staff made of only wood, like the ones the jilaqatas use today.4 They took the golden staff away, they left the wooden one. . . . After that, the eldest son of the Oros governed Panza Island and Pampa Aullagas. He had no name, no baptism. Afterwards his father, our governor, was baptized in the province of Paria in the department of Chuquisaca [with the name of] San Felipe de Austria as well as his wife Catalina Zapatía. Later on, after 1646, Oro was captured. . . . “Now you have to be baptized, otherwise they’ll kill you,” a man said to him. That man was José Vega AlAn Uru Vision of the Conquest  67

varado.5 . . . There had been a decree to kill those who didn’t have a name [weren’t baptized]. . . . The oldest son of San Felipe de Austria . . . had asked which name they could be baptized with. . . . José de la Vega Alvarado proposed the name of Miguel García Morato. .  .  . From that year we’ve used the name Morato and his wife María Cocha. . . . So José de la Vega Alvarado also said that you will pay [taxes] for Lake [Poopó]. . . . They measured it in yards. . . . Now it had a title from the Spanish Crown. . . . They paid forty-­five pounds of gold. That’s how our ancestors bought the lake with pounds of gold for all the Uru Muratos who are walking about [today].

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Juysu, from the Spanish juicio, means “judgment” in the sense of the Last Judgment: a miraculous intervention by God which marks the passage from one age of the world to another. The speaker refers to the southern Andean myth of a previous age when there was no sun, only the moon, and the world was inhabited by another human race known as chullpas or gentiles. The “judgment” occurred when the sun suddenly arose and burned this previous race to death, apart from the Urus (and the Chipayas) who hid underwater and thus escaped being burned. Thus, they are leftovers (puchu) of this previous race, and “lake” (quta) leftovers because both before and after the judgment they lived on islands in various altiplano lakes. See “The Myth of the Chullpas and the Emergence of the Sun,” also in part II. 2. Dense stands of totora reeds fringe Lake Titicaca. The reeds are used to make mats and boats, and when heaped up thickly, form artificial “floating islands” on which people live. The reed beds are inhabited by many species of water birds, fish, and amphibians, which provide rich hunting and fishing. 3. Abuelo literally means “grandfather,” but here it refers to a more distant ancestor. A boleadora, also called bola, is a hunting tool made of three stone or metal balls, each tied to a braided leather thong whose three ends are united in a single knot. It is thrown to bring down birds, in this case flamingoes. 4. Jilaqata is an Aymara title for local community leaders. The post is held for a year at a time and rotates among the adult male members of the community. 5. José Vega Alvarado was a Spanish bureaucrat active in the mid-­seventeenth century, when the Spanish Crown, desperate for cash, was selling the Indians’ own lands to the same Indians with the pretext of providing them with legal titles. Several regions have origin myths that identify these transactions, said to have been paid for in large amounts of metallic gold, as the basis of present-day ethnic groups. The titles were, however, legally valid and have been used time and again over succeeding centuries to defend the lands from outsiders’ attempts to usurp them.

68  Daniel Moricio

A Guaraní Vision of the Conquest Oral Tradition

The Guaraní in the Chaco region put up long-­lasting resistance to conquest and colonization. Recurrent hostilities characterized the relations between the Guaraní and the Spanish Crown and, after Independence, the Bolivian state; the region in the eastern part of Charcas, not far from the capital La Plata or Sucre, is known even today as “the Frontier.” In South America, this resistance is comparable only with that of the Mapuche in southern Chile. We do not know how far back this myth dates, but it was recounted by a Franciscan missionary from Italy, Doroteo Giannecchini, in a written account in 1898. The myth seems to apply to the final campaign of the Guaraní, no longer against the Spaniards but rather against the republican Bolivian Army during the last third of the nineteenth century, the same period in which Giannecchini heard it. Between Independence in 1825 and 1860, the autonomy and power of the Guaraní grew in relation to the karai (whites and mestizos on the frontier) because the Guaraní were more numerous and because of their military skill, which, drawing on guerrilla tactics, avoided direct confrontation.1 But in the later period, with the economic upturn in the country due to mining, the demand for meat increased greatly and with it the pressure for the karai to expand their cattle ranches. The karai developed improved military capacity, and their aggression grew with each successive confrontation. The massacre in Yuki (Huacaya) in 1875 and the final defeat of the Guaraní in Kuruyuki in 1892 stand out among these campaigns. In 1892, Guaraní forces were led by Apiaguaiki Tumpa, who had mobilized some six thousand warriors armed with bows and arrows (see Juan Ayemoti Guasu, “The God Man,” in part VI). After several skirmishes, many Guaraní had taken a defensive stand in Kuruyuki (instead of continuing with the previous guerrilla strategy). After an unequal battle lasting eight hours, between six hundred and nine hundred Guaraní lay dead, and innumerable others were wounded (many of whom later died). The army’s casualties were only four dead and several wounded. One historian later concluded that it had not been a battle so much as the hunting down of bronze and red-­painted bodies. They say that one fine day, two men, more like old men, were poor and downhearted sitting in a room. Suddenly, the fox god came down from the winds, took them to another room, and said to them: “I felt sorry to see you 69

down and out, I want to make you rich and happy. Do you see these weapons? Each one of you has to choose for himself the ones he likes best.” On one side were bundles of arrows, on the other side, old rusty guns. One of the two men, more alert than the other, hurried to get up and checked out the guns, but they seemed too heavy to him, and he didn’t like them. He went over to the bow and the arrows; they seemed lighter, more easy to use, and more lovely to him, and bursting with happiness he said, “Cáue che taréco” (I’ll stay with these). The other man didn’t have a choice, and by force, he had to settle for the rusty, worn-­out guns. He looked at them time and again; he set to cleaning and polishing them. When the sun came up, the guns, already polished, began to shine and reflect its rays. So then the fox god, turning to the arrow man, said, “You hurried too much in choosing the weapons. Take this, too.” He perforated the man’s lower lip and put the tembeta [ornamental lip plug] over his chin. They say that the Chiriguano had never seen a tembeta before, that the fox god had slyly put it next to the bow and arrows and continued saying to the man, “Stuck in your ways and fast to the bow, you will always be poor and live naked; while this karai will always lord it over you and you will always be under him: for being the owner of the land, the cows, oxen, horses, donkeys, sheep, wine, cloth, shops, in the end everything, he will always be rich and your lord.2 You on the other hand will always be poor and his serf. However, to give you relief from your stupidity, naiveté, and nakedness, I will let you beg him for all you need, and I order him, as his obligation, to give you everything you ask him for, since he will always be rich and you will always be poor.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. According to early accounts, the Guaraní used the term karai to refer to all whites and mestizos because they deemed the cunning, skill, and reasoning of the first conquistadors they met to be similar to those of their finest shamans, whom they called karai, meaning “cunning” or “sly.” 2. This version of the myth uses the older term “Chiriguano” to refer to the Guaraní.

70  Oral Tradition

III The Rich Mountain

In the early seventeenth century, colonial contemporaries envisioned the great city and mining hub of Potosí at the center not only of the Andean world, or even of the Spanish empire, but of the universe itself. The celebrated eighteenth-­century image of the Virgin of the Mountain (see color plates) depicts an Inka at the base of the mountain, the figures of the Spanish emperor and the pope kneeling in the foreground, flanking a globe of the world, and the Holy Trinity crowning the mountain above. The syncretic identification of a fertile native earth mother with the Virgin Mary herself proclaimed the city’s abundant material wealth and its sacred power. The famed chronicler of Potosí Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela wrote of the city as “the very celebrated, always illustrious, august, magnanimous, noble, and rich City of Potosí; condensed orb; honor and glory of America; center of Peru; empress of the cities and places of this New World; queen of her powerful province; princess of the peoples of the Indies; proprietress of treasures and fortunes[;] . . . singular work of God’s power; unique miracle of nature; perfect and permanent marvel of the world.” 1 As an economic center, Potosí was the site of intensive exploitation of minerals and of men and women. Its fabled wealth, the dream of European colonizers, derived in part from concentrated capital investment in infrastructure and technology. The colonial state coordinated an elaborate system of dams and hydraulic works that powered the ore-­crushing mills, and it ensured the supply of mercury from Huancavelica in the central highlands of Peru, which was crucial for the amalgamation process used to extract silver from raw ore. Wealthy merchants also provided credit to mineowners for private investment in the capital-­i ntensive and volatile industry. The glittering imperial and private fortunes amassed in Potosí also derived from the back-­breaking labor of Indian workers—​­the mingas, or “free” face-­workers within the mines, and the mitayos, the corvée workers who did most of the transport and refining labor—​­and from the subsidies provided by native communities. Southern Andean ayllus, with the coordination of their cacique governors, sent a stream of mitayos and their families to the mines, and made sure they had adequate foodstuffs and lodging to survive the year-­ 71

La Virgen del Cerro (The Virgin of the Mountain), an anonymous eighteenth-century painting of the Virgin Mary as Mother Earth, is a quintessential expression of the articulation between Andean and Catholic religions. The Mountain of Potosí was a huaca, a pre-Hispanic deity, associated with Pachamama (the earth goddess) and her fertility. The mountain was referred to as coya, or queen, into the colonial period, when the Pachamama was associated with the Virgin Mary in an attempt to Christianize the mountain. In the foreground, at the foot of the mountain, is the pope, a cardinal, and a bishop; on the other side, separated by the globe, is the great emperor of the sixteenth century, Charles V. Behind him kneels an indigenous lord with his wife, presumably the sponsors of the painting. Thus, the sacred majesty of the Rich Mountain was recognized by the religious powers of the day, the secular power of the empire, as well as the devout indigenous population. Courtesy of Casa Nacional de Moneda, Potosí, Bolivia (The National Mint of Bolivia).

long forced service. Here, too, it was ultimately the colonial state that enforced the steady supply of these rotating labor drafts (known as the mita). Writing in a long tradition of protest against the institution, the Dominican friar Antonio de Calancha denounced that “the mines have ground more Indians than ore” and compared the interior of the mines to the horrible realms of hell. It is true that Calancha’s tone was strident, that some Indians did find ways to evade the mita or to make claims on the state for their service, and that some preferred to stay in Potosí as “free” laborers rather than return home. Yet the toil was arduous and the toll undeniably high. The great mining city was also a hub for local, regional, and even global commerce. Rural communities in Potosí’s hinterland sent wheat for sale in the city’s public markets. Cochabamba agrarian estates (haciendas) sent corn. The semitropical Yungas valleys of La Paz sent coca leaf, which was prized for the grueling work in the mines. The estates along the Pacific coast of southern Peru, some owned by the Aymara lords on the altiplano, sent brandy wine and red peppers. Tucumán, in what is today northern Argentina, raised the mules, and the Aymara altiplano provided the llamas that transported goods throughout this integrated “Peruvian economic space.” Silver bullion sailed out of the port of Arica to Lima and Panama—​­only from the 1750s did the route by Cape Horn around the tip of South America become common—​­then crossed the isthmus by land and followed an Atlantic route to Cádiz and the Spanish imperial metropole; the Pacific route went north to Acapulco, Mexico, and onward to Manila and China. Given that Potosí’s population was well over 100,000 in the early seven­ teenth century, few cities in Europe surpassed it in size. It was a site of racial and class contrasts and convergences: Indian mitayos, independent minga mineworkers, and petty marketers inhabited the city alongside wealthier merchants, mineowners, priests, and bureaucrats. Its periodic festivals brought together elites and commoners in performances marked by grand pageantry and panoply. The great Baroque painter Melchor Pérez Holguín illustrated this public manifestation of high and low in his rendering of Viceroy Diego Morcillo’s entrance into the city in 1716 (see color plates), a scene also captured by the Baroque chronicler Arzáns. With market forces unleashed so powerfully in Potosí, the city was a magnet for adventurers and fortune-­seekers, a place of possibilities for social reinvention and mobility as well as tensions over racial and class hierarchy. Patriarchal honor codes served as one of the ways in which colonial society made sense of and regulated the social flux and tensions. A letter written by Juan José de Segovia, a high-­ranking colonial magistrate, to his young daughter on the proper conduct for a wife provides an example of the concerns of elite families for patriarchal order. In contrast, Arzáns’s picaresque tales, while invoking moral and religious norms, delight in the unexpected incongruities and reversals of social convention that could occur in the city. The Rich Mountain 73  73

The noble stratum within indigenous society mediated in crucial ways the contradictions between the upper and lower echelons in the colonial social hierarchy. Powerful cacique lords or mallkus (condor chiefs in Aymara), such as Fernando Ayra de Ariutu from the town of Pocoata in the Potosí hinterland, proudly traced their native lineages back to preconquest Aymara chieftainships while also publicizing their families’ military and administrative services to the Crown, including the provision of mita laborers for the mines. Ayra de Ariutu sought and gained royal approval for a dynastic shield of arms that featured Andean iconography within a European heraldic framework. Such prominent Andean figures were both the agents of indirect colonial rule as well as the political and ritual representatives of their indigenous community vassals. Despite the initial shocks of conquest and the subsequent demographic decline through the seventeenth century, the indigenous population rebounded in the eighteenth century. The cities and provinces of Charcas had nearly half a million people in the late colonial period, and its highlands and upland valleys were among the most densely settled indigenous districts in the Americas. On the lowland frontiers, missionary evangelization extended the reach of the Spanish Crown and colonial society and incorporated some indigenous ethnic and linguistic groups within the sphere of Catholic culture. The Franciscans made inroads into the plains of the Chaco region, in Guaraní territory. The Jesuits established missions in the Chiquitos region of Santa Cruz and the Moxos region of the Beni. At the same time, this ethnic, linguistic, and religious unification could give rise to new forms of collective identity, such as that of the “Chiquitano” Indians in Santa Cruz. The Jesuit missions were architectural jewels and the sites of rich musical cultivation and festival cycles. The missions were also thriving and largely self-­sufficient economic units, which exported goods such as the musical instruments fashioned by Indian artisans. Life on the missions involved trade-­offs for indigenous peoples. They faced major spiritual and cultural sacrifices and impositions (while holding on to many of their own beliefs beneath the surface), but also enjoyed a measure of material security and new spaces for creative adaptation and collective expression. The missionary culture that emerged over many generations would prove long-­lasting. Some sixty years after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the French traveler Alcide d’Orbigny witnessed a choral and orchestral performance at the mission of San Xavier: “I listened to this music with even greater pleasure since in all of America I had heard nothing better.” 2 The popular Moxeño lullaby invoking the Virgin Mary, which the descendants of Jesuit mission inhabitants continue to sing to this day, provides another example of such enduring colonial legacies. Beyond the mission fields, other indigenous groups continued to flourish independently in the eastern lowlands. In some cases they evaded the colonial frontier, and in others they 74  The Rich Mountain

skirmished with settlers, assuring that the long-­standing processes of conquest and intercultural identity formation would persist for generations even after the colonial period drew to a close. Notes 1. Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Relatos de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, ed. Leonardo García Pabón (La Paz: Plural, 2000), 11. The territory today known as Bolivia was under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of Peru and was called Upper Peru or Charcas, for most of the colonial period. In 1767, it was transferred to the new viceroyalty of Buenos Aires. 2. Alcide d’Orbigny, Fragment d’un voyage au centre de l’Amérique Méridionale; contenant des considérations sur la navigation de l’Amazone et de La Plata, et sur les anciennes missions des provinces de Chiquitos et de Moxos (Bolivia) (Paris: P. Bertrand, 1845), 28. This publication consists of an extract from D’Orbigny’s multivolume work Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale.

The Rich Mountain 75  75

This page intentionally left blank

Tales of Potosí Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

The annals of Potosí composed by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela (1674–1736) occupy a blurry literary domain between history and fiction, edifying morality tale and titillating scandal sheet. Like an Andean Cervantes, Arzáns’s narrator claimed to write from first-­person knowledge, credible rumor, and his reading of learned chroniclers. The city that emerges from his picaresque stories is inhabited by a remarkable cast, including warring parties of Basques and other Spanish immigrants; trapped Indian mineworkers rescued by a miraculous Virgin; an Indian social climber rebuffed by the Spanish upper crust; a fortune seeker who entered into a pact with the Devil; a Spanish woman who chewed coca and practiced witchcraft; a wicked wife who poisoned her unsuspecting husband only to be redeemed by her countrymen for being a creole, and so on. Writing at a time of urban and industrial decline, Arzáns celebrated a hybrid New World society during the Rich Mountain’s earlier heyday. In this classic tale of cross-­dressing and gender-­bending, the two young maidens Eustaquia and Ana take on the personae of gallant and virile young men courting adventure on the rough streets of the city. Despite their transgression of conventional gender norms and the considerable sexual ambiguity below the surface, in the end their story also affirms both male and female codes of honor.

The Adventures of the Warrior Maidens Don Juan Pasquier—​­in his History of Potosí, which he wrote with such elegance of style—​­gives an eyewitness account of the exploits of two noble Peruvian maidens of this city. In this chapter I will follow his account, along with those of three venerable old men who are still alive today and who knew those ladies by both sight and speech. This is the manner in which it all happened. In this imperial city of Potosí there lived Captain Antonio de Souza, a noble Portuguese, and his wife, Doña Leonor de Meneses, a native of this city; their children were Don Juan, the elder, and Doña Eustaquia, a singularly beautiful little girl. Their home was near Munaypata; and in the same quarter of the town lived Don Pedro Urinza, an Andalusian gentleman, and his wife, Doña Plácida Lezama; they had a daughter, Doña Ana, who was 77

their only child and an unusually beautiful little girl. Doña Plácida died when the child was very small, and within the space of two years her father, Don Pedro, died also, leaving the child in the care of Don Antonio de Souza so that she might be reared with Doña Eustaquia, who at the time was also four years old. As soon as Don Juan de Souza, Eustaquia’s elder brother, reached a sufficient age, his father had him taught to handle and make use of arms, both steel and fire, for he had all sorts of such weapons in his home. Eustaquia and Ana greatly enjoyed watching that sport and were even sorry they were not men so as to be able to use them. Those who do not think that it is easy for a woman to succeed in whatever she attempts are mistaken, for many women have surpassed men in valor, in the use of arms, and in knowledge. In the use of arms there have been three Corinnes, two Aspsias, a Hortensia, a Sappho, a Zenobia, a Cornelia, and a Praxilla, not to mention others such as Arete, Proba, Eudocia, Istrina, and Cassandra; and in valor a Pantasilea, a Zenobia, an Artemisia, a Cleopatra, and the Castilian queen Isabella the Catholic, heroic among famous women and a singular miracle of strength and prudence in the world. No one need be astonished to see such excellence in women, for neither are they of a different nature from men nor are their souls less perfect (insofar as essential perfection is concerned). With such examples of women before me I think it is no less than fitting to state that those whose story I tell in this chapter had the same qualities, and I am sure that no one will be surprised by the events I shall recount concerning them. The uncertainty and misery of this life are always great and the proof of this is always with us; thus, it happened that just as Don Antonio de Souza had relied upon a particular means to advance his son in life the same means brought about his greatest grief. For it happened that one day when Don Juan de Souza was fencing with a fencing-­master and sweating from his exertions, he asked for a pitcher of water; and having drunk it, within twenty-­four hours he was dead, to the great sorrow of his parents; he was but fifteen years old. At this time the two maidens, Eustaquia and Ana, were in their thirteenth year and were more inclined toward the exercise of arms (because they had seen Don Juan use them) than to the needlework proper to their sex; whenever their parents (as Doña Ana also called Don Antonio and Doña Plácida, because they had reared her) were away from home, the two girls amused themselves in learning to shoot firearms and make use of other weapons. Not much more than fifteen months after Don Juan’s death his mother followed him, and Eustaquia and Ana were left alone with Don Antonio. They had been reared with such circumspection and kept so closely within doors that scarcely anyone knew of their existence, not only in the town at large but even in the quarter where they lived. There was an oratory in their house where they had heard mass, and they had gone to church only ten times a year; and their father continued to rear them in the same way. Don Antonio 78  Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

kept a young manservant, and it was he who told them all about the fiestas, theatrical performances, bullfights, balls, and other entertainments that took place in the city, and all this increased their desire to get out of their house to see such things. Still leading this quiet kind of life, they came to the year 1653 (which was also the fourteenth year of their age), and realizing that they were likely to be shut in for a long time they longed merely to see the streets of their native city—​­for this purpose they determined to go out one night in men’s clothing to take a turn about the town and come back home; they also confided in a faithful Negro serving-­woman. One night after supper they went to their bedroom when their father was already asleep and soon armed themselves and dressed in garments quite different from those they usually wore. Over their fine linen undergarments they put on doublets, and over these, mail shirts of the finest workmanship, under which they wore short tunics of fine scarlet brocade reaching to their knees, hose of the same color, and white shoes; over the mail shirts they placed jackets of Castilian buckskin, and over these, short skirts of scarlet cloth; then they donned white beaver hats, scarlet capes adorned with gold stitchery, swords, stout bucklers, and a pistol for each. I have mentioned these trifles in order not to omit everything that Don Juan Pasquier recounts in connection with this feminine exploit, for he gives a great many small details, and I will try to include some of them. The maidens went out into the street dressed in this elegant and dashing clothing leaving their father asleep; they ordered the Negress to await them at the door, promising her that they would return very shortly, even as she begged them not to get lost. When they had walked the length of a street or two, wishing to reach a corner where a food shop was still open, they met a young man who was going to such a place. He stopped to admire the dashing appearance and elegance of those two persons, and when the girls saw that he was so close to them, they asked him where he was going and if he had much to do. He replied that his parents had sent him to buy bread and that whatever they commanded him he would do with a good will. They told him that they wished to have him accompany them, for being strangers to the town, they did not know the streets and wanted to stroll about. “Señores,” said the youth, “I also am a stranger and have not been long in this city. But I know enough to tell you that the town is dangerous; for if by day men are killed like dogs in the street, by night it is even more common, and that is why the magistrates go on patrol at night, and it may be we will meet such a patrol. But I will accompany you if you like for your elegance of person and the fact that you are armed for any encounter inclines me to follow you; and indeed all that I see in your persons is new and strange to me, especially the fact that your faces are covered. Be so good as to tell me who you are, and in return I will tell you that I live on this street, that my famTales of Potosí  79

ily is not lacking in nobility, and that my parents were Andalusian nobles in Spain. They died and left me in Mexico—​­for I am from that realm—​­and from thence I came to Potosí, this fount of all riches, refuge of strangers, hospice of the poor, homeland of the brave, requital of the ill-­treated, and free exchange of firm friendships. Here in Potosí I live with Juan Bravo, who has received me into his house as if I were his own son.” The girls responded to the young man’s speech with courteous words and told him that they would satisfy his curiosity as they walked along. When he heard this offer the lad (whose name was Diego Melgarejo) told them to wait for him, that he would leave at home the things he was carrying and return immediately. They agreed to this, and the young man shortly returned, wrapped in a cape and with a dagger at his side. They thanked him for coming back so quickly, and young Diego again implored them to tell him who they were. Because they were grateful to the youth they decided to lay the truth before him, and so they told him their names, true sex, and of their fancy to dress as men. Our youth was considerably disturbed by this but by no means unwilling to have such company, for when they uncovered their beautiful faces, their agreeable appearance left him in no doubt that both were equally attractive, especially when he heard them speak with the sweetest of voices and became convinced of their liveliness of mind. In addition to this, their weapons, their rich clothing, their behavior, their sweet smell, and their grace and elegance made him throw caution to the winds. He led them down several principal streets without incident, but on their way back they met in the Plaza de San Lorenzo the servants and Negro slaves of the chief magistrate, Pimentel, who, with the excuse of going out on patrol, often set forth by night to perform many acts of effrontery, setting upon workmen or Indians to snatch or steal their money. As soon as these men saw the maidens, realizing how valuable were their clothes and swords, they surrounded them, with the aim of stealing all their possessions. But the valiant Eustaquia, seeing their boldness, said to the one who, as ringleader of the gang, had come closest, “Stand fast, for if you come closer I will fire this pistol whether you like it or not,” and showed them her fierce weapon. The man raised his sword arm to strike her, and Eustaquia fired her deadly pistol; the bullet struck him in the chest and he fell senseless to the ground. Not to be outdone, her friend Doña Ana also fired her pistol, though to no effect, because the others turned and fled, leaving their comrade dead. Then the brave girls laid hands on their swords and tried to follow them, as they surely would have done had not Diego, their youthful guide, told them that they had better leave the spot, for on hearing the cries of the other servants, not only the neighbors but also the officers of the law would rush to the scene. And so they had to follow the young man, retreating as though on wings. Eustaquia and Ana returned home, found the slave waiting for them 80  Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

at the door, and went in without their father’s hearing them; Diego Melgarejo did the same, exceedingly frightened as he himself later recounted. The next day the whole town was in an uproar over the efforts made by President Nestares and the chief magistrate, Pimentel, to discover who had killed the servant; but they could not find the culprit. A few days later those prankish maidens determined to make another sally and therefore sent the woman slave (who knew the whole story) to the house of young Melgarejo, the youth who had guided them on the previous night, telling him that on San Juan’s Eve he must accompany them a second time. But the young man declined, fearing another accident like the previous one. However, since they wrote him a note ridiculing him as a woman and a coward, he was forced to reply that he would go with them; but he begged them repeatedly to desist from such dangerous and childish tricks, for sooner or later some irremediable evil might occur. But how can one’s own choice be correct and how can one decide important matters without accepting advice? Humans making decisions are fallible; nor are things any more certain to turn out well if left to chance. Repentance is a fine thing, but when it is deferred so long through the refusal of good counsel that it and the discovery of error strike home to the spirit simultaneously, the greater is the grief, for then guilt is more deeply felt and the evil that has been done cannot be mended. This was the experience of those two maidens, because they had been guided solely by their own inclinations and would listen to the advice of no one. When the Eve of San Juan arrived, Melgarejo was awaiting them at the door of their house and praying to God that they might never come out, so frightened was he—​­although better prepared than on the previous night, for he carried two pocket pistols in the belief that valor resided in them. It was a little past ten o’clock when Ana and Eustaquia appeared, wearing different clothing than before but very well armed; instead of swords they carried Damascus cutlasses and heavy shields, and they wore black hats, scarlet capes embroidered in silver, white hose, black shoes, short tunics of silver cloth (which barely covered their knees), and doublets of blue brocade, and under these, jackets and mail shirts. Thus attired they appeared before their guide, to whom they handed a sweet-­sounding guitar so that he might sing with them in one or another of the streets, as was the custom in that part of the country. Having passed through several streets, they reached the Plaza del Gato and sat down on the benches that were there (as if in a room of their own house); the charming Eustaquia tuned her instrument and sweetly sang songs of her own choosing, attracting with her delicate voice and skill a great many people who were strolling in the town until she thought it prudent to stop the music. Everyone wished to see the faces of the singers, expressing amazement at the sweet voices of those whom they supposed to be men (but the girls concealed their sex very well); and the crowd never ceased to praise Tales of Potosí  81

their sweetness and skill, desiring them to play and sing again. But they departed and by strolling through other streets reached the Calle de la Pelota, which in those days was so famous. They sat down in a doorway underneath a balcony to rest and, again taking up the instrument, were engaged in tuning its strings when four young men appeared at the corner. Seeing the persons who were sitting in the doorway, they approached and asked, “Who goes there?” Eustaquia answered, “Two gentlemen.” The reply was: “Whoever you are, you have done very ill in coming to these doors, for there are young girls living in the house and you sully their reputations by hanging around because you are young, and unknown in the town.” To this Eustaquia replied, “Indeed, it seems that you are the wardens of this house, for if not, you would not be so meddlesome; but we do you no offense, not even in thought, for we do not know whose house it is or who you are; and we have sat down here only to rest and to entertain ourselves with this instrument.” The four responded (as Diego Melgarejo, who was present during all this, later described it) with some unintelligible words and then angrily told them, “Get away from here; you are young rascals and know how to cover your evil desires with excuses.” To this Eustaquia and Ana replied, “Now we have hit upon the motive for your suspicions, and we tell you again that we have offended you in nothing; and if our words do not give you sufficient satisfaction, our weapons and our actions will make that satisfaction complete.” On hearing this, the men again said to them, “Get away from here, scoundrels, before we take you on.” The spirited girls replied, “Now we will see if your deeds are as good as your words,” and so saying, Eustaquia handed the guitar to Diego, who already foresaw disaster. A valiant spirit is indeed a great thing: if it attacks first, the victory is won, for initiative and determination are held to be half the battle in acts of courage and repute; but cowardice and hesitation are not well regarded in any sort of person, nor do they do him any good. The young man took the instrument and retired some distance away without using his pistols; but Doña Ana, drawing hers, said, “Stop there, you roughnecks, or you will feel the force of this thunderbolt.” Greatly angered, the four men crowded around her to grab the pistol, but she fired; and when the ball left the gun (since at that very moment two of the men had quickly stepped aside) it passed between them and lodged in the doors, making a great deal of noise. Doña Eustaquia also tried to cock her pistol and indeed succeeded in doing so, but it did not fire, and as the shield in her hands prevented her from lifting the hammer again, she stuck the pistol in her belt and unsheathed her cutlass (as Doña Ana had already done); they fiercely attacked the four men, who responded with their own swords and shields. They set upon each other from every direction, making such a din with their weapons that it seemed a hundred men were fighting; sparks of fire 82  Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

leaped from their swords, the fierce blows they were exchanging rang, and the voices of the men they were fighting resounded in the street. In the thick of the encounter one of the four said to Doña Ana, “Ah, villain, you have wounded me,” and rushing at her he administered a brutal thrust with such force that it pierced her shield and wounded her in the chest, tearing through her clothing, jacket, and mail shirt, and wounding her just under the left breast; the girl fell to the ground. When the valiant Eustaquia saw this, she leaped to place herself in front of her sister and, brandishing her cutlass in all directions and very conscious of the danger they were in, nudged Doña Ana with her feet, saying to her in great anguish, “Get up, sister, for our honor is at stake.” The injured girl rose to her feet like a lioness and, recognizing the man who had wounded her, said, “Monster, now I will revenge myself for that wound you have given me”; rushing at him fiercely she gave him such a mighty blow with her cutlass that she broke his shield and wounded him in the hand. He, not daring to wait for another, again joined his three companions as Doña Ana rejoined Doña Eustaquia and the girls fought on like wild things. The valiant Eustaquia knocked down another of the four, for the stroke of her cutlass caught him on the upper part of his head and he fell to the ground half-­stunned and badly wounded; he began to cry out for a confessor, and the servant who was guiding them began to shout, so that between his cries and those of the wounded man the whole neighborhood was aroused. A crowd of people emerged from the house (the same one that had been the motive for the bloody encounter) just as Doña Eustaquia aimed another cutlass stroke at the man on the ground, which would surely have killed him had not one of his companions, with a mighty effort, given the valiant lass a savage blow from behind. This made her turn on the man who had wounded her so basely, but he fell back as if to flee. It was then that Doña Eustaquia heard someone say that a man had been killed, and calling to Doña Ana under the name of Don Juan, she quit the battle. The neighbors came rushing up with weapons; and when the girls realized that they ran the risk of being discovered, they hastened to the corner where young Melgarejo was awaiting them, calling to them and begging them to flee. The girls followed him, leaving the ensign Mendoza, a native of Madrid, dead behind them with his brains spilt and one Rufino, an Andalusian (for the other three men were of that nation), badly wounded. The girls were also severely wounded, so that by the time they reached the cemetery of San Francisco, Doña Ana could not take another step because of a wound she had in her thigh, not to mention the chest wound, which was very grave; struggling to overcome their weakness they reached the bridge and paused under one of its arches to stanch the blood from each other’s wounds, for both were bleeding copiously. They removed their armor and found that Doña Eustaquia had three Tales of Potosí  83

wounds, one in the back, a small one in an arm, and another in a foot; the wound in her back was a serious one. Doña Ana, as I have said, had two, and both were dangerous; they bound them up tightly and, rearming themselves, continued on their way, for it was nearly dawn. Thanks to those trusty weapons they had not perished on the spot, though in addition, God was responsible for their great valor, for such bravery had never before been seen in Potosí in women of such tender age and gentle rearing. Finally they went to the Ribera (where the ore refineries are) and reached their house, with Doña Eustaquia and Melgarejo carrying Doña Ana because she could no longer walk. They reached the door, the slave opened it, and the young man told her to take care of the girls because they were badly wounded; and he went home swearing by all the saints that he would never accompany them more. The next day our Melgarejo managed to inform himself of how they were and learned that they were very ill because their wounds had not been attended. Their father, Don Antonio (whom they had persuaded that they were ill of some other malady), brought them a doctor, but they refused to let him examine them on grounds of modesty and instead had recourse to a Sevillian lady who lived nearby and who went to see them under the guise of paying them a visit. Her they told of their wounds, but concealed the gravity of the injuries. It was God’s will that she succeeded in curing their wounds, giving their father to understand that they had some other illness. They kept to their beds for almost two months, after which their health was completely restored. Three months later the Negress returned to Melgarejo’s house with a note in which the maidens made an appointment with him to go out once more, but the young man was unwilling to commit such a senseless act and responded in no uncertain terms that he did not wish to accompany them. They, unwilling to recognize that they were being unduly rash and that they could not always hope to get off so easily, determined to go out by themselves; but God frustrated their plans, for when they were ready to leave the house their father discovered them dressed in men’s clothing and with their swords and pistols. The noble Portuguese very nearly fired the pistols at them without waiting to find out what such preparations could mean, but after beating them soundly he shut them up in their bedroom, meaning to punish them more severely that night. But God saved them from this danger (which might even have cost them their lives, for Don Antonio was a man of violent temper) even as He had saved them from others, perhaps to the end that later in their lives they would make amends by serving Him in perpetual chastity (as indeed they did). For the Lord uses many means to increase His glory and save those whom it is His pleasure to save, to bring light out of shadows, roses out of thorns, and life out of death. And what man would not be confident of his ability to conquer the weakness of his flesh by divine grace, seeing how it was conquered by these young women, surrounded (as 84  Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

we shall see later) by base men, like unto vipers and basilisks, and seeing how they passed through the midst of the flames and were not burned? Therefore the two girls, finding themselves in this peril, placed their trust in God and found the strength and craft to escape. This they did with the aid of the slave woman, who, by tying a rope at the window of the bedroom, helped them to flee; carrying no weapons and wearing not men’s clothing but only short skirts, they slid down the rope to the roof of a stable and thence to the street at about seven o’clock in the evening. From there, in the company of the Negress (who always remained exceedingly faithful), they went to the home of Doña Paula, the Sevillian lady who had tended their wounds. She took them in under promise of great secrecy, but could not extract a single word from them as to the reason for their leaving home. That same night the girls sent the Negress, dressed in Indian costume, to the house of the young man who knew all that had happened; she asked him to write a message to the valley of Mataca, to a son of hers who lived there, telling him that his mother bade him come with four good mules and that the girls were sending the money to buy them; he wrote the letter and it was sent off immediately. Don Antonio’s anger and his efforts to find the missing girls were extraordinary, though to his honor it must be said that they were not public. But he could find not a trace of them, which increased his anger and even undermined and ruined his health. Diego Melgarejo, the agent of all these doings, always talked with the slave when she came to his house in Indian dress. By order of Eustaquia and Ana she instructed the young man (giving him a sum of money) to buy in the market place two swords and sets of men’s clothing, which he thereupon did. A week later the Negress’s son arrived, bringing four stout mules provided with saddles, and when he reached the house, where the girls were, he rested for a day. On the following night the girls, in men’s clothing, and the Negress, in Indian dress, thanked Doña Paula for the help she had given them and departed for the city of La Plata with the Negro. When they arrived in that city, still dressed in the same clothes, the beauty of those two ladies served as a letter of recommendation, since everyone who saw them was enthusiastic about them. Their own prudence of conduct helped to gain the good will of all, so that they had a very agreeable stay there. After a month’s time it happened that a merchant was going to Lima on business, and they took this opportunity to go with him, leaving the Negress (now dressed in her ordinary clothes) in the house of a reverend canon and taking her son as their servant; they were still dressed in men’s garments, for these hardy girls did not leave off wearing them for a long time. Once they had arrived in Lima, and because they possessed many jewels and a large quantity of gold and silver (which they had taken from their father’s house), their appearance was so handsome and dashing that they creTales of Potosí  85

ated a very favorable impression on everyone they met in the city. There was no one who did not aspire to their friendship, and so they were sought after and feted, everyone believing them to be young noblemen. And it is a remarkable thing to realize how perfectly accustomed they were to men’s clothing and also to recognize their great moral restraint, for despite the many opportunities that were offered them they were not carried away by the natural appetite of sensuality. But he who has God on his side and trusts in His divine majesty lives safely in the midst of danger, for all he undertakes is secure, even in the hands of his enemies. And so, having passed two years in Lima, they went to Trujillo and visited other cities, after which they again returned to Lima; and there, in the fiestas and bullfights of that city, their appearance was exactly that of men. While they were in Lima they learned of the death of their father, who had died of grief; and in his will he stated that should his daughter Eustaquia reappear she would inherit his large fortune, but only in case she were still single, for if she were married she would lose it all. Hence, five years after they had left Potosí and in the twentieth year of their age they returned to Chuquisaca accompanied by the faithful servant who had so successfully kept the secret of their disguise. Before entering that city they dressed in richly adorned women’s clothing, which only enhanced their beauty. Then Eustaquia took possession of her inheritance, and both made arrangements to become brides of Christ in the convent of the nuns of Santa Monica; but this did not come to pass, because the beautiful Doña Ana fell ill of an ailment that lasted many days, the result of a fall from a horse in the city of Lima when she was engaged in a bullfight, and for other causes which I do not relate because I am not certain of them. After he returned to Potosí the Negro who had served them during their journey to Lima and their return told other piquant details to Don Diego Melgarejo, and he in his turn recounted them to me. In the town of Chayanta I also made the acquaintance of a certain Don Juan de Itulaín, who told me some things that had happened to those two valiant maidens when they were in Lima and of the friendship he had had with them there in the belief that they were really men. When he went to La Plata in the same year that those ladies left Lima, he learned that his friends had not been men. Never ceasing to marvel that he had seen with his own eyes the valor of those two females, one day he begged Doña Ana (even though she was ill) as well as Eustaquia to put on their men’s garments, for they had kept them; since he asked it so insistently they donned them, and Don Juan Itulaín had portraits made of them in that garb. At the foot of one he caused to be inscribed, “The valiant Doña Eustaquia de Souza,” and on the other, “The valiant Doña Ana de Urinza, Peruvian ladies of Potosí.” Having learned of this, when I next journeyed from Chayanta to the city of La Plata, I went to this gentleman’s house and saw those portraits; indeed, their beauty was beyond my powers 86  Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

of description, and I took the liveliest pleasure in seeing them, although at that time I did not have the slightest idea of writing this history, which would relate the story of those two ladies. After living in La Plata a little more than two years. Doña Ana died of her ailment, and four months later Doña Eustaquia also died (of an affection of the chest), grieving for her beloved companion; and at the end of their days both declared that they died as virgins, for though both had been placed in perilous circumstances and had undergone terrible temptations, they had been fortified with divine favor and had overcome temptation and always preserved their chastity. Everything that they had was left to be judiciously divided among the poor, and they freed their faithful servant the Negress, also leaving her, together with her son, a sum of money sufficient for the rest of their lives and for their return to this city. Nor did they forget Diego Melgarejo; they sent for him and presented him with a thousand pesos and all their men’s clothing.

Tales of Potosí  87

Imperial Panoply in the Baroque City Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela

On 25 April 1716, the city of Potosí received with great pomp and circumstance the newly appointed Viceroy of Peru, Fray Diego Morcillo Rubio de Auñón, who had been serving as archbishop of Charcas. Symbolizing the very body of the king himself, and in the company of the local civil and ecclesiastical hierarchy, he processed through an array of triumphal arches before the assembled crowds of spectators. Over a week, the city feted the viceroy, one highlight being an allegorical masquerade including a float of the splendid mountain of silver. Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela’s description of the viceregal entry celebrates the city’s munificence and loyalty to the Crown, but also contains muted criticism of the colonial extraction that had slowly undermined the city’s fortunes. His paean to the beauty of women in the New World, along with his moral warnings about sexual impropriety, in fact add a dash of excitement to his account of the festivities. The spectacle was also captured in a monumental canvas painted by Melchor Pérez Holguín (ca. 1660–ca. 1725), a creole from Potosí, like Arzáns, and the greatest artist to emerge in colonial Upper Peru (see color plates). When the music had ended, the illustrious cabildo (city council) presented to His Excellency a richly caparisoned Chilean horse, with stirrups of fine silver washed with gold and shoes of the same (all of which had been specially made for this occasion at enormous expense). He mounted, and with the senior member of the cabildo and the royal standard-­bearer walking by his stirrups and two magistrates at his reins (they in court dress with their jewels of office and gold chains, and the illustrious senators in splendid clothing), and accompanied by the mace-­bearers and the canopy, His Excellency began his procession. The streets were blooming with members of the fair sex who crowded balconies, windows, and the stands built for the occasion. So many honorable matrons, chaste maidens, and ladies celebrated for their beauty, all richly and gorgeously dressed, had never been seen before. Nor had the city ever seen so many jewels and precious stones or such a profusion of pearls to augment the beauty of their faces. Smiling and graceful, all offered a thousand welcomes to His Excellency, supplanting the function of Flora and the beauty of Diana in the eyes of all who looked upon them and the hearts of those who loved; others, like the dawn when it covers plants and 88

flowers with grateful dew, sprinkled the noble retinue with sweet-­smelling waters that seemed to come from the angels, for those who sprinkled them were angelic indeed. This is no exaggeration of the richness and beauty there displayed, for although the Spaniards have made away with an enormous amount of wealth and have given it to the French, yet enough is left to maintain the grandeur of this city;1 and as for beauty, apart from that of its native daughters, here the fair sex of all America and even of Europe represents the cream of every condition of womankind: only in this there may be one great danger, for if man is the essence of earthiness, woman is the epitome of heaven, and if divine commandments and laws are not adhered to, both sexes will suffer eternal damnation. The distance from the triumphal arch to the principal church is very long, yet all the balconies, windows, doors, and street crossings were filled with vast numbers of people, and the walls on either side were hung from top to bottom with rich and varied hangings of satin, velvet, and innumerable other silk tapestries, rich stuffs, damasks, beautifully painted pictures representing landscapes, and portraits; but the women surpassed all with their beauty, fine clothing, coiffures, jewels, and pearls.

Note 1. Arzáns complains that the Spanish Crown had shifted from the Hapsburg to the Bourbon dynasty after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

Imperial Panoply in the Baroque City  89

The Good Wife Juan José Segovia

Written at the end of the colonial period by one of the most powerful colonial magistrates in the Audiencia (high court) of Charcas, this letter could serve as a manual for virtuous conduct by women. Juan José Segovia gave his daughter a highly detailed body of precepts about the proper hierarchy between husband and wife and about a woman’s honorable behavior in the private and public spheres. The father’s advice was to obey the explicit and implicit rules of what we could call colonial patriarchy. These rules stipulated modesty with grace, but also allowed the discretion to negotiate certain terms of the marital relationship. Upon marriage, a young woman was no longer subject to the patriarchal power of the father over his children, instead coming under the patriarchal power of her husband. This power was enshrined in law as patria potestad, a principle that carried over from the colonial period into the republican legal code.

My darling daughter Rosalía: You have now married a person of your liking. Though I chose him to offer to you, I left the choice to marry in your hands, so that it was your free will that decided your fate. The man you have chosen as your husband is understanding; he is gallant, courteous, liberal, kind in his moods, and has for you a great liking: all of his qualities inspire hope and lead me to believe that he will never treat you with the imperious tone of a Lord. . . . Conserving his love, making yourself the owner of his will, and gaining authority in all of his deliberations depends on your good conduct. Even if in his amiable company you do not enjoy riches, you will never lack that which is necessary. His orderly handling of affairs and diligence will ensure you sufficient rest because when I chose him for you, I had in mind Temistocles’s words regarding his daughter’s marriage: “I prefer a man without money to money without a man.” Since your departure is near, I will prepare you in writing with what could be said in person if the tenderness of my love were not a natural obstacle to explanation. . . . 90

This infallible truth should be engraved in the deepest place of your tender heart: there can be no success, joy, or rest whatsoever where God is not feared, and on this solid principle you should base the happy days of your new state, asking Our God every day for the means to maintain it with dignity. Assuming that the man is the head of the family and the woman his subordinate, you are left with no other legitimate choice but to share in his authority with submission, satisfaction, and sweetness. Giving him this as much as he desires and orders, you will quickly have him not wanting more than what is agreeable to you. A husband’s graces can only be preserved by doing everything according to his pleasure and by patiently suffering all that he does even if it is disagreeable to the woman. Whenever prudence allows it, do not think or execute your own plan without communicating it to him, for this trust will dispose him to act in the same way with you. Your husband should be your only confidant. Always embrace his advice. If you should have to contradict him, do so with prudence and kindness, showing the disadvantages he neglects to mention, perhaps for lack of reflection. But do not be too persistent in your opinion, because the woman’s role is submission. When you see him being tender, loving, and lighthearted, offer your advice, but with sweetness and without making him feel that you want to dominate him. Do not presume that he has as much love for you as you must have for him, nor expect him to offer as many demonstrations of affection as you would like, because men in general are less tender than women. On this point, women must surpass them in tenderness, because you will end up unhappy if you are too subtle with your love. To ensure constant peace, you must learn to put up with the shortcomings of your husband’s moods, temperament, and conduct. Men have their ideas, their outbursts, their days and times of ill humor. In these moments, patience and sweetness go a long way. If he is in a mood to resist, reprehensions fan the flames and turn what could have been a quickly extinguished flare-­up into a fire that destroys everything. For this reason, never contradict his ideas with haughtiness, especially if he is enflamed. As Saint Monica taught other married women, “Hold your own tongue first because it is not women’s place to resist their husbands.” Wait for when he is calm, and then in private, when affection prevails, let him know that he strays from the right path in his projects. But always be aware that since no man is perfect in everything, we must ignore many things in order to live in peace. When he comes home, always receive him with joy and lavish attention so that he knows the concerns his absence causes you. If, because of the seriousness of his affairs, he arrives overly angry or sad, you must The Good Wife  91

be very careful. Calm him with tenderness, praise, and consolation, and let him unburden his heart. Enlightening each other, you will figure out a solution in which reason prevails, rather than impulse. Since you and your husband are like one piece of flesh, you must share together the joys and sorrows. No marriage is without its ups and downs. But prudence and forebearance soften everything, because in the worst adversities, patience tends to achieve what happiness cannot reach. . . . Just as the domestic affairs of the house are a woman’s responsibilities and hers only, you should not involve yourself in your husband’s public affairs; unless of course he asks you to, in which case you may, putting your opinion beneath his, be frank in telling him what you feel. With other women in your social sphere, you should conduct yourself with courtesy, affability, and affection, giving them the attention they deserve but without creating an intimate, close friendship or confiding to them what is in your heart without first confirming their virtue, honor, and judgment. For without these qualities, there can be no true and solid friendship, because only virtue forges an unbreakable chain. In the city of Potosí, there are many with such high character, so you will have your choice among them. May these women sustain you with their advice and keep you from any precipice over which you could throw yourself. You must flee and detest with all your heart, my precious daughter, the company of those women who think and converse only about fashion, dances, parties, and entertainment, having profoundly neglected the government of their homes and neglected even their husbands. I can only say that, not knowing how to thread a needle, they think only in [unknown term] and they censure hidden vices, they spread the news of others’ private misfortunes, and they gossip about everyone. These women are poisonous lice who, in no time, will corrupt your spirit and cause you to fall into an abyss of evils from which escape is impossible. As the sacred scripture tells us, “Such conversation and company corrupt good manners and destroy all that is naturally good and the best of intentions.” On a daily basis, the poisoned breath spoils the precious fruits of simplicity and good education. Women, when they are more flattering, are more false: they say one thing and have another in their heart. They flatter their friends by calling them discreet, beautiful, and gallant, but as soon as their backs are turned, they speak about any imagined defect. Never feel richer for their praise, for it is a false coin. But if they comment on a defect of yours, take the criticism with patience in order to mend your ways. Socrates said, “If what they say I have done wrong is true, then it will serve me to mend my ways. If it is not, then I don’t care at all.” . . .

92  Juan José Segovia

Do not idolize your beauty nor spend time in front of the mirror adorning yourself excessively. Beauty must be looked upon like a brief flower. Only for a few days does the sovereignty of marriage allow for the privileges of beauty, which will last only if it is adorned with honesty. If you are only beautiful for your husband, he, to love you, will look at your heart, not your face. Your cleanliness will captivate his will without you tiring yourself out by dressing up, considering instead your own nature. If women were at liberty to change the symmetry of their features and the shapeliness of their limbs through finery, makeup, and fashions, a despotic court would be established for the debts of love. As a married woman, you must present yourself to the public in honest dress, and that will be the best assurance of the purity of your intentions. As Saint Paul warns you: clothe yourself decently, adorn yourself with modesty and moderation, and be well groomed, as befits women who profess virtue and good deeds. The fashion for dressing with extravagance is but the legacy of prostitutes, who, having lost all shame, make a show of their self-­assurance and, with any small movement, expose the most reserved parts of their womanhood. . . . Since the day you were married, you were removed from my own legal power [patria potestad], and my authority over you ceased. You replaced it with that of your husband, whom you must obey, unless virtue and honor prevent it. Get used to the idea of obeying, because this will sustain your Soul in those moments when your husband suffers fluctuations in his temper or care. . . . Since the responsibilities of a marriage are divided between the two spouses, with the husband attending to matters involving the prestige and subsistence of the family, the woman’s part is the internal government of the house. This should be the principal occupation of your efforts, making sure everything is in order and especially that you and all the servants live in holy fear of God. Rise in the morning so that you have more than enough time to give orders about what needs to be done over the course of the day. If you sleep a lot, the servants will be careless in the performance of their chores. In the Gospel, Christ teaches us that while the father of the house sleeps, the enemy sows discord. Your first task in the morning will be to pray the holy rosary with your entire family, just as your mother did. If you leave it for later in the day, activities and visits may impede this exercise of holy devotion. . . . If you have the time, make sure to attend mass, especially on Saturdays, out of reverence for your Most Holy Mary. But this devotion, like any, must be solid and sincere, occupying the time not required for your other obligations. There is no prayer more powerful or efficient in God’s

The Good Wife  93

eyes than the fulfillment of our duties. Thus, Henry IV, King of France, said, When working for the public, I seem to leave God behind for God himself. You will be well served with a small number of maids. Multitudes are always harmful because some will more easily conceal the faults of others. Madame Vandona one day found her Secretary Palafrat punishing a servant, and she harshly scolded him. According to the sacred scriptures, masters owe their servants food, instruction, and work. If you do not feed and dress them well, they will compensate themselves with theft. You are responsible before God for instruction in the mysteries of the Holy Faith and in good manners. The apostle declares, He who neglects this obligation has renounced his faith, and this is worse than being an infidel. In order for idleness not to corrupt your servants, you must keep them busy the entire day. According to the Holy Spirit, continuous work makes one who serves humble and inspires inclination toward one’s obligation, while laziness becomes doctrine. . . . It would be disrespectful toward the laws of humanity to treat your servants with pride, using harsh, injurious, and contemptible words. Though they be blacks who cannot change the color of their skin, they still have the feelings of rational beings. The master who examines the hidden corners of the house and speaks little is more fearsome than he who dissolves into screaming, tantrums, and threats. Reprimand them softly and with integrity, and if they do not correct their behavior, banish them from your house. Make the government of your house a happy mix of graciousness and firmness, of sweetness and strength, so that your domestic servants love you as much as they respect you. . . . I would recommend withdrawal into the home more highly, if I did not know that you have practiced it since childhood. Always maintain it, at least because that is what your mother taught, for it is a woman’s particular character (Menander the poet says) to always be at home, for what is taken in by others is of low condition. If you are compassionate with the poor, coming to their aid by offering them necessities or assuaging their troubles, you will hear the voice of nature that teaches us that the poor are our brothers and our fellow man. When they lament, imploring our help, they are speaking to a relative. One must (says Mr. Fontenelle) deny oneself the superfluous in order to provide others with the necessary. For the sake of your own good reputation and so that idleness does not overcome you, you must continuously be with your cushion or sewing just as your mother was. When they see you in these honorable tasks, they will applaud your judgment and will praise your kindness. An abun94  Juan José Segovia

dance of goods does not excuse you from this laborious occupation. The best princesses did not spurn this activity. Queen Isabel Amalia, dignified wife of Sr. Juan Carlos III, sewed the very shirts worn by her august consort. Be neither vain or nor profusely spendthrift in festive galas and other wasteful things. Maintaining a modest economy but one that does not forsake quality ought to be the character of a prudent woman. If the husband is oppressed by excessive expenses, he becomes exasperated and mercilessly ruined. How many opulent families have become present-­day Troys, razed and destroyed with their vanities? Learn this lesson so that refusing to walk this misguided path, you follow the road of economic certainty and safety. If by some reversal of fortune, your loving husband is snatched from your company, reducing him to the most unhappy imprisonment and the greatest insults (as I myself have suffered), do not let desperation get the better of you. Come back to yourself. Wipe away your tears with Christian resignation, sending your petitions to Heaven, and heroically practice all possible means of liberating yourself. Indemnifying his conduct without augmenting his worries with your sadness, offer him the greatest consolation even if you are exposed to great dangers, except that of your honor. A loving and virtuous woman during her husband’s storm is the most skillful pilot for saving him. Michol did not lose heart in the face of David’s persecutions, and she saved him with astuteness. The wife of Mitridates, King of Pontus, accompanied him without leave through all of his misfortunes, serving as his lackey. Doña Sancha, the wife of Count Fernando Gonzáles, got him out of prison while she remained inside. And your mother was stalwart through my misfortunes, the central basis for my honorable reestablishment. This, my darling daughter, is what I have found convenient to advise you. I pray that you read this attentively now and many more times, as is fitting coming from a father who loves you. Counting your good luck as my greatest fortune, I will end my days joyfully if you are at ease, which you will achieve through the virtue of your prayers. La Plata, 10 April 1794 Your loving father who wishes you well Doctor Juan José Segovia

Translated by Jean Friedman-­Rudovsky

The Good Wife  95

Cacique Nobility and Heraldry King Felipe IV of Spain

Colonial society was far more complex internally than the Spaniards’ abstract juridical notion of two “republics”—​­one Spanish and one Indian—​­would suggest. Within indigenous society itself, there were hierarchical gradations, with the stratum of Indian nobility and caciques or mallkus at the top. As community representatives, the caciques served as crucial cultural intermediaries with Spanish society and as the indispensable linchpin in the system of indirect colonial rule. Under the institutional regime established by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, they collected tribute, organized mita labor, and preserved local order for the Crown. In 1638, a century after the defeat of the Charka lords in Cochabamba, Fernando Ayra de Ariutu, the wealthy governor of Pocoata from the Qaraqara territory of northern Potosí, cited his services as well as those of his ancestors in a petition to King Felipe IV. Going back well beyond the Spanish conquest to that of the Inka, he presumed an unbroken continuity in his lineage’s loyalty to the state. In this royal decree, the king recognized the family’s ancient Indian nobility as well as its early conversion to Spanish cultural norms (“being among the first to dress Spanish style”), and granted Ayra de Ariutu the right to display a distinctive shield of arms. The heraldic emblems contain both European and Andean resonances, adding up to a suitably mixed symbol, with different possible readings, of the complex mediation that caciques performed in colonial society. A template for the escutcheon is preserved in Seville’s General Archive of the Indies. Royal Provision

Don Felipe, By the Grace of God King of Castille, of León, of Aragón, of the two Sicilies, of Jerusalem, of Portugal, of Navarre, of Granada, of Toledo, of Valencia, of Galicia, of Mallorca, of Seville, of Sardinia, of Cardona, of Correga, of Murcia, of Jaen, of the Algarves, of Alguacira, of Gibraltar, of the Canary Islands, of the East and West Indies with their mainland, of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, of Baravante and Milan, Count of Hapsburg of Flanders, Tirol and Barcelona, Lord of Vizcaya and de Molina, etc.1 96

For as you, don Fernando Aira de Arriuto, resident in the province of the Charcas, have told me how since your father and grandfather, and other ancestors, you have served me in the offices of Governor and Lord Mayor of the Province of Caracaras, and of Captain of their Mita in the Imperial Town of Potosí, at a time when the Indians were very scarce, for which reason you supplied from your resources more than 4,000 pesos, and you charged when the Corregidor was unable to, and by his order, more than 15,000 pesos of fixed tribute, and you reduced a large number of Indians at your own cost, bringing them out of remote parts, with which the Mita was delivered, and finally you collected 12,670 pesos of fixed tribute, wherewith my royal fifths were increased;2 And don Fernando Chinche your father was Captain of the Province of Chayanta and General Reducer of the Indians of its Mita, in whose delivery he put great care and diligence, and he spent more than 3,000 pesos on the Indians who were absent, and equally he served the post of Governor of the town of Pocoata for more than thirty years, arriving very punctually to deliver the tributes and Mitas without causing any absences, and he was instrumental in having the most sumptuous church built in this town that can be found anywhere in the Province, and he spent much of his wealth on it, and he too was Lord Mayor of the same town, and he performed well in each post, and in the year 1627 he served me with 500 pesos of donation; And don Fernando Chinche, your grandfather, was also Governor and Captain of the said town, and he helped Viceroy don Francisco de Toledo impose the tributes and the Mita; And don Francisco Aira son of the said, your great-­g randfather, was Governor of the said Province, and served in the incursion which was made to the Chiriwana with more than five hundred Indians, and he sent more than a thousand llamas loaded with supplies, and 700 pesos as donation;3 and having always come to the service of my Royal Crown, you and all the rest of your ancestors, and being among the first to dress Spanish style, you have been highly regarded and you have presented yourselves with great display as being the lords of the nation of the Caracaras in the said town of Copoata [sic] since the time of the Incas Pachacuti and Guayna Capac, who were Kings of these Provinces; and of Ochatoma, your great-­g reat-­g randfather, [who] equally served me when he sat down and gave obedience;4 and Anco Tutumpi Aira Canchi, father of your great-­g reat-­ grandfather, was lord of twenty thousand Indians in the said province of Caracara; and don Joan Ynga Moroco, his son, served in the discovery of the said Province with great sums of gold and silver, and helped persuade the Cacique Nobility and Heraldry  97

The shield of arms of the Ayra de Ariutu dynasty of Pocoata was granted by King Felipe IV in 1640. A template is preserved in Seville’s General Archive of the Indies (AGI MP [Mapas y Planos] Escudos 75). Used by permission of the Archivo General de Indias.

other caciques to give their obedience, and in the rebellion and riots that there were, he heeded the Royal Voice with his person and his Indians, and made great demonstrations of loyalty and good vassalhood with great danger to his life—​­5 You asked me, taking into account everything that has been said, and so that there should remain a memory of your services and those of your ancestors, to grant you permission to honor yourself with a coat of arms. And after my Council of the Indies had examined the case, and considered what is reasonable, and the President of my Royal Audience of the City of La Plata of the said Province of the Charcas giving me their counsel, I have decided to make you the grant, as by the present document I do, of the said coat-­of-­arms, and I order that you can bear, place, and hold as your known arms the following, which are: A shield divided in four quarters: In the first above, in a blue field, a green shoot with three white lilies in a green field, and in the upper part of the quarter a splendor, and in the middle an evening star of gold with eight rays,6 and in the second quarter to the left, in a field of gold, a condor, which is a great black bird, and on its neck it has a white smudge, with its wings spread and made beautiful with gold,7 and in the third quarter, in a red field, a tiger with its own colors rampant and made beautiful with gold, and in the fourth quarter, in a blue field, a rock, and upon it a strong tower of stone,8 And to crown it on the visor of the shield, a half Indian, with a red bonnet, and three golden feathers in it, as here go placed and painted. And I give you these as your known arms, and I wish and it is my will that you, the said don Fernando Aira de Arriuto, and your sons and their descendants, and the children of each of them may have and hold and be able to bear and place them on your buildings and houses, and on those of each of your sons and their descendants, and wherever you and they should wish and consider it correct, and by this my letter, or by its legal copy signed by a public scribe, I entrust to the Most Serene Prince don Baltasar, my very dear and beloved son, and I order the infants, prelates, dukes, marquises and rich counts, men, priors, comendadors, mayors of the castles and fortified and ordinary houses, and those of my Council, viceroys, presidents and judges of my Courts and royal chanceries, mayors, constables of my house and court and chanceries, corregidors, governors, mayors, constables, neighbors, provosts, twenty-­four sworn regidors, knights, shield-­bearers, officials, and gentlemen of all the cities, towns, and places, both of these kingdoms and lordships and those of the said my Indies, islands, and mainland of the Ocean Sea, and each and every one of them: Cacique Nobility and Heraldry  99

That they keep and fulfill, and make to keep and fulfill, this my letter and its contents, on behalf of you and your said sons and descendants, and the grant which by it I make to you of the said arms, and that you have them and hold them for your known arms, and that you be allowed to bear them with your sons and their descendants, and with those of each of them, and that in no part of this will they present or allow at any time any obstacle or contradiction, under any circumstances, on pain of my grant and of 10,000 maravedis for my treasury to be paid by anyone who disobeys, and that is my will. Given in Madrid, 4 May 1640. I the King.

Translated by Tristan Platt Notes 1. The king begins by establishing the outlines of his “universal monarchy.” 2. As noted here and in the following paragraph, the Pocoata lords spent considerable sums to hire wage laborers when the required number of mitayos were not available. Also as seen in this and the following paragraph, the caciques enrolled unregistered Indians in the lists of eligible tributaries and mitayos, raised substantial tribute revenue in the communities under their authority, and provided their own funds in times of hardship when normal tribute collection underyielded. While other portions of the tribute money went to pay the salaries of officials, the royal fifth was a percentage allocated directly to the Crown treasury. 3. The Pocoata lords provided essential supplies and men for the Spanish expeditions against the Guaraní, who conducted raids against Spanish colonial settlements in the southeast frontier regions. 4. Ochatoma showed his obedience to the Spanish king while seated on the throne of Andean lords, known as a duo. 5. Joan Ynga Moroco was Ochatoma’s son. “Discovery” refers to the mines of Porco which the native lords delivered to the king of Spain in exchange for privileges after Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro’s military victory aided by Paullu Inka and native troops in Cochabamba in 1538. 6. The drawing found in the General Archive of the Indies does not include all the elements indicated in the heraldic description here. The term resplendor may refer to a bolt of lightning. 7. “Second quarter to the left” is from the perspective of the shield, that is, the top-­right quarter from the perspective of the viewer. 8. “Tiger” was the common Spanish term for “jaguar.” Ancient stone fortresses are known in the Andes as pukaras.

100  King Felipe IV of Spain

Trade with Potosí A Trader’s Diary

This extract, from the picaresque diary of an anonymous silver trader, vividly describes a journey with a mule train from the highlands to the coast, from La Paz to Lima. It depicts the vicissitudes of life on the road, such as fording rising rivers in the rainy season, the illness and death of a young black child, a man infected with malarial fever. The merchandise was carried by mules, which were themselves a commodity produced in present-­day northern Argentina and traded throughout the southern Andes. The city of La Paz was an intermediate point between Potosí and the coastal capital. Potosí was the hub of a commercial network that encompassed a vast territory stretching from what is today northern Argentina and the Chilean coast to the eastern valleys of Bolivia, the Peruvian highlands and coast, and Lima, the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru. Although Potosí had declined from its peak at the beginning of the seventeenth century, its output of silver and demand for goods nevertheless gave rise to intensive commerce in which alcohol (brandy and wine from the coast) and coca leaf (from the Yungas) were leading products. Our traveler took the Urcusuyo road bordering the western bank of Lake Titicaca (rather than the Umasuyu road on the eastern bank), passing through Juli, Ilave, and Puno, then descended to the valleys of Arequipa in order to follow the route north to Lima.

Diary of the Journey I Made from the City of La Paz until Arriving at Lima, Having Left La Paz on the 23rd of October 1758 and Arrived at Lima on the 16th of January 1759 I left La Paz on the 23rd of October 1758, and the first setback was to have left two days after the cargo and to find it still only four leagues away from La Paz due to the mule drivers having lost some mules, which it had taken them those two days to find. Without more delay, we set off on the following day, but two days later it began to rain heavily and went on like that for three days and nights without stopping until we reached Juli. From there on, the rain that overcame us was not so serious, although there was already a storm here and there every day, but we were able to escape them all.

101

The black boy, who was ill when I took him from La Paz, continued with his illness on the road, getting worse every day until we reached Ilave, whence I went ahead with an Indian and the said black boy to arrive sooner on that same day in Puno and give him treatment removed from the exhaustion and bother of the journey. On arriving in Chucuito, I went to see the accountant Don Thomás de Landaeta, and he refused [to receive the black boy]; I went on to Puno and gave the sick boy treatment, putting him in the hands of a doctor, and eight days later he died, after all the aggravations and unguents which he had on the journey, and was buried with a mass, etc. From Puno, I wrote to Don Thomás de Landaeta, reprehending him for his absence and not having taken care [of the black boy], since I knew that he had refused. His letter merely says that he has ordered his servants that on seeing any traveler who asks after him, they should say he is not at home, and that his said servants did right in saying so to me because I didn’t offer him any sweets, for he knew that I was going to complain to him about the payments he owes. I remained in Puno until the 20th of October [November], Don Juan de Zapata’s representative being sick all that time with the aggravations that were God’s will.1 But as the sick man decided that he was not going to stay there, he set out on the road with his aches and pains. It was necessary to mount him on his horse, dismount him, and all but spoon-­feed him, but upon arriving in Arequipa, he got better. Two or three days’ journey out from Arequipa, I went ahead so as to arrive sooner and arrange for the mules that were to take me to Lima. I wanted to make that stage of the journey in one day, but it was not God’s will because traveling all day with the cold and a fierce gale following us, the mules got tired. At five in the afternoon, it seemed to me that I should leave the Royal Road and take a sidetrack, which to my mind seemed shorter and led down a valley between two mountains. It was natural to think that it would be somewhat out of the wind, which turned out to be so, but a league down the valley we entered a forest along some cliffsides where every step was on the edge of a precipice. With night falling we were ever more worried, and having already decided to stay in the forest until morning, at that moment someone came upon a guanaco path along the hillside.2 Already tired, we went down, and up again; we forded the river and crossed it back again to the other side. Following said path, at about seven o’clock we saw that the path was getting wider, and it now showed tracks of people as well as animals, which we followed until we came upon some fields. Arriving at a house which, since it was such an out-­of-­the-­way path and late, everyone [who lived there] thought it was very odd [that strangers should have appeared there at night], and no one agreed to give me lodging or fodder for the mules. A boy agreed to show us . . . a field of alfalfa . . . where the mules

102  A Trader’s Diary

could feed all night. . . . We went on down steep hillsides with no end of labors until we came upon the alfalfa field, which was not the boy’s but someone else’s, and having spent the night as God willed, in the morning we set off at dawn since its owner overheard us, and we mounted right away and left via a wattle-­and-­daub wall that had a breach in it. Everyone crossed it without problems, and when I crossed it, my mule put its head between its legs and threw me head over heels and fell on top of me. I managed to struggle out and the mule got up without her or my having been hurt, but traveling all day at ten in the morning we came across a farm near the city and there we stayed until nightfall to enter the city. I stayed ten days in Arequipa in a lodging house, where all my friends came just to lament, and their attendants came to the house with their travails to wheedle a couple of bars [of silver] out of me. So everything was lamentation and sobbing as if I were uncle to them all or obliged to save them, and so I was exasperated for the ten days. But after that I left for the city of Lima, now with fears of the rivers, which we did not run into until we arrived at Camaná, where requesting the assistance of the king’s officers (intimate friends), they called out all the people of the town, and although we had a couple of frights, they helped us to get all the cargo [across the swollen river]. Passing Ocoña, which has a bad, deep, and treacherous river, and very fast flowing, it was necessary to send the cargo across on a raft, which we did with some courage and a lot of fear for what could have happened to us [if we had fallen into the water]. In Acari, Don Juan de Miranda’s representative fell ill, and it was necessary to help him with the charity demanded by the loneliness of the road. He was sick with malarial fever all the way to Lima and even after he arrived there. He has had it for three months.

Continuing with the road and the frights in the rivers. We left the said Don Juan de Zapata’s representative in Acari, who did not appear when we were leaving because of the fear that the mule drivers had put into him about a cloak [which was not his] which he had sold. I went on until I arrived at the fearful Pisco River, where, on leaving the wayside inn at daybreak and arriving at the river, they started taking the cargo across. At the first attempt a mule with two bars [of silver] on board fell [into the water]. They got out the mule and one of the bars, but the other did not appear no matter how much they searched, until I took the measure of draining the river and diverting it into another channel.

Translated by Alison Spedding

Trade with Potosí  103

Notes 1. In literal translation, “Don Juan de Zapata’s representative” would be “[man] recommended by Don Juan de Zapata.” Presumably the trader who wrote this diary was in charge of a mule train that carried merchandise belonging to various other traders as well, each of whom would have sent a “recommended” man to make sure that nothing got lost en route. 2. Guanacos are wild camelids, related to the llama, that live in the high Andes.

104  A Trader’s Diary

Mining and the Mita Pedro Vicente Cañete y Domínguez

The rich silver mines of Potosí were like veins through which flowed, as one contemporary put it, “the blood of the political body” of the Spanish empire. Born in Asunción, Paraguay, Pedro Vicente Cañete y Domínguez (1749/50–1816) worked his way up as an “enlightened” functionary of the colonial administration in the late eighteenth century. In his impressive compendium, Historical, Geographical, Physical, Political, Civil, and Legal Guide to the Government and Intendancy of the Province of Potosí (1787), Cañete recounted the history of the silver mines and described the forced labor system known as the mita, by which the state provided Indian workers for the city’s mines and ore-­processing mills. He recognized the arduous work of the corvée mineworkers (mitayos), but justified forced labor on the grounds of Indians’ purported sloth and argued that the decrease in the number of mitayos was not due to mortality caused by the mine work, but rather due to plagues and workers’ systematic flight. As adviser to the intendant of Potosí after 1793, Cañete and the leading mining industrialists proposed a major increase in the number of forced workers, which met with fierce opposition led by Victorián de Villaba, the state’s official Protector of Indians. Villaba ultimately prevented publication of the Guide by convincing the leading mining entrepreneurs, who had already given Cañete a first advance, that the book made them look bad in their treatment of the mitayos. In short order, experience showed that it would not be possible to advance, or sustain, the labor and profit of the mines if it were left to the Indians’ free choice to work or not to work. Their dispirited laziness, their aversion to all service because of the custom they were born and raised with, to wander without property and to live off the scarce harvest of their wild abodes, their lack of civility and even less education led them to the innate vices of drunkenness, idolatry, and adultery, distancing them from all lucrative and honest activity. Thus, it was important to change the old system of government so that the state would not entirely lack the benefits of the minerals. There were no known means for sustaining the state other than working the mines, both because of their great profitability and because of the infertile lands and lack of farmers. To this end, different royal decrees concerning Peru were dispatched to 105

Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, ordering him to distribute Indians to the Spaniards for the mines, just as they are distributed for fieldwork and other public works to which the Indians, since pagan times, were subject and with which they always complied when summoned.1 This great viceroy—​­Araciel says that His Holiness Pius V thanked the king for his appointment, adding that the happy state of the kingdom of Peru was due to his prudence, to his knowledge in the matters of government, for which he seems to have been educated—​­created the laws and allocations that he considered advisable for the mines of silver of Potosí as well as for those of mercury in Huancavelica and others of this kingdom, namely the mines of Berenguela of Pacajes and, even before Potosí had mitayos, Porco and Zaruma.2. . . Ramiro Valenzuela reports that Viceroy Toledo, in the years around 1575, assigned ninety-­five thousand Indians in seventeen provinces for the benefit of the mountain of Potosí. He decided that the seventh part of these should leave [Potosí] by the beginning of the year and, having worked the mines for a year, should return to their countries, free from the mita for six years, and another seventh part would leave to work [in Potosí], so that in this way four thousand five hundred Indians worked every day and nine hundred rested or were voluntarily rented out. . . . We know how a single bad night breaks the most robust and well-­fed man. For these unfortunate ones, all the nights are terrible. They go up and down, overloaded with four arrobas of weight, through caverns full of horror and risk that resemble the rooms of demons. The mineral fumes break them down in such a way that due both to the fatigue of these laborious tasks and the copious sweat that they transpire, due to the underground heat and excessive coldness that they receive on leaving the mines, they wake up so languid and pale that they look like corpses. The rest time in the morning is used to transport the material that they extracted from the mine at night, which amounts to delivering roughly twenty to thirty measures of metal with a weight of more or less four arrobas each.3 Therefore, one can truly say that abuse has turned these men into the most unfortunate ones in the world, since one has to consider those perverse criminals who are sent to do forced labor in the mercury mines more fortunate, because even though this punishment was considered intolerable and little less terrible than death, the truth is that each coerced man only works barely three hours a day. . . . These unjust oppressions and most cruel and continuous deaths inflicted on the Indians of the mita in the mountain of Potosí came to horrify them so much that, fleeing from these towns that the Inca and Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo founded for them to bring them into political life and to gather them together out of the fields where they lived like savage beasts, these Indians sought out the most remote and hidden valleys, where they could live free of the extortions and aggravations of this deplorable service. There they were under the protection of the landlords themselves, who were interested 106  Pedro Vicente Cañete y Domínguez

in their staying to work the fields and cultivate the plots of land. Thus, all diligence in searching for them, to return them and their families to their towns of origin, has been useless. With the free dealings that they had with Spaniards, blacks, and mulattos in these places, they turned into mestizos and other classes, transforming themselves into other kinds of peoples exempt from the burden of the mita. In these sites that were bereft of all reasonable assistance, smallpox caused its damage with greater force and, repeated each seven years together with other malignant epidemics of diphtheria and erysipelas, came to exterminate the caste of the Indians to such an extent that, among other causes, the remarkable reduction in the number of Indians, verified in 1607 when the Marquis of Montesclaros was governing, is mainly attributed to these plagues. Finally, the horrifying blow of that deadly contagion that infested the entire kingdom in the year 1719 finished ruining the towns, leaving almost no family from which it had not snatched most of its members. These are the true and main causes of the decay of the mita of Potosí, not a great loss of life that [Antonio de] Calancha writes about, reaching the extreme of exaggeration when he asserts that each peso that is minted in Potosí costs ten dead Indians in the caverns of the mines.4 The modern historians [Guillaume Thomas] Raynal and [William] Robertson also attribute to this cause the rapid destruction of the Indian caste in the states of America where mines are worked. If Calancha’s calculation were accurate, one would need to agree that eight hundred billion Indians had perished in this mountain, corresponding to the more than eight hundred million pesos that have been minted, which is not only unbelievable but ridiculous. It is true that Don Fernando Carrillo y Altamirano, addressing the Catholic king, and Captain Juan González de Acevedo, addressing Felipe III in another memorial that he presented in 1602, affirm that in all the district of Peru where the Indians are needed to work in the mines, their number has been reduced to half, and in some places to a third, from that which existed in the viceroyalty of Don Francisco de Toledo, around the year of 1581. With this testimony, the cited historians demonstrate that the mines annihilate the human race and that working them has destroyed most of the Indians. As respectable as these Spanish authors may be, we have seen that in the year 1601, discounting the flaws in all the previous mita allocations, there were twelve thousand six hundred thirty mita workers. Compared to the fourteen thousand two hundred forty-­eight Indians who were distributed by Don Francisco de Toledo, around the month of August of 1578 and on 20 December of 1580, the shortfall from one time to another is not of a third part and certainly not of half, as González de Acevedo affirms, but rather only one thousand six hundred eighteen Indians, which corresponds to a little bit more than the tenth part. Since it is likely that this number declined due to the desertion of the Indians to the interior of the valleys and due to the Mining and the Mita  107

plagues and epidemics, rather than loss of life in the mines, it is preferable to select the first conjecture as the most fitting for the experience and nature of the Indian. Thereafter, over the years, the mita declined gradually, without a doubt due to the greater influence of the aforementioned causes and to the desolation caused by those great epidemics of erysipelas and diphtheria in the year 1614, in addition to the great plague of 1719. Thus, in the year 1692, only four thousand one hundred one Indians were distributed by the Count of Monclova. Of these residents in Potosí, one thousand three hundred carried out actual work, with their two teams of substitutes. In the year 1733, barely six hundred fifty showed up, as reported by the superintendent of the mita Don Pedro Vásquez de Velasco, magistrate of the Court of Charcas.

Translated by Adriana Salcedo Notes 1. Cañete refers here to preconquest mita labor, as, for example, on the grain farms of the Inka in Cochabamba. 2. Alonso Pérez de Araciel (1653–1718) was a jurist and head of the king’s Council of the Indies. Huancavelica is located in the central highlands of what is today Peru, Berenguela on the altiplano of La Paz, Porco nearby Potosí, and Zaruma south of Quito in what is today Ecuador. 3. The arroba is equivalent to 11.5 kilos, or 25 lbs. The total volume of material would have been delivered over five days. 4. Fray Antonio de la Calancha (1584–1654) was an Augustinian priest and chronicler.

108  Pedro Vicente Cañete y Domínguez

New Worlds, Jesuit Worlds

The Jesuits were instrumental in the colonization of the indigenous peoples of the eastern lowlands of what are today the departments of Santa Cruz and Beni. The missions they established at the end of the seventeenth century through the mid-­ eighteenth were modeled on the ideal cities proposed by sixteenth-­century humanist philosophers and were influenced by both church architecture and local building materials and styles. In 1767, the Spanish Crown expelled the Jesuits from the missions and the Americas, as part of a consolidation of secular over religious power. Alcide d’Orbigny, the French scientific traveler and natural historian (see part VI), visited the eastern lowlands in the early years after independence, once the erstwhile Spanish colonies had been opened up to foreign travelers and trade. His drawings lay out the mission settlements in Concepción (Moxos region) and San José (Chiquitos region), based on information provided by the descendants of the colonial residents. The missions were important economic and demographic centers, and the drawings depict the religious, manufacturing, and residential core surrounded by plantation fields and communal gardens. Traces of the colonial mission culture remain evident in the mid-­twentieth-­century imagery of the German photographer Hans Ertl.

109

Alcide d’Orbigny visited the San José and Concepción missions in 1831, more than sixty years after the expulsion of the Jesuits. He described them as “remaining intact,” and his maps, including the one pictured here, suggest continuities in local settlement patterns after the departure of the missionaries. In Alcide d’Orbigny, Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale, vol. 8, Atlas historique, géographique, géologique, paléontologique et botanique (Paris: Chez P. Bertrand, 1847), plate 24. Source: Identifiant: ark:/12148/ btv1b530879350; département Cartes et plans, GE DL 1845-26; Relation: http://catalogue .bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb43578942j. Used by permission of Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

In the Chiquitos region of Santa Cruz, Jesuit missions brought together numerous ethnic and linguistic groups in a process of Christianization and cultural unification that would lead to a “Chiquitano” identity. Hans Ertl’s photo (1949) shows the Jesuit mission of San Rafael, Chiquitos. Source: Pedro Querejazo, ed., Las misiones jesuíticas de Chiquitos (La Paz: Fundación Banco Hipotecario Nacional, 1995), 93. Courtesy of Beatrix Ertl and Pedro Querejazu.

Hans Ertl’s photo (1949) shows local musicians, known as solfas, performing on locally made string instruments and singing in Latin from a written score, in a ceremony without priestly oversight. It reflects long-term cultural continuities at the Jesuit mission of Santa Ana, Chiquitos. Source: Pedro Querejazo, ed., Las misiones jesuíticas de Chiquitos (La Paz: Fundación Banco Hipotecario Nacional, 1995), 196. Courtesy of Beatrix Ertl and Pedro Querejazu.

Echoes of the Missions José Lorenzo Justiniano Noe Noco

The Jesuit missions produced musical works of extraordinary beauty, composed by European and to a lesser degree anonymous indigenous musicians and performed by local choirs. This musical culture persisted at the local level for centuries and enjoyed a renaissance starting in the 1990s. The villancico (Christmas carol) presented here—​­which has its roots in early modern Iberian popular song—​­shows the vitality, evolution, and reach of mission musical forms. It was performed in one of the communities in the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (tipnis) that were established in the early twentieth century by Moxeño indigenous groups fleeing from encroachment on their territory around Trinidad (Beni). They brought with them the violins and musical scores which had become part of their culture and have been passed on from generation to generation. The following song is in Spanish, with inflections from Portuguese (as in the phrase “bona note teña uted” [good evening to you]) and Quechua (Viracocha [lord]). It contains elements of a lullaby, including a warning of punishment if the child does not sleep, and is sung and danced as part of a Christmas ritual cycle. The score presented here (one of many versions) comes from the community of Coquinal del Sécure, which has conserved 1,448 scores. This version was copied in 1944 by José Lorenzo Justiniano Noe Noco, who was responsible for copying 330 scores between 1909 and 1961. He was the choir master, violinist, flautist, and cantor of the community.

Original Spanish Señora Doña Mariya bona note Señora Doña Maria, buenas noches teña uted   tenga usted Dondes ta lavira Cocha, Niñito que Donde está el Señor Viracocha, pariou Te   niñito que parió usted Jugate Eunubi ji Ta que asi no Juega con una ovejita, que así no yorares   llorarás Y si no quere caya coquita te Y si no quieres callar, coquita harri cume   te haré comer Campanero celestiales Las campana Campaneros celestiales Las repicad   campanas repicad Dilin dilin dilindan Dilin dilin Dilin dilin dilindan Dilin dilin dilin Dan   dilin Dan

113

Musical score, for two sopranos and two violins, of the song “Señora Doña María” from the Coquinal del Sécure community. An example of “post-Jesuit” musical culture originally from the Moxos region, it was transcribed by the choir master José Lorenzo Justiniano Noe Noco in 1944. Source: Piotr Navrost et al., comps., Misiones de Moxos, Catálogos, vol. 1, tome 1 (Santa Cruz de la Sierra: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2011), item 245, signatura 436, p. 480. Courtesy of Piotr Navrost.

Lady Mary, good evening to you Where is the lord infant to whom you gave birth? Play with a little sheep, so you won’t cry And if you won’t be quiet, I’ll make you eat coca Celestial bell-­r ingers—​­sound the bells Dilin dilin dilin dan, Dilin dilin dilin dan

Translated by Sinclair Thomson

114  José Lorenzo Justiniano Noe Noco

IV From Indian Insurgency to Creole Independence

The Andean political order appeared relatively stable after the latter part of the sixteenth century. Indeed, Spain ruled its territory without any standing army and without any major insurrectionary threats until the mid-­eighteenth century. In 1771, the provincial governor (corregidor) of La Paz asserted, The Indian has a propensity toward disturbance, novelty, and movement. But this only persists in a system while he does not see the threat of punishment, or, simply put, the arm raised over him. It is the threat that keeps these people in order. It is remarkable—​­since they are not subjects who act out of respect for religion nor honor and loyalty—​­that such large towns of Indians can be maintained by a magistrate with no more weapons or support than the name of the king whom he represents. But it is true that there is no other basis of respect, and that only that name and the threat of punishment are what contain them.1 By the time he was writing, however, local revolts were beginning to proliferate in the highlands of Charcas and occasional anticolonial voices were also starting to be heard. Over the next fifty years, the former order came undone and momentous political confrontations ensued. The threat of punishment began to lose its power, first in the face of Indian community mobilization and then of creole-­led armed revolt. The name of the king also began to lose its power, first challenged by the name of the Inka and then by the name of “the people.” Rural unrest in the mid-­eighteenth century stemmed especially from depredation on the part of provincial governors (corregidors), who used their political power to extract resources from the Indian communities beholden to them.2 Bourbon state reforms generated additional resentment in the cities, among plebeians as well as mestizo and creole middling sectors. In the 1770s, the revenue-­hungry colonial state raised taxes on trade and imposed stricter control over commercial circulation, for example through the establishment of new customs houses. This led to urban unrest and riots in the southern Andes, notably in Cochabamba, La Paz, Arequipa, and Cuzco. In March 1780, 115

when open revolt broke out in La Paz, one anonymous broadside exclaimed: “Death to the king of Spain! . . . For he is the cause of such iniquity. If the monarch knows not the insolence of his ministers, the public larceny, and how they prey upon the poor, long live the king and death to all these public thieves.” 3 With political crisis engulfing the countryside and the cities, the most powerful anticolonial revolution in Spanish America prior to independence erupted in 1780 and left Spanish sovereignty temporarily hanging in the balance. In an era remembered as an age of revolution, what distinguished the Andean case from the North American and Haitian revolutions, as well as the subsequent process that led to Latin American independence from Spain, was that the leadership and fighting forces in 1780–81 were primarily men and women from Indian communities. The Andean revolution is most often associated with the Cuzco cacique José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who took the name Tupac Amaru and proclaimed himself heir to the Inka throne in Peru, yet it actually unfolded in several regional theaters. Over the course of the revolution, insurgents effectively controlled enormous swaths of territory from Cuzco down through the highlands of Charcas and into what is today northern Argentina. The insurrection got under way in the hinterlands of Potosí in the late 1770s, as Tomás Katari led a growing community movement against the abuses of the corregidor. The local conflict burst into full-­fledged insurgency in the northern Potosí district in August 1780. This probably instigated Tupac Amaru to launch his own armed movement—​­beginning with the public hanging of a corregidor—​­in the Cuzco region in November. A major new theater opened up in the region of La Paz in March 1781. Julián Apaza, an Indian commoner who took the name Tupaj Katari, thereby linking himself symbolically to the insurgents in Potosí and Cuzco, laid a crippling siege to the city of La Paz. When Tupac Amaru was captured and executed in April, his Quechua forces moved south to combine with Tupaj Katari’s Aymara forces near Lake Titicaca. The Spanish population in La Paz held on for months until counterinsurgent auxiliary forces arrived from Buenos Aires. The Quechua commanders surrendered, and Tupaj Katari was captured and executed in November 1781, thus putting an end to the main insurgent threat. The war had powerful repercussions. Tens of thousands died, and fields, flocks, and estates were ravaged. While the Spanish Crown managed to regain tentative control for another thirty years, the depth of the colonial crisis lay exposed for all to see, and the experience shaped a distinctive cycle of anticolonial struggle in the early nineteenth century. In 1809, the regions of La Paz and La Plata (today Sucre) were the sites of two of the earliest movements anywhere in Latin America to establish local autonomy from colonial authority. In 1807, when Napoleon invaded the Ibe-

116  From Insurgency to Independence

rian Peninsula and forced Carlos IV from his throne, a power void emerged at the very heart of the empire. Provinces and cities in the metropole formed assemblies (known as governing juntas) that claimed to represent the people, and municipal governments and their rural hinterlands in the Americas soon followed suit. While ostensibly loyal to the deposed monarch, the juntas clashed with local colonial officials. Though they were forcibly smothered, the impulse toward self-­government gained greater momentum. In 1811, under Juan José Castillo, and again in 1813, under Manuel Belgrano, armies from Buenos Aires entered into Charcas, attempting to wrest the territory away from royalist officials, although they were ultimately turned back. In their wake, pockets of resistance remained—​­these were the guerrilla units exercising local control on the margins of colonial territory known as republiquetas (petty republics). In Spain in 1812, liberal forces centered in Cádiz also introduced a new constitution, which aspired to more democratic representation, including partial representation of colonial territories. Yet after Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne in 1814, the forces of absolutism went on the counteroffensive. The liberal constitution was abolished throughout Spanish territory, and royalist militias defeated most of the republiquetas and regained the upper hand throughout Charcas. If Charcas saw the deepest colonial crisis in Spanish America in the late eighteenth century and was one of the first staging grounds for independence in the early nineteenth century, it was also the last territory to achieve independence. After fifteen years of warfare, Simón Bolívar’s armies descending from the north finally expunged the last royalist resistance in 1825. General Antonio José de Sucre, born in present-­day Venezuela, commanded the victorious republican troops and became the first president of a new nation, named for Bolívar himself, that was no longer subject to control by the viceregal centers of Lima or Buenos Aires. Bolívar conceived of the new polity as a model of enlightened, liberal governance, and in fact, republican rule in the name of the people represented a dramatic departure from monarchical tradition. Yet Bolívar—​­like other creole statesmen of the day, who were mindful of the Indian insurrection of 1780–81 and the black revolution in Haiti—​­was deeply suspicious of popular power. In a parallel to colonial rule, he favored strong central authority and sought to rein in democracy lest it lead to anarchy. As “Bolivia” came into being in the early nineteenth century, the racial and social hierarchy inherited from the colonial period was reconstituted, and the effective constraints on the political participation of the indigenous majority, people of African descent, and women undercut the new liberal ideals of citizenship and equality.

From Insurgency to Independence 117  117

Notes 1. Cited in Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Aymara Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 318 n. 82. 2. The common device corregidors used to extract resources from Indian communities was the forced consumption of commodities (reparto de mercancías), whereby Indians were required to receive and pay for what were often shoddy or useless goods. 3. Cited in Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 135.

118  From Insurgency to Independence

Death to Bad Government Anonymous Pasquinades

Mounting fiscal exactions by the Bourbon Crown in the 1770s generated escalating unrest in the southern Andes among Indians, mestizos, and creoles. One of the most resented reforms was the introduction of customs houses designed to control trade more strictly and to levy higher commercial taxes. Recurrent conspiracies and revolts broke out in Cochabamba, Arequipa, Cuzco, and La Paz and were often accompanied by public pasquinades that lampooned, often in crude verse, the colonial authorities. In La Paz in March 1780, the unfortunate customs-­house official was Bernardo Gallo. He came in for fierce invective and ridicule from the anonymous authors of the pasquinades, and pleaded unsuccessfully to resign his post. The public warning reproduced here played with the word gallo, which means “rooster” in Spanish. This popular urban unrest against the Bourbon reforms clearly contributed to the outbreak of the general insurrection in 1780–81. In 1781, during the massive Indian siege of La Paz, Gallo became emotionally distraught. He rashly delivered himself to his enemies and was promptly hung in an act of insurgent justice. The pasquinade from a year earlier proved a grave prophecy. Another pasquinade from the antitax revolt of March 1780 in La Paz is remarkable for its radical content. It hints openly that the king of Spain, and not just his ministers, may be ultimately responsible for the injustices in colonial society and that the kingdom of Peru—​­meaning colonial rule in Andean territory as a whole—​­should come to an end. Pluck this thieving old cock [gallo], cut up some juicy morsels, and into the river with him. There’s no feigning ignorance or saying his downfall was sudden, as this is the third warning. Such a shame that many will pay for this thieving scoundrel. the miserable conniving corregidor

the Devil take this cursed fellow, pluck this evil cock

these gentlemen are the thieving royal officials

and after these will follow those who the nineteenth of this month, are [guilty] and those who are not   it will turn out badly for who   ever does not defend the patria 119

Pasquinade from 1780 against the custom-house official Bernardo Gallo, calling for patriotic unity against the colonial authorities and their reform policies. Photo by Rossana Barragán. Source: Archivo General de la Nación Argentina, IX, 32-02-05, “Intento de sublevación en la ciudad de La Paz. Año 1780,” f. 36.

Pasquinade from 1780 challenging King Carlos III and his sovereignty in the Andes. Photo by Rossana Barragán. Source: Archivo General de la Nación Argentina, IX, 32-02-05, “Intento de sublevación en la ciudad de La Paz. Año 1780,” f. 49.

Long live God’s law and the purity of Mary! Death to the king of Spain and may Peru come to an end! For he is the cause of such iniquity. If the monarch knows not the insolence of his ministers, the public larceny, and how they prey upon the poor, long live the king and death to all these public thieves since they will not rectify that which is asked of them. This is the second warning and there is no rectification. We will weep with grief since because of two or three miserable thieves among us many innocent lives will be lost and as much blood will run through streets and squares as the streets of La Paz can hold water! The nineteenth of this month, let him beware who does not defend the creoles.

Translated by Sinclair Thomson

Death to Bad Government  121

The Siege of La Paz Sebastián de Segurola

After the outbreak of the indigenous insurrection in 1780, the Spanish-­born military officer Sebastián de Segurola (1740–89) was transferred from Larecaja, where he was corregidor, to the city of La Paz. There he headed the defense of the city as it came under siege in 1781 and kept an informative and fairly sober diary of events. We include the diary’s opening and closing remarks, as well as the entry about one of his early sallies outside the city. His account reveals the violence deployed by both sides, the military superiority of Spanish forces in the field, and the suffering sustained by the city’s residents. He depicts his Indian adversaries as cruel and savage, yet cannot fail to marvel at their valor and tenacity in battle. After the protracted war, Brigadier Segurola was made the first intendant of the entire district of La Paz. A play in verse staged in his honor in 1786 praised Segurola as “that chief who freed you from disaster, when the infernal serpent of Catari and Tupac Amaru . . . infested this kingdom with their poison.” A common Indian from the town of Ayoayo, province of Sicasica, named Julian Apasa, intercepting correspondence between the principal rebel Tupac-­ Amaru with that of Chayanta, Catari [Tomás Katari], availed himself of the documents which it contained, and governing, since he did not know how to read or write, with a cholo of this city, called Bonifacio Chuquimamani, he made himself the principal leader, calling himself viceroy, with the denomination Tupac-­Catari, thus combining those [names] of the principal leaders of the rebellion, as has been said.1 The Indians, disposed and inclined to it after this Apasa manifested his intention to them, awarded him blind and faithful obedience. His ideas were adaptable to their spirit, the principles being to make the dominion of the Spaniards tremble, putting to death those of them who might be found; to separate themselves from the Catholic religion, to which end he ordered them not to pray, nor to remove their headdresses before the Holy Sacrament, with other equally scandalous provisions; and moreover in order to restore the rude manners to which in profane matters they were accustomed in heathen times, he ordered that the Indians should not eat bread, nor should they drink water from public fountains,

122

etc.2 The uprising extended itself in a few days to near this city, sacrificing in all the towns in revolt as many people of Spanish or mixed blood as resided in them, in many cases not even pardoning ecclesiastics. On hearing about the rebellion in the town of Viacha, province of Pacajes, at a distance of six leagues from this city, which was reported by the acting priest of the said parish, who came in flight the ninth day of March of the present year, it was decided to send an expedition with the aim of punishing them, and to see if the violent lesson would procure the submission of the other surrounding communities. In effect, I ordered the departure at midnight, under the orders of the colonel of militia Don Manuel Franco, of a detachment composed of thirty grenadiers, thirty independent officers and city residents with shotguns, and as many as four hundred lancers, some mounted and some on foot, which on arriving at the said town of Viacha at dawn fell by surprise upon the Indians and put three hundred of them to the knife, pardoning the rest, who in a fair number retreated to the church, where they declared once again obedience and submission to the king, Our Lord Don Carlos III (may God keep Him).

13 March. In effect, at midnight with the aforementioned people I carried out my departure for the town of Laja, and before arriving there dispatched Colonel Don Manuel Franco and Captain Don Dionisio Escauriza with a detachment so that each one would separately scour the Indians’ hamlets, which lay to the right of the road. With the main body, I marched to the town, where I arrived at sunrise. Realizing that it had been abandoned by the said Indians, no doubt for the news they had received of my march, and that on a high hill, at a distance of a quarter league from the town, there were a number of enemies, with the idea of attacking them, I took some people from the vanguard and with them I went to the said hill, on which I recognized that there were about eighty Indians, who in the instant when we approached began to hurl stones at us with slings. Not having sufficient people, and only four of them with firearms, although I attempted to climb up the hill I could not manage to do so. But seeing that some thirty fled from the hill, and fearful that before more of my people arrived, those who remained there would do the same, with the few who accompanied me I made to surround them. In a short while, those with shotguns and lances began to arrive, without the grenadiers, who with the fatigue of the march on foot, arrived exhausted in the town, from which they did not advance until very late. The greater part of the men with shotguns had remained in the aforesaid detachments. Likewise, those of the cavalry and the infantry only cared to sack the town once they had arrived there, without attending to or obeying the orders they were given. The hill was attacked, and although we made it to the summit three

The Siege of La Paz  123

times, the Indians dislodged us from it as many times, because they fought with an imponderable desperation. Meanwhile, some more people arrived, with whom, and with the dismembering which the Indians had undergone, the hill was taken for the fourth time, in which action we finished off more than fifty rebels who were present on it, having noted in the enemies such horrendous spirit and persistence, that without a doubt it could serve as an example for the most valiant of nations. Although shot through with bullets, some seated and others stretched out on the ground, even so they defended themselves and assaulted us throwing many stones. Once this operation concluded, I returned to the town where the aforementioned detachments were reincorporated, leaving razed behind them the hamlets to which they had gone and some sixty Indians dead. They also brought some sheep, with some cattle, which were added to those taken on the outskirts of the town, and I disposed that all together should be driven to the city.

This is the history, without many other things or particularities of small importance and dimension which as such have not been taken into consideration, of the lengthy, painful, and highly dangerous siege, which this city of La Paz suffered for 109 days. It was blockaded and set upon by the Indians of its three surrounding parishes, the four provinces of Yungas, Sicasica, Pacajes, and Omasuyos which surround it, and various [groups] from those [provinces] of Paria, Carangas, Oruro, Cochabamba, Chucuito, and Paucarcolla, who arrived to join forces around her [the city] in an imponderable number, although this according to the seasons, as it came to be known, has varied. But restricting oneself to the most probable conjectures, she came to have more than forty thousand enemies gathered against her, with the aim of devastating her and in particular setting her on fire. To this end, they aided themselves with innumerable inventions, machines, and devices, hurling at us arrows with balls of burning wool, rockets that carried candles of straw, bundles of linen with fire and gunpowder in their center, thrown with slings, and hand grenades, shot from the cannon, in the knowledge that they could affect some houses at the side of our trenches and which are thatched with straw. So, trusting that the total destruction of the city was assured, they had built another in El Alto, with church, houses, prison, and other elements corresponding to a town. By the mercy of God, we defended ourselves, despite hunger, plague, and enemies, including those within our walls, who did not provoke less concern than those without, achieving her freedom and preserving the most essential and best part of her buildings from pillage, fire, and other excesses which the rebels could have committed. The food of her residents, and of many other people who gathered from neighboring provinces, was not only the horses, mules, and donkeys, but after exhausting the dogs and cats, the skins of cattle and the most worthless leather cases 124  Sebastián de Segurola

served as the best sustenance. It is worthy of admiration that a cat came to cost six pesos, and for the mules, which died totally emaciated and of starvation, thirty pesos were given. In this way, of more than two thousand mules which were to be had inside the city at the beginning of the siege, at the end, for any sally which was indispensable, barely forty which were of some use could be found. The plebs, whom the siege took by surprise, took advantage of the others for their subsistence, assaulted by the poverty and the scarcity of foodstuffs which they suffered. Diseases in the time of the siege made the advances that are natural on such occasions, particularly among people of scarce comforts since more than a third part of those who made up their neighborhood had died at the hands of the enemies. Apart from military operations, some three hundred or four hundred people died when they were driven by necessity outside the trenches, in search of some food or vegetable, firewood and fodder for the horses, and for lack of caution met with the enemies. Of those with bullet wounds, apart from those mentioned in this diary, some fifty died, one of them being Colonel Don Juan de Higuera, who died today, a subject full of merit, who proved his courage, honor, and love for the service of the king in every encounter with the enemies that presented itself to him on various occasions. He carried out to satisfaction the commissions he was given, in particular the establishment of a gunpowder factory inside the city after the siege, which has provided our defense. In this diary no account has been given of those of us who have been wounded and mistreated with stones and sticks, because there is absolutely not one who has not been so [harmed] among so many people who gathered in this city, and several still suffer the consequences. Before the siege and during it, there must have been hung and killed more than two hundred fifty rebels, who were captured on different occasions and sallies, and who turned out from their confessions to be infidel spies and influences for the rebellion. The tortures and cruelties which the enemies executed upon our people, both with those whom they captured alive and with the corpses which remained upon the field, cannot be mentioned without the greatest horror, pain, and pity. The most common, with which they displayed their fury against the Spaniards, was to cut off their heads, arms, and legs, and cut slices off their bodies, dancing round the corpses whenever they managed to seize one, with other actions proper to the most barbarous and inhumane nations, which lack the feeling of religion. La Paz, 1 July 1781 Sebastián de Segurola

Translated by Sinclair Thomson

The Siege of La Paz  125

Notes 1. There is substantial debate over the origins and changing significance of the term cholo. In this context, it should probably be understood as a person with Indian-­peasant origins who has acquired certain urban skills (such as literacy) and status markers (such as Western clothing), but whom elites continue to see as lower class and vulgar. 2. The reference to “public fountains” may also be to the fonts of holy water in Catholic churches.

126  Sebastián de Segurola

An Unbearable Yoke Tupaj Katari and Sebastián de Segurola

In mid-­1781, Julián Apaza, who took the name Tupaj Katari (Resplendent Serpent), was at the head of tens of thousands of Aymara-­speaking community troops from across the altiplano and the highland valleys. Encircling the city of La Paz, he waged a punishing siege that pinned down the meager Spanish forces under the command of Sebastián de Segurola. Katari sent letters to authorities in the city, calling on them to surrender and urging creoles—​­Spaniards born in the New World—​­to rally to his cause. Katari was illiterate himself, and hence he relied on scribes to pen his letters. The most prominent of them was Bonifacio Chuquimamani, said to be an Indian or cholo who had lived for many years in the city and worked as a clerk in the ecclesiastical court. The letters were written in a rough, uneven style. They were dismissed by Segurola as “confused expressions,” and historians have struggled with their meanings. Here they have been partially smoothed out for legibility, based on our best assessment of the intended sense. They are exceptional documents insofar as they come directly from the insurgent camp, unlike the filtered Spanish accounts which make up most of the existing documentation. While difficult sources, they afford us a rare access to the political voice and vision of this formidable anticolonial leader. One of the distinctive features of these letters is Katari’s view of a new social order in which “each thing should be in its place” (cada cosa en su lugar). Following the political line of Tupac Amaru in Cuzco, Katari meant that those born in the Andes were the ones who should live, govern, and control the wealth in the territory, whereas Europeans should withdraw or be sent back to their own lands. Also notable is Katari’s effort to assert political legitimacy. He claimed to be acting as viceroy; though he does not name the rightful sovereign, the implication is that it was the Inka Tupac Amaru. While Segurola wrote as if his own authority were unshakeable, it was in fact Katari and his warriors who exercised greater de facto power in this critical historical moment.

My Very Reverend Father, Father Preacher of the Order of Our Father San Francisco [the bishop of La Paz]: By this letter, Your Fatherhood will deign to admonish and advise, and all shall notify one another on seeing this letter, and order that all arms 127

directed against us be withdrawn, such as the bombs and rifles and all the offensive weapons that seek to harm us. For I give you to know that [with your] putting this into effect and being obedient and loyal, I am on the point of calming myself and not carrying out any operations. Because my intention was to finish off everything and turn everything to ash, and so do not scorn this notice of mine. If you do the opposite, you will get the gallows and the knife. And under the condition that you surrender all offensive weapons, all the entryways [to the city] will be opened, so that everything may resume. In this way we will be firm and constant friends unto death. And thus I will send all the Europeans on their way, so that they be returned to their lands, and the creoles will be pardoned forever. I also notify you that if you do not take this as the truth, I will then turn [the city] into dust and ash. Because I have some hundred thousand Indian soldiers all around the city who are well armed and determined to bring down the city. Even if it takes three or four years, I will be here in El Alto until we have our way.1 You can disabuse yourselves, since it is from on high that each thing should be in its place; what is God’s to God and what is Caesar’s to Caesar.2 So do not look down on this notice of mine, because I have ordered and signed it here in this Alto de la Batalla on 9 April 1781. I, the Lord Viceroy Tupac-­Catari

[Correspondence between Segurola and Katari]

To Julian Apasa, who calls himself Tupac-­Catari: I have received a letter of yours, with the date of yesterday. Neither the context nor what you call yourself—​­which proves your rebellion and deceit, by which you seduce the miserable Indians who are such a concern for the King, my Master and natural Lord of these dominions—​ ­require me to answer your confused expressions. Nonetheless, following in every respect the royal piety and love with which my King and natural Lord, Carlos III (may God keep him), looks upon the natives of these dominions, I can say to you that if the context for the mentioned letter is to solicit pardon for the grave crime which you and your followers have committed, and you present yourself with them with submission, humility, and recognition of the error committed, I can, in virtue of the authority that is vested in me, and in the name of my August Master, treat you with the kindness so encouraged in his venerable laws. This is what I can answer and offer you in His royal name. On this matter, you shall respond promptly, with the understanding that this step suspends other serious measures that I had determined to take. La Paz, on 28 April 1781 Sebastián de Segurola 128  Tupaj Katari and Sebastián de Segurola

Sir don Sebastián de Segurola: In view of Your Lordship’s letter, I must tell you that the letter I wrote to you was not to solicit the pardon of the Europeans like Your Lordship. If I wrote it, it was out of love for the creoles, who were charged to me by my Lord Monarch,3 and this pertains to the good ones. But as for the evil ones, it will all be turned to ashes, just as for those of your kind, because of the heavy yoke with which they oppressed [the Indians] and so many taxes and the tyranny of those who hold these posts [as officials], without consideration for our misfortunes, and with their aspirations due to their impieties, it has been decided to shake off the unbearable yoke and curb the bad government of the authorities who make up these [governing] bodies. This is the reason for the determinations that have been taken, with all the seriousness I possess. This is what I can tell you. From this Alto de la Batalla, 29 April 1781 The Viceroy Tupac-­Catari Translated by Sinclair Thomson Notes 1. Katari wrote his letters from his headquarters in El Alto, overlooking the city in the basin below. El alto means the high point, and he calls his encampment “the height of the battle.” The place-­name resonates with the claim that his cause comes from “on high,” meaning from heaven. 2. Katari, perhaps influenced by his scribe Chuquimamani, creatively adapts Jesus’s dictum so as to reinforce the idea that each party should occupy its own sphere, with Europeans returning to Europe. It has the added twist that Caesar in the Andean context should be a native ruler. 3. The Inka Tupac Amaru is implied here.

An Unbearable Yoke  129

The Specter of Justice César Brie and Teatro de los Andes

Beginning in the late 1770s, local community struggles against corregidors and the caciques in league with them came to a head in the region of northern Potosí. The man who emerged to lead them was Tomás Katari, a commoner from the town of Macha. In 1778, Katari set out by foot on a remarkable journey of over a thousand miles to the new viceregal capital of Buenos Aires in order to obtain royal justice. The trip took several months, but he returned with orders from the viceroy for an investigation into the conduct of the local authorities and protection for Katari. Local authorities refused to comply, however, and the conflict escalated to full-­scale insurrection in August 1780. Katari acquired great prestige throughout the countryside and his movement put on the defensive the Spanish forces based in La Plata (today Sucre), the seat of the royal court for the entire district of Charcas. Katari was finally captured and Corregidor Juan Antonio Acuña sought to transfer him in chains to La Plata. Pursued by Katari’s followers, Acuña disposed of him, along with his scribe and collaborator, Isidro Serrano, by tossing him off a cliff near the community of Quilaquila in early January 1781. Community members then attacked and killed Acuña in retribution. After Tomás Katari’s death, leadership passed to his brothers Dámaso and Nicolás, and the movement grew increasingly radical before losing momentum in March 1781. The following passage comes from the unpublished play “The Sandals of Time,” written by César Brie and first performed by his theater company, Teatro de los Andes, in 1995. In the play, the Indian protagonist, Hilaco, travels to the land of the dead to find his friend Jacinto, who died one year earlier. In their wanderings, they encounter memorable and forgotten figures from the past, and in the scene that follows Hilaco is possessed by the spirit of Tomás Katari. Carried away, Hilaco accompanies Katari in his struggles, and the implacable ancestor speaks through him. Katari’s ghost evokes the living memory of colonial abuses and the ongoing journey in search of justice.

The Sandals of Time

Scene 8: Tomás Katari hilaco (appears possessed by a strange force, a kind of wind which turns him weightless and shakes him): 130

Usqhayta jamuy, muyuj wayra Llanthuykitaj upiykuwachun Ukhitimpi chinkachiwachun1 Come swiftly, whirlwind Let your shadow swallow me whole And lose me in its entrails My feet hurt, Tomás. How much further is it to Buenos Aires? We no longer have sandals. We’re walking barefoot, Tomás, without shirts, without ponchos. Who will receive us? The viceroy will listen. We have the right to speak. The corregidor steals, the priest steals, the mineowner steals. You’ll see, Tomás, the days will return when theft, hunger, and lies will disappear from our land. jacinto: Hilaco!

hilaco:

Waqayniywan juq’uchasqa Khuyaq jallp’a, qhataykuwayku Embrace us, beloved earth Soaked with our tears My feet hurt, Tomás. How long will it take to get back to Macha? The viceroy said yes. He gave us the papers. Tomás, we are going to govern. The thieving kurakas will lose their heads, so will the corregidor, so will the priests who abuse the faith. It’s not vengeance, Tomás; it’s justice. Centuries of injustice are in my hands. What could I do? jacinto: Come back, Hilaco, please calm down.

hilaco:

Nuqa tuta kani Ch’intamin munani Yuyaynipitaj llakiy kani I am the night I want total silence And in my thoughts I am grief (He falls to the ground. Jacinto ties cloths with herbs to the soles of his feet.) My feet hurt, Tomás. Where are you? Did the corregidor kill you? Here I am, fallen into a ravine with a hole in my chest. They carry me, along with my scribe, in vicuña fleeces. Dead. The light is fading. Don’t cry for me. I live on in all of you. (He gets up.) Nuqa wañuyta mask’aj risqani Awqanchijkuna saruchikunqanku I had gone to look for death Our enemies will cause themselves to be trampled Musu k’ajajtin yuyariway Ñuqapis yuyariskayki The Specter of Justice  131

Maykamañachus qanrayku Kay ch’ulla sunquyqa chayan jacinto (ringing a little bell around him, to frighten off the spirits): 2 Leave him alone. He’s not dead. He’s a visitor. He came to bring news, to take news back [to the land of the living]. Tomás Katari, leave him alone. He has to go back to his life. His destiny hasn’t yet arrived.3 Please. Leave him alone. hilaco: They buried me in chains, Tomás. I’ll always go with you. I shared out the land [to its rightful owners], I cured pain, I was in prison, I cut off heads. And my murderer cannot rest. He walks without eyes, unseeing; he cannot return.4 I am Tomás Katari, and my chains pain me, and my feet hurt from so much walking. When the earth shines remember me I too will remember you However far it may be, for you My solitary heart will reach there (Hilaco seizes Jacinto from behind and both fall to the ground. They sing at the top of their voices. Little by little, their singing fades away.) jacinto: It’s over, Hilaco. Tomás Katari got inside you. He walks like a shadow. He’s strong and he doesn’t give in. He visited you. Now it’s over.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. These and the following lines in italics are in Quechua and are immediately followed by a translation in Spanish in the original. We have maintained the Quechua and translated the Spanish. Only in the case of the fifth speech in Quechua does the translation not follow immediately; it is interrupted by Jacinto and appears at the end of Hilaco’s following speech. The passages are taken from colonial-­era Quechua poetry, especially that of Juan Wallparimachi (see the selection titled “Farewell,” also in part IV). 2. A little bell is rung in the Catholic mass at the moment of the elevation of the Host, which is when it is transubstantiated, according to theology, into the body and blood of Christ. The same bell has been incorporated as a ritual object in various traditional Andean rites not accepted by orthodox Catholicism, as is the case here. 3. In contemporary Andean contexts, “destiny” (destino) refers to the time, place, and manner in which God has determined that a person will die. 4. According to historical documentation, Indians gouged out the eyes of the corregidor’s corpse so that he be “taken by the devils.” The reference here is to a ritual practice in which, on capturing a notorious thief and killing him, Indians destroy his eyes before burial. The idea is that, being blind, his soul will be unable to find the path to the land of the dead, where it would encounter some sort of rest, but will instead wander forever lost between this world and the next.

132  César Brie and Teatro de los Andes

The Creole Cry of Freedom Anonymous

In 1809 the first autonomous governments, known as juntas, were formed in the cities of La Plata (today Sucre) and La Paz in response to the political crisis in Spain. The abdication of King Carlos IV and then his son Fernando VII under pressure from Napoleon had allowed French forces to seize power on the Iberian Peninsula. In the colonies, the early bid for power by creoles and mestizos received the support of urban plebeian sectors, though it generated little rural Indian allegiance and was quickly repudiated by Spanish civil and military authorities. This anonymous document, titled the “Proclamation of La Plata to the Valiant Inhabitants of the City of La Paz,” is undoubtedly one of the most radical political expressions of the period. It challenges the tyranny and “misgovernment” of colonial officials and, in an indirect reference to the conquest, denounces the loss of liberty three centuries before. The strong sense of opposition between “Americans” and Spaniards that emerged in this period anticipated the overt struggle for independence in the 1810s. Until now we have tolerated a kind of exile in the very heart of our homeland. For more than three centuries, we have watched with indifference as our primitive liberty was sacrificed to the despotism and tyranny of an unjust usurper who, degrading us in the human species, has deemed us savages and looked on us as slaves. We have kept a silence quite analogous to the stupidity which the uncultured Spaniard has attributed to us, suffering calmly that the merit of the Americans has always been a sure portent of their humiliation and their ruin. Now is the time to shake off a yoke that is as fatal for our happiness as it is favorable to the national pride of the Spaniard. Now is the time to organize a new system of government founded on the interests of our homeland, which is greatly oppressed by the bastard politics of Madrid. Now at last is the time to raise the standard of freedom in these unfortunate colonies, acquired without the least title and conserved with the greatest injustice and tyranny. Valiant inhabitants of La Paz and of all the empire of Peru: reveal our

133

projects through their execution and take advantage of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Do not despise the happiness of our land, nor ever lose sight of the unity that should reign among all of us so that we be as happy in the future as we have been unfortunate until now.

Translated by Alison Spedding

134  Anonymous

Debate over Spanish Sovereignty Anonymous

Written by an anonymous author, the following imaginary dialogue between the Spanish monarch Ferdinand VII and the Inka king Atawallpa, who was executed by the Spaniards in 1533, is not only an inventive literary expression, but one of the most striking political documents of the early independence period.1 It was circulated during the crisis of the Spanish monarchy brought on by the Napoleonic occupation of Spain and the abdication of King Fernando VII (1808). In the king’s absence, but in his name, various juntas or representative assemblies assumed local governance in both Spain and the Americas. The crisis gave rise to diverse positions, often expressed in rumors or anonymous pamphlets, responding to the power vacuum and hinging on the autonomy of local governments vis-­à-­v is the colonial authorities. The dialogue presents an ensemble of arguments to delegitimize the Spanish presence in the New World. It attacks the legitimacy of Pope Alexander VI’s granting of the Americas to the Kings of Spain in 1493, the Spanish conquest’s violation of the “primitive freedom” enjoyed by New World peoples, and the exploitation of Indians in the mita of Potosí. The dialogue ends with an appeal by Atawallpa to the people of Peru and the Americas to fight for their lost liberty.

Atawallpa: In the three hundred some years that I have enjoyed the delights of these Elysian Fields, the memory of my tragic fate never ceases to make me suffer. But a man walks toward me who by the look of it seems to be a Spaniard, and I wish, if he is newly come here, to call him over and ask what goes on in my lands. You there! Whoever you may be, tell me, who are you? Fernando: I am Ferdinand of Bourbon, the seventh of that name, the saddest and most unfortunate of all sovereigns. Atawallpa: And why unfortunate? Fernando: Because scarcely had I been proclaimed by my people monarch of Spain and of the Indies, when the most infamous and vile of all living men, that is the ambitious Napoleon, the usurper Bonaparte, tore me with his wiles from the sweet breast and lap of my homeland and my kingdom, and accusing me of crimes wholly false and fictitious, led me prisoner

135

to the heart of France. There I remained until I learned that my Spain, already overcome and defeated by the formidable and almost invincible legions of France, my enemy, was about to surrender, and in pity for my pain, I was relieved of such a sad and bitter life.2 Thus, I closed my eyes on the world with the sole and meager counsel that the English, Germans, and all the world wished to oblige that monster to desist from his aims and restore to my house the usurped and iniquitous possession which he now holds on the peninsula. Atawallpa: Tender youth, your misfortunes hurt me more insofar as I know by my own experience the immense pain suffered by one who sees himself unjustly deprived, as was I, of a scepter and a crown. Fernando: Is it that you also saw ambition snatch away your crown as it did mine? Atawallpa: The miserable Atawallpa, the unhappy sovereign of the empire of Peru is by your side, Fernando. However unjust and iniquitous you have seen to be Bonaparte’s conquest of Spain, you neither feel nor do you admit that the domination the Spaniard has held in America is, as I mark it, equally usurped and furtive. Fernando: Although I rejoice and it pleases me to know you, Inca, I do not know on what grounds you come forward to tell me that if the unjust Bonaparte dominates my peninsula, without a doubt the Spaniard does the same in America. Atawallpa: Speak, Fernando, is it not true that since the base and only firm support of a large and well-­founded sovereignty is the free, spontaneous, and deliberate will of the people to cede their rights, he who, overturning this sacred principle, should procure the oppression of a nation and ascend to the throne without having passed through that sacred stage will be, instead of a king, a tyrant to whom the nations will forever give the epithet and fame of a usurper? There is no doubt that you must admit that, since it is the powerful proof of the notorious injustice of the emperor of the French. Fernando: I admit it, and even add that there is not a living soul on the face of the earth who does not look on Bonaparte with derision and horror on knowing that he snatched the scepter of Castile from a monarch unanimously sworn in and proclaimed by its people, and a monarch descended from an infinity of kings; in consequence, it will be seen that the inhabitants of the peninsula render him only a forced obedience, effect of the fear and terror inspired by the unheard-­of tyranny of his bloodthirsty troops. Atawallpa: Compare then your fate to mine: the conquest of the peninsula with that of the New World, and the conduct of the French in Spain with that of the Spaniards in America. Consider, I tell you, the scenes observed on Peruvian and Mexican soil, and you will evidently see that they show that at the moment when Columbus gave the news of the discovery of 136  Anonymous

the fertility of the new lands and their riches, avarice began to boil in the heart of the stupid Spaniards who, crossing immense oceans, migrated in a tumult to the Indies. They know that the Americans are simple and submissive, but at the same time they note that, although uneducated and savage, very few are misanthropic and the greater part live gathered together in society; that they have their sovereigns whom they obey with love, and they comply punctually with their orders and decrees. In the end, they know that these monarchs, just like you, descend from an infinity of kings and under their rule their vassals have the perfect enjoyment of an unalterable peace; but since their eyes, soaked in the poisonous liquor of ambition, believe that the summits of the mountains are crowned with gold and silver, or at least endless treasures deposited in their interior, just as the very huts of the rustic and innocent Indians seem to them to overflow with precious metals, they wish to capture everything and obtain everything; they declare that they will ruin that unfortunate people and destroy their monarchs. “Reason dictates,” they say, “that this is an assault, and religion teaches us that it is sacrilege, but there is no other means to mitigate our implacable greed. Then let humanity, religion, and reason be suffocated and let our desires come true.” And straightaway desolation, terror, and death begin to rain in all parts. Barbarous in every respect, skilled only in speeding and fomenting cruelty and tyranny, they destroy humble huts equally with sumptuous palaces; immense rivers of innocent blood flow on every side; thousands of corpses are to be found everywhere, unfortunate victims of Spanish ferocity. Before such a terrible spectacle, virtue sobs, nature groans, and the whole world shudders. Only the Spaniard, more barbarous than the bloodthirsty and poisonous wild beasts of Libya, continues to raze the fields, lay waste the provinces, overthrow thrones, dragging down monarchs and cutting emperors’ throats. The inexhaustible riches stripped from the sovereigns and their vassals are not yet sufficient to staunch their implacable thirst. So they go to seek for more treasures in the interior of cliffs and crags; they drag down whole tribes of Indians and oblige and order them to mine the hills and enter their remotest and deepest depths. The poor obedient Indian begins his work, but after a few hours the languishing vigor of his weak and exhausted arms is no longer sufficient to break and shatter the hardness of the stones. Almost fainting, he sits down to restore his strength. The Spaniard observes this and straightaway sheaths his sharp steel in the breast of the innocent Indian, who, swathed in his own blood and continual tears, gives up the ghost from his body. Others, it is certain, manage to penetrate as far as the gloomy entrails of the earth, but in that dark and obscure chaos, bereft of all help, deprived of the light of the sun and even of the scant consolation of groaning at the side of their family, they soon undergo the same fate as the previous one. Those who have managed to Debate over Spanish Sovereignty  137

emerge from that abyss, assailed by hunger, go in search of some food but find none, because all has been stolen. They run to drink from springs and find their water dyed with the blood of their brothers. The innocent mother weeps bitterly for the afflicting death of her beloved son until grief itself cuts the thread of her life. The anxious father observes that death is his only resource: he sees in it only the happy end of his fatigues and, assassin of his own self, dies hanging from a tree with a rope, thus putting an end to his life and his reputation. All, finally, suffer so many misfortunes and calamities, that they can say together: traditi sumus ut conteramur yugutemur et perca musam aeterna ni inservoc et famulus vemundemus et tolerabili malum [sic].3 See there, Fernando, the living image of the conduct of the Spaniards. See, I say, whether with reason I call them unjust, cruel usurpers when like the French in Spain they have enthroned themselves against the will of the people; when in the same way they have snatched away the scepter from sovereigns descended from several kings and, in the same way as you, unanimously sworn in by their people; when, finally, the homage which they receive is even more forced and violent than that which Spain pays to the French emperor. Convince yourself that the Spaniards have been sacrilegious assailants of the sacred and inviolate rights of life, of the freedom of man. Recognize that, jealous and infuriated that Nature should have awarded so many riches to America which she had denied to Hispanic soil, they have trampled it everywhere. Confess, finally, that your throne in what concerns the Americas was sustained by iniquity, and was the very seat of iniquity. ... Fernando: But if this [Fernando has stated arguments on behalf of Spanish conquest] does not convince you, be persuaded at least by three hundred years’ possession together with the oath of faithfulness and fealty which has been given by all the Americans, grateful for the great joys we have showered upon them, who live happily subject to the kings of Spain. ... Atawallpa: I infer that neither the oath of fealty which the Americans have given to Spain nor the three hundred years of possession which the latter has achieved in [the Americas] are sufficient title to have the right to dominate them. The oath is not, because it must not have been more free than that in which man sacrifices his own freedom. It has not put the American under any obligation as, violated and captive, he swore to the Spaniard for the terror which the latter’s ferocity inspired, the fear of being bloody victim of his despotism, the sad situation of having been stripped of arms with which to defend himself, the sight of strength deposited solely in the Spaniards and authority united only in them—​­this is the captive origin which gives birth to his promise. And if it is not so, answer, whence comes the nullity of the fealty which the habitants of the peninsula offered to 138  Anonymous

the French emperor? No doubt they are forced by the impossibility of resistance. But even if this oath should have been free and spontaneous, it was not, as I have said, under the tacit and indispensable condition that the Spanish monarchs should gaze on them with love and make their homeland happy. And what does this happiness consist in? In the ignorance which they have fomented in America? In the stubborn insistence and vigilant effort to impede Minerva from crossing the ocean and restrict her only to the banks of the Thames and the Seine? In keeping them groaning under the unbearable weight of misery in the very heart of the riches and treasures which their amiable homeland offers them? In having dismissed them from all employment, in having deprived them of commerce and impeded their manufactures? In the pride and despotism with which the grossest of Spaniards treats them? In having finally beaten and degraded them to the level of beasts? Yes. In this consists the happiness that Spain has generously given them, and from the same comes the nullity of their vows. If you wish to present the three hundred years of domination to justify the usurpation, you should first confess that the Spanish nation committed a terrible assault when after eight hundred years subject to the Moors, it finally shook off their yoke. You should reprimand Spain, France, and England because after having suffered the domination of the Romans for many a long year, they finally restored their freedom and deserved the eulogies of all posterity. Do you want that Spain, which as an evident punishment of the vengeful arm of the All-­Powerful, suffers in ruin and destruction the same fate as she imposed on the Americas, should remain and still be subject to a Fernando who speaks with me now in the land of the dead? Do you want that when Heaven opens the door of happiness, they should be so numb as to permit the heavy yoke of another nation? Is it not certain that the universal convulsion of the metropolis and the terrible contagion of the fight that will without doubt reach as far as the Americas should inspire them to live independently? Fernando: Convinced by your reasons, I confess to all that you have said, and in virtue of it, if I were still alive, I myself would move them to freedom and independence rather than live subject to a foreign nation. Atawallpa: And if I could transmigrate from this place to my kingdom, without a doubt I would exhort them with the following proclamation:

[to the] inhabitants of peru: If, denaturalized and unfeeling, until today you have watched with calm and serene visage the desolation and misfortune of your unhappy homeland, remember now the sad lethargy in which you have been sunk: let the sad and funereal night of the usurper disappear and let the clear and luminous day of freedom dawn. Break the terrible chains of slavery and begin to enjoy the delicious charms of independence. Yes, fellow countrymen, your cause is Debate over Spanish Sovereignty  139

just, your designs are equitable and fair. Then join together and hasten to begin the great work of living in independence. Fernando will not stop you, because he has not or soon will not have more life than his name nor more existence than that which is published by fraud and lies. Swathe yourselves with enthusiasm, and publishing your liberty, you will all be fortunate, and the spectacle of your felicity will be envied throughout the universe.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Some scholars have assumed the author was Bernardo Monteagudo (1789–1825), a prominent figure in the Argentine and Peruvian independence processes. As a young law student, Monteagudo went from Córdoba to the San Francisco Xavier University in Chuquisaca, where he may have been involved in the autonomy movement of 25 May 1809 and may have written this dialogue. The Bolivian historian José Luis Roca believes the author was José Antonio Medina (1773–1828), a priest born in Tucumán who was also part of the Chuquisaca university world and who was a leader in the autonomy movement of 16 July 1809 in La Paz. 2. It is not clear if the author of this dialogue was convinced that Fernando was really dead in 1809—​­in fact, he lived until 1833—​­or if this is merely a literary artifice to achieve the desired effects. However, rumors that he had died at the hands of the French circulated insistently in America, and many people believed it to be true. 3. The meaning of this phrase is difficult to decipher, either due to the awkwardness of the original or of later transcriptions, but it refers to the injustices suffered under the Spanish yoke.

140  Anonymous

Guerrilla Patriots José Santos Vargas

The diary of Drum Major José Santos Vargas (1796–1854) provides a view from below and a feeling for day-­to-­day life that are exceptional for understanding the Latin American wars of independence. Vargas was born in Oruro in modest circumstances and orphaned as a child. He grew up fluent in Spanish, Aymara, and Quechua and joined the patriots fighting against Spain as a young man. He was a writer by vocation, though his style is unpolished, and his diary, covering the period between 1814 and 1825, is an observant account of provincial guerrilla warfare that sheds light on material economic conditions as well as internal struggles and the strategies and tactics deployed against the royalist armies. Vargas fought with Commander Eusebio Lira in the republiqueta (petty republic) that held out in the valley region of Ayopaya, near Cochabamba, Oruro, and La Paz. With the old monarchical regime in crisis and the future nation-­state still in the offing, what was it that Vargas and his comrades were fighting for? The term they used was “la Patria,” although its meaning was ambiguous to many people at the time. The following passages highlight their efforts to introduce the idea to the local indigenous populations. Vargas wrote, “Commander Lira always made [the Indians] understand everything that the Patria and independence from Spanish government meant, what it involved, and the things it would bring for posterity.” 1 However, some Indians continued to feel loyalty toward the king of Spain, and the notion of Patria could seem disembodied and abstract. One patriot sought to put the idea in very grounded terms for Indian peasants: “The Patria is the place where we exist and our own land” [La Patria es el lugar donde existimos y nuestro propio suelo].2 By implication, the Spaniards were usurpers in the country. Vargas’s own chronicle also sought, in some of its staged speeches, to stir a patriotic spirit in his readers. By then, [Commander] Lira was beside himself. Without being able to decide what to do, he said: “Boys, what can we do now, how can we escape from this cruel danger? We can’t be taken prisoner. It’s better to die fighting with bayonets than to surrender to the enemy. So, my sons, we’ll die for the Patria, and we’ll have fulfilled our destiny. Let’s accept our fate and put ourselves in the hands of the Supreme Being.” Then a soldier called Pedro Loayza, born in the hacienda of Tiquirpaya 141

near the town of Palca, gets to his feet and says: “My commander, I won’t let the enemy take me prisoner. It’s better to die jumping over a cliff.” He threw himself over the precipice and died, [his body] shattered. As if we were all going to give ourselves over to that same fate, Commander Lira nearly threw himself over as well. If some comrades had not held him back, he would have headed for the cliff. Then he says: “Come on, comrades and fellow patriots, let’s die for the Patria. Let’s see, throw all the guns down there and grip one another’s hands. I’ll be the first to go over, and we’ll die for love of the Patria. There’s no longer any remedy for us, nor is it possible to save ourselves in this situation.” At about three in the afternoon, a sergeant, Julián Reinaga, native and householder of the town of Machaca, nephew of the priest of that town, Doctor Ceballos, comes out and says: “My commander, let’s set fire to the grass on the slopes, and that way perhaps we can escape. The enemy is up there.” Right away Lira grabs a gun, pours loose gunpowder down the barrel, and puts a cartridge in his mouth, wetting it a little, and pulls the trigger [to start the fire]. The gun fires with a flash, sets light to the cartridge which burns (since the powder was damp), setting light to the grass.3 Then Lira says: “Boys, do whatever you can to set fire to it.” So we did. In a minute almost the whole hillside was in flames, helped by the wind blowing from below toward the heights and the grass that was so tall it could almost hide a man. So the enemy troops, which were advancing on us so cheerfully, then ran uphill shouting, asking the All-­Powerful for mercy, with the fire already roasting them. The waves of flames that leapt up from the fire were the most terrifying, not just to the squad that was advancing on us, for they were capable of terrifying a whole army. The miserable undefeated soldiers of the king barely had enough time to get rid any way they could of their cartridge belts, so as not to be roasted by the packets of powder, and some threw their guns away. We gained seventeen guns, as well as forty or more cartridge belts. The burnt cartridge belts resembled pork cracklings flying through the air. After that, Lira, having given thanks to the maker of the universe with tears in his eyes, congratulated the soldiers for the happy escape we had made from such a great danger. Thus, we were all saved without any damages except for Pedro Loayza, who threw himself over the cliff and died. Even during the bushfire, we advanced firing; wherever we heard shouts, we aimed. Lira said: “Boys, aim at the smoke.” And he said to the king’s men: “The Patria, since it is the place where we exist, is what is undefeated. Let’s see your monarch put out the fire, if he’s as powerful as you say.” ... On Sunday the 26th, absolutely all the Indians of the district of Mohoza 142  José Santos Vargas

had turned up. They had promised to deliver the tribute [to the king] on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and after that pursue us until they caught us. There was always someone to tell us all about it. On the same night of the 26th, we came down from the mountain of Chojñacota. By nine at night, we were already at the Chacoma water mills. The principal adjutant, Don Pascual García, set off on Commander Lira’s orders to the hamlets of Sivingani, Tahacachi, Chuachapi, and Ivira, with thirteen men, and he [Lira] took a similar number along the left side (because we were directly opposite where the enemy was, at a distance of two leagues), through the hamlets of Arcani, Coato, and Sopo, stopping above the town of Mohoza itself, at the places called Huarahuarani and Calacruz. García arrives at the first hamlet, Sivingani, and pretends to be part of the king’s troops, calling the Indians rebels and insurgents, with questions about Commander Lira and his comrades. Right away the Indians gathered, very happy to present themselves to García, thinking that they were the king’s troops, and with one voice they say: “Sir, we have already presented ourselves in town. We’ve brought firewood, meat, barley, potatoes, as much as we could. We have always been supporters of the king’s cause, ever since we were born and opened our eyes under the Spanish flag. The rebels are others. You call us rebels in vain. In a few days, the rebels will be captured, since we’re searching for them. We’ll make sure that not one of them will escape. At present, they’re on the mountain of Chojñacota, and whatever their movements, we’ll report to the provincial governor.” To this García says: “Very well, my sons, call everyone together. I’ll congratulate you. The aim is not to give in to these rebels against the king and the Crown.” Immediately, about twenty Indians gathered round. He orders them into a house, has them locked in, and congratulates them with fifty lashes or even one hundred for each one of them, without anyone being left without their share, pointing out to them that as he had deceived them by saying that he was of the king’s party, he would also deceive the true royalists, telling them they should not leave the interior, since Commander Lira was dead and his head [was on a spike] in the town square.4 “Everything is a lie. The Patria is the place where we exist. The Patria is the true cause that we should defend at all costs. For the Patria, we should sacrifice our interests and even our lives. Although for now we are persecuted, in the end we will triumph. In vain you say that your eyes are open. Rather, we are all blind, with our eyes covered by the black blindfold of Spanish greed. And so now it is necessary that we all open our eyes, waking up from the lethargy in which we have lived for so many years under the yoke of Spanish government, and come seek to join us patriots who are sufficiently numerous to destroy the enemy. Commander Don Pedro Alvarez is on the heights of Mohoza with many people. Lira is full of enthusiasm, and Guerrilla Patriots  143

all the Indians of this district are with him, except for you and the rest of the Collana community, which is where I have come on the orders of these commanders.” This word was spread everywhere, at a time when not a single Indian was on our side. We were just flitting about saying these things, as if we were newly conquering a foreign country.

That afternoon [30 December 1816], the Indians of Yayipaya reported that eighty men had left the town of Mohoza to go in search of us, and they had passed through Lirimani, followed by twelve Indians with twenty-­six cargo-­carrying donkeys to take the booty, and having been unable to cross the river, they had returned via Tomaycuri, which is on the side of Chicote mountain. Having received the report, Lira orders Captain Don Pascual García to set out with thirty armed men and forty Indians, with their captain, Don Mateo Quispe. At five in the afternoon, they went down from Coriri, and at two or three in the morning, they took the royalist Indians by surprise in the moment when they were teaching each other how to spread the word, some of them spouting a thousand curses on the Patria as if they were bees buzzing, others calling roll like in the barracks, giving the names of the generals of the Patria, and then answering themselves that they [the enemy officers] were sick, were defeated, were deserters. Taken by surprise while they were doing this, the [patriot soldiers] tied up the eleven of them, since there weren’t more, and not one got away. They took them out onto Calasaya Hill, where they killed them all with sticks, stones, and lances. It is said that some of them died so heroically that it was a waste. Some said that they died for their lord and king and not for being rebels nor for the Patria, that they did not know what the so-­called Patria is, nor what person it is, nor what the Patria looks like, nor has anyone ever met it, nor is it known if it’s a man or a woman; while the King is a known person, with a well-­established government, with laws which are respected and punctually obeyed. Thus perished the eleven.

In the course of these forays or maneuvers by the Indians, a notable case occurred with one Nicolás Apasa or Arias, an Indian from Mohoza. This fellow was advancing with a cudgel, all on his own, toward an enemy soldier. The latter turned round and shot at him, missing him by a hair. So the Indian comes up to him to beat him with the cudgel. The soldier diverts the blow with his gun and sinks the bayonet into his belly. The Indian seizes the barrel of the gun with fury, and he himself sinks the bayonet deeper into his belly just to get a bit closer and reach the soldier with his cudgel. Seeing this determination, the soldier drops the gun and turns to run away. The gun 144  José Santos Vargas

was left in the Indian’s hands with the bayonet sunk in his belly. He pulled it out. He bandaged the wound with the neck-­cloth which the Indians use in that region, and very happy, he ran up the hill having won a gun at the cost of his blood. The brave Indian did not fear death but was very satisfied with the gun, and with great pride he handed it over to Commander Eusebio Lira, declaring at the top of his voice: “Every man who sets out to defend the Patria should go into action with the intention of dying in defense of her or else winning something as I have now. I know that I shall die because the wound I have is mortal, but I have the great solace that, although at the cost of my life, this gun was won from the enemy and increases [the arms] in favor of the Patria, so that later those to come may tell of this act, so that in view of it those who truly set out to defend the Patria and freedom may do the same.” He sat down and could no longer get up. Lira ordered that he should be mounted, providing a saddled mule, and taken to the town of Mohoza for treatment. Five days later he died there.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. José Santos Vargas, Diario de un comandante de la Independencia americana, 1814–1825, transcribed, introduced, and indexed by Gunnar Mendoza (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, 1982), 266. 2. Vargas, Diario de un comandante de la Independencia americana, 175. 3. That is, instead of instantly exploding, the cartridge burns slowly and thus sets fire to the dry grasses on the hillside. 4. That is, they could stay in their provincial backlands and need not respond to calls to combat the rebels, who had already been defeated.

Guerrilla Patriots  145

Frontier Confrontations Argentine Military Official

The southeastern borderlands around Tarija were the site of sustained tensions between Spanish settlers, who slowly encroached on Indian territory, and Chiriguano tribes, which were not averse to military counteroffensives of their own. In the turbulent late-­colonial period, the Chiriguano leader Cumbay both negotiated and warred with Spanish authorities as well as with patriot creole armies over some fifteen years in order to defend Chiriguano autonomy. On two occasions, in 1799 and 1801, Cumbay went to the Audiencia of Charcas to solicit territorial rights. The remarkable account that follows, attributed to an Argentine military official, describes Cumbay as a proud “barbarian prince” when he was ostentatiously received in Potosí in 1813 by Manuel Belgrano, commander of the invading army from the Río de La Plata. The report shows the prestige Belgrano enjoyed, not only with the mass of Indians, but also with their legendary leader. Yet it is important to remember the interests that the creoles themselves had in obtaining the support of indigenous groups. This would have implied pragmatic deal making. Cumbay promised, for example, to send more than two thousand Indians to Belgrano. Besides his symbolic gifts, what was the commitment of the Argentine commander? The popularity that [General Belgrano] acquired among the Indians was immense, attracting them in such a way to the cause of independence that despite their proverbial perfidious character, and the secret hatred they profess for the Spanish race, they were always faithful to his memory. The fame of his name reached the regions of the Chaco, where at that time there was a famous cacique called Cumbay, a sort of barbarian king who with the title of general surrounded himself with the pomp of a monarch and was respected as such by all, due to the multitude of warriors who obeyed his orders. Despite being a fiery supporter of independence, and having received a bullet wound while fighting on its behalf in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, he had never wanted to enter the cities; but when he heard of Belgrano, he wished to know him and asked him for a meeting. Belgrano agreed, and some time later General Cumbay arrived in Potosí, with his interpreter, two of his younger sons, and an escort of twenty archers with quivers on their backs, bows in the left hand, and poisoned arrows in the right. When Belgrano came into view, 146

Cumbay dismounted and looked at him with attention for a while; he was heard to say, via his interpreter, that “he had not been deceived, that [Belgrano] was very beautiful, and that his heart must be like his face.” Belgrano gave him a richly harnessed white horse with silver horseshoes, and the two paraded between the ranks of the army, at which the savage did not deign to look. When they crossed in front of the artillery, which was of caliber .18, he was cautioned to take care with his horse because a salute would be fired in his honor, to which he replied that “he had never been afraid of cannons.” A bed worthy of a king had been prepared for the cacique, who was magnificently lodged, and he, giving his hosts a lesson in humility or pride, threw the rich decorations it was covered with into a corner and in their place spread his camping equipment. After several feasts to which he [Cumbay] was taken, Belgrano wished to give him a spectacle of military exercises and ordered the army to go out to bivouac in the nearby fields of San Roque, where they presented exercises in shooting and maneuvers, demonstrating how much they had advanced in training and discipline. Cumbay watched all this with certain amazement; but on being interrogated by Belgrano as to how it seemed to him, he replied with arrogance: “With my Indians, I would do away with all that in a moment.” Belgrano could only look at him with surprise. On taking leave of one another, he [Belgrano] showered him with attention, giving him among other things a great uniform and a lovely emerald embedded in gold, with which to cover a hole he had between the chin and the lower lip, which is distinctive to his tribe, and which the Indians cover with ordinary stones, or with disks of other materials. Cumbay thanked him for such generosity, offering him two thousand Indians to fight against the Spaniards. This scene, which has a certain savage originality, gives an idea of the means Belgrano employed to conquer the Indians’ affection and at the same time capture their imagination; thus, despite their defeats, these allies continued to fight alone against the Spaniards and provided effective help to the independence commanders who were later to wage war in Upper Peru. In countries such as Upper and Lower Peru, where the Indians settled in civil life are the basis of the population, and together with the cholos, who are the mestizos, form what may properly be called the popular masses, the indigenous element was of greater importance. Above all, the subsistence of the armies depends on them; since the Indians are the only ones dedicated to raising cattle, and the country is arid and poor in the mountainous regions, which the military routes cross, they need only to withhold food and forage in order to paralyze a general’s most skillful maneuvers. The indigenous element was also of great importance as active supporters of Belgrano’s military maneuvers. The whole country was covered by Indian militias, armed with sticks and slings and with infantry pikemen, who obeyed the orders of local chiefs who had acquired a certain fame and carried out active vigilance, intercepting the enemy’s communications and keeping Frontier Confrontations  147

it on constant alert. The province of Chayanta, in the heart of the mountainous area between Oruro, Potosí, Cochabamba, and Chuquisaca, was the headquarters of these community troops, little to be feared on the battlefield, but as we have seen, important as allies, above all considering the topography of the territory they occupied.

Translated by Alison Spedding

148  Argentine Military Official

Farewell Juan Wallparimachi Mayta

The Quechua poet Juan Wallparimachi Mayta’s background and tragic life are the stuff of legend. According to one account, he was of mixed Inka and Spanish parentage, and raised from a young age by Indians in the region of Potosí. He fell in love with the young wife of a wealthy Spanish mineowner, the story goes, and their passionate romance led to her being sent to a monastery in Arequipa. Wallparimachi is said to have gone off to fight in the independence wars in the guerrilla army of Manuel Ascencio Padilla and his wife, Juana Azurduy, in Chuquisaca. According to tradition, Wallparimachi died in the battle of Las Carretas in 1814, when he was only twenty-­ one years old. The heroic story has made him a national icon. His poetry is no less shrouded in mystery. A dozen Quechua-­language poems are attributed to him, though their authenticity cannot be substantiated. They have a strong and sensitive emotional register. The kacharpari, or farewell verse, is a traditional Quechua song style lamenting someone’s departure, and this one uses highly economical five-­syllable lines. We follow the Spanish version of Jesús Lara (1898–1980), who played an important role in popularizing the figure of Wallparimachi, though there are discrepancies between the Spanish and the Quechua in Lara’s rendition. This poem resonates with the stories of Wallparimachi’s own life. Though his lover must leave for distant Arequipa, the location of the volcano called El Misti, he promises to accompany her in his heart always. The poet himself will go off to face death in battle, though he affirms that the lovers’ bond will overcome death.

Kacharpari Cheqachu, urpi, Ripusaj, ninki, Karu llajtaman, Mana kutimoj? Pitan saqenki Qanpa tupunpi Sinchi llakiypi Asuykunaypaj?

Farewell Is it true, my dove, That you must go To a far-off land Never to return? Who will you leave behind In your nest And in my sorrow To whom may I turn?

149

Rinayki ñanta Qhawarichiway. Ñauparisuspa Waqaynillaywan Ch’ajchumusqasaj Sarunaykita.

Point out the road That you must follow. I will depart before you And with my tears I will water the earth That you travel.

Maypachan ñanpi Intin ruphawan Ñiwajtiykiri, Samayniykuna Phuyu tukuspa Llanthuykusunki.

And when you feel On the road That the sun burns you, My breath will turn into a cloud And will lend you The freshness of its shadow.

Yakumantari Sinchi ch’akiwan Ñiwajtiykiri, Waqayniykuna Para tukuspa Ujyachisunki.

And when you feel The bite Of thirst, My sobs will turn into rain And will give you Drink.

Rumijpa wawan, Qaqajpa churin, ¿Imanispataj Saqeriwanki?

Creature of stone, Breast of rock, Have you a heart To leave me behind?

Ñan ñoqapajqa Inti tutayan. Yanay chinkajtin Muspay purejtiy, Manañan pipas Ayau niwanchu.

The sun is snuffed out For me. Since my beloved is leaving On a routeless road, No one feels for me Even a bit of compassion.

Irpallarajmi Urpiy karqanki Maypacha ñoqa Intiwanjina Ñausayarqani Qhawaykususpa.

You were so tender, My dove, When on finding you I became blind, As if I had gazed Straight at the sun.

Ñawiykikuna Phallallaj qoyllur Lliphipirerqa.

Your eyes flooded me With the starry riches of their  splendor,

150  Juan Wallparimachi Mayta

Rajra tutapi Illapajina Muspachiwarqa.

And like flashes in the night, They forced my path To turn.

Ankaj rijranta Mañarikuspa Watumusqayki. Wayrawan khuska Wayllukunaypaj Phawamusqayki.

I will take on the power With the eagle’s wings To go to see you, And with the wind I will arrive to give you My embrace.

Kausayninchejta Khipuykorqanchis. Manan wañuypas Rak’iwasunchu, Ujllaña kasun, Ujlla ñerqanchis.

Our lives we tied up In a great knot, So that not even death Could part us. We will always be a single being, Only one, we said.

Wañuyta mask’aj Ñoqa risqani Auqanchejkuna Jamuyanqanku Pukarankuna Jalatatajtin.

I must head off To the field of battle. The enemy Will surrender When it sees its bastion Collapse.

Munasqay urpi, Phutiy ayqechej, Maypipas kasaj, Qanllan sonqoyta Paqarichinki Kausanaykama.

My dove, you who knew How to chase away my pain, Wherever I find myself, as long as   I live, You will be The only dawn that illuminates My heart.

Misti k’ajajtin Yuyaway, ñoqan Yayasqasqayki. May kamañachus Qanrayku chayan Ijma sonqoyqa.

When El Misti lights up Remember me, since I Will always be thinking of you. For your love, where Will my solitary heart Not reach?

Translated by Xavier Albó and Sinclair Thomson

Farewell  151

Inventing Bolivia Simón Bolívar

Once the struggle for Spanish-­American independence was triumphant, Simón Bolí­ var crafted a series of liberal legislative decrees for Peru and Charcas designed to abolish colonial forms of oppression. The vast indigenous majorities would no longer be subject to tribute, the mita, or personal services for state, ecclesiastical, and indigenous authorities; slaves would be freed; and equality among all citizens was declared. Bolívar proclaimed in January 1826 that his proposed scheme for the nascent republic that carried his name was “the most liberal constitution in the world.” In his address to the Bolivian constituent congress in May 1826, Bolívar drew on a range of classical and contemporary constitutional models for a system of checks and balances that would assure political stability. Yet at the time, and ever since, the constitution has generated controversy especially because of its illiberal proposal for a lifetime presidency. In the later years of his life, Bolívar had grown increasingly skeptical of democracy, believing it to be a political system unsuited for Spanish Americans after centuries of monarchical rule. The devolution of power to the people or to a federation of states risked anarchy, he believed, and hence a prominent central authority was needed. Despite the theoretical commitment to equality before the law, and consistent with Bolívar’s own wariness about popular political participation, the new republic’s constitution clearly differentiated between Bolivians and citizens. The former would include Indians, but the latter category effectively excluded most of them since citizens were required to be literate and have a trade or profession. The Bolivian constituent congress approved Bolívar’s design in July 1826. Two liberal propositions that it did not adopt, however, were the outright emancipation of slaves and the secular character of the state. While Bolívar’s model lasted only five years and subsequent constitutions eliminated the lifetime presidency, the central authority of executive power actually increased in the nineteenth century.

Address to the Constituent Congress of Bolivia . . . I have summoned all my powers in order to convey to you my opinions on the manner of governing free men, in accordance with the accepted

152

principles of civilized peoples, though the lessons of experience point only to long periods of disaster, interrupted by only the briefest intervals of success. What guides should be followed amid the gloom of such disheartening precedents? Legislators! Your duty compels you to avoid a struggle with two monstrous enemies, who, although they are themselves ever locked in mortal combat, will attack you at once. Tyranny and anarchy form an immense sea of oppression encircling a tiny island of freedom that is perpetually battered by the forces of the waves and the hurricane that ceaselessly threatens to submerge it. Beware, then, of the sea that you are about to cross in a fragile craft with so inexperienced a pilot at the helm. My draft of a constitution for Bolivia provides for four branches of government, an additional one having been devised without affecting the time-­ honored powers of any of the others.1 The electoral branch has been accorded powers not granted it in other reputedly very liberal governments. These powers resemble, in great part, those of the federal system. I have thought it expedient and desirable, and also feasible, to accord to the most direct representatives of the people privileges that the citizens of every department, province, and canton probably desire most. Nothing is more important to a citizen than the right to elect his legislators, governors, judges, and pastors. The electoral college of each province represents its needs and interests and serves as a forum from which to denounce any infractions of the laws or abuses of the magistrates. I might, with some truth, describe this as a form of representation providing the rights enjoyed by individual governments in federal systems. In this manner, additional weight has been placed in the balance to check the executive; the government will acquire greater guarantees, a more popular character, and a greater claim to be numbered among the most democratic of governments. . . . The first chamber [I propose] is the Chamber of Tribunes. It has the right to initiate laws pertaining to finance, peace, and war. It exercises the immediate supervision of the departments administered by the executive branch with a minimum of interference by the legislative branch. The senators will write the codes of law and the ecclesiastical regulations and supervise the courts and public worship. The Senate shall appoint the prefects, district judges, governors, corregidors, and all the lesser officials in the department of justice. It shall submit to the Chamber of Censors nominations for members of the Supreme Court, archbishops, bishops, prebendaries, and canons. Everything relating to religion and the laws comes under the jurisdiction of the Senate. The censors exercise a political and moral power not unlike that of the Areopagus of Athens and the censors of Rome. They are the prosecuting attorneys [fiscales] against the government in defense of the constitution and

Inventing Bolivia  153

popular rights, to see that these are strictly observed. Under their aegis has been placed the power of national judgment, which is to decide whether or not the administration of the executive is satisfactory. The censors are to safeguard morality, the sciences, the arts, education, and the press. Their authority is both terrible and solemn. They are able to condemn to eternal damnation those serious criminals who usurp sovereign authority or commit other terrible crimes. They can bestow public honors upon citizens who have distinguished themselves by their probity and public service. The scepter of glory has been placed in their hands, and so the censors’ integrity and conduct must be beyond reproach. If they stray, however slightly, they will be prosecuted. I have entrusted the preservation of our sacred rules to these high priests of the law, because it is for them to denounce whosoever profanes them. In our constitution, the president of the republic becomes the sun, which, fixed in its orbit, radiates life to the universe. This supreme authority must be perpetual, for in nonhierarchical systems, more than in others, a fixed point is needed about which leaders and citizens, men and affairs can revolve. “Give me a point where I may stand,” said an ancient sage, “and I will move the earth.” For Bolivia, this fixed point is the life-­term president. Our entire order rests upon him, even though he lacks the power to act. He has been decapitated so that no one will fear his intentions, and his hands have been tied so that he can do no harm. The president of Bolivia is endowed with many of the powers of the [North] American executive, but with restrictions that favor the people. His term of office is the same as that for the presidents of Haiti. I have chosen as Bolivia’s model the executive of the most democratic republic in the world. The island of Haiti, if you will permit this digression, found itself in a state of perpetual insurrection. Having experimented with an empire, a kingdom, and a republic, in fact every known type of government and more besides, the people were compelled to call on the illustrious [Alexandre] Pétion to save them. After they had put their trust in him, Haiti’s destinies pursued a steady course. Pétion was made president for life, with the right to choose his successor. Thus, neither the death of that great man nor the advent of a new president imperiled that state in the slightest. Under the worthy Boyer, everything has proceeded as tranquilly as in a legitimate monarchy. There you have conclusive proof that a life-­term president, with the power to choose his successor, is the most sublime inspiration among republican regimes. The president of Bolivia will be even less dangerous than the president of Haiti because the mode of succession is better suited to serve the state’s interests. Moreover, the president of Bolivia is deprived of all patronage. Such restrictions on executive power have never previously been imposed in any duly constituted government. The head of the government will find that one check after another has been placed on his authority, so that the people are 154  Simón Bolívar

ruled directly by those who exercise the most important functions in society. The priests will rule in matters of conscience, the judges in matters involving property, honor, and life, and the magistrates or men of state in all major public acts. As they owe their position, their distinction, and their fortune to the people alone, the president cannot hope to entangle them in his personal ambitions. In addition, the natural growth of opposition, which any democratic government experiences throughout the course of its administration, means that there is reason to believe that abuses of popular sovereignty are less likely to occur under this system than under any other. Legislators, from this day forth, liberty will be indestructible in America. Consider the wild character of our continent, whose very nature rejects monarchical rule in favor of the desert’s independence. We have no great nobles or churchmen. Our wealth has amounted to little and it is no greater today. The Church, though not without influence, does not seek domination, because it is preoccupied with maintaining its position. Without these supports, tyrants cannot survive. Should any ambitious soul aspire to make himself emperor, there are Dessalines, Christophe, and lturbide to warn him of what he may expect. No power is harder to maintain than that of a newly crowned prince. This truth, which is stronger than empires, defeated Bonaparte, the conqueror of all armies. If the great Napoleon could not maintain himself against an alliance of republicans and aristocrats, who then in America will undertake to establish monarchies upon a soil fired with the bright flames of liberty, which would consume the very pillars intended to support the royalist structure? No, legislators, fear not the pretenders to a crown that will hang over their heads like the sword of Dionysius. Newfound princes who should be so bold as to erect thrones upon the ruins of liberty will instead erect tombs for their own remains, which will proclaim to future ages the fact that they preferred vain ambition to freedom and glory. The constitutional limitations on the president of Bolivia are the narrowest ever known. He can appoint only the officials of the Ministries of the Treasury, Peace, and War; and he is commander-­in-­chief of the army. These are his only powers. Administrative functions are performed by the cabinet, which is responsible to the censors and subject to the close vigilance of every legislator, governor, judge, and citizen. Customs officers and soldiers, who are the cabinet’s only agents, are hardly the people to win it public affection, which means that its influence will be insignificant. There has never been a public official with as limited power as the Bolivian vice president. He must take orders from both the legislative and executive branches of a republican government. From the former he is given laws, and from the latter he receives commands. He must march down a narrow path between these two barriers, knowing there is a precipice on both sides. Despite these disadvantages, this form of government is better than an absoInventing Bolivia  155

lute government. Constitutional limitations increase political consciousness, thereby giving hope of ultimately finding a beacon of light that will act as a guide through the ever-­present shoals and reefs. These limitations serve as dikes against the violence of our passions, which are prompted by selfish interests. In the government of the United States, it has of late become the practice for the secretary of state to succeed the president. Nothing could be more expedient, in any republic, than this practice. It has the advantage of placing at the head of the administration a man experienced in the management of a nation. In entering on his duties, he is fully prepared and brings with him the advantages of popularity and practical experience. I have borrowed this practice [of succession] and embodied it in the law. The president of the Republic will appoint the vice president, who will administer the affairs of the state and succeed the president in office. By means of this device, we shall avoid elections, which result in that great scourge of republics—​­anarchy, which is the handmaiden of tyranny, the most immediate and terrible peril of popular government. Compare the tremendous crises in republics when a change of rulers takes place with the equivalent situation in legitimate monarchies. The vice president should be the purest of men. This is because, if the president does not appoint the most honorable of citizens, he will inevitably fear him as an ambitious and terrible enemy, and always be suspicious of his motives. The vice president will have to exert himself and serve faithfully in order to win the high esteem that will make him worthy of the supreme command. The people and the legislative body will expect both ability and integrity of this high-­ranking office, as well as blind obedience to the principles of freedom. If hereditary succession perpetuates the monarchical system, and is all but universal, is not this plan much better, where the vice president succeeds to the presidency? What if hereditary princes were chosen by merit and not by fate? What if, instead of wallowing in idleness and ignorance, they were put in charge of government administration? They would unquestionably be more enlightened monarchs, and they would contribute to the happiness of their peoples. Indeed, legislators, monarchy has won its support across the world because of the hereditary principle, which renders it stable, and by unity, which makes it strong. A monarch is brought up as a spoiled child, cloistered in his palace, reared on adulation, and swayed by every passion. But, what irony, he is able to maintain order and command the subordination of his citizens by virtue of power firmly and constantly applied. Remember, legislators, that these advantages are also combined in the life-­president and hereditary vice president that I propose. The judicial Power that I propose enjoys an absolute independence not to be found in any other nation. The people nominate the candidates, and the legislature chooses the individuals who will serve in the courts. The judi156  Simón Bolívar

ciary is therefore able to fulfill its obligation to safeguard individual rights, as their own power emanates from the people. These rights, legislators, are those that ensure freedom, equality, and security—​­all guarantees of the social order. The real foundation of liberty resides in the civil and criminal codes, and the worst kind of tyranny is that which is exercised by the courts through that powerful instrument, law. As a rule, the executive is the custodian of public affairs, but the courts are the arbiters of private affairs, of the concerns of individuals. The judicial power determines the happiness or the unhappiness of the citizens. If the republic enjoys justice and liberty, this can only be because of the effective operations of the judiciary. At times, political structure is of minor importance if civil organization is perfect, which is to say, if the laws are rigorously enforced and held to be as inexorable as fate. The use of torture and forced confessions is prohibited in keeping with the ideas of our time, as should be expected. We also shorten the procedures that allow an intricate maze of appeals to lengthen lawsuits. . . . The responsibility of government officials is set forth in the Bolivian constitution in the most explicit terms. Without responsibility and restraint, the nation becomes a chaos. I should like most forcefully to urge on you, the legislators, the introduction of strict and well-­defined laws on this important matter. Everyone speaks of responsibility while paying it no more than lip service. When there is no responsibility, legislators, the judges and all the other officials, high and low, abuse their powers, as there is no rigid check on government servants. The citizens, consequently, are the victims of this abuse. I recommend a law that will provide for an annual check on every government employee. The most perfect guarantees have been provided for the individual. Civil liberty is the one true freedom; the others are nominal, or they affect the citizens slightly. The inviolability of the individual—​­the true purpose of society and the source of all other safeguards—​­is guaranteed. Property rights will be covered by a civil code, which you should wisely draft in due time for the good of your fellow citizens. I have left intact that law of laws—​­equality. Neglect it, and all rights and safeguards will vanish. We must make every sacrifice for it and, at its feet, cast the dishonored and infamous relics of slavery. Legislators, slavery is the negation of all law, and any law which should perpetuate it would be a sacrilege. What justification can there be for its perpetuation? Examine this crime from every aspect and tell me if there is a single Bolivian so depraved as to wish to sanctify by law this shameless violation of human dignity. One man owned by another! A man reduced to a chattel! An image of God coupled to the yoke like a beast! Where are the legal claims of the enslavers of men? Guinea did not authorize them, for Africa, devastated by fratricidal struggles, spawned nothing but crime. Now that the remnants of those African tribes have been transplanted here, what law or power has jurisdiction to sanction these victims’ becoming the slaves of masInventing Bolivia  157

ters? To transmit, to ignore, to perpetuate this criminal breeder of torture would be a most detestable outrage. To establish a principle of ownership based on a heinous dereliction cannot be conceived unless the very elements of law and rights are distorted and all our concepts of men’s obligations perverted beyond recognition. No one can violate the sacred doctrine of equality. And can slavery exist where equality reigns supreme? Such contradictions impugn our sense of reason even more than our sense of justice. This would win us the reputation of madmen, rather than tyrants. If there were no divine protector of innocence and freedom, I should prefer the life of a great-­hearted lion, lording it in the wilderness and the forests, to that of a captive in the keep of an infamous tyrant, a party to his crimes, provoking the wrath of Heaven. But no! God has willed freedom to man, who protects it in order to exercise the divine faculty of free will. Legislators, I shall mention now one item that my conscience has compelled me to omit from the constitution. A political constitution should not prescribe any particular religion, because, according to the best doctrines, fundamental laws are to guarantee political and civil rights. Since religion has no bearing on these rights, it is by nature unrelated to public society, as its place is in the moral and intellectual sphere. Religion governs man in his home, within his own walls, within himself. Religion alone is entitled to examine a man’s innermost conscience. Laws, on the contrary, deal with surface things; they are applicable outside the home of a citizen. If we apply these criteria, how can a state rule the conscience of its subjects, enforce the observance of religious laws, and mete out rewards and punishments, when the tribunals are in Heaven and God is the judge? Only the Inquisition could presume to do their work on earth. Would you bring back the incendiary ideas of the Inquisition? . . . .  .  . Doctrine cannot be commanded, and he who gives orders is no teacher. Force can play no part in the provision of spiritual counsel. God and his ministers are the only religious authorities, and religion exerts its influence solely through spiritual means and bodies. The nation’s body politic is not an instrument for religion, as it serves only to direct public energies toward purely temporal ends. Legislators, as you now proclaim the existence of the new Bolivian nation, you must be inspired by noble, generous, and elevated thoughts! The admission of a new state into world society gives humankind a cause for great celebration because it expands the great family of peoples. What a joy it is then for its founders! And a joy for me, also, on seeing myself compared with the most celebrated of the Ancients, the founder of the Eternal City. This honor rightly belongs to the creators of nations, who as their very first benefactors truly deserve the rewards of immortality. Similarly, the honor you give me is immortal, and in addition it is gratuitous because it is undeserved. Where is the republic, where is the city that I have founded? Your magnanimity in giv158  Simón Bolívar

ing my name to a nation has far outdone any services I may have rendered, for it is infinitely superior to the service of any one man. My embarrassment increases as I contemplate the magnitude of your reward, for even if I had contributed the talents and virtues, indeed the genius, of the greatest heroes, I should still be unworthy to give the name you have desired to take—​­my own! Shall I express gratitude, when gratitude alone can never express, however feebly, the emotion stirred within me by your kindness, which, like that of God himself, is infinite! Yes! God alone had sovereign power to call this land Bolivia. And what does Bolivia signify? A boundless love of liberty, and after you had received it, you, in your enthusiasm, could conceive of nothing equal to it in value. When, carried away by the immensity of your joy, you could find no adequate way to express the sweep of your emotions, you put your own name aside and adopted mine for all time to come. This act, which is without parallel in all history, is especially so in view of the sublime disinterestedness that inspired it. Your deed shall demonstrate to the ages that as yet exist only in the infinite years of the future how strongly you cherished your right—​­the right to exercise political virtue, to acquire sublime talents, and to know the satisfaction of being men. Your deed, I repeat, shall prove that you were indeed fit to receive that great heavenly benediction—​­the sovereignty of the people—​­the sole legitimate authority of any nation. Legislators, happy are you who preside over the destinies of a republic that at birth was crowned with the laurels of Ayacucho, a republic destined for enduring life under benign laws which, in the calm that has followed the fearful tempest of war, shall be dictated by your wisdom. Simón Bolívar Lima, 25 May 1826

Note 1. The four branches were the executive, the judiciary, the tricameral legislative (with tribunes, senators, and censors), and the electoral (comprising provincial electoral colleges).

Inventing Bolivia  159

This page intentionally left blank

V Market Circuits and Enclave Extraction

Only five years into the life of the new Bolivian republic, the pseudonymous author The Villager (el Aldeano) posed a critical question: Why does the wealth of the nation fall so far short of its rich endowment of natural resources? The contrasting answers to that question have resounded into the twenty-­fi rst century. For The Villager, the culprit was the free influx of foreign trade, which stymied national production: “It with one blow has cut off so many arms in the republic. It has snatched from the citizens those occupations with which each one gained access to the necessities and comforts of life. It has diminished and may yet do away with the wealth of the nation.” From the opposing position, it was not only Bolivia’s geographical fragmentation but also the heavy hand of the state that weighed down private enterprise. Writing in 1871, the silver magnate José Avelino Aramayo declared: “Separated from the other nations of the globe—​­not only by the desert, the inaccessible cordilleras, and the torrential rivers that encircle it or cut through it in different directions, but also by the obstacles that it itself has created to block its freedom of action, or that have been created by the armed guard that it sustains under the name of government and that has no other business than restricting the free development of its moral and material interests—​­it is not strange that Bolivia finds itself in this sorry situation.” 1 Over the first century after independence, and especially by the 1870s, liberal economic tenets gradually gained the upper hand in tandem with the expansion of the hacienda and the rise of new extractive industries, especially mining, tied to foreign export markets. The economic outlook of the country was dim for the first quarter century of republican life. Though The Villager dreamed of a thriving domestic economy, fifteen years of war had taken a heavy toll, market circulation was feeble, manufacturing impoverished, and most important, the mining sector stagnant. Simón Bolívar’s and other liberals’ dreams of abolishing indigenous tribute and reforming the fiscal structure by introducing generalized income and property taxes were likewise frustrated. The state’s incapacity to raise new revenue ultimately forced it to fall back on Indian tribute, though the country’s first presidents saw it as a shameful legacy of colonialism. 161

The debate over the country’s economic future counterposed free-­trade against protectionist policies. With the end of Spanish colonial control, first foreign commodities and later foreign commercial and finance capital, especially British, began to flow into the region. But leading heads of state—​ ­General Antonio José de Sucre (1825–28), Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz (1829–39), and General José Ballivián (1841–47)—​­also saw the need for monetary policy and for tariffs and mercantile controls to foment regional commerce and manufacturing. The alliance between General Manuel Isidoro Belzu (1848–55) and the artisanal classes in La Paz gave the protectionist position a sharp popular political edge. Yet the pressure from merchant and mining sectors strengthened the liberal project in the 1850s. Liberal agrarian reform, another of Bolívar’s initial objectives, had been rapidly sidelined after independence. As the state’s reliance on Indian tribute began to wane after midcentury, liberal proposals attacking community property and promoting the commoditization and privatization of land began to gain ground. These culminated in the Law of Disentailment (Ley de Exvinculación) of 1874, which declared the legal abolition of Indian communities. But agrarian reform was not simply the implementation of pure liberal theory. Between 1866 and 1868, General Mariano Melgarejo (1864–71) had sought to raise money for the state by forcing community members to buy the title to their lands and by selling off those lands that were not purchased, although community resistance around the altiplano put a stop to the plan. The Law of Disentailment was finally put into effect, after 1880, as a means to collect revenue for the war effort against Chile. This “second agrarian reform” —​­after that of Bolívar and prior to that of 1953—​­thus combined abstract liberal theory and momentary fiscal convenience, as well as pro-­landlord and anti-­Indian bias in the legislature. If the 1870s and 1880s marked the consolidation of ascendant capitalist forces, this was especially due to the vigorous growth of the mining industry. The silver tycoons Aniceto Arce, Aramayo, and Gregorio Pacheco began by investing national capital in their enterprises in the 1850s, and in the 1870s they turned increasingly to foreign capital to raise production to world levels. Arce’s Huanchaca mine became the second most important in the world in terms of output, after Broken Hill in Australia. The company drew heavily on Anglo-­Chilean but also on continental European capital, and was responsible for the first altiplano rail connections allowing mining exports from Uyuni and Oruro to Antofagasta on the Pacific Coast in the 1880s to early 1890s. At the turn of the century, Oruro’s cosmopolitan population, imported consumer goods, and industrial innovation made it a beacon of capitalist “modernity” for elites. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the spectacular growth of tin mining led it to outstrip the production of silver. By 1910, Bolivia supplied 20 percent of the world tin market, and in the early 1920s mining represented 162  Market Circuits and Enclave Extraction

over 70 percent of the country’s exports. Simón Patiño, whose Catavi-­Siglo XX mine contained the richest tin vein in the world, was the greatest of the country’s three powerful “tin barons,” alongside Carlos Víctor Aramayo and Mauricio Hoschchild. With sharp business acumen, Patiño built a vertically integrated corporation, with its legal home in Delaware, foundries in England and Germany, and additional mines in Malaysia. Resident primarily in Paris, he was one of the world’s wealthiest men by the time of his death in 1947. The extraction and export, with little industrial processing, of various primary resources generated other economic boom cycles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Keen international demand for Cinchona bark (quina or cascarilla), which contained quinine and was used as a cure for malaria, stirred feverish activity in the tropical region of La Paz from the 1830s to the 1850s. Such booms usually attracted local fortune seekers and later foreign investors, and ultimately bred vulnerability to world market fluctuations. They also led Bolivia into international conflicts with disastrous consequences. Rich deposits of guano and nitrates, used for agricultural fertilizer and explosives in Europe and the United States, drew Anglo-­Chilean mining interests to Bolivia’s coastal desert region in the mid-­n ineteenth century. After a dispute over taxation and state sovereignty, Chile annexed Bolivia’s littoral in the War of the Pacific (1879–83). In the 1890s, the rubber boom in the Acre region led to Brazil’s annexation of a swath of the Bolivian Amazon in 1903. Between 1920 and 1922, the state granted three million hectares in concessions to Standard Oil in the southeastern lowlands, and the U.S.-­based firm held a virtual monopoly on oil production. The effort to control petroleum reserves in the region led to Bolivia’s doomed military campaign against Paraguay in the Chaco War (1932–35). Ultimately, Bolivia lost approximately half its original territory in this period, either through wars or renegotiation of its borders, to every single one of its neighbors. The peace treaties signed with Brazil and Chile in 1903 and 1904 gave Bolivia £3 million and the opportunity to build a network of railroads to better integrate a country that was not only mutilated externally but fragmented internally. But the Liberal Party in power after 1900, closely tied to western mining interests, spurned the entreaties of elites in the eastern lowlands. The new rail lines built in the early twentieth century to connect La Paz, Oruro, Potosí, and Arica merely reconsolidated the external orientation of the private-­m ining magnates Aramayo and Arce, who had looked westward in launching the first railway projects in the late nineteenth century. And the trains that carried valuable primary commodities to the world returned with cheap goods that impeded the development of regional production. The gradual victory of laissez-­faire economic policies and the cycles of primary extraction for export achieved a sort of “modernization” and “development” in the century after independence, but a sort that was highly uneven, Market Circuits and Enclave Extraction 163  163

leaving glaring disparities of wealth and geographical imbalances. The country now depended heavily on foreign finance and market conditions, while native industry and internal markets continued to languish.

Note 1. José Avelino Aramayo, Apuntes sobre el estado industrial, económico y político de Bolivia (Sucre: Pedro España, 1871), 1.

164  Market Circuits and Enclave Extraction

A Conspiracy of Commerce The Villager

The Villager (el Aldeano) was an anonymous author who gave us some of the most important socioeconomic descriptions of life in early post-­independence Bolivia. He was, however, far from being the provincial he claimed to be, explicitly quoting Enlightenment authors like Benjamin Constant, Jeremy Bentham, Gaetano Filangieri, Montesquieu, and Jean-­Baptiste Say. The Villager questioned whether Bolivia was really independent and free, painting a portrait of “misery” five years after independence: the mining industry was in ruins and the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in decline. The fundamental dilemma that he analyzed was why a country with so much natural wealth could suffer so much poverty. This early Bolivian economist attributed the “epidemic of the Nation” to free trade and foreign trade. He maintained that the abundance of imported goods meant a decrease in the demand for goods produced in the country, leading to unemployment and the breakdown of domestic trade. This resulted in a decrease in the money supply as well, since foreign commodities had to be paid for with silver. In the face of these “dire consequences” of economic liberalism, The Villager proposed protectionist fiscal and tax policies, recommending a series of regulations against imported goods and increased tariffs. In addition, he argued for reform of a moral order such that citizens—​­and especially women—​­might renounce the vice of consumption of imported luxury goods.

Sketch of the State in which the National Wealth of Bolivia Is to Be Found, Presented for the Nation to Examine by a Villager Son of the Same

Year of 1830 Problem: Why is national wealth or abundance not at the level of the efforts that the nation makes to obtain it? It is evident that the problem takes as given that the Bolivian republic lends the most abundant resources to all the productions that constitute the wealth of the nation, and this supposition is correct; anyone who has a moderate idea of its geographical situation and may also have seen the statistical arguments which are current in the newspapers of all its departments, provinces, and cantons is capable of forming a very good impression of the immense 165

treasures enclosed by this fortunate territory. Rich farmlands, innumerable metallic minerals, both precious and not, great talents which leave nothing to envy of the best produced in the various nations of the world, and a great facility for commerce, all this can be found at hand. It remains only to see what progress the nation has made with all these grand materials, and this is precisely what the problem sets out to discover. . . . When the republic groaned beneath the domination of the Spanish government and throughout the time of political convulsions, the citizens were always divided into three parts, or principal classes: the landowners and capitalists, the artisans and workers of all sorts, and the indigenous caste.1 In that unfortunate epoch everyone knew, I repeat, that those born in America were forbidden to develop their talents and industrial faculties, and to trade freely with other nations. Mining was the only branch of production in which they could invest their capital and to which they could dedicate themselves in any way. Withal, there were few hands that did not find a lucrative occupation. The few cities and towns which there are in the republic and a few notable rural districts were like sites dedicated to industrial factories. A great number of artisans, manufactories, and the like were to be found in them, in such a way that making an estimate one can believe that two-­thirds of their respective populations maintained themselves with the products of industry. It is true that among these places some were more industrious than others. . . . Now I ask: what has brought about such a fatal change? The answer is easy. Free foreign trade. It with one blow has cut off so many arms in the republic. It has snatched from the citizens those occupations with which each one gained access to the necessities and comforts of life. It has diminished and may yet do away with the wealth of the nation. It has introduced so many commodities into the nation that there is now a shortage of warehouses to store them. There is no canvas, textile, cloth, haberdashery, tin ware, furniture, or fine jewelry that may not be found among them. And to say it once and for all: human understanding faints at the sight of so many lovely things, and the most delicate luxury leaves nothing to be desired. And if this is the case as all can see, what of the industry of the country? By what means may it flourish? And how will so many thousands of families subsist that do not have land, capital, industry, or commerce? . . . With the motive of this foreign trade, any poor citizen or rich man or woman only has to get the money in order to dress from head to foot the moment they wish, to furnish their house, to saddle their horse, and even to harness their beasts of burden, but in a way so decent and cheap that nothing could be more attractive. In such a case, who would want to buy a yard of local weaving or employ an artisan who might not do so well or so cheaply? Let us take the example of the most common things. In the past a yard of cotton cloth cost six reals, while today the same hessian, of foreign make, but even wider, is on sale in the towns at two reals a yard; who will leave off buying 166  The Villager

this hessian in order to buy the other? In the past, local homespun half as wide as foreign bolts of cloth was worth a peso and two reals the yard, and a thin black corduroy cost six. Today the same woolen cloth twice as wide and of the best make has been sold at twelve or ten reals a yard, and velveteen at six and even three reals. Who would want to dress in local homespun or corduroy? In the past a handwoven poncho from Cochabamba or any other which was well woven and fine was worth from fifteen to twenty-­five pesos. Today one can make oneself a decent poncho from factory cloth for twelve pesos, and besides there are foreign ones which have been sold for six pesos. Why should people weave ponchos in this nation? In the end, everything is going in the same direction, and by these means the country’s industry is nullified. I do not mean to say by this that the foreigners are guilty. They can very well carry and sell their goods wherever they can or want to. Since they do not apply force to anyone to make them buy, they do no one any harm. We who are most interested in this matter are those who ought to think about it. But let us advance. Manufacturing industry is not the only one to have suffered from free foreign trade. There is another, and it is agriculture. In order to fix our observations on this part, which constitutes the wealth of the nation, let us anticipate some notions of political economy. “In every state—​­it says—​­the producers, the products, and their sale go hand in hand, that is, the more producers there are and the more the products multiply, the easier, more varied, and extensive is their distribution.” Elsewhere, “the offer is directly related to the demand,” that is, while there are more buyers for a determined commodity or good, so much more of it will be created and will be sold. Nature has formed our republic in such a way that some departments with others, some provinces with others, some cantons with others have such reciprocal dependence that the one cannot live without the other, at least not comfortably. The department of Cochabamba has products that Oruro needs, and the latter has ones that it can offer to the former. The same is the case for the departments of La Paz and Potosí, and so on. Now let us pretend that these close links have been broken and consider each department as isolated and concentrated on itself: what would the result be? Each department would be left with its own products, as there would be no way to sell them. Each one would lack what others produce, and this privation would occasion a state of violence. After a while, each one would have reduced some products and other products would have disappeared entirely. And if, unfortunately, producers and products could not be directed to other places to seek a replacement, we should finally see the department itself reduced to nothing. This is the portrayal that appears to reflect the truth of our present situation, and the state of decadence in which agricultural industry should and does find itself as a consequence of foreign free trade. . . . It now remains for us to examine the transcendence of external trade A Conspiracy of Commerce  167

[compared] to the internal, and we shall briefly do so. A nation whose commerce consists entirely of foreign commodities cannot properly be called a trading one. This is the reason why the merchants who travel to the ports and import mercantile goods will be few, and these few will not make it a trading nation. Trade must thus be greater inside the country and must be based on national commodities. This is what animates agriculture; this is what gives impulse and life to the manufacturing industry; this has an existence which is not precarious and can never go against the well-­being of society, whatever vicissitudes it suffers. According to [Jean-­Baptiste] Say, the English government has not considered that the most useful advantages are those that a nation provides for itself, because they cannot exist except in so far as the nation produces two sources of value: that is, the value that is sold, and that which is bought. Due to the intimate relations between the departments of Bolivia which I have sketched, anyone can be within reach of the great material which the nation offers to create, foment, and extend its internal market. And is this what we observe? I should not like to even approach lifting the veil that conceals such a hateful matter. . . . Our merchants seem to have conspired against the nation. Ships barely come into sight on the Pacific coast, dazzling them with the splendor of their merchandise and fascinating them with great profits, for them to gather their capital, seeking it wherever they can, bagging up the silver and gold, and running in a rush to the ports to fight over the purchase of the goods. They import them into the country, stuff the warehouses, open shops, and seek subalterns and brokers who snare the unwary everywhere. There is not a city, town, canton, or village square or market which is not full of this merchandise. A pretty sight, I say, on seeing all this apparatus and fuss on the part of our merchants. Where, I ask, are the commodities of this country? Is there no manufacturing industry in Bolivia? What has been done with the many laborers who lived off industry? Where will I find that the old barriers against this branch of industry have disappeared? Where that Bolivians are free and independent of all foreign nations, and that they are civilized, as they say? Is this civilization to run about collecting the blood of the body politic and suck it out? I repeat that it seems that my compatriots have conspired against their homeland and rather wish to be agents and dependents of foreign countries than useful citizens of their own.2 It would be so much better if all this immense capital extracted from our soil were to be productively employed in promoting industry and all the other branches which form national and individual wealth. Do we want the nation to be rich and poverty not to spread through all the classes of the people like a devouring epidemic? We will talk more about this further on. At present, I am content to have made a light sketch of the state of this afflicted nation. If the facts are indeed as anyone can observe them to be, it is certain that Bolivia produces less than

168  The Villager

it consumes and that national wealth and abundance are not at the level of the resources that the nation offers due to free foreign trade.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. “The time of political convulsions” refers to the wars of independence, which lasted almost two decades and ended in Bolivia only five years before 1830. 2. Wholesale merchants and those who are called peddlers collect not only cash money but also any worked silver which is to be had in the towns. [Note in original.]

A Conspiracy of Commerce  169

The Argument for Free Trade La Época

La Época was one of the leading newspapers in the nineteenth century, published in La Paz and founded by Argentine political refugees, including the intellectual and future Argentine president Bartolomé Mitre. In September 1845, La Época published a series of articles about foreign trade, advocating its complete deregulation. In response, the newspaper El Eco, of Potosí, argued that the consumption of foreign goods was “destructive to public wealth,” and that it was therefore necessary to introduce tariff barriers in order to protect and promote national industry. This debate continued the analysis of the country’s economic situation that the protectionist Villager had begun in 1830, and would last until at least 1860, when the entire economy was deregulated. We will finally begin the examination of a question which is interesting under all lights, not only for Bolivia but also for most American nations—​­that of foreign trade. If we ask the economists, Mr. de Lemonnier says, What are the principles that should govern industrial relations between peoples?1 We will see that on this point they are divided into two groups; one which supports the prohibitionist system, which they ridiculously call protectionist; the other, fiery defenders of an unlimited freedom. “Each people,” says the first group, “has different and even contradictory interests; each people is and should be occupied in surpassing its neighbors, because the homeland [comes] before all else. In this endless struggle between nations, at times noisy, at times muted and disguised, guilty and senseless would be the government that did not think to unchain the people it dominates from dependence on their neighbors, and to provide them by all possible means with an equal sum of welfare and wealth, whether by the triumph of peace or making the same use of war.” “What a happy nation,” we interrupt, “that could be sufficient unto itself with its natural and indigenous production, able, without any danger or lack, to live and declare itself isolated in the midst of the family of peoples! Happier still, that [nation] which, having no need at all of others, not only produces raw materials for itself, but can

170

also supply its neighbors with them! It dominates them, it forces them to uphold its laws, it turns them into tributaries.” This system of competition between nations necessarily engenders the prohibitionist regime, tariffs and taxes on the trade that passes through, and on imports and exports in general, [and] the forbidding of foreign products, when they are cheaper or of better quality; the premiums awarded to manufacturing industries whose consolidation, ignoring the climate, is sought inside the country, and other similar measures are the consequences of indiscreet and ruinous zeal. “One may compare,” says a prudent economist, “the peoples who practice the prohibitionist system, with the private individual who, wishing to escape from dependence on his boot maker or his tailor, should propose to make his own clothes and footwear.” “The peoples,” say the partisans of commercial freedom meanwhile, “have a natural and invincible tendency to unite and form associations—​­it is madness to ignore this. It can be assured that the prosperity of each people in particular is directly proportional to the alliances that link it to a greater number of nations. It happens with peoples as with individuals: for them, the sources of wealth are the division of labor and the combination of efforts. A people comes to be richer insofar as, leaving to each of its neighbors the branches of industry that nature has made more accessible to them, it limits its production to the specialty in which it is outstanding; this is the only way to give its capital, its strength, its time the most economical and at the same time most lucrative use. Here is the origin of the preponderance and the astonishing wealth of the United States, which have established the most absolute freedom of trade and industry ever known. Such are the arguments presented by the partisans of both systems. “We,” says Mr. de Lemonnier, after a lengthy examination of the matter, “do not hesitate for a moment to declare ourselves for commercial freedom—​­we believe in peace.” ... Having settled the principles which support the triumph of free trade over the prohibitionist system, a triumph which is now recognized by all the civilized nations of the world, we will examine the connections that this may have with the actual state of Bolivia, and in which part that freedom could be damaging to it. The industrious people can occupy itself in three ways. It cultivates, or it manufactures, or it exchanges. To exchange is to trade, in the general sense; and this commerce has for its materials all the products, whether they are extracted from the bowels of the earth, or had by the cultivation of the fields, or by manufacture which transforms the primitive materials. It is very easy to frame the modes in which the Bolivian people exercises its industry. As cultivator and manufacturer, its situation is very humble, given that it barely covers its needs. Its manufactures go no further than those skills acquired

The Argument for Free Trade  171

two or three hundred years ago, such as tocuyo, bayetones, and so on;2 the manufacture of wines, rum, sugar, and other articles of consumption is extremely narrow and limited, such that by itself it would not fulfill national needs. We could conclude that as manufacturer, our nation strikes a poor figure when ranked with other nations. As a cultivator, it is well known that almost all the plantations which constitute the basis of [our] agriculture are entirely natural, such as coca, coffee, quinine bark, Brazil nuts, and so on, and these plantations, far from increasing, have diminished, due to well-­marked causes which we will speak of later.3 Our people, then, as cultivators are likewise to be found in the rearguard. As traders, could it ever be said that Bolivia occupies a commercial rank? No, not even this has yet been possible, nor has anyone thought how to remove the immense obstacles that prevent it. Such is the state of things that, to tell the truth, we are not even farmers. Won’t our fellow citizens be offended to hear this? The hard-­working and enterprising character of our people has been superior to the local obstacles that go against its progress; so we see that the lively people of Cochabamba travel to Potosí carrying sponge cakes, chickens, boxes of sweets, despite the barbarous demand of paying a silver peso for each one of these last.4 In consequence, our backwardness cannot be attributed to the character of the people, but rather to the nature of our landlocked situation and to the mortal indifference of previous governments. Our routes of communication blocked or ignored; our fields abandoned, with ploughshares beaten into breastplates and swords; subjected by infamous and Machiavellian policies to bear the commercial yoke that Peru imposed on us; forced to be their tributaries and consumers, our people have vegetated until today. They had distilled liquors, wines, sugar, and cloth, and Peru supplied and still supplies them to Bolivia; they had mineral and vegetable wealth, and these were demerited because Bolivia did not have easy and secure means to export them—​­and while on the coast, a cowhide is usually worth up to four silver pesos, here we have to sell them for the miserable price of three or four reales!5 Does anyone doubt the causes which have given rise to this backwardness? ... With respect to the reciprocity of profits (continues the correspondent from the Potosí newspaper Eco, complaining about foreign trade), there are none; because the sons of this country do not take part in it, because [their commercial activity] is reduced to nothing more than selling dear in Bolivia what is bought cheaply in Europe, and because it is for us a pure consumer trade, leaving the profits from production, transport, and return exclusively in foreign hands.6 Up to a point, the definition of the Eco’s correspondent, on the pretensions of foreign trade, is original. “To sell expensively in Bolivia what is bought cheaply in Europe.” This is exactly the object, let us not say of trade with Bolivia, but rather [of trade] with all the nations of the world: to

172  La Época

exchange the products of one country with those of another, but always using either the real values of the former or the reduced prices of the articles taken back on the return journey. To complain about the trader who sells the articles bought cheaply in Europe at a high price to us in Bolivia is as ridiculous as it is unfair. With reference to the foreign trade that does not deliver any income for this country, this is another proposition that has not been clearly proven, despite the reasons presented by the author of the article. In the first place, the trade in imported goods swells the national coffers with almost a million pesos (in taxes) every year. This is a real profit which cannot be ignored; because although they may tell us that it is not the foreign trader, but the consumer who produces this income, we reply that there is not one tax which does not eventually fall, directly or indirectly, on the consumer. In second place, together with the foreign products, good taste, enlightenment, [and] the desire for improvement and progress are imported into our towns, and this is a profit that in truth could not be more [to the benefit of] the nation. With reference to the claim that our fellow citizens do not take part in this trade, leaving all the profits in foreign hands, this is not the fault of the foreign traders or of the laws of commerce; the fault is all our own; nor are we traders by character, nor do the routes of communication with Europe put us on the level of Chile, of whose market as much again could be said. If the port of Cobija had the conditions to store [merchandise] in huge storehouses, as in Valparaiso; if the roads from that port to all our interior markets were in the excellent state that we have asked for, there is no doubt that foreign trade would not be in foreign hands; and just as Valparaiso supplies all the national traders of the Republic of Chile and even the retail traders of Bolivia, Cobija would supply us, the commercial genius which at present sleeps among us would develop, and our commerce would not be merely one of transport.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. “Industrial relations” refers not to relations between workers, unions, and employers, but rather to relations concerning the exchange of the products of various industries. 2. Tocuyo is coarse cotton cloth, and bayetones (more usually bayeta) is heavy woolen cloth woven from local wool spun on hand spindles. 3. The “natural,” meaning “wild,” state is true of Brazil nuts, which even today are gathered from wild trees scattered in the Amazonian rain forest. It was true as well of the wild trees from whose bark quinine (the antimalarial drug) was extracted. However, coca and coffee are not wild products; they are domesticated plants which require careful cultivation. 4. The “silver peso” or strong peso (peso fuerte) contained a high percentage of pure silver, versus the weak peso (peso feble), which was debased (mixed with metals other than silver)

The Argument for Free Trade  173

and thus worth less, although its face value was the same. The weak peso circulated in greater quantity, and this is why it was considered abusive for the tax collector to demand payment only in strong silver pesos from the traders. 5. There were eight reales to a peso. 6. “Return” refers to the products purchased in Bolivia with the profits of the sale of imported goods, then exported back to the country of origin of those goods.

174  La Época

The Silver Patriarch José Avelino Aramayo

The founder of the Aramayo mining dynasty, José Avelino Aramayo (1809–82) was a prominent advocate of industrial modernization, which he had witnessed under way during his travels in Europe. He championed Bolivia’s potential to attain the economic level of its neighbors Argentina and Chile, if not that of Europe itself. Mineral wealth would be the basis for economic development, he believed, yet Aramayo was also concerned with the advance of railroads, agriculture, public works, and political democratization. From a modest landholding family in the far south, near Tupiza, he eventually came to lead the revolution in the silver-­mining industry, which hinged on technological innovation and expertise as well as national and international capital investment. In the following passages, from his Notes on the State of Industry, Economy, and Politics in Bolivia (1871), he recounts his rising economic fortunes and alludes to his political vicissitudes. He was exiled from the country by Presidents Belzu, Melgarejo, and Morales, all army generals, and was a fierce opponent of military government. In consistent liberal vein, he also opposed state regulation and taxation, state control of mineral purchasing, as well as the early republican state’s debased silver currency (moneda feble), a monetary policy that sought to protect domestic production and foment internal trade. Aramayo was an audacious entrepreneur, and his risky investments left him at the end of his life, in Paris, with more debt than fortune, although his offspring would maintain the family’s prominence in the mining industry. This space of half a century, which seems an excessively long time, has passed for me like a flash of lightning. I remember as if it were yesterday the day and hour in which I left the side of my beloved father, having embraced the only profession that was practiced in the place where I was born (that of mule driver). I began to serve at the rank corresponding to a boy aged fifteen and began my career of journeys all over the place, from up above to down below and from down below to up above, as my fellow countrymen say. Driving mules, in the first year I went from Jujuy to La Paz and returned by the same road. In the second year I went as far as Puno, in the third to the outskirts of Cuzco, acquiring great skill in that exercise and becoming a complete gaucho;1 but as regards everything else I was so completely blind 175

that I was in darkness, despite the clarity of the days and the brilliant sun which lights up my homeland. In the long days I spent mounted on a saddle mule, I had plenty of time to think about my situation and about each one of the animals which I drove before me, whose coats and markings I knew like the palm of my hand. What most attracted my attention was the space that constantly opened up before me; the new horizons I discovered; the high peaks that surrounded me, which it was impossible for me to climb; the new objects that appeared to me at each step—​­i n the end, the world, full of beauty and splendor, but whose configuration I was not capable of noticing. I belonged to a poor family; my good mother had died very young, leaving seven children, among whom I was one of the oldest and six years old when she left us. My father lost the little he possessed in the wars of independence. . . . We lived without rest and without means of education, so much so that when I reached the age of fifteen I could barely read and write a little, which my good father had taught me personally. In the year 1828, I left my first profession of mule driver, having acquired a place as employee in the firm of the distinguished and most justly famous miner don Martín de Jáuregui; I was then eighteen years old. On the day when I entered that firm I proposed to myself to settle the foundations of my future and made a firm resolution to serve well, with decision and loyalty. It is certain that, from being the most subaltern employee, I very soon became a trusted servant and little by little the intimate friend of my employers. I continued to work with them in the mines of Chichas and Chayanta until the year ’35. In those seven years I had acquired the habits of a miner, great affection for that activity, and some knowledge of mine work, as well as something about the processing of the minerals, but that kind of vulgar and routine knowledge which serves only to deceive with false illusions and perturb the healthy intelligence of youth, presenting it with some examples of fortunes casually improvised without working and which for that reason have no merits at all. I can recall only with pleasure that epoch when I was an employee and which has been the happiest time of my life. In those days my responsibility was limited to punctually carrying out what I was ordered to do and since I was overflowing with strength, activity, and willingness for everything, I fulfilled my tasks without much effort. . . . Even when I had to work day and night, which often happens in the activity of the mines, I always had time left over to have fun and to race horses, my dominant passion from childhood until now. In 1835, I had to leave the mines, to accompany one of my employers, who was leaving for Europe, the noble and distinguished gentleman don Gui­llermo Irigoyen, who became my protector and my best friend. When I left the mines of Aullagas, where I was employed, it was due to this incident, since I had the most burning desire to see the world and did not want to lose 176  José Avelino Aramayo

the brilliant opportunity I was offered, although my intention to work in the mines was already very notable. In 1836, I made my first voyage to Europe, in the company of Mr. Irigoyen. Through this gentleman’s contacts and with his personal help, I was able to get my first petty goods together in France, with six thousand pesos, and returned immediately to Bolivia. From that moment, left entirely free to follow my own inspiration, without experience, without mercantile knowledge, without any support or more protection than that of providence, I was able to get by, as God intimated I should, embracing with enthusiasm a career in commerce. Between ’37 and ’38, I made my second voyage to Europe with better results. In those good times of fortune and youthful activity, I thought a European deal was bad if it did not turn at least two hundred pesos of liquid profit, and I was making long journeys and getting to know the courts and enjoying myself. It is true that there is a time in a man’s life where everything seems rose-­colored, in which people are an amusement and illusions are reality. Once I had decided to continue a career in commerce, I went into partnership with my brothers; we set up a merchant house in La Paz and another in Potosí, directed by them as the company Aramayo Brothers, and I continued traveling to Europe. As our business expanded, we ran up against and recognized the obstacles that oppose the spontaneous development of every industry in Bolivia. The natural obstacles, which are so over-­exaggerated, are certainly not so serious as those which have been created by custom and our industrial legislation, as backward as that of colonial times in many respects. To show these obstacles, relating the history of their infinite modifications, it would be necessary to write a whole book, because their number and their terrible consequences spread progressively over all the productive industries of the country, eventually annihilating them all, reducing them to nullity. I do not know if there exists in the world a people whose needs are more moderate, whose customs are more frugal, and which suffers more than ours, since despite these thousand obstacles—​­which go against their education and the free development of their faculties, and notwithstanding that their industries not only lack all protection and guarantees, but are also assailed by the multitude of taxes which oppress them—​­it is not rare to see some fortunes which by dint of activity and savings manage to rise to a certain height, at which level everything is paralyzed in Bolivia. In 1850, I once more embraced a career in the mines, giving in to my first inclinations. I began various operations in Chile and Bolivia on my own account; later, after the collapse of the Banco de Quinas, I dragged my brothers into this business, obliging them to abandon commerce.2 Of course, I proposed to set up mining establishments in the deserts of Carguaicollo and Sevaruyo, which could serve as the basis for other undertakThe Silver Patriarch  177

ings I had in view.3 I hired foreign operators of all kinds: engineers, chemists, machinists, artisans, and whoever else was necessary to develop enterprises such as those I had seen and practiced in other places, without noticing at the time that the concerns of my country did not permit extraordinary modifications which were not initiated and directed by those in government. Under the weight of such influences, I had launched myself with decision into works of immense magnitude, struggling against every kind of obstacle at each step. The result [was] that in three years of unceasing work, I put Sevaruyo in conditions to produce three hundred thousand pesos a year. At the same time as I did this and in the shadow of that already established company, I took on others that were more important and had a huge future, borrowing for that end heavy sums of money at interest, mortgaging the credit of my family and my person everywhere I could do so. Jealousy and calumny had unfolded their hideous coils around me, on the pretext of public order. Men of judgment insisted in persuading the plebs that my system was not only damaging to the industry, but also implied a challenge to the government, a lack of respect for the wise concerns rooted in our customs and upheld by the most reputable leaders of our society. Thus, they muttered, “It seems this bird wants to make investments without the authorization of the government, and his wings have to be clipped before he goes any further.” As they saw it (and so do I), he who rises by means of personal effort, without the participation and the favor of the government, aspires to freedom and independence, which gives a man a certain dignity, which does not allow him to humble himself before those in power, and such insolence is punished by despotic governments with the greatest severity. The energy I spent on my enterprises, bringing in foreign capital to establish it in a country dominated by the revolutionary spirit, was real madness, which was understandably condemned by the general public.4 The noise of the machinery and the materials which piled up in Sevaruyo, in Potosí, in Antequera, in Huanchaca, and in Chichas could only awaken that fatal jealousy, which appeared to be sleeping when it was only resting in order to rise up like a wild beast, stirring up all the susceptibilities of the country. The most powerful obstacle that I seemed to encounter was the lack of routes of communication, especially for transporting mineral products to foreign markets. I dedicated my attention to this from the year ’55 to that of ’60, in a practical inspection of all the roads that lead to the Pacific Ocean. I had competent engineers, paid by me and maintained out of my pocket, accompany me in my explorations. When I had convinced myself that railways from the coast to towns in our interior were practical, I formulated my project, ordering plans to be drawn, and after having obtained all the necessary information, I gave it to the press for the knowledge of the public. In the year ’63, I presented my railway project to the National Congress, in a meeting in Oruro. They accepted it with enthusiasm and ordered the 178  José Avelino Aramayo

Executive to put it in practice. Due to this national mandate, I was commissioned to solicit businessmen in Europe and to negotiate a loan, in the name of the government, under the instructions and the full powers that were conceded to me. Straightaway I left for Europe and returned in October ’64, having fulfilled my mission in the most complete fashion, since I brought the corresponding railway contract, another for guano, which would guarantee us the complete possession of Mejillones, and a loan of ten million pesos, negotiated on the most favorable terms which have to date been obtained by the nations of South America.5 General Achá’s government hesitated a while in accepting those contracts and in the moment of ratifying them was surprised by the December revolution, which wrecked everything.6 Here I must confess that when I formulated my first project, I was not familiar with the diplomacy of my country, nor did I know that an industrious citizen does not have the right to speak the truth as he sees it without any kind of considerations. Occupied as I was in a work of great interest to the nation, I could not even suspect that I might offend someone with my investigations. I had proposed to inform foreign capitalists of the state in which my country found itself and of the advantages and inconveniences that they might find in establishing a railway. For this I had to tell the whole truth, such as I had come to understand it. For that reason, I gave a brief industrial and political report, indicating the causes that have constantly perturbed the development of industry, and I did not hesitate to affirm: that the general poverty of Bolivia was the logical result of false coinage and the army, both the exclusive work of our governments.7

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. In the nineteenth century, gaucho was the term applied to the cowboys and mule drivers of the vast plains of central Argentina, famous for their horsemanship, capacity to live out in the open in the most basic conditions, and insubordinate temperament. 2. The Aramayo family obtained a monopoly on the export of quinine from the eastern lowlands of La Paz and Cochabamba, though the enterprise failed due to saturation of the market. 3. Carguaicollo and Sevaruyo were in fact cold and desolate highland areas, not to be confused with the real deserts of Atacama on the Pacific coast. 4. In Aramayo’s era, a “revolution” referred to a coup led by a military strongman. 5. Guano (wanu in Quechua) is animal dung of any kind. Aramayo refers to the accumulated dung of vast colonies of seabirds, an excellent natural fertilizer which was the basis of another short-­lived export boom in the 1870s, until it was replaced by chemical fertilizers. The Bolivian department of Mejillones, on the Pacific coast, is now north-­central Chile, taken over in 1879. Aramayo’s trust that guano exports would permit Bolivia to exercise

The Silver Patriarch  179

effective control over this region, which had few contacts with the rest of the country, was misplaced. The same area turned out to contain major nitrate deposits ideal for the new chemical fertilizers that replaced guano. These deposits motivated Chile to take over the territory at the end of the 1870s, thus inciting the War of the Pacific. 6. General José María Achá (1861–64) was overthrown in 1864 by General Mariano Melgarejo (1864–71). In fact, it was Achá’s government that failed to ratify the agreements Aramayo had negotiated in London, and the deals were not as successful as he suggests. 7. Italics in original. “False coinage” refers to the so-­called moneda feble, debased silver coinage issued, in part, to cover the lack of cash in the internal market. Its consequences for the economy continue to be debated by historians.

180  José Avelino Aramayo

Transforming the Property Regime Two Lawyers from La Paz

On seizing state power in 1864, General Mariano Melgarejo brought about an economic and political restructuring that ushered in the age of full-­blown liberalization. One of his key measures was an unprecedented attack on indigenous community lands. In 1866, a decree declared community lands to be state property, and for Indians to retain their plots, they were required to buy individual land titles for between twenty-­five and one hundred pesos in accordance to size. A later decree, in 1868, intensified the measure by permitting entire communities that could not produce colonial land titles to be auctioned off. The land sales were intended to reduce the state’s debt obligations, and by the end of the Melgarejo period, some 1.25 million pesos worth of land had been sold to expanding hacienda, mining, and speculative interests, in many cases closely linked to Melgarejo. Amid the chaos and uncertainty of the actual implementation of the decrees, only a small number of communities were able to consolidate titles and a far larger number had their lands confiscated and sold to the highest bidder. Widespread indigenous opposition to the forced expropriations in the Aymara provinces surrounding La Paz crescendoed after 1868, and in January 1871 Melgarejo’s political enemies succeeded in deposing him and driving him into exile. In this period, a flurry of publications argued for and against the restitution of indigenous community lands. The publications urging that the land sales and the new owners be respected took pains to depict themselves as haters of tyranny and lovers of freedom. The tract presented here, penned by two anonymous lawyers from La Paz, argued against the nullification of the sales and the restoration of land to the original owners, community Indians. It invoked capitalist progress in contrast to Indian backwardness, and the benefits of the hacienda regime over the poverty and exploitation in Indian communities. The functions in perpetuity, trusts, primogenitures, entailments, and so on, and all of the modes of blocking the circulation of property produce the effects of the paralysis of the blood, which is death: with reason they call dead hands those which keep properties mortgaged and entailed. The work of modern civilization is to free from encumbrance the estates of the aristocracy and the clergy which feudalism has invented.—(The Doctrine of the People, ​­Casimiro Corral)

181

We permit ourselves to state before public opinion that we are not buyers of communities, nor have we been their enemies.1 We have fought the tyranny of Melgarejo on the side of the people; and today, we will continue to fight with the same firmness as before in the defense of its interests. . . . The sale of communities is not a new idea, and is not one that has arisen only in Bolivia. The states that are in the vanguard of civilization and progress in this century of steam and electricity have rushed to sell off communal, vacant, and uninhabited lands and even monastic assets, transferring them from dead hands to industrious hands, both national and foreign. They understand that agriculture is the primary and fundamental base of all branches of progress, for it augments national wealth and the population obtains employment and a lower cost of living. History provides irrefutable proof. The United States of North America, France, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, Central America, and all the states of Spanish America have sold off and sell off their state land, as well as their monastic assets, either to balance their budgets or yielding to the powerful law of the progress of nations. Economic science confirms and justifies these sales because of the ignorance, lack of skill, inertia, poverty, worries, and so on of the indigenous community member. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will induce him to improve his crops; in contrast, the new proprietor will employ his capital to augment his seeds and plant, to mechanize, to introduce irrigation systems where needed, and [to] make use of better fertilizer. In this fashion, the indigenous community member, who once was a complete barbarian, is converted into a skillful farmer; and with the aid of the landlord, he uses all of these means for himself and obtains better and more abundant yields. . . . The indigenous community member lives in isolated places, in those barren wastelands where the sun, the cold, and the wind have blackened his naked body covered with a few rags; the presence of a provincial townsman fills him with terror because he expects something bad or because contact even with someone half-­civilized is repugnant to him. I say this because the indigenous community member is like the human beast used by all, the corregidor, the priest, townspeople, mayors, jilacatas, segundos, soldiers, travelers;2 everyone puts him to work, taxes him, beats him, imprisons him, takes away his children, and so on. The condition of an indigenous community member, begging your pardon, is worse than that of a beast that has an owner who takes care of it, and favors and esteems it. . . . Who is the Indian colono [peon] of the hacienda? He is a member of the landlord’s [patron’s] family and receives all of the care of paternal protection: the hacienda colono is given shelter in the landlord’s house, where he finds food, coca, and security for himself and his animals; when a market seller, soldier, or somebody else tries to cheat him or attack him, the landlord solicitously runs to his defense; when he or a family member falls ill, he goes to 182  Two Lawyers from La Paz

the landlord for medicine with all the trust that a son has in his father; if he lacks money to pay the tax, the landlord pays, saving him from the clutches of the bailiff. . . . In sum, the community member who becomes a hacienda colono improves his condition, because he is no longer one of many, but instead is like the landlord’s son.

Translated by Seemin Qayum Notes 1. In the epigraph the anonymous authors—​­two lawyers from La Paz—​­quote the 1871 text of lawyer and statesman Casimiro Corral, one of the foremost critics of Melgarejo, who presided over the constituent assembly that ultimately reversed the land legislation and sales of the Melgarejo period. Corral is protesting the fact that Indian community lands could not be bought and sold freely on the market. 2. The corregidor in the nineteenth century was a local government official; the jilaqata was a local community authority; and the segundo was the jilaqata’s assistant.

Transforming the Property Regime  183

Disentailment and Its Discontents Government of Bolivia

The Law of Disentailment (Ley de Exvinculación) of 1874 was the culmination of liberal reform initiatives going back to the late-­colonial period and to Bolívar. It sought to end the colonial institution of Indian tribute and replace it with a universal tax on the land, to be collected from all citizens regardless of caste or race. At the same time, it aimed to break up collective landholding by Indians, on the grounds that communal property was a drag on the land market and economic productivity, and to grant titles to individual proprietors who would be free to buy and sell it. From this point on, communities were to be legally abolished. In 1880, Secretary of State Ladislao Cabrera explained the theoretical rationale: “To put this immense wealth of [indigenous community lands] in circulation, to deliver them to intelligent and capitalist proprietors, was the spirit that animated the legislature of 1874; and if the law is put into practice, public wealth will be considerably increased, and agricultural yields will also grow in the same proportion.” In fact, the state also stood to make money when individuals bought the title to their land and paid taxes, and when the state sold off any lands deemed vacant or unused. Not coincidentally, the Law would not be put into effect until after the 1880 National Convention when the Bolivian state, caught up in the War of the Pacific, sought to fill its empty coffers. But just as Mariano Melgarejo’s prior attempt, in the 1860s, to sell off community lands met with Indian resistance, so did the land survey commissions in the early 1880s. In 1881, a new government resolution was forced to grant communities the option of ongoing collective title. In 1883, in response to protests by communities that had purchased the rights to their lands in the colonial period, a new law admitted that community lands with colonial titles were exempt from the survey. The outcomes of the liberal land legislation were mixed and uneven. Indigenous tribute ended, but in practice, the new property tax was applied only to Indians. In Cochabamba, the impacts contributed to a pattern of peasant smallholding. On the altiplano of La Paz, the law contributed to a long-­term weakening of the land base of communities and an expansion of the haciendas.

184

Law of 5 October [1874]

Community Lands Their disentailment; the tax which landowners should pay; survey commissions. The National Assembly Decrees:

First Chapter First Section: On indigenous property rights Article 1. In conformity with the dictatorial decree of the Liberator, of the 8th of April 1824, brought into force by Bolivia by a resolution of the same [Simón Bolívar] on the 29th of August 1825; with the Laws of the 28th of September 1831 and the 31st of July 1871, the Indians [indígenas] who possess land, whether as originarios, forasteros, agregados, or under any other denomination, will have in the whole of the Republic absolute property rights to their respective possessions, under the boundaries and boundary markers recognized at present.1 Article 3. Pastures, drinking ponds for animals, forests, etc., held in common and in which no possession by any individual Indian is recognized, will belong to all those who possess [rights in land in the community] while their division is carried out. Article 4. The other lands which are not found to be in the possession of the Indians will be declared vacant and, as such, property of the State. Second Section: On the exercise of property rights Article 5. As a consequence of the preceding dispositions, the Indians may sell or exercise all acts of dominion over the lands which they possess, from the date in which they receive their title documents, in the same manner and form which the civil code establishes with respect to the properties of the rest of the citizens. Article 6. Inheritance will conform to the dispositions of the Civil Code. Article 7. Once property titles have been conferred, the law will not recognize communities. No individual or group of individuals will be able to take the name of a community or ayllu, nor represent such before any authority. The Indians will act personally or via [third parties to whom they have given] power of attorney in all their affairs, if they are of age, or if they are under age they will be represented in accord with the dispositions of the civil code for that case. . . .

Second Chapter First Section: On tax and its collection Article 19. The tax, which from now on the indigenes who receive the benefit of the present law will pay, will be territorial.2 The survey committee Disentailment and Its Discontents  185

will set its level taking as a baseline the contribution which they pay at present. One boliviano ought to be paid for each peso which is paid today, with the possibility to increase this in an equitable manner for plots which are of very considerable [size] in comparison to those which the rest [of the community] owns. Article 20. The territorial tax is levied exclusively on the land, is paid for the land, and persists no matter to whom the land may be transferred. He who comes to own the land is obliged to pay the tax at the same level as his predecessors.

Decree of the First of December [1880]

Community Lands Regulation of the Law of 1 October 1880 concerning the disentailment of same, on examination [of land titles] and on the tax which the Indians ought to pay Article 1. The survey of native lands will continue to be carried out, subject to the Law of 5 October 1874, the Decree of 24 October 1874, the Law of 1 October 1880, and the present regulatory decree. ... Article 4. The communities will be divided among all the owners who have a right to them and hold a communal property title. Before proceeding with the division and distribution, the surveyor will present a record which will determine the boundaries of the community, the Indians who will participate in the property and possession, and in addition the share or proportion of the land which will correspond to each one of them. ... Article 6. Should the division be made impossible by the opposition of the Indians or by the very nature of the land, the examiner will order the public sale of the land, after its assessment and measurement, and the product will be divided among the Indians. The auction will take place before the survey commission in the capital of the province, with previous announcement of the date published in posters.

Resolution of the First of December [of 1881]

Survey of Land Titles It Is Resolved II. Since the spirit of the Law of Disentailment of lands is to uphold the property rights of the originarios who possess them and pay the tax, each of them will be separately registered, giving them title in proportion to the part which corresponds to them by possession; and if this should give rise 186  Government of Bolivia

to inevitable resistance, they will be registered collectively and awarded communal possession.

Law of 23 November 1883

Lands Consolidated and Excluded from the Surveys Sole article. The original lands consolidated in the colonial period, by means of titles conferred by land surveyors, are the property of their owners, thus remaining excluded from the survey established by the Laws of 5 October 1874 and 1 October 1880.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. There is significant ambiguity in the categories originarios, forasteros, and agregados. The term originarios usually referred to natives, in the sense that they were born in the place where they lived; it came to signify that class of community members who possessed the largest and best plots of land. The term forasteros, having lost its original meaning of “outsiders” or people who arrived from somewhere else, denoted community members who possessed only marginal scraps of land, or subsisted on plots loaned to them by others, or made use of land considered communal property. The term agregados, referring to people attached to the community, were a class of community members who possessed medium to small plots of land. 2. By stating that the tax would be territorial, the law indicated that the tax would be levied strictly on the basis of land ownership, not on the basis of membership in the “tributary caste,” that is, of being Indian. Previously, a head tax on Indians had been levied on community members who possessed land, but also on landless Indians in towns and Indian tenants on landed estates.

Disentailment and Its Discontents  187

Integration of the Lowlands Geographic Society of Santa Cruz

The Memorandum of 1904, presented here, argued the case for the regional interests of the eastern lowlands. It was written by members of the intellectual and political elite of Santa Cruz who belonged to the Geographic Society, and was directed to the Bolivian National Congress during the period in which the financing and construction of railroads was being debated.1 In 1904, Bolivia and Chile signed the Treaty for Peace and Friendship, which obliged Chile to build the railroad between Arica and La Paz.2 The year before, the Treaty of Petropolis resolved the territorial dispute between Bolivia and Brazil—​­the former would cede the rubber-­rich Acre region and the latter agreed to build the Madeira-­Mamoré Railway. The document highlighted the perspectives of the representatives from eastern and northeastern Bolivia, which it claimed had been “drowned out” by the representatives of the western regions, who held the parliamentary majority. It underscored the reasons why a railway link with the Pacific would be problematic—​­it would lead to Bolivian dependence on Peru and Chile and to the ruin of Santa Cruz, because the region would remain isolated and face heightened economic competition. The alternative proposal was a connection with the Atlantic, through the River Plate and Amazon River basins, which would unite the eastern and western parts of the country. This foundational text later resurfaced as a reference for lowland groups seeking regional autonomy, especially the Camba Nation movement from Santa Cruz in 2001 (see part 11). Today the Congress will debate the construction of railways in the republic, as the only means to release it from the economic collapse in which it finds itself, taking the road to progress. We believe it is important to make ourselves present in this debate by means of this memorandum. It is certain that we have the regular channel of our representatives, whom we have sent to the Congress to lobby for the interests of the east and northwest of Bolivia.3 But a long and painful experience of more than seventy years has persuaded us that the western peoples of the Andean region, whose interests express more or less solidarity among themselves, do not take into account the interests and the progress of the eastern peoples, which when they are well understood are the most important interests for the well-­being of the nation, and 188

the western parliamentary majority drowns out the opinions of the minority from the east. We direct ourselves in particular to each one of the national representatives: that our opinions should not remain walled up within the narrow parliamentary building; we want them to be known to the whole nation, and to leave opportune record of them. Let us get to the point: As the Bolivian nation constitutes the heart of southern America . . . some of the peoples that form it gravitate toward the Pacific coast, and others toward the Atlantic, by means of their fluvial arteries. . . . The Andean peoples, more or less close to the Pacific coast, who form the majority of the Bolivian nation and the center which directs the destinies of the republic, have persisted in putting themselves in contact with Europe precisely by the longest route, via the Pacific Ocean, seeking the most dangerous passage by the Strait of Magellan and despising the easy exit to the Atlantic by the Paraguay River. They must have their reasons; their interests must be better served that way. However, it seems to us, and it is evident that, since the disastrous War of the Pacific, the pact of truce with Chile, and the treaties celebrated with Peru, Bolivia has become a tributary of those nations, and its markets Chilean-­Peruvian trading posts. We understand that this unbearable situation of commercial vassalage is the result imposed by the fatality of international events unfavorable to Bolivia. But we do not come to understand why the governments, after the loss of the Pacific coast, did not facilitate the only natural exit left to Bolivia: to the Atlantic via the Paraguay River. If they had done so, the nation would not be so anemic today, because there is no doubt that once commercial currents have been established by the River Plate, free of all guardianship, their advantages would have compensated those that had just been lost in the Pacific. . . . The Bolivian government must have been persuaded that we can only get out to the Pacific trailing behind the conqueror’s triumphal carriage. Blindness or illusion has to have evaporated by now, and we must look toward the Atlantic. All we have expounded must be very well known and understood, better than we do, by the statesmen from the interior who direct Bolivia’s destinies. In speeches and writings, they make the most beautiful apologies for the greatness which awaits Bolivia in the east, but unfortunately, these are no more than impressive words and phrases. We, the inhabitants of the east, do not understand such a huge aberration. Why do they not put into practice what they think, say, and write? Why such shortsightedness? Why do they not call a meeting . . . of the ethnic elements of the nation so that all, united, can contribute to make it greater? Why do they not seek the sources of wealth in the east so that they may contribute to the development and process of industry, commerce, and the general well-­being of the entire republic? Integration of the Lowlands  189

This political plan [of building railways to the Pacific] would mean nothing, and would rather merit all applause if it were aimed at producing a benefit of national prosperity. But we see . . . that it is quite the opposite: the ruin of the nation, and in particular that of one of its richest regions, we refer to the departments of Santa Cruz and the Beni. Perhaps the departments of Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, and Tarija will not be excluded from this ruin. . . . The interests of the east and northwest of Bolivia are not in conflict with those of the west; on the contrary, they are harmonious and in solidarity. The towns of the interior are the obligatory and natural markets for the products of the east, which have no competitors there, apart from the similar foreign products from Chile and Peru, to whom the governments, via unconsulted international pacts, have conceded such privileges and franchises that they have converted the markets of the interior into a foreign country for the national products of Santa Cruz. The error of the international pacts should have been corrected via a plan for transport routes, which would be a counterweight to the conquering invasion of similar foreign products. The most rudimentary and primordial rules of a good government are to favor the industrial development of the country and procure that it consumes its own products before foreign ones. At the beginning of General Pando’s administration, .  .  . he seemed to understand this, and proposed to link the east to the west via a railway from Bahía Negra to Sucre and Potosí.4 . . . [B]ut when his government came to an end, it had totally changed its opinion, as was made manifest in the speech pronounced on closing the legislative session of 1903, announcing the aim of investing the two million pounds sterling, in compensation for Acre, in local railways: from Viacha to Oruro, from Oruro to Cochabamba, from Sevaruyo to Potosí, thence to Sucre, and so on, making a mockery of what was established in the treaty with Brazil.5 That railway network has the aim of putting the towns of the interior at the disposition of Chilean policies of absorption. What a wise policy! . . . Bolivia, or better said, its government, will give them a railway, although to build and maintain it will cost the sacrifice of the two millions and all the nation’s taxes; although it would annihilate the industries of the departments of the Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija; although it would kill the east of Bolivia by suffocating it, which could by itself produce everything and more than the rest of the republic produces, because the conditions of its soil, due to its exuberant fertility, are suitable to offer an immense development of agriculture and stock breeding, its immeasurable forests filled with fine hardwoods of every species, which can offer a vast industrial and commercial development, its ranges of hills pregnant with minerals, gold, silver, platinum, copper, tin, lead, iron, petroleum, coal, and so on. All this is worth nothing compared to the excessive ambition of a certain group of individuals. It is necessary to annihilate and kill the east in order to satisfy a few egoists. . . . 190  Geographic Society of Santa Cruz

We are anxious that the towns of the interior should prosper greatly; the prosperity and expansion of La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosí, and Tarija will be the prosperity and expansion of Bolivia and the pride of the people of Santa Cruz and the Beni, and this implies making reality of the precise railway plan sponsored by official circles. We judge with evident conviction, as the great Bolivian and foreign statesmen have judged, that the only truly national railway, due to its political and economic advantages, is that which takes off from the Paraguay River or the Pilcomayo River, passes through Santa Cruz, and ends in Cochabamba or Sucre, from whence whatever branches are desired can be extended. To unite the east with the west, to get out to the Atlantic, to counterbalance the influence of the Pacific, today in Chile’s hands, to thus escape from constant guardianship of that absorbing nation—​­that is evidently the rational and unifying national policy which without being statesmen, we can see, since common sense shouts it aloud. .  .  . In reality there are only two opposed opinions: that of the western towns of the Andean region, which support the construction of railway lines as appendices to the foreign lines of Antofagasta and Puno; and that of the towns of the east and northwest of Bolivia, which gravitate toward the Amazonian and River Plate basins, as supporters of the railway line which ends on the Paraguay River and the Pilcomayo River, tributary of the former, because this route will always be free of any foreign guardianship. . . . The constitution of a railway line which, starting from the western bank of the Paraguay River, or of the Pilcomayo River, ends in the interior of the republic, will offer Bolivia the advantage of putting itself in more immediate contact with Matto Grosso in Brazil [and] the republics of Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay, above all with the great South American metropolis—​ ­Buenos Aires—​­and the very important city of Montevideo. These extensive markets put Bolivia in advantageous conditions for the exchange of its products, bringing as a consequence the commercial and industrial development of the country. But there is a still more important market by this route, which offers an easy and swift exit to the Atlantic: it is Europe, and better said, the whole world. . . . We have previously proved that the extension of the lands of the eastern region of Bolivia is greater than that of the lands of the west. Nevertheless, it is the least populated part of the republic, above all the western bank of the Paraguay River and the Chaco, where the governments of Bolivia, due to a criminal indifference, have ceased to establish colonies or centers of population, which would make these immense empty lands, which contribute nothing to benefit our exhausted treasury, productive. . . . The mere fact of Paraguayan occupation in territory which is properly Bolivian, demonstrates the indifference with which the governments of Bolivia Integration of the Lowlands  191

have looked at the interests of the east. Even the territorial integrity of the republic, even national honor, have been sacrificed on the shameful altar of the provincial egoist! . . . What a disgrace! . . . The eastern railway will put a stop to Paraguay’s advances and pretensions, it will allow the population of huge uninhabited territories, and this increase in population will give the republic more political importance vis-­ à-­vis other states. The eastern railway will put the eastern peoples, today so distant from its action, into the hands of the government. Finally, the eastern railway, on putting Bolivia into more immediate contact with the republics of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay, will establish the international equilibrium of our country, due to its closer relations with neighboring states. . . . We ask for a railway, because we have the right to ask for it, not to benefit the east, but for the general well-­being of the republic, because our consciousness and good faith oblige us to demonstrate the truth, pulling back the provincial veil which covers the eyes of our fellow countrymen from the west.

Santa Cruz, September 1904 Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Geographic societies were significant institutions during the long nineteenth century in Europe and the Americas, bringing together intellectuals, scientists, statesmen, top civil servants, military officials, and explorers, among others. 2. The Treaty for Peace and Friendship was the final chapter in the peace negotiations after the War of the Pacific (1879–84), in which Bolivia lost its territories on the Pacific coast. The treaty established the borders of the two countries and mandated monetary and other reparations to Bolivia for its loss of coastal lands and sea access. 3. From the perspective of Santa Cruz, the lowland regions of what are today Beni and Pando are located to the northwest. 4. General José Manuel Pando was president from 1899 to 1904. 5. From 1899 to 1903, Bolivia waged an intermittent war with Brazil over the province of Acre, which was then its extreme northwestern frontier and part of the great rubber boom. The territory was eventually handed over to Brazil in 1903 in exchange for the compensation payment of two million pounds sterling. The treaty with Brazil did include provisions on railways, but they were to be constructed in the Amazonian regions which were part of the rubber boom.

192  Geographic Society of Santa Cruz

Dreams of the Railroad Ignacio Calderón

In the late nineteenth century, the railroad was imagined by liberal elites as offering a marvelous fix for the country’s ongoing problems of geographical isolation, regional stagnation, and technological backwardness. Paeans to the railway, such as the passage that follows, written by the Bolivian diplomat Ignacio Calderón (1848–1927) in 1906, conceived of modernization as the replacement of the animal caravans that had long traversed the Andean landscape with the new Anglo-­American-­financed mode of mechanized transportation. Calderón was the representative in Washington for the Liberal administrations of Ismael Montes (1904–9, 1913–17). He actively courted U.S. financial investment and arranged the so-­called Speyer Contract, a joint stock venture between the Bolivian government, the National City Bank of New York, and the Speyer Company to construct railroads that would “vertebrate” national space. The project was intended to connect principal urban sites with mining and rubber zones. Calderón envisioned that access to the rubber region in the Beni would stimulate trade with Brazil and allow for Bolivian export of precious tropical products. But in the end, the lines that were built privileged the highland and highland valley regions, where the bulk of the population and the mineral wealth were to be found. They did not reach further east than the agricultural breadbasket of Cochabamba, which serviced the mines and major cities, and did not extend to the Beni, in the lowlands. The regional demands of Santa Cruz, implicitly noted in this passage, were put off for later. The Speyer Contract also proved a losing financial proposition for Bolivia, which did not recoup its $22 million investment and ended up with less than half the amount of track originally promised. When the government faced economic difficulties, its foreign partners sold their shares to a British firm at a profit, and British capital came to control nearly the entirety of Bolivia’s railway network. The progress and culture of modern peoples are measured by the number of their schools and railways. By this criterion, we Bolivians do not have much to be proud of; but it is also just to recall that the country has often made dedicated attempts to improve its situation. The numerous concessions that have been made with crazy prodigality to so many knights of industry are

193

proof of this, which as payment for flattering promises have left only deception of our hopes and ambitions. Suffocated amid our rough mountains, almost without communication with the world, without an internal market which would cultivate and foment good relations and mutual interest between the departments of the republic, the isolation in which we live has developed the fatal illness of local allegiance and given rise to rivalries, not in work and effort, which elevates and instills vigor, but rather in miserable rancor and jealousy, proper to sick, selfish, or ignorant souls, and the result can be no other than national ruin and dissolution. . . . The ideal would be to take railway lines from north to south to the most distant limits, uniting all the populations and crossing the rich metallic zones which abound along the route; to put us in immediate contact with the east; to arrive as far as Paraguay and the diverse tributaries of the Amazon, the Beni River, the Mamoré River, and the great network of rivers that help to swell them. But if it is not possible to do this at once and in a short time, it has to be seen how and along which lines we should begin to make this ideal a reality, without compromising it and perhaps making it impossible for a long while. . . . The republic has to be considered as a great national unit and convince itself that the progress of one part has logically to bring with it that of the whole and that compromising the future, allowing regional interests to impose themselves or an unwise hurry to start works that it will be impossible to complete, is to go against these same interests and desires that one aims to satisfy. . . . In view of these fundamental reflections, it can easily be understood that the railways that are most essential for the swift progress of the country and that better consult its present and future interests are those that put the greater part of its settlements in contact and make it worthwhile to exploit those elements that actually constitute the source of its wealth, that is to say, the work of the mines and the exploitation of rubber.

Translated by Alison Spedding

194  Ignacio Calderón

Integration of the South Lieutenant Colonel Angel Rodríguez

In 1927, an army official presented the government with a troubling assessment of the Gran Chaco, the open region in the southeastern lowlands of Bolivia that borders on Paraguay and Argentina. His report revealed the weak integration of the territory within the nation. The routes for transportation and communication were lamentable. The population was minimal in size and prone to emigration to Argentina, and the towns mostly sleepy. Economic activity was sluggish and limited in scope. The Franciscan missions and the Standard Oil Company exercised more presence in the region than did the Bolivian state. Writing five years prior to the Chaco War (1932– 35), the report was prescient about the disastrous consequences that would ensue if the country undertook an unconsidered war effort on the southern border with Paraguay. Lieutenant Colonel Angel Rodríguez, Commissioned to Study the Routes of Entry to the Gran Chaco, to the Señor Minister of War

Señor Minister: After the lecture which I had the honor to present in the Military Circle on the routes of entry to the Gran Chaco on the basis of the commission with which I was charged to this end, and having presented the topographical registers of the trajectories covered, where all the details can be found graphically without the need to indicate them in this report, all that remains for me is to add a general idea of my observations followed by my military opinion with respect to the precautions that should be taken for the defense of the zone that concerns us. Villamontes without a doubt signifies for us the strategic point par excellence with reference to the concentration of troops destined for maneuvers in the Gran Chaco. In order to arrive at this point with military forces provided with all their materials of war and heavy vehicles, at present we do not dispose of any route that could immediately respond to military demands. On the other hand, there are three mule trails which for posterior use should be extensively worked on if it should be necessary to use them. . . . It be noted that, although the entire zone which we crossed as far 195

as the Gran Chaco is composed of extremely rich lands for agricultural exploitation, current production is subject only to the small needs of the scarce population of those provinces. Thus, at this moment, it is very difficult to obtain forage for fifty beasts of burden, which due to the needs of the journey cannot be set loose to graze in the countryside. The aspect displayed by the several towns on the actual route, such as Carlazo, Entre Ríos, Saladillo, and Caraparí, is as sad as it could be. It seems that the people live in hopes of a providential who-­k nows-­what, which may lift them out of their poverty. In all these places, small change reigns with full sovereignty, but a five-­peso note finds no way to circulate. Yacuiba, which for a long time has featured in the press for its supposed commercial importance, is no more than a town that is dying in the same conditions as the aforementioned ones, since not even being freed from customs duties has it been able to alleviate its economic situation. Its three hundred inhabitants make some living from the cavalry detachment; the three commercial houses display the rags and dry goods that could not be accommodated in the neighboring towns in Argentina. The export of cattle to that country is the only thing that in some way maintains this town; this export may be calculated at 1,500 head per year, according to the customs documents. Agriculture does not give great results in Yacuiba, not because the land is not apt for it; on the contrary, with the exception of some excessively salinated sectors, it can produce all kinds of crops. But, unfortunately, the rains are very scarce and however encouraging the sown fields may appear in their first weeks, fifteen days of uninterrupted sunshine are enough to dry them up without remedy, and all the efforts of the few farmers go to waste. In Yacuiba itself and at a short distance from this provincial capital, fine wood can be found, such as cedro, sevil, palo blanco, the famous quebracho, palo santo, algarrobo, and luchan; in greater quantity, splendid firewood such as misto, brea, chañar, and tusca can also be found. Without any exaggeration, this is the aspect that is displayed by the whole zone lying between Tarija and Yacuiba, that is to say the Gran Chaco, which in order to develop in some way undoubtedly requires a greater density of population. But in addition to this, not only do the few people who venture into these regions with some hope of finding work fail, but what is most alarming is that the migration of people from Tarija goes on in shocking proportions if they are considered as a percentage. Consul Arraya in Jujuy [northern Argentina] in 1924 showed that 16,000 people from Tarija [were] working in the sugarcane harvest and processing, without including 1,000 people of the same origin occupied in different activities in that same city. As regards the people from the Chaco, 196  Lieutenant Colonel Angel Rodríguez

that is to say the best element on which we could count in case of need or of a conflict with Paraguay, they scatter just as the people from Tarija do and more easily. For them it is quite amazing to cross the frontier and return after a few months of work with a horse, an Argentine-­style saddle, a knife, and a gaucho-­style hat. It would seem that the Argentine landowners, interested in attracting this group, which demands little for the heavy labors in the sugar industry, do all they can to delay paying them. In addition to this, the people of the Chaco are not familiar with the circulation of our [Bolivian] currency, so that when they return from Argentina with some cash, this is a highly seductive novelty for the rest of them. The result of this pact with the Argentine landlords for us is more damaging than might be thought, since at present the people of the Chaco and even the natives of Tarija set off on their journey to the Argentine estates with their whole family and even with their friends and do not return to the land of their birth, a land which did not give them any opportunity to feel what it was like to have money to spend. This is the truly alarming situation of those Bolivian populations, which leave the territory without anything having been done to date to avoid such desertion. . . . Cuevo. Among all the towns which are found on the route from Tarija, Yacuiba, Cuevo, Monteagudo, and Padilla, as far as Sucre, the only one which can be found in full prosperity is Cuevo. Its population is a thousand inhabitants; its commercial exchange reaches 600,000 bolivianos a year; it has, as is natural, two schools, one for boys, with seventy pupils, and one for girls, with seventy pupils. The latter is directed by a convent of Franciscan nuns who without a doubt take charge of something as praiseworthy as is teaching, but nevertheless they charge two bolivianos a month for each pupil, which is perhaps the reason why peasant women do not send their daughters to be taught. Cuevo also has in religious terms the rank of a bishopric; and, effectively, a gentleman with the title of bishop and the collaboration of three Franciscan friars, who in general opinion are the equivalent of four zeros, are present in the activities of the Church. Much is said in conferences and even in different articles in the press concerning the great results which the friars’ missions provide in these uninhabited zones far out of the reach of the government. According to my personal opinion, I think that these benefits are not so great as they are said to be, and that the Indian subject to the missions is a simple serf of the missionaries, naturally in external appearance presenting some level of discipline and signs of acquired customs, but the Indian of the missions is fundamentally the most ignorant of all the Indians. It is said that in the mission schools they are taught to read and write, while I have verified on my own that they Integration of the South  197

teach them only to pray in Spanish in the same way as words are taught to a parrot. The results of this education are that when an outsider speaks to any old Indian or to a schoolchild, they do not know how to answer in Spanish, a language which they are not only unable to pronounce, but which they do not understand. The missionaries speak the Chiriguano language and understand them perfectly, especially with the numerous female servants who have a Muslim appearance.1 . . . It is necessary to summarize what the Standard [Oil Company] has done. The Standard [Oil Company] works the following [oil] wells: Sanandita—​­four wells with four hundred laborers employed in them. Macharetí—​­t wo hundred laborers. Buena Vista—​­It has a well which has reached a depth of 3,200 feet and from which at present fifty barrels a day of oil are extracted. Cambetí—​­[The well] has been abandoned at a depth of 2,800 feet. Anacasoro—​­Located at ten kilometers to the south of Charagua, it was also abandoned. Guarirí—​­Abandoned. Taputá—​­It has given thirty barrels a day, which, according to what is said, were immediately employed for the use of oil lanterns. The modernly equipped hospital in Taputá should be noted. Tatarenda—​­The exploitation in this place has been highly formalized and it is surely the well that costs the most, since it has a pipeline which comes from the Río Grande with a length of thirty kilometers, and water is pumped into the mines via two pumps located at a distance of fifteen kilometers from one to the other. Choretí—​­It has a main well with a depth of 2,600 feet in full exploitation and served by one hundred laborers. Despite the work caused by the drilling of each of these wells, it seems that the plan is to abandon them all except that of Sanandita, where it is planned to straightaway install a small refinery. Each well of those that have been drilled costs about 25,000 bolivianos and three years of work. The Standard [Oil Company] uses trucks, cars, and wagons drawn by mules for transport. We have nothing to thank them for with respect to its eighty wagons, since at present the route that they take is impassable for cars and trucks due to the huge, deep ruts which these vehicles leave. The Standard [Oil Company] counts at present on two thousand first-­ class mules. In sum: 1,500 laborers live directly off the Standard [Oil Company], without including in any way the population of Cuevo and other less important places such as Buyuibi, which also receive benefits. The daily wage which they pay at present is three bolivianos a day. This amount of 198  Lieutenant Colonel Angel Rodríguez

money which never [before] reached the hands of the inhabitants of that region in such a guaranteed and regular way as it does nowadays causes the Indians to think that [this income] is inexhaustible, and they dedicate themselves to emptying the shelves of the bars which naturally are not scarce where money flows. . . . In sum: a campaign in the Gran Chaco, without including the time needed to open our roads as far as Villamontes, would demand of us a [period of work] no less than eight months. It [would be] without a doubt a very slow advance; on the other hand, it would [also] be to march at a firm and sure pace. The worst mistake would be to consider that in case of a declaration of war, we should respond immediately with some two thousand men mobilized and hurriedly dispatched in order to face the first Paraguayan troops. Such a measure, although it would respond to the self-­esteem of not leaving our forts abandoned, would in contrast leave us fatally demoralized, since there is no doubt that the Paraguayan forces, used to the climate and with other advantages, would obtain unquestionable successes over our untrained troops in the skirmishes which would take place. This means that if our command has to lose sleep over anything, it should be just that.

Translated by Alison Spedding Note 1. Rodríguez’s comment is presumably a sly dig at the friars’ supposed celibacy, suggesting not that these women were veiled, but that the mission had so many maids that it looked like a harem.

Integration of the South  199

The Tin Baron Augusto Céspedes

The man who rose to the peak of Bolivian tin mining and became a titan of the industry worldwide was Simón Patiño (1860–1947). He started his career as a low-­level commercial operative who struck it rich when he found the mineral vein called La Salvadora (the Savior) near Llallagua. He ended up with a legendary fortune, a business empire spanning four continents, and extravagant mansions from Bolivia to Biarritz. In Bolivia, however, the rising nationalist forces linked to the labor movement saw Patiño as a symbol of all that was wrong with the political and economic order. They attacked Patiño and the other tin barons for their repression of labor, their tight control over government policy, and their fabulous private accumulation at the expense of the national interest. Augusto Céspedes (1904–97) was a dynamic journalist, intellectual, and political leader of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) in 1946 at the time he wrote his satirical biographical novel about Patiño, El metal del diablo (The Devil’s Metal). Céspedes would go on to a career as a diplomat and one of the country’s leading men of letters. In the passage that follows, the lead character, Zenón Omonte, a fictional version of Patiño, returns from abroad to visit his mines and plot the company’s political and economic strategy. Céspedes here criticizes a corrupt coterie of lawyers, politicians, and men of influence—​­known in nationalist and leftist discourse as the rosca—​­that held the nation in thrall to the great mining companies.

The Devil’s Metal As he arrived in Bolivia, the silence went before him as the sole expression of a severe and impenetrable country, built above the clouds. Once inside the frontier and crossing the altiplano, the desert assailed the train from all sides, unfolding surfaces of plains and mountains. The train seemed lost in an almost unbroken immensity, scarcely interrupted at long intervals by stations with corrugated iron roofs, under which tiny Indians, starving, blackened, and ragged, seemed to sprout from the earth to beg for alms, wailing in their native language, raising their hands to the windows, and collecting the crusts thrown to them from the dining car. Faced with such a disagreeable

200

spectacle, the millionaire ordered the curtains of his private rail carriage to be drawn. Bolivia . . . Bolivia twelve years later [. . .] The executive, two engineers, and the administrator accompanied Omonte through the huge mineral-­processing plant, on a tour that took all morning. It began at the mouth of the mineshaft from which the mineral was extracted, transported via cables to the first tin-­roofed section, where it was poured into sluices so that the mechanical crushers could break up the ore, which then passed in little trucks to the grinders, thence to the sifters, and then on to the vibrating table sieves. Omonte, deafened by the iron and steel in movement, through all the dynamics of wheels and hammers, levers and belts, recognized the old processes. The women ore-­pickers, sitting at the side of an endless transmission belt, selected the ore by hand from the raw mineral and dropped it into the funnel each one had at her side, whence another belt carried it down and away below this section of the mill, situated like a bridge over the white rhyolite hills. The racket of boiling, blows, a deafening tumble of sounds linked each to another, as the retinue advanced to observe the sieves, which once again selected the ores, divided according to its fineness into grit and flour, which followed different paths, passing to new mechanical mills along other belts that collected the coarse mineral and left the finer stuff, which in turn went to the tables that selected the sand, leaving the finest metallic part to be concentrated still more in the jigs, lifted up to the classifiers, sent down to the concentrators, conducted to the draggers, and finally encased. Indifferent, bathed in dirt and dust, the workers labored under the eyes of the visitors, who looked at them as if they were the least interesting components of the machinery. Nor did they give any importance to Omonte, who followed, climbing ramps and going down stairways. Another part of the ore was milled in the “pig-­pens,” which emitted a cloud of dust in which only the laborers’ coughs could be detected. Selection was carried out by centrifugal force or via the vibratory movement of water on oscillating tables, dividing and subdividing it, before passing through other apparatuses that ground the metallic dust finer each time in order to separate it from the sand, purifying the milled earth until it turned black via aqueducts, buddles, belts, stores, tanks, nets, and sieves, forming a staircase of moving forms, a dance of iron figures, of steel spinning like a top, of wheels, sloping tables, tubes, and tanks where the forces of electricity and gravity set up diverse prodigies, acting together with water on the mineral, carrying it from below to above and from above to below through an infinity of compartments, until it reached an enclosed yard, where all the products selected in this great process were once again reunited, while all along the

The Tin Baron  201

mill the waste material was spilled onto the spoil heaps like the trail of a snail. Beside Señor Omonte, the executive and the Bolivian engineer explained to him, shouting to be heard over the noise, all the proceedings through whose complications he recalled the primitive operations. “This is just the maritana . . .” on seeing the jigs. “This is the purmuchina . . .” on seeing the buddles. “They just used to do this with a little hammer . . .” on seeing the MacCully Crusher machine. They arrived as far as the roasting ovens. “This is what we want to replace with the new flotation method. We’ll enlarge the ‘Progress’ mill.” “Once the mines are unified, the exploitation will be 50 percent easier . . .” They entered the huge hangar where, like imprisoned monsters, the diesel engines shone. “They’re the largest in South America.” “So it is, so it is . . .” Omonte was sweating. “Do you want to go down the mine, sir?” “Oh no, no. It’s very late now.” “Señor Omonte is tired.” In the afternoon, the tired millionaire could not receive a delegation of mine and mill workers, who handed a document to Doctor Dávalos, commenting on it out loud in Spanish and Quechua.1 “Of course it’s hard work,” Doctor Loza commented, “but they don’t calculate how much all the improvements they ask for would cost the company. You have to judge this mine in comparison with others! The rest of the companies treat them like savages.”

It was cold in the boardroom of the Oruro Bank. At ten in the morning, one after the other, Doctor Dávalos, Señor Guamán, and Doctor Gustavo de Cuellar arrived. They came in rubbing their hands together. Señor Omonte arrived, accompanied by the executive Writt and the long-­ expected Señor Ahpeld, carrot-­topped, dressed in very pale colored flannels, a permanent Cuban cigar in one corner of his mouth, as a counterweight to the twist at its other corner. Doctor Cuellar, when Omonte was introduced to him, hurried to take his overcoat and hang it up with care. Omonte took his seat on a wide leather sofa, and Dávalos and Writt occupied the two armchairs that matched it. Ahpeld took his place behind the desk, on which he laid his file of papers. On side chairs, isolated like schoolboys under punishment, were the doctors Cuellar and Guamán. 202  Augusto Céspedes

Omonte coughed and began by expressing his disgust. “All I find in Bolivia are headaches. I have to attend to everything personally, because all of it has been neglected. And I pay salaries, thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands . . . and you have not even been able to keep the government under control. I have to oversee these things from Paris, I myself. That’s why Señor Ahpeld is here now, to explain the plan to you, which you have already seen in writing.” The advisors listened to the reprimand in bad Spanish, then turned their eyes to Señor Ahpeld, who began to speak. “First, forgive my bad pronunciation. Second, this is the situation of the company: we have virtually won the court cases; forty thousand tons are produced; a mining group has been formed; tungsten mines were exploited until the price level went down; new bank branches have been opened, so that the bank which was founded to emit banknotes for the wage packets is at present the largest commercial bank in the country. The company also owns the majority of shares in the state bank, which to all intents and purposes is directed by us.” In the silence, the only sound was the creaking of the chair where Doctor Guamán sat. “Third: Señor Omonte has acquired a majority of shares in the Anglo-­ Chilean, which should now be reconsolidated with the ‘Providence’ group. The exploitation should now be through the contact shaft, to emerge in Llallagua, with the ore being processed in the expanded Barsola ore mill. Am I understood?” Universal gestures of agreement. “Señor Omonte has received proposals to buy mines in the Malayan Straits and shares in the William Harvey foundries. This will be grandiose: to form a great tin trust—​­m ines in Bolivia, with Señor Omonte majority shareholder; mines in Malaya, with Señor Omonte shareholder; and tin foundries, with Señor Omonte also shareholder. Win all ways: if the foundries buy tin cheap, the foundries win, and if they buy expensive, the sellers win, that is, the company always wins because with the trust it can fix three things: the quantity of production, the price of crude metal, and the price of refined metal, all around the world.” Omonte heard him with his hands folded over his abdomen, in a bored posture. Señor Ahpeld lit another Cuban cigar and went on. “Tin is not an industry for a small country. Big capital is international and should be directed from great centers, to manage the industry all around the world. Hence, it is absolutely necessary that from now on the Omonte company seat be in the United States, forming a limited company there.” [. . .] Then Doctor Guamán spoke. “This is the situation. I made a speech before parliament, much praised by The Tin Baron  203

the press and the opposition parties, taking apart the project on mining profits. I said, Señor Omonte, that the only financial thesis of the government is to obtain money in order to stay in power. But the law has been promulgated. It had to be. But is that the end? No, sir. The good part comes now. We can make use of that law to put the government in our pocket! When one lacks strength, what is the attitude with which one can tame an assailant? With offers, putting him to sleep. But . . . only until the police arrive. We have people sufficiently skillful for that. I do not offer myself, because I am classed as an enemy of the government. But here we have Doctor Cuellar, who is not involved in politics; here are so many friends who can come to an understanding with the president. Politeness does not mean lack of courage.” “What do you mean?” “It does not require high finance. It is something very well known. Just as one ties the worker to the company via advances from the company store, so we can give loans to the government, and we’ll have them in our pocket.” “A loan? To a government that wants to rob me?” muttered Omonte. Doctor Guamán rubbed his hands together to warm them and continued. “A loan, yes, sir. But with what conditions? Short term loans—​­guaran­teed” (he emphasized the word with his orator’s voice), “guaranteed with the same taxes which as payment will be registered to the company’s account and with the promise of not raising them, given that the amount would already be established as a bilateral obligation.” “But would the government accept that?” “And what are we here for, sir?” Doctor Cuellar intervened. “I am from Chuquisaca. I know how things are there. The government will receive the loan on its knees, because the regional demands from Sucre and the east, for the railway, are being terribly stirred up by the opposition in those places. One has to continue stirring them up . . .” “Hmm . . . ,” exclaimed Omonte, doubtfully, looking at Ahpeld. “This is just the beginning,” Cuellar went on. “This is the bait to get the government looking the other way, while the company gets its capital out of the country.” Hurriedly, Doctor Dávalos interrupted to stop Cuellar stealing the originality of his plan. “This is the great plan that we have studied, Mr. Writt, Doctor Guamán, Doctor Cuellar, and your servant; it consists of a double maneuver. Together with the rest of the mining companies and the banks, we besiege a starving government. So then we offer them a . . . prudent loan.” “And if they try to slap more taxes on us?” Guamán rapidly broke in. “By then our capital will already be in foreign countries. The government, sworn not to raise taxes, will not be able to break the contract signed with a 204  Augusto Céspedes

foreign company. Besides, in the moment of making the loan, the company should request guarantees of political tranquility, suggesting, insinuating that financial agreements fit in only with a responsible government, which can be so only when it complies with two classical conditions: an all-­party cabinet and the suspension of the state of emergency. Such a cabinet would be set up with the applause of the whole country, with men trusted by the company, in particular in the treasury, for which we can provide a large technical component. A cabinet of national unity, conscientious ministers, would not attack the mining industry!” “And if the president will not accept such a cabinet?” “We will reduce tin shipments, we’ll take the taxes to the Supreme Court, we’ll refuse to loan money to the government, we’ll collaborate with the opposition. With less money and more opposition, the government falls . . .” “And if it were not to fall?” “Then we’ll lend them more money, Señor Omonte: you, who are an admirable man, said that the company ought not to intervene in politics, except when the government damages us with its laws. That is what has happened. In defense of the mining industry, we have managed to get this government classed as Bolsheviks, detested by reasonable opinion. Now, let’s give it an injection just to get it to accept the transformation of the company; but we’ll not go too far, because it will fall in any case. We get in good with the president, apparently, but watching out for the chance to appear at the head of the revolution at the opportune moment, pacting from that same moment, in secret, with the opposition leaders. They’re all anxious to deal with the company. So, instead of falling with this government, we’ll turn out to be the creators of the next one, its axis. We’ll have freed the country from tyranny . . . !” Doctor Cuellar stuck his nose out. “Now let me speak, doctor, to reinforce your brilliant idea. Since we have to protect the company’s interests, for the time being we have to deal with the government. The short-­term loan is a very good idea. A minister, very good. But, without showing that he’s ours, he must stay at the despot’s side for a while and . . . resign sensationally in the moment when the company notifies him, on the eve of a coup.” With his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, showing off a gold chain, Señor Omonte drummed his other fingers on his belly. He looked at them all. Señor Cuellar moved back to the edge of his chair, shooting out his pointed knees, almost at the level of his Semitic nose.2 “I promise to propose the loan to the government. As I am a political neutral, I can do it.” “Very well,” said Ahpeld. “The first step, the loan. With the loan, we get the minister of the treasury. With the treasury minister, authorization to transfer capital to New York and transform the company into a public limited The Tin Baron  205

company. It’s perfect. They already told me that you have excellent lawyers, Señor Omonte.” “Many thanks, many thanks . . .” “Just one comment,” Señor Cuellar warned, swallowing saliva down his lizard’s neck. “Ehm . . . Doctor Guamán was of the opinion that we should request the suspension of the state of emergency. No! Now more than ever, the press has to be silenced. They won’t lack some newspaper that shrieks to heaven that we want the mines to flee from Bolivia!” “That’s so, that’s so . . .” The meeting had lasted for two hours. Omonte stood up and gave Guamán and Cuellar friendly slaps on the back, after which Cuellar dusted off his shoulder with his handkerchief. Doctor Dávalos regretted having called him from La Paz. They left the hall of the bank to go to the lunch that Omonte was offering to the Association of Small Mineowners. As he held his overcoat, Doctor Dávalos whispered in his ear with a smile. “It seems that the doctors Guamán and Cuellar want to be ministers, even under the tyrant . . .”

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes In this piece, unbracketed suspension points are in the original; bracketed ellipses indicate abridgment of text. 1. Bolivian lawyers receive the courtesy title of “doctor.” 2. The mention of Cuellar’s “Semitic nose” reflects the anti-­Semitic (and fascist) tendency that was present in the 1940s within the mnr and its newspaper, La Calle, which Céspedes himself directed.

206  Augusto Céspedes

VI The Nation and Political Fragmentation

Traveling in South America on an extended scientific expedition, the French naturalist Alcide d’Orbigny spent three years (1830–33) in the newly independent republic of Bolivia. He later wrote glowing pages about the country and published handsome prints depicting the exotic cultural and natural variety to be found in its different regions. If d’Orbigny reflected an external perspective on a country that was newly opening to foreign travelers and foreign capital, an internal perspective was subsequently expressed by the Bolivian artist Melchor María Mercado. Mercado produced his Album of the Landscapes, Human Types, and Customs of Bolivia (1841–1861) as a response to d’Orbigny, even reappropriating a few of the images found in the celebrated French scientist’s Voyage to South America. Mercado’s was an early attempt to imagine, in a vernacular aesthetic style, how the regional and ethnic heterogeneity of the country constituted a distinctive and admirable national identity (see color plates). In its first decades, however, the political identity of the country was no more secure than its cultural unity. President Andrés de Santa Cruz was named head of state in 1829, after serving as president of Peru from 1826 to 1827. An accomplished general in the top ranks of Simón Bolívar’s army, Santa Cruz also proved an outstanding statesman who introduced progressive administrative reforms. But in pursuing Bolívar’s vision of panregional government, Santa Cruz came to be considered a threat by his neighbors. He negotiated the formation of the Peru-­Bolivian Confederation (1836–39), which sought to unify, under his own powerful command, Bolivia with southern and northern Peru. In response, rival sectors in Peru, as well as in Chile, went to war to crush Santa Cruz and the federation. Within Bolivia, too, opponents of the project feared that Bolivia would be diminished when forced to share power with Peruvian forces. With the defeat of this project for a grand federation of states, Bolivia began to settle into the more circumscribed political definition of the nation-­state that we know today. It also went from occupying a leading position in international affairs in the early nineteenth century to long-­lasting political isolation. After Santa Cruz, military strongmen continued to wield political power, 207

many of them seizing control through coups d’etat. While these early heads of state have been painted with a broad brush as “caudillos,” in fact their profiles and policies varied widely. General Manuel Isidoro Belzu (1848–55) stands out not only for his vigorous protectionist policies, but also for his urban plebeian constituency, especially artisans. General Mariano Melgarejo (1864–71), denounced by liberal politicians as well as historians as the quin­ tessential “barbarous caudillo,” unleashed the first attack on the land base of altiplano indigenous communities, a project that would in fact be carried through under later liberal civilian regimes. While the intense political strife involving saber-­w ielding pretenders to power might seem at odds with the capitalist growth beginning in the 1850s, in fact, after Belzu, these illiberal political actors ensured the liberal model of economic accumulation through extraction and export. The marginalized region of Santa Cruz was the site of an important alternative project for the nation in the 1870s. Andrés Ibañez, representing urban artisan groups and advocating an early labor and egalitarian agenda, proposed a federalist scheme that would grant the country’s diverse regions greater self-­government. Yet it was quickly suppressed by the regime of General Hilarión Daza (1876–79), enforcing the interests of central government based in Sucre. In the rural lowlands of the southeast after independence, the agricultural frontier grew but slowly, the state exercised limited control, Franciscan missions engaged in the parastatal and paternalistic aims of “civilizing” and “protecting” indigenous groups, and the centuries-­old confrontation between mobile Indian groups and white settlers backed by the military continued. The parties involved did arrange occasional pacts to stabilize the frontier, and early on, native groups could negotiate from a position of power. But over the course of the nineteenth century, the expanding system of missions was critical in undermining native autonomy and pitting Christianized “neophytes” against unconverted “heathen.” In 1892, Guaraní insurgents rose up under the warrior god-­man Apiaguaiki Tumpa, but were mowed down at Kuruyuki by Bolivian troops and other Guaraní allies from the missions. Centuries of fierce resistance against the haciendas, the army, and the missions ended in crushing defeat, with the death of nearly a thousand people, the subjection of the labor force, and the takeover of Indian lands. The final conquest of Guaraní territory took place precisely when states and elites around the Atlantic world were celebrating the quadricentennial of Columbus’s “Discovery.” Another military clash proved a more visible turning point in national history. Bolivia’s defeat at the hands of Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–83) brought not only the loss of Bolivia’s entire coastal territory and valuable natural resources, but a profound political crisis. The military caste was in disarray, and the grand mining entrepreneurs realized the need for a more 208  The Nation and Political Fragmentation

stable and fiscally sound state structure that would not perturb their international connections. After 1880, a new “modernized” political order emerged in which civilian politicians from the upper echelons of society presided over a parliamentary system with a restricted electorate. The silver magnate Aniceto Arce—​­despite accusations of complicity with the Chilean forces—​ ­emerged at the head of the Conservative Party, which held power for most of the remainder of the century. From this time on, Bolivia’s powerful mining interests with their foreign ties exercised more direct political and economic influence over the state, and the different political parties in office catered to their needs. In 1924, for example, the tin baron Simón Patiño, irked by an attempt to raise the export tax, extended a loan of £600,000 to the government of Bautista Saavedra (1921–25) in exchange for the concession that taxes not be increased for five years. The network of political operatives, lawyers, and journalists in the pay of the mining oligarchy came to be known infamously in the early twentieth century as the rosca (a small, compact “kernel” at the center of power relations). The nineteenth century came to a close with a civil war to resolve the nation’s regional political and economic tensions. Raising the banner of federalism anew in 1899, elites from the Liberal Party linked to emergent economic forces in the north challenged the Conservatives based in the capital of Sucre to the south. As the military contest intensified, the Liberals mobilized indigenous community troops under the command of Pablo Zárate Willka. Yet at signs of autonomous political initiative on the part of Indians, and after the massacre of Liberal troops by their own Indian allies in Mohoza, Liberals and Conservatives regrouped to work out a settlement. The capital was transferred to La Paz, and thereafter Liberals, or offshoots of the Liberal Party, gained the upper hand in government. They promptly cast off the federalist program and resumed a centralist rule that favored the interests of La Paz. The state trial against the Aymara speakers accused of massacre in Mohoza proved a flashpoint for hysterical pseudoscientific racial discourse about Indians. As the new century began, oligarchic liberalism was in its heyday. Yet there were also deep political and cultural fissures within society. The regional question, spurring recurrent federalist sentiment against centralized authority, concerned the rivalry between north and south and the imbalances between west and east. The Indian question focused on the fate of the majority of the population at a time when the enlightened public sphere saw Indians as posing an obstacle to national progress and when indigenous communities were still capable of formidable political resistance to the ongoing dispossession of their lands. It was not incongruous that figures as different as the cruceño dissident Andrés Ibáñez and the Aymara military leader Pablo Zárate Willka could both call for the “regeneration” of Bolivia.

The Nation and Political Fragmentation 209  209

This page intentionally left blank

The Peru-­Bolivian Confederation Bolivian and Peruvian Authorities

Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz was a leader in the triumphant Bolivarian army, the president of Peru from 1826 to 1827, the dynamic successor to General José de Sucre as Bolivian president in 1829, and Supreme Protector of the Peru-­Bolivian Confederation between 1836 and 1839. Born in La Paz, he was the son of a creole military officer and an indigenous noblewoman descended from the mallkus of Lake Titicaca. Considered “white” in most elite circles, he was nonetheless scorned by his opponents for his “Indian” ancestry, particularly in the viceregal capital Lima. Dissatisfied with the debilitating national boundaries defined at independence, Santa Cruz believed that Bolivia needed to be united with Peru, as it had been earlier in the colonial period. Taking advantage of political divisions in Peru in the 1830s, he set about creating his grand territorial confederation through alliances with Peruvian forces, especially in the south. Though recognized by the United States, Britain, and France, all of whom sought commercial entrée in the region, the confederation provoked intense hostility, both within Peru and Bolivia and from their neighbors, and was short-­lived. In light of Bolivia’s later political, economic, and territorial weaknesses and marginalization, it is remarkable to see the willingness of Peruvian regions such as Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cuzco, and Puno to join forces with Bolivia in this era. The two documents presented here, from 1836 and 1837, reflect southern Peru’s participation in the alliance under the authority of Santa Cruz and announce the full consolidation of the confederate pact.

Declaration of the Assembly of the South of Peru, 17 March 1836 The Assembly of the South of Peru, in the name of the departments of Are­ quipa, Ayacucho, Cuzco, and Puno, Considering firstly: that the peoples of the South are convinced, by a lengthy and sad experience, that their association with those of the North, under the regime of Unity, makes their organization difficult if not impossible, and likewise more difficult their happiness, which essentially depends on the form of Government, Secondly: that the revolutions of which all of Peru has been victim were

211

born from this violent union; that they have dissolved the general pact; that the peoples of the South, and likewise those of the North, are seeking to procure their future security. . . . Solemnly declares and decrees: Art. 1. The departments of Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cuzco, and Puno establish and constitute themselves as a free and independent state, under the denomination of the South Peruvian State, adopting the popular representative form for its Government. 2. The Southern Peruvian State promises, from now on, to celebrate with the state that forms in the North and with Bolivia federal links, whose bases will be agreed by a Congress of Plenipotentiaries named by each of the three states that will conform the Great Confederation. 3. For the time being, the exercise of the sum total of public power of the state is conferred on His Excellency the Captain General, Superior Chief of the United Army, Andrés [de] Santa Cruz, under the title of Supreme Protector of the Southern Peruvian State. 4. The Protector of the Southern Peruvian State will invite the others to the indicated Confederation, and will not omit all the good offices that may help to bring it to perfection, harmonizing it with the vote of the peoples. 5. The Protector of the State, once the circumstances allow it according to his judgment, will convoke a Congress that will fundamentally constitute the country. In faith of which, we the Representatives of the four departments make and sign in their name and ours, the present declaration, which is the will of our committees, which they and we on their behalf promise to uphold, conserve, and defend with all our efforts, pledging our honor and invoking the protection of the Supreme Being and of our sister the Bolivian Republic: in the sessions hall, in the town of Sicuani, the 17th of March 1836. Dr. Nicolas Pierola, President, Deputy for Arequipa. José Mariano de Cosio, Deputy for Arequipa. Cesareo Vargas, Deputy for Arequipa. Estanislao de Aranivar, Deputy for Arequipa. Mariano Miguel de Ugarte, Deputy for Arequipa. Pedro José Flores, Deputy for Ayacucho. J. M. Mujica, Deputy for Ayacucho. Pedro Ignacio Ruiz, Deputy for Ayacucho. Tadeo de Segura, Deputy for Ayacucho. Juan Corpus Santa Cruz, Deputy for Ayacucho. Severino de Valdivia, Deputy for Ayacucho. Mariano del Campero, Deputy for Cuzco. Manuel To­ rres Mato, Deputy for Cuzco. Anselmo Centeno, Deputy for Cuzco. Diego Calvo, Deputy for Cuzco. Bonifacio Alvarez, Deputy for Puno. José Maria Bejar, Deputy for Puno. Domingo Infante, Deputy for Puno. Andres Fernandez, Deputy for Puno. Juan Antonio de Macedo, Deputy for Puno. Juan Cazorla, Secretary, Deputy for Puno.

212  Bolivian and Peruvian Authorities

Treaty of the Peru-­Bolivian Confederation, 29 June 1837 Thursday, 29 June 1837 Peru-­Bolivian Confederation

In the Name of God Triune and One The Bolivian republic and those of the South and North of Peru—​ ­being desirous of tightening the links of friendship that have existed between them and of bringing about the Confederation, which they have declared themselves in favor of in a solemn fashion in the Congress of Tapacarí and the Assemblies of Sicuani and Huaura; animated by the just and noble design that through this new system internal and external peace and the independence of each be guaranteed; wishing at the same time to evade forever any motive that in a state of isolation could affect the numerous relations of fraternity and the common interests that nature has created between them, of which they have been warned by sad and painful examples;1 and finally expecting to obtain, with the help of this new plan of political organization, the prosperity and happiness to which the fecund and beautiful regions that make up their vast territory are destined—​­they have agreed to complete the Pact that will establish the bases of the said Confederation, already declared by the Captain General Andrés [de] Santa Cruz, President of Bolivia and Protector of the Southern and Northern Peruvian Republics, authorized as competent to this end by the Congress and Assemblies previously mentioned. Translated by Alison Spedding Note 1. In 1828, Peruvian forces under General Agustín Gamarra had invaded Bolivia, ultimately compelling President Sucre to step down and leave the country. While Gamarra sought reunification between Peru and Bolivia, like Santa Cruz, he advocated greater control for Peru.

Peru-Bolivian Confederation  213

In the Forests of the Yuracaré Alcide d’Orbigny

Once the new nation was opened up for foreign curiosity and investment, a stream of travelers began to flow through. The scientific traveler and natural historian Alcide d’Orbigny was among the first Europeans to cross the Andes into Bolivia in the years immediately following independence. He undertook an exhaustive and meticulous survey of Bolivia’s physical and human geography, gaining prominence and respect during the three years he spent in the country. He received advantageous official support, and obtained information and insights from a variety of sources, including creole intellectuals, local priests, and indigenous peoples. His Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale offered an exotic yet sympathetic account of Bolivia, and his engravings etched a romantic vision of peoples and landscapes. This provided material for a new, positive view of national identity, and d’Orbigny was a formative influence in the nineteenth century and beyond. For example, the prolific production of the Bolivian artist and autodidact Melchor María Mercado included vernacular versions of d’Orbigny’s drawings (see color plates) to provide a nationalist counterpoint. About one in the morning I arrived at the Guarayos’ huts in Ascensión. I walked toward the chief’s hut, from which a man clad in a long bark-­cloth tunic soon emerged to speak to me in his language. I was completely ignorant as to which race this tribe might belong to; for that reason, my surprise was not small when I heard him say good day to me in Guaraní, a language of which I had learned a good many words on the frontier with Paraguay. I immediately replied in the same language. The Guarayo chief was as surprised as I myself, and from that moment showed me the most cordial friendship and accompanied me everywhere during the forty days I spent with that hospitable nation. I once again encountered with lively pleasure, in its primitive state, the remains of one of the ancient migrations of Guaranís or Caribs, the most intrepid conquerors of South America, who carried their arms from the banks of the River Plate to the Antilles. I entered the chief’s hut, where I found his entire family, composed of almost naked women and a great number of small children. I hung up my hammock, but, dazed by the journey, by the Guaraní speech I heard, and by

214

finding myself among a still savage nation, was barely able to sleep for a few hours, impatient as I was for the next day to begin. The next morning, all the Guarayos came to visit me, each one bringing me a gift: chickens, eggs, bananas, sugarcane, papayas, squashes, cassava, pineapples, and even game. In a moment I had provisions of foodstuff for several days. I noticed that the fruit—​­above all, the pineapples—​­were twice the size and much more flavorful than in other parts of the republic. This province, notable for its produce, seemed to me to be a second promised land. My attention was also taken by the easy manners, the beautiful proportions, and the interesting faces of these Indians. The old men, leaning on their bows, clad in long, sleeveless bark-­cloth tunics, with long beards, truly inspired respect for the nobility of their aspect and pride in their posture which, without a doubt, must be characteristic of free men.1 Far from adopting the humble tone of the mission Indians, they stepped forward without concern, and they expressed themselves with ease. Each head of family was accompanied by his wives, who never came alone. I was also impressed by their lovely faces and the beauty of their forms, unconcealed by their dress, which was reduced to a simple piece of cloth wrapped round their hips and coming halfway down their thighs. Their suntanned color, although much lighter than that of other Indian women, their smooth skin, which shone like satin, gave them the aspect of ancient statues. They wear their hair loose at shoulder length, cut square across the front, so that their foreheads are clearly revealed; their arms are adorned with bracelets and their necks with necklaces of glass beads; and although their legs are naked, they always use garters. Some of them, perhaps to make their savage beauty stand out, paint themselves black, and others with the red paste of achiote seeds, except for their faces. Some of them wore black around the curve of their mouths and stripes on their faces, or their hands and legs painted black and vertical stripes of this color on the rest of their bodies. . . . On the 25th of December, eve of my departure, I wished to take advantage of the Christmas festivities to utilize the Guarayos’ meeting and watch various ceremonies of their primitive religion. I had a reason to hurry. The priest of Ascensión, a decent fellow without resources, who was more occupied with his personal interests than with the salvation of the Indians, let me do as I wished, but I feared the religious austerity of Father Lacueva, who, in Trinidad,2 without a doubt would have opposed these manifestations repudiated by Christianity. I was served by the deference of the Guarayo chief, who ordered everything to be set out so as to please me. He came to seek me out in secret at midday. He led me mysteriously and in silence into a small octagonal house located on the edge of the village, where I found some naked men sitting in a circle around the room with the women standing behind them. As soon as I entered, they closed the doors, and the

In the Forests of the Yuracaré  215

oldest of them, with a long beard, struck the floor with a bamboo pole. All the rest imitated him with the same instrument, with their eyes fixed on the floor. When they achieved the same rhythm, the old man intoned a hymn in a beautiful bass voice, which all the rest repeated, accompanying themselves with the beat of their bamboos, while the women marked the rhythm with genuflections. Those masculine voices, those discordant sounds of the bamboos, the imposing attitude of the singers, their posture, everything about that ceremony which surprised and amazed me, transported me to a place which I could not in truth describe, but I can affirm that I would never have given up my place in that spectacle. Those first chants were directed to Tamoi (the great father), whom the Guarayos conjured to descend among them and hear them. Then they asked him for water for their fields. Then they stood up, all of them formed a circle and walked around in a row, striking the floor and singing another hymn, with their eyes cast down; they walked slowly in one direction, then turned around and walked in the other direction. These hymns are full of figures of speech and ingenious comparisons. They accompany them with the sounds of the bamboos, because Tamoi, after having taught them to sow, had climbed up to the east of the sacred tree, while the angels struck the earth with those canes. In addition, bamboo being one of the gifts of Tamoi, in the sense that it forms part of the construction of their cabins, they considered it as an intermediary between themselves and the divinity. After the ceremony, I invited all the Indians to come together in the square, where I wished to offer them a kind of feast. There I came across the priest, who had found out, I know not how, what had just happened. I expected to receive, at least, a few reproaches on his part, but the opposite happened. He only made me note that, since I had to leave on the following day, I had done something foolish in having the Indians carry out the ceremony in which they asked for water, given that it would inevitably rain, since the Guarayos, he added, always get what they ask for. This reflection surprised me, coming from his lips, and gave me the measure of his perspicacity. With the aim of judging the skillfulness of the Indian men and women, I set up an archery competition for all of them to take part in. The girls took part first, and I gave prizes of bracelets and trinkets to the most artful. The men followed them. I was amazed by the precision of their aim; the arrows, launched with force, whistled through the air and hit the target with violence. However, I could confirm that their shots were not sure beyond sixty meters. After giving me an idea of their skill, the Guarayos begged me to show them in turn the power of our firearms. They placed a chicken at the same distance and had me kill it, which entertained them so much that I had to refuse to deprive them of all their chicken coops. I wanted to give them another pleasure: that of looking through an excellent telescope and a microscope. Nothing could describe their surprise and ecstasy on seeing distant ob216  Alcide d’Orbigny

jects brought close or contemplating tiny beings made so voluminous. After this moment, I was no longer a stranger to them, and they all looked on me as an extraordinary being, and they called me with respect and exclamation their brother (Cherú), which was a great thing for a Guarayo, the proudest of all the savages. Because of the freedom they enjoy, they believe they are the first among men, to such a degree that they become angry when they are called Indians, upholding with pride: “Only the [inhabitants of] Chiquitos are Indians, for they are slaves; I am free and not an Indian; I am a Guarayo.”

. . . I navigated with difficulty up the Coni River, at times struggling against a fierce current, at times crossing rapids which ran among boulders, but always enjoying the spectacle of the most beautiful nature on the banks. Finally, on the 28th of May, after fourteen days of navigation, I halted on the left bank, close to a narrow footpath. I had completed the first stage of my journey. Impatient to encounter the Yuracaré Indians, whom I knew to inhabit these landscapes, I walked for a league through the most beautiful jungle and arrived at an Indian cabin, where the Indian women immediately set to roasting cassava roots and huge bananas and offered them to me with infinite grace. I know not how to explain the pleasure I felt on tasting those fresh foodstuffs, which produced the best effect imaginable on our health, deteriorated in consequence of the bad food we had had to put up with and the continual rain which we had been exposed to throughout eight days. I forgot all my sufferings on seeing new human faces. I had been recommended to take special care not to speak to the Yuracarés of my illness, because if they should have suspected, they would have fled into the forest in no time at all. When I arrived, I was surprised by the proud aspect of the Yuracarés, who, nevertheless, were perfectly welcoming to me. Their regular features, their almost white skin, their easy manners surprised me as much as the beauty of the settings where they dwell. I asked for a house, and they gave me one straightaway. I settled among them, in the middle of the forest, which I never tired of walking through, such was the enchantment I found in it. The virgin forests of Brazil, so well portrayed by one of our famous painters, are not at all like the places where I found myself. It could be said that, coming up against the last foothills of the Andes, nature, at high temperatures and constant humidity, has reached a stage of development that admits no comparison. Thus, I was left in ecstasy at each step before the four distinct levels of this magnificent vegetation. Trees from eighty to one hundred meters high form a permanent canopy of greenery, often adorned with a few brilliant splashes, at times the magnificent red flowers which completely cover some trees, at times the flowers of the creepers whose fronds fall like long hair to the ground, forming bowers. There is where the numerous species of fig, mulberry,3 and walnut trees are mixed with an immense quantity of trees of In the Forests of the Yuracaré  217

Alcide d’Orbigny depicts his encounter with the Yuracaré people in May 1832, as well as the exuberance of nature in the foothills of the Andes east of Cochabamba. Source: Alcide d’Orbigny, Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale: Le Brésil, la République Orientale de l’Uruguay, la République Argentine, la Patagonie, la République du Chili, la République de Bolivia, la République du Pérou, exécuté pendant les années 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, et 1833, vol. 8: Atlas historique, géographique, géologique, paléontologique et botanique (Paris: Chez P. Bertrand, 1847), customs and usages no. 11 (Visite des indiens yuracares), http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/162759#page/79/mode/1up. 

generally undivided leaves, each of which is so covered with parasitic plants that it represents a true botanic garden. Below this upper level, as if protected by it, one finds at twenty or thirty meters the graceful straight trunks of palm trees, whose foliage is so varied in shape and so useful to savage man. Here are the pinnate crests of the Vina and the Acuñas or the crowns of the other species which provide a multitude of clusters of flowers or fruit, incessantly courted by the most marvelous birds. Still lower down, three or four meters above the ground, other palms grow, much more spindly than the first and which would be felled by the least breath of wind; but the gales only ever manage to shake the summits of the giants among this vegetation, which barely allow a few rays of sun to reach the forest floor. But even this floor is adorned with the most exquisite variety of plants, a mixture of elegant ferns with fretted leaves, little palms with lobeless leaves, and above all, extraordinarily delicate mosses. Nothing holds us back beneath these eternal fronds; we can pass everywhere without fearing spines or thorns. Who could paint this admirable spectacle and the joys it makes us feel? The traveler, marvel218  Alcide d’Orbigny

ing, feels transported, and his imagination exults; but if he comes back to himself, if he compares himself on the scale of such an imposing creation, how small he feels! How his pride is humbled in the consciousness of his weakness, in the presence of such greatness! Attracted as I was by so many new things, my days seemed too short for my investigations of natural history. At times I collected plants or drew the diverse species of palms; at times I walked under the shady canopy, pursuing the brilliant flocks of tangaras which fluttered around the flowers of the palms, the shrieking toucans, so sought after by the Indians,4 or the numerous caciques; but in each case I was obliged to wait until these birds descended to the second level of vegetation, because my firearms could not reach the crowns of the trees. I think I had never felt so happy anywhere, and nevertheless, I had to abandon it in order to think how to travel upriver toward the cordillera of the Andes.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. They are the only American [Indians] with beards whom I have encountered; the rest have scanty [beards] and they pluck them. [Note in original.] 2. Today, Trinidad is the capital of the department of Beni. 3. It is a species of mulberry that provides the best bark for making the clothes of the Indians. The bark is taken off, much like the bark of the fig, but finer. [Note in original.] 4. They prepare their skins, which they then trade with the Indians of Moxos and the inhabitants of Cochabamba. [Note in original.]

In the Forests of the Yuracaré  219

“Are You Not Equal?” Manuel Isidoro Belzu

In much of mid-­nineteenth-­century Latin America, charismatic military or political leaders with popular followings were common figures. In Bolivia, General Manuel Isidoro Belzu (1848–55), who gained the allegiance of urban artisans and plebeians in La Paz, was an exceptional example of these caudillos. Belzu was an early proponent of national economic growth based on domestic manufacturing, which earned him the ire of liberal elites tied to free-­trade doctrines. His political adversaries sought to discredit him as a socialist and a communist. In a gripping speech from 1849, presented here, he inveighs against aristocratic privilege and the prevailing property regime, themes that were a constant in his public pronouncements. Belzu invoked the contrast between the disinherited classes and suffering common people in ponchos, on the one hand, and the oligarchy of gentlemen dressed in tails, on the other. The radical discourse associated with Belzu signified a historic rupture. It was with his government that the popular urban groups of artisans, small traders, and common people were first recognized as political actors. The narrow electoral world that existed up until that point doubled in size and would continue to expand, opening the doors to greater political participation and to an issue that had been absent until then in postcolonial Bolivia: social equality. Comrades: An insensible mob of aristocrats has become the arbiter of your riches and your destinies; they exploit you ceaselessly, and you do not see it; they strip you day and night, and you do not feel it;1 monstrous fortunes have accumulated with your sweat and blood, and you are not aware of it. They divide up the land, honors, jobs, status, leaving you only misery, ignominy, work, and you are silent. How long will you slumber? Awaken without delay; the hour has struck when you must ask the aristocracy for their titles and private property its justifications. Are you not equal to the rest of the Bolivians? Is this equality not the obligatory result of the equality of the human species? Why are only they provided with the conditions for material, intellectual, and moral development, and not you? Comrades! Private property is the principal source of most of the crimes and offenses committed in Bolivia; it is the cause of the permanent struggle among Bolivians; it is the principle of the current domi220

nant egotism, of that selfishness that has been eternally condemned by universal morals. No more property, no more landowners, no more inheritance! Down with the aristocrats! The land for all; an end to the exploitation of men. What reason could there be for the Ballivianistas to occupy high social positions?2 Are you not also Bolivians? Were you not also born, like them, in this privileged land? Friends! As a great philosopher has said, property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong; common property that of the strong by the weak. The fundamental basis of property is chance; of community, reason. Bring about justice with your own hands, since the justice of men and history has denied you.

Translated by Seemin Qayum Notes 1. Strip, in literal translation, would be “shear your wool”; the English colloquialism would be “steal the shirt off your back.” 2. Belzu overthrew General José Ballivián (1841–47), and Ballivián’s supporters maintained a constant opposition to him.

“Are You Not Equal?”  221

Cosmopolitan Taste Juana Manuela Gorriti

Born in northern Argentina, Juana Manuela Gorriti (1818–92) accompanied her family into political exile in Bolivia, where at age fifteen she married Manuel Isidoro Belzu, then an army captain, with whom she went on to bear three children. Belzu left her nine years later, amid mutual accusations of infidelity. He became Bolivia’s head of state in 1848. Gorriti took their children to Lima, where she embarked on her journalistic and literary career and became the hostess of a prominent intellectual salon and an advocate for the progress of women. Toward the end of her life, she re­ settled in Argentina, where she continued to pursue her public activities to considerable acclaim. Her literary cookbook, Cocina ecléctica (Eclectic Cookery, 1877), featured contributors from around Latin America and a few from Europe, a continent-­and ocean-­spanning constellation of women who read, reflected, wrote, cooked, and corresponded with one another. Among them was the remarkable Clorinda Matto de Turner, Peruvian writer and social reformer, who knew Gorriti from her time in Lima. Matto de Turner’s “Theological Soup,” the first recipe in the volume, is dedicated to Gorriti with warm nostalgia: “Meanwhile, I beg you to make use, you yourself, of this powerful agent of life, so that you can, with me, return to be seen by this Lima which loves you and misses you.” Excerpted here are Gorriti’s prologue and her daughter’s recipe for humintas (steamed corn cakes) from La Paz.

Prologue The home is the domestic sanctuary; its altar is the stove; its priestess and natural guardian, the woman. She, she alone, knows how to invent those exquisite things that make the table an enchantment, and that prompted Brontome’s counsel to the princess, who asked what she could do to hold her husband to her side:1 “Seize him by the mouth.” I, alas, never thought of such a mighty truth. Avid for other regions, I threw myself into books and lived in Homer, in Plutarch, in Virgil, and all that galaxy of antiquity, and afterward in Corneille, Racine; and later yet in Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine; without 222

thinking that those famed geniuses were such, because—​­with the exception of the first—​­they all had at their side hard-­working and selfless women who spoiled them and fortified their minds with succulent mouthfuls, fruit of the science most suitable to a woman. My woman friends to whom, in repentance, I confessed did not admit my apology except on condition that I published it in a book. And, so good and merciful as they are beautiful, they have given me to that end precious material, further enriched with the enchanting grace of their words. . . .

Humintas Of the grains used in human alimentation, none has so many and such excellent applications, in all the countries of South America, as does corn. Its cobs, when they are still fresh, with the grains full of a sugary milk, are known as choclos; now ground and transformed into various pastes, from the borona, which is the bread of the people in Biscay, to the delicate Lima cake and the most delicious huminta with which I concern myself here. Grate [the grains off] the fresh corn cob and grind them immediately on a grindstone or, if one is not to be had, in a mill. Once it is well ground, season it with salt to taste, a little, very little sugar, and a good quantity of lard, fried with hot peppers and previously passed through a sieve. Once this has all been mixed, stir and whip it with a spoon, and on the husks of the same fresh cobs, placed two by two in opposite directions, for each huminta, pour three spoonfuls of the paste in the center of each pair of husks. Fold them over, tie them with a string, and cook them in a saucepan, oven, or earth oven. If in a saucepan, fill the pan with water to a third of its depth, cover it with sticks of bamboo cut into four and crossed at the level of the water surface; place the humintas on this, one on top of another, and boil them for two hours. Drain the water and serve the humintas in their wrappings. The earth oven is, for the huminta as for all roast meats, the best way to cook them. Our Choqueyapu River hauls in its current a quantity of cobblestones, which it pulls from the cliffs along its course. The Indians place them one on top of another to make an oven in the ground, which they hollow to about ten centimeters below the surface, and in whose center they light a fire, which they stoke up in order to heat the stones. When these reach the desired point of heat, those who work in the operation wrap their hands in pieces of sacking, and with as much skill as speed, open the oven, and while one of them piles up the stones around the fire, now reduced to hot coals, the others are busy, each on his part, in the following: Cosmopolitan Taste  223

They take a stone, place a huminta on it, cover it with another stone, and place it once more on the fire converted into coals, to form what is not now an oven but rather a wall of hot stones, stuffed with humintas; all this swiftly, to prevent the stones losing the intensity of heat necessary to cook the humintas which they carry inside. A thick woolen cloth folded in four is thrown over the pile of stones to keep them warm. An hour later the humintas are cooked, and the Indians, with the same skill and speed, remove them from among the stones, baked and with their wrappings golden from the fire. Edelmira Belzu de Córdoba La Paz, Bolivia

Translated by Alison Spedding Note 1. “Brontome” refers to Pierre Bourdeille, lord of Brantôme (1540–1614), memoirist and author of several works, including Lives of Gallant Ladies and Lives of Illustrious Ladies.

224  Juana Manuela Gorriti

War and Peace on the Frontier Treaty between the Settlers of Salinas and the Toba Indians

In the Chaco region of Tarija, on the southeastern borderlands of Bolivia, the Tobas kept up fierce resistance to colonization by white settlers in the nineteenth century. The Toba (or Qom, in their own language) were a group of semi-­nomadic hunter-­ gatherers who developed a strong equestrian warrior culture after the Spanish conquest. A peace treaty of 1859 sought to stabilize the frontier. In it we can see how the raiding of farms and livestock by the Tobas restricted the expansion of agrarian estates. The white settlers used Franciscan missionaries as their intermediaries while also threatening military extermination of the Indians. As is evident in the treaty’s use of the terminology “Christians” and “savages” to describe the two sides in the conflict, the old conquest framework persisted on the frontier of the new nation. The treaty of peace and alliance, which is celebrated in the following terms heard by the council of four members, was initiated and begun on the left or eastern bank of the Pilcomayo [River], at the site of the Mission of Tarairí, at three in the afternoon of the 31st of October of the year 1859, [there] gathered together for the one part, the political leader of Salinas who signs [below], the reverend missionary fathers Father José Gianeli, head of missions, and Father Alejandro Corrado, classed as mediators, and the four members named to be the council, the citizens Cornelio Ríos, Mariano Quintana, Zacarias Baldivieso, and Luis Aldana, and for the other part, the captains of the Tobas, in the presence of a large part of their nation, Nainaque, Notenaique, Chilonaca, Sandatirai, Cosiyaique, Cutaicuruque, Coyogoraique, Sucache, Chirioí, Chachií, Candamburrique, and Pezocorique. All the said captains unanimously promise to never again commit any theft of cattle and other animals in all the territory of the District of Salinas. Likewise, they promise to pursue and to capture all the thieves who should in the future commit such crimes against the Christians and hand them over together with the stolen objects so as to avoid in this way that they [themselves] should be suspect and to make known the faithfulness with which they are obliged to recognize the present treaty. They commit themselves, on their own behalf 225

and in the name of all their nation, to be faithful friends of the Christians and capital enemies of all the [Indian] nations that should act in detriment of their lives or interests, waging a war to the death in union with them and helping them in every enterprise which they should decide on. They commit themselves to pitch their camps and have their families dwell in the precise space that abuts the Pilcomayo from where the Angarai trail ends to where the river narrows, and never further down; and if this should not be observed, the Christians will treat them as enemies, and they will not be able to protest over any violence which should be done to them [should they be found] below the indicated limit. They promise to cut off all their relations and commerce with the Indians of Guacaya and [Indian] peoples to the north and to settle them in our missions and Christian towns, where they will be able to approach with a safe conduct, which the missionary fathers of Tarairí will provide them.1 The Toba savages promise to hand over in the mission of Tarairí, via the missionary fathers, all the animals stolen from Caiza in previous years up until now, once the [animals’] brands have been compared [with those of animals declared lost] . . . and with the reward of four yards of coarse cloth for each animal which they hand over. The remaining branded animals that remain in the power of the savages . . . will be rebranded with the brand of the mission and will remain as absolute property of the Tobas, without the Christians being able to confiscate them. The Christians are obliged for their part to respect the guarantees of the savages and to provide them with every protection as long as they should be faithful and comply with all the matters contained in the present treaty. But [the Christians] declare and the barbarians have been made to understand that in the case of the least infraction, [the Christians] are decided to return with a military force to settle permanently in these places until they exterminate the last one of the savages who should mock this solemn convention, and [the Tobas] informed of this have accepted this tremendous declaration, which does not leave them any room for complaint. Having concluded the treaty in the exact terms that have been expressed, the Tobas are left for what remains of this day and the following night to meditate and resolve what is most beneficial for them, and tomorrow at sunrise they should all present themselves to ratify the treaty or break it if that should be their will. It is signed by all those persons who on the part of the Christians have intervened in it, since none of those of the savage nation who are present know how to do so —​­

—​­Chief General Francisco Carmona—​­Father José Gianeli, prefect of missions—​­Father Alejandro Maria Corrado, missionary— ​­Cornelio Ríos— ​­Luis Aldana— ​­Mariano Quintana—​­Zacarias Baldivieso. Today, 1st of November at eight in the morning, [the Toba captains] presented themselves to ratify yesterday’s treaty in their own name and 226  Settlers of Salinas and Toba Indians

in that of the people they command, who failed to appear for this act for justifiable reasons, and in the name of all their subjects and in effect, they ratified and sealed it with declarations, complying with all religiosity and offering as proof of such four captains with some of their soldiers, to accompany the expedition for now. In confirmation and with those present who have been mentioned, the captains Notenaique, Sandatirai, Cutaicuruque, Coyogoraique, Tasií, Teisonocorique, and Cotaique, this ratification was signed on the said date on the banks of the Pilcomayo. —​­Franco Carmona—​­Father José Gianeli—​ ­Father Alejandro Corrado—​­Cornelio Ríos—​ ­Mariano Quintana—​­Luis Aldana— ​­Zacarias Baldivieso Translated by Alison Spedding Note 1. “Settle” is a translation of reducirlos. Reducir, literally “reduce,” is the old colonial term for the policy of obliging Indians to gather together and settle down in a nucleated settlement (reducción), where they could be easily controlled and converted to Christianity.

War and Peace on the Frontier  227

A Tenuous Alliance El Noticioso

The government of the caudillo strongman General Mariano Melgarejo (1864–71) was the first to expropriate indigenous community lands on a massive scale. It provoked violent resistance in response, and Melgarejo’s creole adversaries teamed with Aymara communities to besiege the city of La Paz and topple the dictator. The documents that follow, originally published in the anti-­Melgarejo newspaper El Noticioso, chronicle the militarized campaign of indigenous peasants and their allies, led by Casimiro Corral. Corral had first gained political experience working as editor of the newspaper El Artesano, at the time when President Belzu was encouraging the political participation of the urban plebeian population. Twenty years later, Corral relied on his ties with the indigenous communities around La Paz to stage the coup d’état, termed a “revolution,” that brought to power Coronel Agustín Morales (1871–72). The community forces were organized into effective battalions under the superior military authority of Corral. But they also had their own objectives, enjoyed relative autonomy—​­since they were directed by their own captains and commanders—​­and received their own funding as a result of the pact. Corral thus had limited control over the actions of the indigenous troops, and he feared that their mobilization would lead to “race war.” When he subsequently sought to demobilize them and reestablish order in the countryside, he had to provide assurances that they would regain full possession of their former landholdings. After the victory, a constitutional convention reversed the forced sale of community lands. 3 January 1871

Provincial Chronicle It is known that when the Indians [indígenas] of the canton of Ambaná were advancing in an organized manner toward the general headquarters, on the hilltop of Obispo-­mancani, one F. Escobar, who had previously been corregidor of Carabuco and one of the most famous lackeys of tyranny, appeared before them and attempted to persuade the Indians to defect [from the forces aiming to defeat Melgarejo], telling them as if it were certain that within a few days Melgarejo would be in La Paz as the victor over the revolution, which was going so badly, and that the best the Indians could do was resign themselves to their situation and 228

avoid getting mixed up in politics, thus making themselves deserving of Melgarejo’s mercy. The Indians of Ambaná, incensed by the news and the seductive language of the former provincial authority, threw themselves upon him and put him to death in a few moments, after which they scattered, in search of the petty tyrants who had made them suffer so much over the past six years. It is to be lamented that such scenes should take place, but one is also obliged to admit that they are the just revenge of the victims against their oppressors, who still apply fraud and seduction in order to continue with their satanic system. Only they are responsible for such painful occurrences, because when the doors of justice are closed, those of vengeance open! The Superior Political and Military Leader of the North La Paz, 3 January 1871

To Your Lordship, the Subprefect of Muñecas, Your Lordship’s noteworthy letter, dated from Ambaná on the 30th of last month, confirms the deplorable occurrence on the altiplano, with the poor wretch Félix Escobar. To settle the state of alarm in which they are found, to avoid the contagion of moral corruption in other towns, and to prevent further misfortune, a note sent yesterday has warned Your Lordship to suspend the dispatch of those people, ordering them to keep to their respective cantons until further orders. Your Lordship’s reports are quite alarming, hence you are to make them understand: first, that His Excellency the Supreme Chief [Colonel Agustín Morales] in calling them to his military command had no other objective than to make them participants in the reconquest of their property, combating the Reckless Despoiler; second, that the government is not provoking a caste war, but rather the extermination of Melgarejo against whom the entire nation is up in arms, and especially the Indians as the most injured; third, that the Supreme Chief, having resolved to free them from the servitude to which Melgarejo subjected them, has trusted in them; fourth, that all Bolivians are guaranteed in their persons and property, and no one under any pretext can act against them, under penalty of severe punishment. With this knowledge, Your Lordship should make arrangements for the service they are to offer in their respective cantons until further orders, attempting to persuade them with sagacity and prudence. May God keep you, Casimiro Corral A Tenuous Alliance  229

Secretary General. Government Section. La Paz, 19 January 1871

To His Grace the Prefect of the Department of . . . Sir: The powerful motives that led the Indian masses to take part in the political question of the regeneration of the people have disappeared with the splendid triumph obtained by this heroic capital [La Paz] over the hosts of the funereal predator of the people. Because of this, it is urgently necessary to begin the reorganization of the country, making the opportune determinations which will reestablish in full order the morale and the justice that had been completely loosened in the disorder caused by the previous despotism. As Your Grace understands the benefits that the country will enjoy on moralizing its administration as soon as possible, you will circulate in all the provinces under your command the orders that, by mandate of the Supreme Chief of the Revolution, I go on to communicate in detail: Make the members of indigenous communities understand that they are in full possession of the ancient rights they enjoy over their lands, as they were before the unjust usurpation of them by the tyrant. That the aims of the revolution have been, among others, to return their individual guarantees and properties to those unhappy individuals, without this leading to any obligations other than those they already have with respect to the Church and the State, it being of course their duty to remain subject to those they carried out according to preexisting laws. All commanders and captains of Indians should be ordered to dissolve on that very day their platoons and companies, making sure that they all return calmly to their homes to occupy themselves with their ordinary work, without being allowed to carry out any kind of abuse, under strict responsibility. The subprefects, via their subalterns, will take care that landowners’ houses are conserved with all precautions, making it known that said mansions are destined for rural schools for the Indians. With respect to the furnishings, livestock, and granaries that exist, they will take precautions for their conservation with inventories and [name] a person responsible for them. The parish priests, in particular, will explain the content of the present order in Aymara in the sermon in Sunday mass for three successive Sundays. All the cultivated fields belonging to former landowners are ordered to be cultivated with care by the same Indians who were in charge of them, since the aim of the Supreme Chief of the Revolution is to use the 230  El Noticioso

produce to compensate for the damages of the unjust and forcible expropriation which the aborigines were subjected to. The authorities charged with complying with these orders will make use of coactive force as needed, by means of the armed citizens of the national guard of their canton, so that the previous prescriptions may be properly complied with. May God guard Your Grace, Casimiro Corral

Translated by Alison Spedding

A Tenuous Alliance  231

Egalitarian Revolution Andrés Ibáñez

In the midst of the political campaign for the congressional elections of 1874, the lawyer and congressman Andrés Ibáñez confronted his rival in the central plaza of Santa Cruz, taking off and throwing to the ground his frock coat and shoes in a profoundly symbolic gesture to identify himself with the common people who were called “those without jackets.” He formed a club associated with the newspaper El Eco de la Igualdad (The Echo of Equality), which disseminated the slogan “We are all equal” and advocated for direct democracy, federalism, local municipal power, and regional autonomy. Andrés Ibáñez was considered dangerous by local elites, who turned to the central state to bring him down, although they might have benefited from a regionalist project. His arrest in October 1876 sparked a popular revolt that became known as “the revolution for equality.” Shortly afterward, an eastern federalist junta was proclaimed, a regional government that espoused federalist rather than centralist political principles. The junta would have also supported the plantation peons and called for a tax on sugar produced by the plantations. Ibáñez was captured and executed in 1877, shortly after his proclamation.

Proclamation of the Superior Federal Junta of the East of the Department The hour of regeneration is about to strike on the clock of your destinies. The time is coming. An epoch of peace, equality, and brotherhood will open up no matter how many obstacles are placed in its way by the centralizing and tyrannical form of unitary government. The whole republic is at the boiling point. Because the bolt of lightning that splits even the stout oak already looms over such a sinister system. Carry on with enthusiasm upholding the life-­g iving federal banner which you recently raised to recognize General Daza and his current government as the central national government. And the blood that may be shed will be our baptism. And the sacrifices that you may make will serve to smooth the road that

232

you intend to take. The federation, the new messiah of the oppressed peoples, already looms in the heart of the national space. The day of its approaching triumph will belong to those who began it, to those who have suffered, to those who groaned under chains, to those who demanded equality and justice in vain. A dawn of beneficence and fortune will shine forth for the peoples! The people are hungry and thirsty for justice and for freedom. You will find sufficient justice because what you have begun must triumph, as that which is written must come to be. Freedom watered with the blood of so many martyrs, brotherhood, the sacred link which joins all the peoples, and equality, the holiest of positions flowing from the martyr of Golgotha, will come to restore your well-­being, to wipe the blood from your scars with their caresses, to sink beneath your powerful tread the tyrants who enslaved you with such vehemence. Though the members of the junta whom you have elected may be martyrs one day, those who have spread our teachings and others with swords raised high in patriotic selflessness nevertheless symbolize the form of federal government which you hold to. You must imitate their revolution and their faith. god and freedom Doctor Urbano Franco Doctor Andrés Ibáñez Doctor Simón Álvarez

Translated by Alison Spedding

Egalitarian Revolution  233

The War of the Pacific Andrés Lizardo Taborga

Bolivia’s inability to protect its borders and valuable natural resources was painfully put in evidence during the disastrous War of the Pacific (1879–83). Chilean capitalists with British backing sought to control the rich saltpeter reserves they had been effectively exploiting in Bolivia’s littoral district. A Chilean military incursion into the province of Atacama led to the resounding defeat of Bolivian forces and the annexation of Bolivia’s only coastal territory. The following description of the first battle, fought on 23 March 1879 at Topater outside the town of Calama, was written by Andrés Lizardo Taborga, secretary of the commission charged with defending Bolivia’s settlements. The outnumbered Bolivian soldiers and civilians were led by Ladislao Cabrera, a local political official, and Coronel Eduardo Abaroa, who lost his life in combat, alongside civilian militiamen, while refusing to surrender. Chilean perfidy, the defense of threatened territory, and heroism in defeat would become long-­lasting themes in Bolivian nationalist discourse. Notes on the Campaign of Sixty Days by the Bolivian Forces in Calama, with the Motive of the Chilean Invasion; and the Retreat of These to the City of Potosí after the Combat on the Past 23rd of March When the town of Calama enjoyed peace, with its fortune tied to the valuable mine “The Inca,” whose growth made it more powerful every day, due to the very notable conditions of that rich and extensive deposit of silver, it had a great surprise on the 16th of February, with the abrupt arrival of Colonel Fidel Lara who occupied the subprefecture of the district of Caracoles. He communicated the taking and possession of the Port of Antofagasta, which occurred on the fatal and memorable 14th of February, by the Chilean Naval Squadron, and its disposition to obtain all the coast and Caracoles by force of arms. With this motive he and his column composed of twenty-­three men retreated to Calama, terrain not disputed until then and which is located at twenty-­t wo degrees of latitude south. This fact of such magnitude was immediately reported by express to the south and north of Bolivia, Potosí having received the news, it came to be known, five days after the events narrated. With the dawn of the 17th of that month, the “Caracoles Column” com-

234

manded by Lieutenant Colonel Emilio Delgadillo arrived in Calama. The arrival of these veritable sentinels of the desert awoke all the most holy patriotism and self-­sacrifice in the Bolivians;1 daily labors were replaced by the fatigues of the soldier who had to defend his name, his land, and his interests, violated by the squad of raiders vomited from the corrupted entrails of Chile. It was thus needful to create a greater force on that foundation; and this began on the 17th, with a group of citizens who enlisted voluntarily and with resolution to die. On the 19th, Dr. Ladislao Cabrera arrived from Caracoles, offering his services and his person for the holocaust of the nation. Although the tasks of our situation were so many and so grave, the subprefect thought that it was prudent and even necessary to call together the people to name a commission charged with the direction of affairs. Having carried out the election, the personnel was composed of the gentlemen Ladislao Cabrera, Eduardo Abaroa, and Fidel Carranza, with Dr. Andrés Lizardo Taborga as secretary. The commission assumed full responsibility for its operations, and to its merit began to dictate measures of local security and others concerned with maintaining the territory, demanded by the conflict which grew every day in great proportions. . . . The few citizens, resolved to the point of sacrifice, carried out the most rigorous military service; they were charged with the custody of the barracks, the roads, and the towns; and none were seen to fail in their duties, voluntarily contracted before the sacred image of the nation. On the 1st of March, the author set off for Cobija in the role of secretary of that prefecture. This was a renewed motive to carry instructions from the leaders and to send them sure information on the development of events, despite being under pressure from the armored warship Blanco-­Encalada, one might say [being] in immediate danger for complying with the orders of his companions in arms. . . . The correspondence with the consuls and ministers residing in Peru had major objectives, principally the concentration of armed forces in Noria, the dispatch of rifles, and others directed toward suffocating the invasion in its cradle. The consul general of Peru in Valparaiso, Señor Marquez, on retreating from that port due to the outrage committed against the Arms of the Peruvian republic, on the 4th of March, by the Chilean people, called Prefect [Severino] Zapata to confer on board the ship Amazonas. The consul general displayed the Chilean cabinet’s resolution to take over the Bolivian and Peruvian coasts in the name of reclamation and conquest; he indicated the possible, effective, and swift alliance with his nation, and the pacts of salvation which it is not yet appropriate to reveal; ending by assuring the swift The War of the Pacific  235

dispatch of one hundred rifles to Calama via Iquique, Quillagua, and Toco. This consoling event animated our countrymen, and with this motive the prefect suggested that his presence was necessary in Calama. Having decided to make the journey, after first informing the Supreme Government and agents of Peru, and leaving the superintendency of Cobija to Subprefect Pedro Ross, we set off on the 18th at seven p.m. On the 20th at seven a.m., already in Miscante, we received from the chief of the forces, Señor Cabrera, an official report of the threats made on the 16th against our reduced troops by the Chilean army, via the member of parliament Ramon Espeche. We hurried on our way to arrive in Calama on that day at eight p.m. Three days before the arrival of the prefect, the defenders had already taken positions and set up camp two miles outside the town, on the property of the Chilean Eusebio Quevedo, located to the southeast of the Topater bridge. This was destroyed, and the river was rechanneled over its entire course of more than four miles, and all measures having been taken, nothing was left but to prepare oneself for combat, for which we supposed that the enemy would send at most a force twice our own, which in its totality amounted only to 135 men. On the 21st, we transferred ourselves to the camp. Señor Zapata made a proclamation to the troops, who, brave and enthusiastic, hoped only that the moment of struggle would arrive. What a sublime image, in which the tears of patriotism mingled with thunderous cheers for Bolivia, the Supreme Government, and Zapata and Cabrera! It is not possible to describe the emotions felt at such an august hour; only in the moment of struggle for the nation could there be heroism so holy, so unselfish, despite the small number of our soldiers and their poor arms, if you like, left to our own efforts. . . . The trumpets of the first post put an end to such a solemn moment. It had been thought to retreat without firing a sole bullet; however, to put in practice such an idea would have led to those who initiated it being cut to pieces. It would have signified cowardice and been highly criminal in the face of the vile offenses which we suffered, more than anything the discredit of the name of Bolivia and silent consent to the usurping vandals. Blood has been shed . . . but those immoral pirates who have survived lifted their colors over 128 victims of ambitious rotos.2 . . . Insistent messages were sent from Calama to Lima and Iquique requesting arms and expressing the importance of that site. . . . By then it was too late. . . . On the afternoon of the 22nd, the officer A. Jurado, who commanded the outlying watch post located on a high hill that overlooked Caracoles and Aguas Dulces, from where one could see the enemy’s movements, was taken by surprise. The fate of the young lookouts was left to chance; we feared that we might never see them again, a presentiment which came true with Private Carpio, barbarously shot that night. 236  Andrés Lizardo Taborga

In the small hours of the 23rd, at six o’clock, the enemy appeared en masse, coming down the flat stretch of the carriage road toward the fertile lowland of Calama. At a distance of three or four miles, they split up into groups, so as to maneuver into battle. Chilean hussars set off in the direction of the Yalquincha bridge and another group toward that of Huayta. Shortly before eight a.m., they were entangled in the bloodiest combat our history will ever have reason to register, in which every Bolivian, as if he were another son of Sparta, fought against fifteen ragged bandits. At this moment, the outpost located on the road that leads to Cobija, more than three miles from our camp, reported the approach of a coach bringing the [Bolivian] Commander-­ in-­Chief Belisario Canseco and the Colonels Eguino and Castillo, at the same time that the Chilean hussars advanced at the gallop by the same road, being the most open route to the capture of the town; it may be supposed that these leaders would have been taken prisoner had they not marched in the opposite direction along the same road. At a quarter past ten, our guns fell silent, a time by which Bolivian courage had been measured by the Chilean aggressor. Embittered by the spectacle of the armed clash, in which we lost the hero Abaroa, whose splashed blood left the mark of Cain on the forehead of the transgressors of justice, in the light of the horrendous spectacle of [the town] set on fire . . . and with the desperation of having been defeated . . . shortly before eleven o’clock we were able to take the road leading inland via the highest slope of the San Pedro volcano as far as Canchas Blancas, from whence the message was sent to the government with the sad detail of the armed conflict of that memorable day. Always retreating, the leaders thought to locate our headquarters in San Cristóbal [de Lípez], but the lack of food supplies, the general lack of equipment among the defenders, and a note, as patriotic as it was generous, sent by the gentleman Belisario Peró, offering his house and support, led them to decide to continue the march toward Huanchaca, where the remains or relics of the force arrived on the 27th, now composed in total by fifty men. It is just to express public praise for the merits of Señor Peró, the youth of Huanchaca, and the working class, who received us with the most frenetic enthusiasm, having provided the troops with aid of great importance. Our gratitude to such outstanding gentlemen will be everlasting. After a day of rest, we continued toward Potosí, the place indicated as general headquarters for the south. Fifty days on campaign, a combat of true and forceful patriotism, a thousand fatigues and privations, thirteen days of pilgrimage through the desert were rewarded by the embraces that we earned from our brothers of Potosí on the 4th of April. The generous people, the valiant people awarded us wreaths for the bitterness and the disappointment that devoured the hearts of the defeated. Nothing was owed to the exchequer, because the support of Calama was The War of the Pacific  237

the sole work of the patriotism of its sons who are satisfied that they have fulfilled their duty. Thus ended the campaign of the forces of Calama. The people and the government have already appreciated how much we were able to do on behalf of our trampled dignity and our vilely invaded territory.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The Atacama Desert, reputedly the driest in the world, runs from the western foothills of the Andes down to the Pacific coast in what is now the north of Chile. 2. Rotos, meaning torn or ragged, is a slang term for lower-­class Chileans. In this period, it referred more precisely to poor peasants from the south of Chile who were recruited into the army to invade what were then Bolivian and Peruvian territories.

238  Andrés Lizardo Taborga

The God Man Juan Ayemoti Guasu

Despite the Bolivian state’s weak presence and the ongoing resistance of local indigenous groups, frontier settlement pushed deeper into Guaraní territory in southeastern Bolivia during the nineteenth century. After repeated confrontations with ranchers and landlords and the failure of Franciscan mediation efforts, the charismatic spiritual and political leader Apiaguaiki Tumpa mobilized independent Guaraní communities in early 1892. The uprising was finally put down, three weeks later, with great bloodshed, and the incorporation of the Guaraní into Bolivian society came primarily in the form of labor servitude. Juan Ayemoti Guasu was an older man who lived on the Santa Rosa mission. After falling sick, he had been cured by the young Apiaguaiki, who was also an ipaye (shaman). Ayemoti left the mission and became one of the rebel leader’s principal counselors. His letter below, written in broken Spanish and sent to Father Romualdo D’Ambrogi, reflects both his respect for the Franciscans and his conviction that Apiaguaiqui was sent by God. With the defeat at Kuruyuki shortly thereafter, Ayemoti and another close collaborator were executed in the plaza of the Santa Rosa mission.

My respected and appreciated Father Romualdo: Captain Patiri told me that they sent him to come and say to me that I ought to go another time to the mission, that the fathers will welcome me, [that] they will forgive me everything if I leave my father the tumpa here and return there, that the tumpa is a bad man and perverse and what he wants is not the good of the avas, but his own good with his witchcraft and other things.1 The fathers have been good to me, and you more good, but I cannot return. I want to just stay here because I am fine and happy and nothing bothers me, but I want to say, my Father Romualdo, that it is not what Captain Patiri says, that they have said to all the fathers, that the tumpa is a bad man and just wants to deceive and is an enemy of the Christians and wants to kill them and the fathers too. Father, our tumpa is not bad, he is good like all you [priests] and loves 239

Guaraní warriors living on the Franciscan missions were critical in defeating the independent Guaraní who rose up under Apiaguaiki Tumpa. The missionary Doroteo Giannecchini’s ethnographic account includes this entry for the loyal Guaraní chief Guirahesa: “Chiriguano types. The king or great cacique of the Chiriguanos of Cuervo and his family. . . . This lord is called Quirahesa meaning ‘Bird’s Eye.’ He is a valiant warrior who fought against the insurgents of the tunpa in the war of 1892. He and his subjects have been very loyal and welcoming to the missionary father.” Source: Doroteo Giannecchini and Vincenzo Mascio, Album fotográfico de la misiones franciscanas en la República de Bolivia a cargo de los colegios apostólicos de Tarija y Potosí, 1898 (Sucre, Bolivia: Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, 1995), 157, photo 91. Used by permission of the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia.

people from everywhere very much, and I am going to tell you how things are so that you and the other fathers and the Christian people and all know. He is the son of a captain of Guacaya who afterward left his mother so that she could marry another ava, and [she] never could be in a mission, and [she] went around in some places working because [she] did not have much to eat.2 Her son was little, and [he] helped her and went around with her. He was with his mother in Murucuyati; they had arrived a day before, looking for food, and he saw the massacre by those from Sauces and could escape, and a man from Imboche who also came to look for food in Murucuyati got him out. From all these sufferings, the rage came to him which he has for the 240  Juan Ayemoti Guasu

The Franciscan father Doroteo Giannecchini (1837–1900) with neophytes whom he had taken to the international exhibition in Turin, Italy, in 1898. Giannecchini carried out extensive ethnographic research on the Guaraní and compiled a dictionary of the local language. Source: Doroteo Giannecchini and Vincenzo Mascio, Album fotográfico de la misiones franciscanas en la República de Bolivia a cargo de los colegios apostólicos de Tarija y Potosí, 1898 (Sucre, Bolivia: Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, 1995), 13. Used by permission of the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia.

caraises because they have been bad to us, but not the fathers, who always give food in town and [hold] services and do not let the caraises finish us all off, which is what they want.3 Not one [of] ours complains about the fathers, nor [does] the tumpa complain, he says nothing bad against Your Lordship, only about those who took their land from the avas and kill for the joy of killing and steal our things. He says that he will ask the fathers to help him so that the caraises give back to the people what they took away, that if it is not in a good way, it will be in a bad way, and they will be responsible for what might happen. He is not a sorcerer, he is a person whom God himself sent for our lord and liberator, which recently has become known after the massacre in Murucuyati, and an old man from Sipotindi who knew many, many things had [the future tumpa] in his house, and he taught it all to him so that he could serve the people with it. Also, he was with Captain MachiThe God Man  241

pore in Mororigua, whose servant he was [when] he was still a little boy, and from the captain he learned what he knows now to treat his people well and knows how to give orders like a good chief when there is nothing [peacetime] and when there is war. If our tumpa has come out and he has set himself over his people, it is not because he would have wanted it, but because the avas brought him out when they knew that he is the best of all and is sent by God. They brought him here to Ivo, and they built him a house, altar, and office. After that everyone has come to follow him, and they are with him for what he tells them to do, and they know that what he says [is an] order, which suits us all. The dear fathers sent me a message that I answer in the name of [the tumpa] because I am his scribe, and he always says to me [that] if the fathers of Santa Rosa help us, [then] nothing bad will happen, instead everything good. And I believe what he says because God enlightens him; the fathers must know that it is so and not persecute him or speak evil of him to those who make out they own this place and leave [the tumpa] where he is because he does not do harm to anyone. My beloved and respected Father Romualdo, I beg you, that if I can I would go to beg you on my knees, that they leave us here with our captain [tumpa], the son of God like you [priests are]; there are many of us who are here, and we will stay here anyway, whatever might happen. [As long as] the caraises do nothing, we [will] do nothing that the tumpa does not want, but if they come, we will defend ourselves. If dear Father Romualdo wants to come, he may come, but we will let him come in and then return only after he visits us. I ask you in tears, my father and my friend, from he who was your son but respects you and loves you all his life long. Your servant, Juan Ayemoti

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Tumpa, in Guaraní, combines secular and religious leadership in this context. Avas is the ethnonym for the group known as Chiriguanos during the colonial period and Guaranís today. 2. The Spanish capitán (captain) is used for hereditary secular leaders among the Guaraní. 3. Caraises (or karai) refers to whites and mestizos.

242  Juan Ayemoti Guasu

An Aymara Command Pablo Zárate Willka and Manuel Willka

In the midst of the 1899 civil war between Conservatives and Liberals, the latter mobilized Aymara communities across the altiplano to fight against the troops of President Severo Fernández Alonso (1896–99). The following letter, from the indigenous military commander Pablo Zárate Willka, reflects the written correspondence among Aymara leaders during the mobilization—​­using the Spanish language, since there was no Aymara script, and republican state notarial conventions, perhaps as a sign of formal authority. The letter’s loose and uneven syntactical constructions and the Aymara-­inflected orthography make it difficult to translate. It also exposes the command structure that Indians themselves were elaborating and the high degree of indigenous autonomy within the movement. Zárate here gives direct orders to Juan Lero, the respected leader of the local community forces in Peñas, a town on the altiplano of Oruro. Zárate and his cosignatory both carry the prestigious title Willka (sun, in Aymara), meaning an indigenous military-­political commander. Lero is addressed as a cacique governor, a title used for indigenous community lords in the colonial period and which community members kept alive in their struggles to defend their lands from expropriation in the republican period. At the same time, the document shows Zárate invoking the authority of the Liberal leader José Manuel Pando and employing the rhetoric of patriotism and the “regeneration” of Bolivia. We can speculate that leaders like Zárate and Lero believed that the nation’s “regeneration” under the federalist system advocated by the Liberals would entail protection for indigenous lands and greater political autonomy. General Barracks, Tambo Primero, 20 March 1899.—​­Federal Division.—​ ­To the Cacique Governor of the communities of Tapacarí in the Vice-­ Canton [Peñas], Poopó province.

Sir—​­ I write to inform you that the community under your command needs you to appear, and that General Commander José Manuel Pando reminds you, just as they called on me from the General Command, that with your community vassals and as cacique governor you should help in the decisive combat that will take place against the enemy Alonso and 243

the army under his command. Meanwhile, you are authorized by the right to self-­preservation to defend yourself and your people however you can, against the tenacious aggression to which you are subject.—​­In these moments, patriotism requires a certain level of abnegation that not everyone has, in order to live up to the time of the great cause that proclaims the regeneration of Bolivia. In this sense, I order that on receiving this notification, you proceed to march with all the people under your command; I will have your people wait well-­armed here. Hoping that as quickly as possible you will fully carry out this mandate.—​­Any resistance or excuse and you will be severely punished, without the guarantee of the law, plus a fine of 10,000 bolivianos in case of omission. With such plausible motives, we write you, Pablo Saraven [Zárate] and Manuel Villca.—​ ­Fidel Lazarte, public scribe.—​­ P.S. I advise you let a general commander reach an understanding about this with the community under your command, which is convenient.

Translated by Forrest Hylton

244  Pablo Zárate Willka and Manuel Willka

Social Darwinism in the Courtroom Bautista Saavedra

In the midst of the Federal War of 1899, Indians in the town of Mohoza, in the valleys near the borders of La Paz, Oruro, and Cochabamba, unexpectedly attacked the Pando Squadron of the Liberal forces, with which they were ostensibly allied. In the town, an estimated 120 soldiers and townspeople perished in gruesome fashion at the hands of Indian insurgents. The Liberal leader José Manuel Pando restored communication with his erstwhile Conservative enemy, Severo Fernández Alonso, in order to suppress the perceived threat of what he termed a “race war.” The trial of those Indians accused of masterminding the “hecatomb of Mohoza” riveted public attention in 1901 in the aftermath of the war. Bautista Saavedra, the lawyer for the defense, who would become president of Bolivia two decades later, offered an explanation for the violence of the Aymara population, which he considered normally abject, based on the latest positivist ethnological, criminological, and social-­Darwinist thinking. The defense mixed scholarly erudition with the racial hysteria of public discourse at the turn of the century. The debates continue, aiming to bring to an end a trial exceptionally famous in collective criminality, even more so if one considers the human hecatomb which occurred in the church of Mohoza from the point of view of common criminality, as the manifestation of a fierce and savage outburst on the part of a race morally atrophied, or else degenerated to the point of dehumanization, and not only as a hateful and random consequence of the civil war, as some understand it, in which the Indian mass, motivated by the stimuli of a belligerent political party, and by certain racial suggestions, sacrificed an entire corps of prisoners with the most complete absence of humanitarian sentiments. But even so, in the depths of this drama, as in that of Ayoayo, a horrifying cruelty will always remain, together with the most nauseating cannibalism, characteristic signs of the resurgence of beastly instincts in beings who bear human faces, according to a phrase of Taine.1 It is certain that the collective massacre of Mohoza and that of Ayoayo are not the only actions that reveal the profound perversion of the moral sensibility of the Aymaras. Innumerable cases are cited, today as much as yester-

245

day, in which the most concentrated vengeance, uncontrolled ferocity, and anthropophagy constitute the outstanding features that distinguish them in their murders and struggles.

The Aymara of the present day, after having suffered first the harsh oppression of the Spaniards, and now that of ourselves, has developed, in addition to his primitive character, instincts of distrust and cunning at a superlative level; the first makes him unwilling to believe [anything he hears] and, at the same time, an invincible misoneist; the second imposes on him a special physiognomy of a double-­dealer and a traitor. It can be said that, via [natural] selection, these defensive weapons have been sharpened on facing the brutal depredations of the peninsular Spaniards and the abuses and exploitation of the priest, the soldier, and the provincial governor, who still remain as representatives [of Spanish dominion]. Hence, when the Indian is in contact with a white man, he feigns an abject submission, because he knows he is impotent; but when he finds himself in a position of evident superiority, he is arrogant, stubborn, and impudent: anything contrary irritates him and supplication exasperates him, and if his hatred and rancor have exploded, he is then transformed into a fearful wild animal with a distorted face and reddened eyes, who, carried away to the point of losing the very instinct of self-­preservation, preys on his enemy with a sadism and recklessness which are truly feline. The Mohoza trial, as the victimizations which I am referring to have come to be known, is the most exact proof of the ethnic and psychological conditions of the Aymara Indian.

Lorenzo Ramírez, director and principal author of these events, is an outstanding figure among his accomplices, for the clear intelligence, refined cunning, and astonishing impassivity with which he took part in and directed the executions with all the arrogance of a pasha. He is an old Indian aged between sixty-­five and seventy years, with a height of 1 meter 60 centimeters, which is the average among the Aymaras; his asymmetric skull displays a notably sunken forehead; pronounced eyebrow ridges; small, flat ears without a back to them; small, lively brown eyes; a scanty, black, bristly beard; receding chin. The sum of his physiognomy is not repugnant. Before the court, his attitude is of feigned serenity; he reasons with precision and clarity; his replies are concrete with reference to the facts, but always with the idea of diverting all prime responsibility away from his person. Ramírez, with the prestige that he enjoyed among his fellow countrymen, titled himself general, a sort of lieutenant of another aborigine, Pablo Villca Zárate, who declared himself to be of Incaic lineage, who planned the uprising of the whole Aymara race of the republic. It is with this antecedent that he 246  Bautista Saavedra

In the immediate aftermath of the Mohoza trial, a French team carrying out a major ethnological survey in South America photographed the rebel prisoners. An example of the racial “science” of the day, the Créqui-Montfort Mission applied craniometric photographic techniques in an attempt to establish the racial “type” of the Aymara. Source: Créqui-Montfort Mission in Arthur Chervin, Anthropologie bolivienne, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale / Librairie H. Le Soudier, 1907–8), vol. 1, plate 10, n.p.

inculcated the extermination of the whites in the ayllus under his command, inciting them to an extraordinary uprising, which was to light the fire of a bloodthirsty and barbarous war between castes. From the point of view of the psychological state of the Indian masses, the fate of the prisoners in the church did not depend in any way on their political affiliation; the obsession which possessed those bloodthirsty orangutans was, in moments of excessive excitement, more than sufficient motive for the decision to sacrifice the defenseless victims.

The victimizations of Mohoza have a social more than an ethnic character. They belong among those natural phenomena that are produced in a spontaneous manner. These outbursts should be combated as all lower-­class turbulence should be combated, whether it be religious, socialist, nihilist, or anarchist, by indirect and preventive means, removing the causes of human misery, not responding to violence with violence, which has no other result than to deepen hatred and concentrate the passions, which will explode on another day, fiercer and more insistent. What we must do with the indigenous race is channel it by a civilizing and humane colonization, subjecting it to legislation based on its own customs, as the English have done in India; it is to lift it out of the humiliating condition in which it is placed, protecting it against the depredations of the half-­breeds and the whites; it is to call it to the army and to industry. On the other hand, with reference to the very nature of the events that took place, it is not for us to judge their moral or juridical worth; nor have we to pronounce sentence on the legitimacy of the rebellion or cause upheld by the Indians. It may be that their aims were a madness, that they took on a problem [whose solution] could never become reality, that they invoked a cause that was obviously lost; because a degraded race like the Aymara, which, who knows, may be close to arriving at the final phases of its disappearance, will never be able to impose itself on a race that is superior in a thousand ways, and from which it is separated by centuries and centuries of civilization; but we believe, just the same, that whoever proclaims a reform or promotes a rebellion, however absurd it may seem, whether in the social, political, economic, religious, or literary fields, carries the profound conviction of the worth and holiness of his faith, of his principles, and of his doctrine. The leader is an apostle and generally a martyr. His gang of followers are hallucinators who go singing to the gallows. But however great may be the error or misunderstanding of those who attempt to be reformers, the ignorance and the lack of knowledge of the social framework and the laws of its development, it does not constitute a true crime, in the strict sense of the word, because the future will take charge of justifying, or not, an idea or plan for social improvement, whose value is measured by its success, and 248  Bautista Saavedra

that which today may be seen as the rashest attempt and the most farfetched thought, tomorrow may be a good thing, a great reality. Hence, the present, the contemporary is a poor judge of what is invented and produced around it. It is true that ideas arise that are sick, aborted, destined to die from the day they are born; but when all is said and done, they are ideals, and a certain core of goodness lies within them. Besides, in the struggles between ideas, who may say that truth is always on his side? An individual, a collectivity may propose in the best of faith to save the world and humanity and, nevertheless, what they do is perhaps no more than foolishness or madness, and these cases occur every day. On the other hand, what constitutes a crime is not that error, that foolish [act of] good faith, but rather the antisocial motive which guides or determines an action or a series of actions that are considered to be criminal, and this is so certain that in modern criminology the only psychic element that is taken into consideration to classify what is delinquent is the antisocial motive. On this basis, the great Italian criminologist E. Ferri has maintained in his theory of social defense, that criminality can only be considered in two essential aspects: as atavistic criminality and as evolved criminality, “a distinction”—​­he says—​­“that, encountering above all a psychological foundation in the nature of its motivations, is complicated in real life, perhaps due to the forms in which it is carried out, which can be atavistic in evolved criminality and vice versa.” The meaning that he gives to these two aspects of criminality in general is as follows: the offense to individual and social conditions of existence, for selfish and antisocial motives, is what characterizes the first criminal form [atavistic], and that which is founded on altruistic and social motives is what determines the second [evolved]. Killing for revenge, for example, is an atavistic crime which reveals the bloodthirsty instinct, a throwback of muscular effort to our primitive, savage, and cruel ancestors, and it has in itself an antihumane motivation and, in consequence, is antisocial. “In contrast, political association”—​­the author adds—​­“that which pursues a revolutionary goal, propaganda by the spoken word and in writing, the organization on the part of classes, strikes, the opposition to certain institutions or existing laws, a material attack on society, are the characteristic forms of evolved political or social criminality; it is determined by altruistic and humanitarian motivations, even when these motivations turn out to be mistaken and impossible to realize.” 2 A common crime, such as murder, may be the start of a rebellion, and, generally, a series of violations of law occur in all collective disturbances, given that the very tendency of these actions is to refuse to recognize what is established, breaking with interests established and accumulated in favor of a class, social [group], or political party. In any case, this can only lead to war, and in war there are no crimes, but rather strategy, ruses, counterattacks, revenge, triumphs, and downfalls, the victorious and the defeated. Thus it is that, despite the cruelty and horrifying sadism with which the Social Darwinism in the Courtroom  249

indigenous class sated its hatred of the whites, they should not be put in the dock as simple murderers.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Indians killed a contingent of opposing Conservative soldiers in the town of Ayoayo. 2. L’Humanité Nouvelle, XLII, 1900. [Note in original.]

250  Bautista Saavedra

“The Slow and Gradual Disappearance of the Indigenous Race” Government of Bolivia

In 1900, the political capital shifted from Sucre to La Paz, Liberals finally emerged triumphant on the political scene, and hopes of imminent transformation buoyed the outlook of modernizing elites. The 1900 census, issued by the National Office on Immigration, Statistics, and Geographical Propaganda, interpreted demographic trends along social-­Darwinist lines and anticipated the gradual disappearance of the native population as a sign of progress for the Bolivian nation. Of a general total of 920,000 Indians who populate the territory of Bolivia, 829,000 are subject to the rule of law of the republic, while the rest (91,000, that is 9%) remain in a state of total barbarity. It is necessary to warn that for a long time a phenomenon worthy of intention has been operating in Bolivia: the slow and gradual disappearance of the indigenous race. Effectively, since the year of 1878 this race is mortally wounded. In that year, drought and famine brought plague in their wake, which wrought havoc on the indigenous race. On the other hand, alcoholism, which the Indians are so inclined to, decimates their ranks in a notable way and to such a degree that the number of births does not cover the death rate. According to [José María] Dalence’s statistics, reputed in Bolivia to be the most truthful since they were composed from carefully recorded official data, in the year of 1846, 701,558 Indians existed in the republic within a total population of 1,373,896 inhabitants, or to put it differently, every thousand inhabitants included 510 Indians. At present, the proportion of the indigenous race, including the savages, is the same now as it was fifty-­four years ago, in circumstances in which the white race and the half-­breeds have increased considerably. Thus, in a short time, following the progressive laws of statistics, we shall find that the indigenous race, if it has not been completely wiped off the face of the planet, will at least be reduced to a minimal expression. The reader will form an opinion as to whether this may be a good thing, 251

considering that if something has held back our civilization, this is owed to the indigenous race, essentially unwilling to accept any innovation and any progress, given that it has stubbornly refused and refuses to accept other customs which are not those transmitted by tradition from their remote ancestors.1 White Race. In what we have called the white race, the Bolivian population is composed of two elements: the foreigners and the Bolivians. The element we call foreign may be divided into two branches: the European, which has its origin in the Old World; and the American, which proceeds from the countries of the New World and which belongs to the Caucasian race. The most important of these branches is the European. It is made up, in the first place, of natives of Italy, capable, easily assimilated; in second place, Spaniards, who have been conquistadors and lords for three centuries; third, Germans, who bring with them habits of work and easy assimilation; and in fourth place, the French, whose character is closest to the way that the Bolivians behave; after them come the Austrians, the English, Turks, and Belgians.2 The American branch, more numerous than the first mentioned, is made up, in order [of number], by Peruvians, Argentines, Chileans, Brazilians, Paraguayans, North Americans, Ecuadoreans, Uruguayans, and so on. Asiatic and African elements are very insignificant, in relation to the foreign population. The Bolivian people, the genuine inhabitants of the nation’s territory, are composed of the more or less pure descendants of Spaniards, in the first place; and in the second, those of other Europeans who immigrated during the nineteenth century. A foreign writer, P. Limiana, speaking of this people says as follows: The white race, descended from the Spaniards, whose most famous surnames can be found in profusion here, is the least numerous, although it has conserved the supremacy over the others which it procures everywhere; it is that which directs the governance of the state and occupies public posts and positions. No [other] American nation has conserved as has Bolivia the traditions and customs of its ancestors; and nevertheless, no other is such a friend of progress and advancement; whatever discoveries are made in other countries come to the knowledge of the Bolivians; however, the lack of communications and the hard work of transport are great obstacles to the implantation of any improvement. Bolivians of the white race are extremely affable; friendly to the foreigner who visits them, whom they receive with great affection and protect in every way they can; their conversation is most correct, with252  Government of Bolivia

out ever letting be heard those oaths that are so abundant in the Spanish language. Bolivian children are docile and display a general desire to learn, for which they have a facility linked to natural cleverness. The white race in Bolivia dresses in the same way as the Europeans, although with a refined luxury unknown in the Old World outside the upper social classes. Overseas fashions are followed, without this leading to the abandon of certain national touches, such as the veronica [shawl without fringe], which Bolivian women use instead of the Spanish mantle [manto] or shawl [mantilla]. Although Bolivian houses are not much to look at on the outside, indoors they are furnished and laid out with great luxury and comfort. Mestizo Race. The mestizo race, which has arisen from the union of whites with Indians, is known in Bolivia under the name of cholos.3 Since, in the beginning, the Spaniards did not have many women of their own race within reach, they had to satisfy their moral and physical necessities for sex with women of the conquered race. Many of these women came to inspire in them true passion, to the extreme of marrying these, our Indian women, by law and by Catholic religion. In such a way, a century after the conquest, in all the cities founded by the Spaniards, apart from the peninsular elements who constantly arrived in the galleons, there was a core population of mixed race on which the foreign element continued to operate. In this way, fulfilling the sociological laws that govern the formation of races, this creole race was created which, although inferior to the Spanish race, was very superior to the indigenous race. This, then, is the origin of the mestizo race. The cholo shares the characteristics of the two races from which he proceeds, although his features and his color are closer to those of the Indians. In addition, “It is the social class that, with more education and fewer vices, would be useful to the nation, as a citizen, as a worker, and as a soldier. They are lively, with artificially polite manners but loyal; they are inclined to lie and often dedicated to vice, characteristics even more pernicious since they have taken a direct part in politics. They even become inventors of industry, and in certain local displays, their handcrafts rival the most exquisite European products. As soldiers with courage and training, they equal the vanguard of the most reputed armies.” The mestizo population in the whole of the republic, on the day of the census, reached the sum of 484,611 inhabitants, that is to say 294 out of every thousand in the total of the registered population of Bolivia. Black Race. This element of the population is made up of negroes, whether national or foreign. The first mentioned are descendants of blacks from Senegal and Guinea,

“Disappearance of the Indigenous Race”  253

imported during the colonial era as slaves for agricultural labor in hot regions, where individuals of other races could not resist [the climate]. The second group is originally from Brazil, Africa, and so on, having settled in Bolivia. The total number of blacks inscribed in the registers of the census reaches the sum of 3,945, distributed among eight departments of the republic and in the national territory of colonies. According to the cited statistics of Dalence, in the year 1846 there were 27,941 individuals of black races, of which 1,391 were slaves.4 It can be seen by this datum that the black race in Bolivia tends to diminish notably. The union of a negro man with an indigenous woman produces the sambo, “a race which is valiant, daring, intellectual, and highly apt for making music, due the delicate sensitivity of its hearing, but generally famed as perfidious. The mixture of the white with the black gives the mulatto, which can be distinguished from the black only by a few aspects of the face, being similar in everything else, that is to say in color, in activity, and in intellectual, moral, and physical reach.” Such are the approximate characteristics that distinguish the four races into which we have divided the Bolivian population.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. “Their religious and civil monuments are evident proof of the capacity of this copper-­ skinned race to receive a more perfect civilization; nevertheless, the race has remained in a stagnant condition, it has not taken one step forward; rather, if we must confess the truth, instead of progressing it has retreated in its culture. Where has this come from? A mind accustomed to observe the facts discovers without difficulty the causes whose powerful influence has counteracted the civilizing march of the Children of the Sun. . . . More than three centuries have already passed since the conquest, and the Indian, with very few differences, maintains the same ancient traditions, ideas, and customs of the Incas, while one cannot observe any movement at all toward the union and fusion of the two races toward progress. The Indian is burdened with the heaviest labors in mineralogy, in agriculture, in public and private service of landlords and tenants. . . . The Indian’s house is a small and miserable shack made from mud, stones, and with a thatched roof. Within this ill-­lit and unswept dwelling, a whole family lives, in which they retire for the night, lying on the bare earth or on worn-­out sheepskins. All over the republic, Indian hamlets may be seen scattered along the roads, in the forests, in valleys and ravines, on lands which mainly belong to gentlemen landlords; only in parishes and their dependencies do a few families live in greater comfort. . . . The Indian aspires to nothing; he is not greedy or spoiled and is entirely content with his poverty-­stricken state. This is the reason why he does not sow more than he calculates

254  Government of Bolivia

exactly for the subsistence of his family, for paying taxes, and for some festival. In a word, the Indian, with only a little difference, has the same customs which Garcilaso describes for his times [of the Inkas], whose style of life as he says ‘is similar to the regime of the old monks, and if this had been assumed by choice and not by custom and nature, we would certainly say that it is a life of great perfection.’ . . . In their festivals and meetings, the Indians never come into contact with the whites; their meetings, their songs, their musical instruments, their dances are sad and solemn; the tradition they conserve in public festivities, where the place of the men is separated from the women, all this recalls the ancient Inca times. The need that forces them to make contact and relate to their [land]owners, with the cities and the authorities, has not influenced them at all to improve their condition, nor has it made them take one step along the road to civilization. The Indian is looked on with indifference and is despised; he is considered as a slave destined to serve, without having the right to complain. The most exhausting labors of the countryside and of mineralogy seem to be thought proper to and obligatory for the Indian; the same goes for the vilest tasks in the city. This indifference and antagonism stand out before the eyes of anyone who has walked the streets of a city, who has visited a mineralogical site and traveled around the estates of the landlords throughout the republic. Bolivia, after three centuries of conquest and domination, still presents to the eyes of a traveler the repellent sight of two peoples divided and opposed to each other. The educated and civilized elements [are] limited only to the cities, which appear as if they were surrounded by Chinese walls, impossible to surmount, and a few steps beyond them [are] vast terrains scattered with hamlets with the indigenous element, [living just as if ] in Inca times. . . . Meanwhile, the indigenous race is gradually shrinking [in numbers], with great damage to industry and agriculture; and perhaps the day will come when it will disappear from the land of Bolivia. . . . The authors who speak of the Indians’ incapacity to civilize themselves go against history and experience. It is certain that the Inca empire had a civilization very inferior to the Europeans, but it was a great argument in favor of the Indians’ reception of European Christian civilization . . .” [Footnote in original; no reference included to the quoted work.] 2. The term Turks was used to refer to any immigrant from the Middle East. In fact, the majority was Lebanese or Syrian, not Turkish. 3. In present-­day usage, cholo usually refers to members of a plebeian social class—​­such as traders, artisans, truck drivers, and domestic workers (cholitas, in the feminine Bolivian diminutive)—​­associated with urbanized Indians. Mestizo more often refers to a member of the middle class with a professional occupation. The author’s claim that all mestizos are in fact cholos may be an attempt to discredit the ascending professional middle classes of the time, whose pedigrees were insufficient to claim membership in the “white race,” but who posed effective competition to the oligarchic elite, who prided themselves on their Spanish surnames. 4. Slavery was abolished in Bolivia in 1826, but this was not fully enforced until the 1850s.

“Disappearance of the Indigenous Race”  255

This page intentionally left blank

VII The Nationalization of Natural Resources

On 23 March 1937, Colonel David Toro announced that the national government was seizing the properties of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey’s Bolivian subsidiary, which operated in the southeastern regions of Santa Cruz and Tarija, on the grounds that the multinational had perpetrated tax fraud and illegally sold oil to Argentina, Paraguay’s ally during the Chaco War. All the holdings and facilities were transferred to the recently created state oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (ypfb). This was the first major expropriation of a United States firm in Latin America, preceding Mexico’s oil nationalization of 1938, under President Lázaro Cárdenas. It would anticipate subsequent cycles of “nationalization” in Bolivia: the state takeover of tin mining in 1952, by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr), the expropriation of Gulf Oil in 1969, and the more modest measures of the Movement to Socialism (mas) government since 2006. The discourse of economic nationalism had begun to build in the 1920s, especially in opposition to foreign oil concessions, and took on broader popular appeal—​­which Standard Oil derided as “mass hysteria”—​­in the wake of the Great Depression and the disastrous Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–35).1 Since the mid-­n ineteenth century, unmitigated economic liberalization and deep dependency on foreign capital had brought little benefit to the majority of the population and to the marginalized regions of the country. The 1930s inaugurated a policy turn toward more direct state control over the levers of the economy and strategic natural resources, as well as toward more internal and egalitarian redistribution of the nation’s wealth. In the countryside, liberal land legislation combined with local chicanery to break up community holdings and transfer vast extensions of land into the hands of large estates (haciendas or latifundia). While the expansion of the hacienda through the 1920s was conceived as a form of agrarian “modernization” by liberal elites, it looked like “feudalism” to emergent socialist and nationalist sectors. The property regime was deeply skewed, the labor regime marked by servitude (pongueaje), and productivity on estates stagnant. But intensive struggle over decades by indigenous and peasant communities in alliance with progressive urban, working-­class, and middle-­class sectors ulti257

mately brought about far-­reaching agrarian reform. Despite the more moderate program of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr), de facto seizures of land by peasants in the highlands and valleys forced it into a policy of redistribution in 1953 after the triumph of the revolution. The agrarian reform in Bolivia was the second in twentieth-­century Latin America, after that of Mexico, and it shattered the traditional landlord elite in the Andean region of the country. Its democratizing effects were profound, though in subsequent generations peasants inherited ever smaller parcels (minifundia). In the eastern lowlands, the expropriation of estates was limited and the agricultural frontier expanded through spontaneous “colonization” by peasants as well as through state concession of lands to new landlords. The latter phenomenon was a “reverse” agrarian reform promoted by the military regimes after 1965. The productivity and profitability of Bolivian tin mining entered into relative decline after the late 1920s, though its exports remained critical for the United States, especially during World War II. While the tin barons Simón Patiño, Carlos Víctor Aramayo, and Mauricio Hochschild still carried weight, their power was increasingly challenged by the rising labor movement, and working conditions in the mining camps became a focus of contention. The massacre of striking mineworkers in Catavi in 1942 triggered national and international reactions. In 1943, the International Labor Office sent a commission headed by Robert Magruder to verify conditions, and it issued a moderate social-­democratic call for labor and welfare reforms that irked mineowners, accustomed to setting their own conditions in the mining camps and in the country. In 1943, the nationalist and socialist political opposition generated heated criticism of the massacre, thereby contributing to the crisis of the conservative government of General Enrique Peñaranda (1940–43). In 1944, the first national mineworkers union was organized, and it soon became a key constituency for the mnr . When the mnr finally took power in 1952, armed mineworkers were crucial to the success of the 9 April insurrection, and they drove the government to seize the large mines and turn them over to the new state mining corporation, comibol. The nationalization decree was signed during a public ceremony held at Patiño’s Catavi mine, site of the massacre a decade earlier. Agrarian reform and nationalization of the mines, instigated by mobilized peasants and workers who enjoyed unprecedented attention at the level of the state, were the two most radical economic achievements of Bolivia’s midcentury social revolution. Given the strategic importance of tin mining in the early twentieth century, Bolivia found itself more than ever in the eyes of the international community. In the postwar period, Bolivia attracted early attention in the emerging diagnosis of the problems of “development” and “underdevelopment.” The Keeleyside Report, issued in 1951 on behalf of the United Nations (un) Mission of Technical Assistance, began by noting the same paradox that 258  Nationalization of Natural Resources

had preoccupied The Villager in the first years of the republic. Drawing on the Bolivian metaphor of the “beggar on a throne of gold,” the un mission sought to explain the gap between the country’s potential economic wealth and its actual impoverishment. The explanation, it concluded, was political instability, and the solution, it proposed, was technical-­administrative intervention by the un. At the same time, another un commission advocated restricting the production and consumption of coca leaf, on the grounds that it was socially and economically harmful and a symptom of underdevelopment, despite its integral role in Andean life for millennia. A decade later, in 1961, the leaf appeared in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs’ list of controlled substances, although Maywood Chemical Works, which processed the leaves for Coca-­Cola, and the Merck pharmaceutical company, which manufactured pharmaceutical cocaine, were allowed to retain legal monopolies on coca imports. Despite the political sensitivities concerning foreign involvement in national affairs, Bolivia would for the second half of the twentieth century be a principal target of international assistance and regulation. The United States saw a radical threat in the Bolivian revolution of 1952, yet it did not opt to destabilize and overthrow the mnr government, as it did with the Árbenz government in Guatemala or the Mossadegh government in Iran in the same period. Rather, it used massive financial and development assistance as leverage to subdue the revolution and redirect its course. Bolivia’s dire economic straits made the mnr amenable to this: food production and consumption fell with the dislocations in the agrarian sector, state revenues initially plunged with the takeover of the mines, and inflation spiraled upward as the state printed more currency to pay for its necessities and the new reforms. Eisenhower’s program to export U.S. agricultural surpluses (Public Law 480, or Food for Peace) got under way in 1954, and food promptly made up a quarter of Bolivian imports. The United States renegotiated the tin contract and forced Bolivia to indemnify the expropriated tin companies and to issue a new legal code for oil exploitation, thereby opening the country up to Gulf and other U.S. oil companies. The United States also engineered a financial stabilization plan in 1956 managed by the International Monetary Fund, which constituted an early experiment in neoclassical economic orthodoxy, suppressing wages and limiting state spending. By the late 1950s, Bolivia had received more aid from the United States than had any other Latin American country, with a per capita amount higher than any country in the world. One-­third of the national budget came from the United States, to fund government operations and underwrite the mnr’s March to the East, an ambitious plan to integrate the lowlands and thereby unleash national economic prosperity. The economic aspirations of revolutionary nationalism were thus quickly compromised by dependency on the United States. A substantial measure of state control over the economy persisted under Nationalization of Natural Resources 259  259

the right-­w ing military governments of the 1960s and 1970s. Land redistribution remained a lasting benefit for the peasantry. The nation obtained increasing revenue from its mineral and hydrocarbon resources managed by comibol and ypfb, with natural gas becoming an important new export in the 1970s. The lowland regions, especially Santa Cruz, which developed a dynamic sector of commercial agriculture, enjoyed unprecedented economic integration. The country gradually became less reliant on U.S. and foreign financial assistance. Yet, by the late 1970s, mismanagement of the state firms, public-­sector debt, and falling commodity prices on the world market were generating deep economic imbalances and vulnerability.

Note 1. “Defending the seizure of foreign capital seems to be good politics in those countries where the masses can be hypnotized with soothing promises of the unlimited spoils to be shared by all.” Standard Oil Company of Bolivia, Confiscation: A History of the Oil Industry in Bolivia (New York: Standard Oil, 1939), 20, 22.

260  Nationalization of Natural Resources

The Problem of the East Rafael Chávez Ortiz

Regionalist demands from Santa Cruz were a recurrent feature of political life in the early twentieth century, and they met with a cool reception from the central government. When they escalated to open protest, as with the student movement in the early 1920s, they met with harsh reprisals. In the following speech from 1939, the cruceño Rafael Chávez Ortiz offers a lucid analysis of the Eastern Problem, not from the standpoint of regional elites or advocates of separatism but from a leftist and nationalist position. Chávez Ortiz was at the time a Trotskyist and a colleague of Tristán Marof, and he later joined the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr), before his death in 1947. He argued that regional conflicts were not a cultural or racial problem, and that the complementary integration of east and west would overcome the historically skewed economic development in the country. The unbalanced western orientation of the country, he held, resulted from the influence of foreign imperialism and the highland mining interests with their narrowly external outlook.

The Dangers of Our Nationality The Argentine colonel José E. Rodriguez is quoted as saying in his book Across Bolivia that “if Bolivia is fatally destined to disappear as a nation, in that case no South American country except Argentina has the right to claim the inheritance of its territory.” . . . The words of those who, from Argentina, observe Bolivia’s uncertain fate aggravated by the profound economic, social, and political crisis which it is undergoing, with the problem so far unresolved of eastern Bolivia, agitate for the division of the spoils of a nation that wanders adrift, victim of the incapacity of its ruling classes to incorporate more than half a million square kilometers of a rich territory with great productive possibilities, as is eastern Bolivia, into the national economy. This situation, resulting from the fact that the two economic zones of Bolivia have different natural routes for imports and exports, the east toward the Atlantic and the altiplano toward the Pacific . . . these two zones, I say, have a total lack of commercial links, a fact aggravated by their great inequality in productive techniques. This very serious situation, although we may not wish to admit

261

it, obliges us to recognize that Bolivia is not nor will be a true nationality as long as eastern Bolivia does not integrate its economy with that of the altiplano, via the common link of commercial exchange of their products. The historical and economic condition of close commercial links has not been fulfilled in our country, despite the fact that, as I have previously noted, the diversity of production in both zones should by that same fact facilitate said exchange, since the excluding factor of commercial competition is not present. On the contrary, while the altiplano economy has developed closer links with the Pacific countries, the imports of agricultural products from those countries to Bolivia have displaced little by little the market for the products of Santa Cruz, provoking on the one hand constant growth in Bolivian mineral production, and in parallel the stagnation and commercial restriction suffered by the agricultural economy in the east. This has resulted in an enormous economic inequality, which we note at present in the hypertrophy of mining production in Bolivia, technologically driven and directed by the international financial capital of the imperialist period of the modern world. This has led to the extreme of converting Bolivia into a monoproducer of tin, since for more than thirty years this mineral occupies about eighty percent of our total exports. This great inequality, which provokes a real deformity in the Bolivian economy, is what essentially constitutes the problem of the east, such that those who aim to present the problem from a racial point of view, based on the differences of races and customs of both zones of Bolivia, abounding in subjective considerations on the psychology of the Colla or the Camba, are mistaken, as they resuscitate racial theories, completely discredited in the terrain of social science, theories which in Europe have provided the miserable theoretical baggage of fascist barbarity, with its anti-­Jewish pogroms.1 Racial differences are not what lead peoples to distance themselves; on the contrary, we have seen and see how a multitude of distinct races live together in a single nationality, united by the shared link of their economic interests. A clear example is the vast nation that constituted and constitutes Russia, where more than twenty diverse races live together in the same nationality. Our country owes to the development of mining production the three fundamental conflicts that we are obliged to solve: the problems of imperialism, of the Indians, and of eastern Bolivia. Not only the future of Bolivia, but also the maintenance of the nationality as a whole, which we see constantly more divided by the lack of answers to those questions in our economic and social life, depend on the solution of these three problems. The historical precedents of the problems of imperialism and of the Indians closely coincide with what I have noted about the problem of the east. . . .

262  Rafael Chávez Ortiz

The Consequences in the East of Mining Policies in Recent Years Since the imperialist capital invested in this country directly serves the interests of mineral exploitation, when, at the beginning of this century, Bolivia initiated its railway policies, the railways built were designed exclusively, as they are today, for exporting minerals from the altiplano; this at the same time facilitated the import of agricultural products, principally from Chile and Peru, thus blocking any possibility for the products of Santa Cruz to compete with them. As may be supposed, the construction of railways to Santa Cruz was of no interest to the imperialist capital that exploited Bolivian mines. Our total displacement from the altiplano market did not, however, have immediately catastrophic consequences. The exploitation of rubber in the lowland department of Beni, where English capital had arrived as an extension of its investment in the rubber zone of the Amazon, was at the height of its boom in the period when the [Ismael] Montes government was implementing its railway policy, in exclusive benefit of the tin mines, since Bolivian policies, directed from the altiplano, are no more than the extension in the political and social terrain of the economic supremacy of mining interests.2 This essential quality that has characterized Bolivian governments, of serving exclusively the interests of the great mining rosca, had its immediate consequence in the separatist movement of Acre, which due to the proper weight of the nature of the said movement, ended with its annexation to Brazil. The inhabitants of Acre received from Bolivia only the weight of its taxes and the onerous consequences of the constant laws ordering the remeasurement of their rubber lands, promulgated by the Liberal Party governments with the sole aim of extracting the maximum amount of money for the treasury, which was handled from La Paz and did not translate, as would have been just, in benefits for the region from which it came. The people of Acre, completely disconnected from the altiplano economy, exporting [their products] to Brazil via Pará, by the force of their same commercial interests ended up separating from Bolivia and annexing themselves to Brazil. The altiplano government, for its part, did not have a greater interest in retaining the revolutionary zone; [José Manuel] Pando’s troops arrived in Acre to sign the peace treaty, where the only resistance to the Brazilians was directed by the commercial firm Suárez Brothers, which struggled to defend, not the national patrimony, but rather its rubber lands in the Alto Beni.3 The disconnection and ignorance on the altiplano of the economy of Acre and of the rubber region as a whole were such that on the signing of the peace treaty between Bolivia and Brazil, the sum requested by our country was so insignificant (two million pounds sterling) in comparison with the riches of the territory of Acre that it is said that the Brazilian delegate, Barón de Río The Problem of the East  263

Branco, was so overcome by laughter that the conversation was interrupted for several minutes, since the Brazilian government had given instructions to pay a sum six times greater than that requested by the Bolivian delegate. The business of exploiting rubber in the Beni, at the same time as it provoked a commercial resurgence all over the east, also displayed its enormous backwardness with respect to the methods of exploitation. The feudal relics that still dominate today in the productive regime in Santa Cruz led to the business of rubber exploitation being recalled today among the working classes in the east as one of the blackest periods of slavery, which extended, as I have noted on reading The Vortex, by the Colombian writer Eustaquio Ribera, as far as the sources of the Orinoco River in Venezuela and Colombia. The sale of indebted peons in the Beni was a legal business permitted by all the authorities, a sale in which the buyer acquired the right not only to the peon’s labor but also to his very life.4 Thousands of workers from Santa Cruz died, whether from tropical diseases or under the lash ordered by the owners of the rubber warehouses. Some of the latter died as victims of their crimes, under the rough justice of their peons. When in Santa Cruz, knowing what fate awaited them in the risky affair of indebtedness, the workers refused to accept such deals, the habitual system for completing the rolls was by kidnapping adult peons and boys, permitted and directed by the police. In that way, while the collapse of the rubber boom had catastrophic consequences for the commercial future of the east, on the other hand it provoked the true liberation of thousands of workers. No longer needed in the rubber zone, they could emigrate once more to Santa Cruz, where, despite the existence of the same medieval concept on the part of the landlords, the nature of the agricultural work and the healthiness of the zone rescued them from the fabulous levels of mortality reached in the rubber zone. A bitter memory of those days remains until today in Santa Cruz in the phrase “Beni Street—​­where people go and don’t come back.” The collapse of the rubber boom, caused by the plantations that England set up in its own colonies and later worsened by the manufacture of synthetic rubber, provoked the inevitable catastrophe. The products of the east suddenly found themselves without markets.

The Movement in Favor of Railways and the Regionalist Party The first years of the rapid commercial fall of rubber exports are when the movement in favor of railways begins in Santa Cruz. When the railway from Oruro to Cochabamba was built, Santa Cruz requested an extension as far as that city, with the creation of a regional budget after 1915 that included funds for the railway from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz, but these funds, although approved for that end, were systematically employed in other public expenses by the Liberal governments. 264  Rafael Chávez Ortiz

The incipient bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz, if it can be described as such, which had begun to prosper with the Beni market, soon found itself in a desperate situation with the collapse of the rubber boom. The Saucedo and Amelunge Banks went bankrupt in 1914, ruining almost everyone who had acquired capital trading with the rubber region. A few years later, the agitation in favor of the railway, directed by those who saw their ruin worsened by the enormous restriction of trade in Santa Cruz, began to intensify, producing serious disturbances from 1920 to 1924, a consequence of Bautista Saavedra’s government having used the funds destined for the Cochabamba–Santa Cruz railway to service the debt of the Nicolaus loan obtained from North American capitalists. Saavedra’s Republican Party, openly displaying its intention to renege on its promises since it no longer had funding for them, offered in exchange to build a road, a project which even if it had been implemented, would not have satisfied the needs of Santa Cruz commerce, as we now know from the experience of the actual road built for the Chaco War. Facing the undeniable need for the Cochabamba–Santa Cruz railway, the slogan “Railway or Nothing” was brandished during that turbulent period in which the La Paz government sent to govern Santa Cruz representatives whose only aim was the violent repression of the demonstrations of discontent among the people of Santa Cruz, beginning with a great student strike in 1920, due to the desperate economic crisis they were undergoing. Imprisonment and internal exile were the daily bread for more than three years, a situation that came to a head with the Santa Cruz revolution of 1924, which was put down by the Saavedra government. The Regionalist Party, headed from its foundation in 1920 to its final dissolution in 1930 by Dr. Cástulo Chávez, was the axis for all this period of struggles on behalf of the railway in Santa Cruz.5 It was formed by militants of the Santa Cruz Liberal Party after a violent rupture with the national leadership of that party. . . . Since it is undeniable that the traditional parties are the defenders of the policies of the great mining companies, directly responsible for worsening the problem of the east due to their policies of exclusion, the proposal of the Regionalist Party to break away from them was truly just. But on doing so it was indispensable to seek the support of elements in the rest of the republic who, subordinated by the all-­absorbing policies of the great mining interests, compose the great exploited mass of the nation, who, for that same reason, can confront the great mining rosca in a great liberation movement. . . . The discovery of the oil wealth in the southern provinces of Santa Cruz has created at present one of the greatest possibilities for the development of the economy in Santa Cruz. But at the same time, since the problem of the east remains unsolved today, due to the fundamental characteristics that determine it, the great productive potential of the oil zone creates one of the greatest dangers for the maintenance of Bolivian nationality, since the curThe Problem of the East  265

rent European War, which is rapidly tending to spread all over the world, will intensify the imperialist struggle for the control of raw materials as valuable as petroleum. The construction of the railways contemplated in the oil-­railway treaties with Argentina and Brazil, although vitally necessary for the development of the eastern economy, since they constitute natural export routes for eastern Bolivia, put forward the urgent necessity of the construction of the Cochabamba–Santa Cruz railway as the only means to incorporate the economy of Santa Cruz within the orbit of the national economy. Otherwise, Santa Cruz commerce will be left to gravitate definitively toward the said countries, and in addition the incipient eastern economy will be left to the mercy of imperialist exploitation.

Conclusions 1. While the great mining companies of the altiplano, in their incurable blindness occasioned by the exclusive interest in exploiting tin and other minerals, maintain their hegemony in Bolivia’s economic policy, directed to benefit the great imperial trusts of England and the United States, the danger of the disintegration of our nationality, victim of imperialist rapacity, will hang like the sword of Damocles over our heads. The situation is aggravated by the intensification of the present imperialist war, above all that the failure to construct the Cochabamba–Santa Cruz railway and the initiation of the construction contemplated in the treaties with Argentina and Brazil leave the oil wealth of eastern Bolivia at the mercy of the decisive influence of the economic policy of these two countries, directed in turn by imperialist financial capital, which would provoke the definitive displacement of the production of the east toward them and the greater disconnection and distancing of the economy of Santa Cruz from the rest of the nation. The experience of Acre is very recent and very clear with respect to this. 2. The principal axis around which the action of my fellow countrymen should turn is that of obtaining at all cost self-­government in Santa Cruz for the whole eastern region. This government, within Bolivian nationality, with the autonomy it should be awarded, could direct the economic policy and the colonization of this vast and uninhabited zone, in accordance with the vital interests of Santa Cruz. Only then could the Cochabamba–Santa Cruz railway, the channeling of the Ichilo River, which would facilitate our links with the Beni, and the construction of other routes which we need be financed and directed by the autonomous government, counting on the benefits of the exploitation of petroleum and Santa Cruz rubber. Thus, we would achieve the opening of the altiplano market to the products of our agriculture, promoting in this way our incipient agricultural production, which has great future possibilities and constitutes, as in the rest of the geographical 266  Rafael Chávez Ortiz

zone from the River Plate to the Amazon, the principal characteristic of its economy. 3. The justice of Santa Cruz’s aspirations for autonomy is precisely because a different economy needs a different economic policy and, finally, a different political administration. This just aspiration to autonomy needs to be understood by the altiplano mining rosca, which, in its superficial analysis of the problem of the east, sees what it believes to be a danger to its curious patriotism, which has consisted in maintaining more than half our territory and our population on the margins of the political and economic life of the nation, handing over the wealth of the Bolivian subsoil to the profits of great foreign shareholders. Hence, only the combined action on a national level which unites collas and the people of Santa Cruz in a great national movement against the bloodsucking power of the great mining rosca will be able to solve the problem of the east and the other disturbing problems the country suffers. Sucre, 24 September 1939

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Colla has been adopted as a generic name for anyone from the Andean highlands. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Camba was used by the urban population of Santa Cruz to refer to rural inhabitants considered to be of lowland Indian origin, but later was adopted as a general designation for anyone born and bred in Santa Cruz and other lowland regions, whether descendants of Indians, Spaniards, Yugoslavians, or others. 2. Ismael Montes was president from 1904 to 1909 and from 1913 to 1917. The period of railway construction was during his first government. 3. José Manuel Pando was president from 1899 to 1904. The Acre War (1899–1903) began when Acre declared its independence and ended with a negotiated settlement. 4. “Indebted” is a translation of reenganchados. Enganche is a form of labor contract by which the worker receives an advance in money and goods before setting off. The value of what he produces is calculated by the employer, frequently such that, in order to survive, he must always ask for another advance before his debt is paid off—​­the reenganche. The accumulated debt may be passed on to another employer along with the worker; this is the “sale” of laborers. 5. Rafael Chávez Ortiz was himself the son of the important regionalist leader Cástulo Chávez Eguez. Rafael’s brother Ñuflo Chávez Ortiz became a prominent leader of the mnr who, as minister of peasant affairs, oversaw the agrarian reform in 1953 and who served as the country’s vice president in 1956–57.

The Problem of the East  267

A Woman’s Realm Various Authors

The history of agrarian Bolivia has been analyzed and narrated almost entirely from male perspectives. The group of women quoted in this selection belonged to elite landowning families and were interviewed in the mid-­1990s, when they were in their sixties to eighties. They recalled their own lives as children, the memories of their mothers and grandmothers, and everyday life on haciendas around La Paz and Lake Titicaca before the agrarian reform of 1953, which overturned the hacienda regime. The testimonies depict the lives of women tied to the land, livestock, and artisanal manufacturing, in opposition to the world of politics, careers, and honor in the public sphere. They remember the distinctive spaces that women occupied, and how administering their possessions and even those of their husbands gave them greater autonomy. While the women recognize that they were the owners of the land and of people’s lives, they also remember a common culture with indigenous communities that encompassed elements from food to spirituality. This stands in contrast to the enormous separation and segregation between elites and indigenous communities in the present. In La Paz it was very common to talk about sheep, even in the city. Paceña society was made up of landlords. . . . They lived off the land. . . . Someone who speculates with shares on the stock exchange is not the same as someone who counts sheep. It is a society structured in another way. Most of society and our friends . . . were dedicated to the land. My life was talking about sheep, about the lambing, about the wool, about the baby lambs and all that, and I go to a world where people talked about shares in the Patiño [mining company]. .  .  . I almost went mad because I didn’t understand a thing. You can’t see those things; you can see a sheep. It’s a [real] thing, the land itself. . . .

The field of stockbreeding was in large part handled by women because, naturally, the men first of all were too proud to get involved in these matters of dung and wool, and generally they were in the city dedicating themselves to

268

trade or politics and, well, the ladies. . . . There was no danger; the countryside was a peaceful, quiet place. . . . My father was in the Rural Society because men are always involved in what is honorable.1 Mother administered [the property], and father was in the Rural Society.

I was a four-­year-­old girl, and I knew that there were two lambings a year, at Saint John’s [24 June] and at Christmas; we knew that there would be new lambs then, and we knew that automatically, when the ewes had given birth, there would be cheese, the famous sheep’s milk cheeses that we used to call Paria cheese. And we knew how cheese was made. . . . We knew that there were some ewes that did not have lambs, which were called machorras; so for us the machorra was a symbol for a barren woman. . . . So that world of nature and the animals influenced the way of life of all that group of society which did not live so close [to the land itself]. . . . But we knew that on a certain day we would have to be in the country to count the sheep, which was a ceremony. The Indians used little stones to count them. Ten [stones] on one side, ten on another, a quick system; it was like an abacus, with little stones. It was a decimal system for counting sheep. . . . That was all over the region, say from El Alto to Corocoro. I don’t know about other regions, but all the [landlord] ladies did the same.

Grandmother Rosa was a very hardworking woman, and not only did she keep up the estates and have them worked, but she also invested what she earned from them and then bought other estates around Lake [Titicaca]. . . . And when Grandfather died, she took over and really built up a fortune because she spent little: she did not waste money, she did not make gifts or donations to anyone. . . . So what I remember is that Grandmother not only maintained the inheritance which Grandfather left, but also multiplied it many times. Every day she noted the income in her own hand. “Today so much was sold in the shop,” “Today so much was sold to so-­and-­so,” “Señora Such-­and-­ such owes so much.” 2 . . . She got up early to receive visitors at eleven in the morning. . . . Before that, she had already done her accounts. When I arrived, I would ask, “Where’s Grandmother?” “She’s in her office.” My grandmother used to carry those big keys on her belt. . . . Mother . . . even in her old age had a sort of purse tied [around her waist] because she used a sort of robe or a long full skirt, and in it she put the money, and she was the only one who did the housekeeping. . . . Until her old age she maintained the economy of the house. . . .

A Woman’s Realm  269

My mother was not only the owner of the land and the lives of the people on it. . . . She was also a sort of judge, and [for] every kind of trouble, family problems, whether it was [marital], separation, murder, theft, my mother was named as judge. There was no going to court, and what my mother said was done; she spoke Aymara perfectly.

All that closeness to the countryside and the encounter with [Indian] culture has been lost. There was a shared culture, we [the landlords] were not strangers to them [the Indian tenants]; they did not consider us very distant from them. They did what was to be done, and we took part. We ate a lot of thayacha.3 The thayacha is made in the countryside. It was isaño, which is like the oca, but the eyes of the isaño are black. You boil it, and my mother made it [by laying the tubers out] on the roof [to freeze overnight]. The next day we ate it with honey or cane syrup. On the twenty-­fourth of June [for the naming of the jilaqatas], there was a really lovely festival. .  .  . The landlords brought a kerchief with candies, coca, cigarettes. All the single marriageable girls waded into the river, and the young men who wanted to make them fall in love splashed each other with water too. . . .

And also our relationship with the mountains—​­I, for example, have a relation of guardianship. I look at [Mount] Tuni Condoriri and I am perfectly fine; I have a problem and I get into my car and I look at Tuni Condoriri. . . . I have a terribly intense relationship with the mountain. I think that has stayed with me from when we played in the countryside. . . . And the thing about the ajayu [vital life force]4 —​­After [we had gone to play on the mountain], they always called [our ajayus] because they say that when you’ve been happy someplace, your soul stays there. And so, when we came [back to the city] from the estate, they called [our souls] several times. . . . Our ajayus would have stayed behind if they hadn’t called them. . . .

How different your life is when you put your hand in your pocket and are able to pay. Here, the man, since it’s a male chauvinist society, says to you, “If I only just gave you money, what have you done with it?” . . . It’s what is most humiliating. While if you have your own money, even if it’s only one hundred bolivianos, you buy what you want and that’s it. [In those days] the husband was still the head of the family, but my mother didn’t tell him exactly how much [money] she had. I don’t think we have advanced so much. A woman who works [for wages] has something, and in comparison to the man she may earn more, but she’s 270  Various Authors

always hanging on and subject to her partner. . . . Nowadays, you have to be young, pretty, work, and cook. Back then we had three roles; now they have seven roles. You have to be all things at once. For men it’s not like that.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The Rural Society was an association of landlords with large landholdings which lobbied for their interests. See also the selection titled “Landlord Counteroffensive,” also in part VII. 2. “Shop” is a translation of aljería, which refers to a warehouse, in the city, to which the Indian hacienda laborers brought the landlord’s produce to sell it to urban consumers. 3. Thayacha means, literally, “cold/frost-­made” in Aymara: a harvest-­time altiplano delicacy consisting in the Andean tuber isaño left out to freeze for just one night. It must be cooked and eaten that same morning as otherwise it becomes inedible. 4. Andean people are said to have several souls, and the ajayu is one of them. The ajayu represents a vital force or energy which dies when the person dies. During life, it is not located in the physical body but goes before or around it at a certain distance, and a severe shock or fright can cause it to get separated from the body, after which it has to be called back. It is interesting to note in this testimony that the ajayu needs to be called back from a place where one has been happy.

A Woman’s Realm  271

Everyday Life on the Hacienda Marta Colque and the Andean Oral History Workshop

For Marta Colque, the past of the hacienda was associated with hard work from dawn to dusk, scarcity and poverty, and the constant lack of food. In contrast, she recalled the community of her birth, Punku Uyu (near the town of Huarina on Lake Titicaca), as a fertile, green place of communal labor, cooking, and eating. Her life on the hacienda, which began with her “arranged” marriage to a tenant peasant farmer, was one of sustained suffering and deprivation, from which she was only partially liberated by the death of her husband and her return to her community of origin. This testimony forms part of an oral history project, conducted by the Andean Oral History Workshop (thoa), that recovered the voices and experiences of women who labored in servile conditions on the estate but also resisted the haciendas’ encroachment on their communities. The testimony that follows reveals the gender and power relations in the life of Colque’s family, community, and hacienda. I was taken there by verbal arrangement. We married without having ever met before. That’s how they took me there, with oral promises. I was raised by my uncles and grandparents; they got them drunk, and then they took me away. My uncles handed me over. That’s how I came to P’axchan Molino, which was a big hacienda. ... In the community, we worked as much as was necessary, but only for ourselves. We planted our crops among us all, family by family. We all had our afternoon meal in the fields together, cooking in large pots. It was always like this. During Carnival and the Holy Week, our celebration, we cooked and ate together. We would go to green fields; I would bring my pot, and there we ate and we drank. ... It was different on the hacienda. There was too much work; we had almost no clothing. We worked only for the patrones [landlords], not for ourselves. Saturdays and Sundays, we washed our clothes, and there wasn’t enough time. That’s how it was. We had to go for fertilizer at five a.m. I always had to carry three meals on my back, with my baby on top and the other in my arms. Sometimes, I would almost fall into the water. The walk was very long, 272

through an immense field, and we had to walk the entirety of it. There were seven or eight sheepherding areas, and we had to get fertilizer from each of them. Shucking was the same; we went from farm to farm. And we had to carry the food to where the grain was being stacked. Fertilizing was the same, and plowing, too. We had until five p.m. to finish a furrow, with one person planting the seed and the other plowing. That’s what it was like. ... I had seventy-­five good sheep, not counting the so-­so ones. I began my marriage with this. I know what it’s like to sell a mule in order to buy a suit; I would buy him two suits by selling a bull. He had nothing. I made his poncho. He also knew how to sew. He could take any cloth or rough fabric and make himself a shirt, pants, or vest, and I would buy him the hat. That’s how it was. I dressed only him. It was because the hacienda made him use up his clothes. It was a large hacienda; we had time only on Saturdays and Sundays, and we couldn’t spend it spinning wool. That’s what it was like. The jilaqatas [community leaders] watched over us by making their whips dance; the overseer was on horseback. ... My children were small when they became fatherless. I raised them myself because he died soon after I had given birth to one of my daughters. He didn’t leave me anything: no clothes, not even food. My children’s father was very lazy. I said to myself, “So how am I going to care for them now?” I began to spin wool, from dawn until dusk. I then returned to my community; there, I had to work the earth with my hands. I made it all productive: it gave barley as big as wheat and also chuño. It was only after my husband’s death that I ate real food again. That’s how I lived.

Translated by Jean Friedman-­Rudovsky

Everyday Life on the Hacienda  273

Landlord Counteroffensive Eduardo del Granado

In a first blow to landlords, the progressive constitution of 1938 determined that private property was not an absolute right, and that property could be expropriated by the state if it did not fulfill a productive “social function” in the collective interest. The Indigenous Congress of 1945, sponsored by the government of President General Gualberto Villarroel, abolished labor servitude on the haciendas. In 1947, the Revolutionary Left Party (pir) went a step further, proposing a law for an agrarian reform institute. Eduardo del Granado, on behalf of the landlord class, vigorously responded to these attacks with a tract critical of the new proposal. The Rural Federation of Cochabamba, a regional association of the landed elite, approved the text, and the powerful Bolivian Rural Society, the national organization of landlords, subsequently republished it. In the face of pressures for agrarian reform coming from the left, Eduardo del Granado’s polemical text, which follows, defends the rural elite’s property rights and invokes its presumed technical and cultural superiority as a basis for agrarian productivity. It also denounces the perceived threat of tyrannical communism: if the institute were to take charge of the agricultural labor code and promote the unionization of rural workers, del Granado asserts, it would be following a ruinous Soviet model.

The Communist Assault by the PIR on Democracy and Agriculture Today, freedom finds itself under attack from communism. We, inspired by liberty, inherited from our older generations, take up the pen to defend it. The Rural Federation, breaking the silence and the indifference which surrounds us, believes it is our duty to defend the institutions that are the guardians of democracy and the vital interests of agriculture, endangered by the “project for the reform of the agrarian institute.” Previous constitutions effectively consolidate the life and the rights of individuals, protecting property, work, and capital, the freedom of industry and of commerce. [The text criticizes Article 17 of the Bolivian Constitution of 1938, which insists on the “social function” of property, and debates the meaning of the 274

“collective interest.”] Who represents the collective interest? Since when does the exercise of private property damage the collective interest? What is left of the rights and freedoms of the individual when the state assumes direct administration? Nothing. . . . In other terms, democracy has been converted into a rhetorical word, and the state is the effective owner of lives and haciendas, since in the end it is the only great property owner. Following the communist inspirations of our constitutional legislation [from 1938], the project for the agrarian reform institute is another blow to democracy and agriculture. A simple reading of the project leads us to this conclusion, for its tendencies can be summarized in three points: 1. the substitution of the republic by communist principles; 2. the abolition of private property and individual rights, replacing them with state centralism via a planned and directed economy; 3. the poverty and misery derived from this tyranny and the consequent reduction of production. Article 5 [of the proposed law] expresses this with clarity: the agricultural estates that would be expropriated may be exploited individually or collectively in accordance with what the Institute of Agrarian Reform would dictate with respect to this, considering the proposals of rural associations, peasant unions, and so on. The aim of expropriation is to give the colono [hacienda peon] the land of his landlord, for which the state would have to expend immense sums and thereafter establish collective farms, poorly administered by public employees, and on the other hand fortify communal systems, which instead of being a factor for progress are an obstruction, due to collective ownership, which brings with it all sorts of difficulties. We do not understand what kind of technical value can be found in the chaos of collective property within the communal system. Nor do we know that allocating land to the peasants is the means to increase the production of foodstuffs, raw materials of plant origin, and to provide well-­being for rural workers. Experience shows that quite the opposite is the case. The peasants, whether as smallholders or members of communities, have never been factors of progress, due to their conservative spirit, bound to the routine of their ancestors and to their mentality, full of prejudices, which attributes plant diseases, pests, and floods to supernatural punishment. Because of this, in community lands you will not see dikes, irrigation works, roads, new forms of cultivation, experimental studies, or the use of machinery. All these are due to the initiative of the landlord, who according to the communists is an exploiter, who should be attacked relentlessly, stripping him of all his rights and burdening him with taxes. Among [the rights that would be recognized for peasants], the most dangerous is . . . to guarantee the organization of agricultural laborers in unions, with the aim of obtaining the full recognition of their rights. This article . . . Landlord Counteroffensive  275

has an exclusively political end, aimed at provoking the class struggle of the colonos against the landlords. The leftists attempt to legalize demagoguery with indigenous uprisings, looting, work stoppages, and massacre of landlords, offering [the peasants] the mirage of the defense of their rights. . . . We do not know what the rights of the indigenous population are, whose full recognition would be obtained by the unions directed, naturally, by communist elements. The project talks about the “economic plot” [parcela económica] and of the allocation of land to the peasants. To put it another way, the unions, with the right to strike, will take over the landlords’ property, with assistance from the state. . . . Once private property has disappeared, the communist government, sole owner of agriculture, will begin by enslaving the Indian [indígena], submitting him to forced labor, determining a yearly supply of food for him, so as to sell his harvests and enrich the real exploiters, throwing the nation into poverty and misery. . . . The landlord’s authority over his colonos responds to the imperious necessity of discipline and organization in agricultural labor. This organization is carried out with attention to the peculiarities of the landscape. . . . In consequence, it would be absurd to impose, in general terms, a working day of eight hours, with three days for the landlord and another three for the colono, . . . [because irrigation and cultivation should be carried out] when nature demands it and not according to a timetable. Care of the sown plots, of the granaries, of animals used for traction, and of the herds also requires continual and immediate attention. Should these services be abolished out of devotion to the timetable and rejection of servitude? The proposal of the “economic plot,” which would be allocated as property to the colono, is another communist absurdity. In the estancias, the Indians sow wherever they like and occupy as much land as they are capable of without restrictions, for their own exclusive use.1 Under our current regime, the relations between the landlord and his colonos develop according to traditional customs, which the Indians observe with pleasure. The landlord has always been the advisor, doctor, lawyer, and partner of his colonos. Their [mutual] interest in increasing production unites them in harmony. If the landlord is abusive, the colono leaves [the estate], or has the right to complain to the authorities. There is no right without an obligation. These rights and obligations, both of the landlord and of the peasant, should be subjected to the freedom of the contract. Just as it is impossible to oblige the peasant to serve the landlord or to suffer his abuses, neither can the latter be stripped of his legitimate property rights or be forced to work with lazy, insolent, or thieving colonos. The culturalization and technical instruction of the peasantry can be provided by the state without the need to unionize the indigenous population. . . . What kind of culturalization is that which foments hatred between social 276  Eduardo del Granado

classes? Experience shows us that the Indian and even the [lowland] savage, in a superior environment, acquire a civilized way of life. In reality, what Bolivia needs is a strong flow of selected immigrants to raise the cultural [level] of its masses and populate the extensive vacant territories inhabited by savages.2 If the government adopts this route for its policies, within a few decades Bolivia will be a strong industrial nation, flourishing just like the other South American countries that surround us.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. In the Andes, estancias were small clusters of houses in mountainous or rural areas. On the hacienda, estancias were the sites where colonos had their houses and the usufruct plots they received in exchange for their unpaid labor services. 2. Del Granado was implying that the indigenous population needed to acquire European culture and civilization. “Savages” referred to the native inhabitants of the rainforest in the Amazonian lowlands, who were considered of an even lower cultural level than were the indigenous inhabitants of the Andes. The land rights of “savages” were also more tenuous, given that the territories they inhabited were deemed simply “vacant” (baldíos); the “savages” did not count as occupants, and thus their territories were open to colonization.

Landlord Counteroffensive  277

“Land to Those Who Work It” Government of Bolivia

“Lands to the Indian, Mines to the State” was first put forth as a slogan by the socialist writer Tristán Marof in 1926 and gained ground after the Chaco War, capturing revolutionary aspirations to recast society and economy. The calls for agrarian reform from the left accompanied the growing levels of organization and mobilization in the countryside during the 1930s and 1940s. When the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) came to power in April 1952, it sought to cement an alliance with the rural sector which, according to the 1950 census, still represented 73 percent of the population. Only a few months after the triumphant insurrection, the government created the Ministry of Peasant Affairs, and the number of peasant unions rapidly multiplied, some with “armed regiments.” The mnr initially intended to reform the servile labor regime but not to challenge large capitalist estates. But the direct action of peons on haciendas as well as Indian reclamation of communal lands pushed the government to pass a more radical law for the redistribution of property. It was the second major agrarian reform in Latin America, after Mexico’s, which had unfolded both more slowly and with greater violence. The first peasant unions had emerged in Cochabamba in the Ucureña area, in 1936. President Víctor Paz Estenssoro returned to the same location on 2 August 1953, to promulgate the Agrarian Reform Decree, in Spanish with oral translations in Quechua and Aymara. The announcement was met with the warm applause of the hardened hands of about one hundred thousand peasants and indigenous people who had arrived from all over the country for the historic occasion. (The 2nd of August had been declared the “Day of the Indian” in 1937, in honor of the foundation of the Warisata ayllu-­school in 1931, and also coincided with the anniversary of the death of the independence soldier and Quechua poet Juan Wallparimachi in 1815.) This measure, together with others for universal suffrage and public education, went further than independence in 1825 or any subsequent event to incorporate the peasant and indigenous majority into the Bolivian nation. The eleven prefatory clauses that follow reflect the general spirit of the decree. The first two foundational articles establish national ownership of natural resources, the priority of national public interest over private property, and reaffirm the 1938 Constitution’s stipulation that private property fulfill a social function. Other important articles declare an end to the “feudal” estate (latifundio); guarantee lands for dis278

possessed indigenous communities, former hacienda workers, and all who wished to undertake new cultivation; promote peasant unionization; and confirm the abolition of rural servitude, which had first been decreed by the Gualberto Villarroel government in 1945. 2 August 1953 Enactment of the Agrarian Reform Law Víctor Paz Estenssoro

Constitutional President of the Republic, Whereas: From precolonial times, the Incas, in spite of the poor development of their productive forces and the rudimentary techniques that characterized their economic regime, assured to their people the satisfaction of their needs by preserving their forms of collective ownership and the cultivation of land and exercising wise management and regulating production and consumption; The Spanish conquest and colonization, without completely eliminating the forms of production of the indigenous past, violently dislocated the agrarian economy of the Inca empire and transformed it into a predominantly extractive economy focused on minerals, thereby leading to the impoverishment of the indigenous populations and the oppression of the native worker under the forced regime of the mita in the work of the mines—​­particularly in Potosí—​­and yanaconazgo in agriculture and in the mills;1 Despite the material and spiritual protection of the Laws of the Indies, the indigenous race, through the imposition of a semi-­feudal system with its repartimientos and encomiendas, was unfairly dispossessed and subjected to personal and unpaid servitude, establishing, for the first time, the problem of the Indian and the land, not as a racial or a pedagogical problem, but essentially as a social and economic one;2 To the dispossession, slavery, and servitude was added an oppressive tax system so inhuman and degrading that it was the main cause of the bloody uprisings of Tupac Amaru, Julián Apaza, and the Katari brothers and their eagerness to reclaim the usurped lands and to liberate the native population from the cruel exploitation of the encomenderos, tax collectors, corregidors, and caciques; In 1825, when the republic was proclaimed, the feudal creoles distorted the political and economic aspirations that drove the War of Independence, and instead of destroying the colonial heritage and creating a true national and democratic revolution, they consolidated the process of concentrating land to the benefit of some landowners and maintaining the servile status, cultural backwardness, and political oppression of the “Land to Those Who Work It”  279

national majority, thereby spoiling the possibilities of further development based on capitalist economic foundations; Finally, the financial penetration of imperialism, which began in the last decade of the past century, also did not modify the structure of the feudal-­colonial system and land ownership, but, on the contrary, the mining industry subordinated the national interest to its own, thereby turning the country into a monoproducing extractive semi-­colony in such a way that the vast resources from mining, instead of promoting the industrialization of the countryside, almost completely strangled the traditional agricultural subsistence economy; Whereas: The feudal land owners, in close alliance with the mining consortium that existed until 31 October 1952, because they are an obstacle to the capitalist development of agriculture, because they have not overcome primitive production methods through the use of modern technical-­ agricultural means, because they have banished the indigenous population from civilized life, and finally, because they have directly or indirectly been implicated in the periodic massacres of workers and peasants, have demonstrated their inability to evolve according to the historical needs of the country; Whereas: By virtue of the uneven development of the nation’s productive forces, the present distribution of a significant proportion of rural property in Bolivia, which was accomplished by means of the dispossession of indigenous people, legal fraud, and administrative levy, is unfair, flawed, contradictory, and irrational; Whereas: Article 6 of the Law of 13 November 1886, Article 4 of the Law of 26 October 1905, Article 3 of the Law of 11 September 1915, and Article 28 of the Decree of 20 June 1907 have expressly nullified the public-­land concessions that have not complied with the conditions of population and farming; In the execution of the aforementioned legal provisions, especially the Supreme Decree of 28 December 1938, all these lands should revert to state ownership for purposes of colonization, immigration, and other requirements of public utility and necessity; Whereas: By order of Article 17 of the Constitution, property must fulfill a “social function” in order to be recognized; In turn, Article 107 of the same charter grants the right to impose limits on the use of property that the public interest may dictate, as well as to plan, regulate, and rationalize the implementation of these limits; Because of the archaic systems used in its exploitation and in the forms 280  Government of Bolivia

of servitude in work, rural property has not fulfilled its social function and instead has become an obstacle to the country’s progress; The public interest is determined by the social need to make lands available for cultivation, granting them to those who will work them; According to the data obtained from the 1950 census, it was found that only 4.5 percent of all the landowners in the country retained 70 percent of private land ownership, with parcels between 1,000 and 10,000 hectares under semi-­feudal forms of exploitation, thereby demonstrating how land was concentrated in a few hands; As a result of unfair, unequal, and defective land distribution and primitive forms of work, the low percentage of cultivation in relation to the total area under ownership is evident in the following breakdown: Properties cultivated by the owner himself Properties cultivated with the help of settlers, laborers, etc. Rented properties Properties of indigenous communities

1.50% 2.44% 2.66% 2.86%

Whereas: In the ownership and new structure of land, it is necessary to privilege smaller properties, since these are the essential means of life for the peasant worker; At the same time, the midsized properties, whose production is the basis for supplying cities and the mines, must also be preserved; Whereas: As a result of inequality in land tenure and the broken system of exploitation that characterizes it, Bolivia has limited agricultural production, even to satisfy the needs of domestic supply, for which the state spends about 35 percent of its foreign currency, which could be invested in other urgent needs; The same irrational and unfair distribution of land ownership and the culpable indifference of oligarchic governments, which failed to protect the peasant worker, led to the depopulation of the Bolivian countryside, whose masses, unable to obtain the means of subsistence in the countryside, constantly migrate in search of work to mining centers, cities, and foreign countries, thereby causing incalculable damage to the demographic interest of the nation and to crop and livestock production; That such a situation is attributable not only to the insignificant peasant economy, in the context of the economy of the country as a whole, but also to the inability of those governments that, forgetting the supreme national interest and in order not to infringe on the privileges of gamonalismo of large landowners, never legislated a rational system of rural land survey and taxation;3 Whereas: “Land to Those Who Work It”  281

The dispossession of indigenous property and the regime of servitude sustained throughout the republican era has likewise resulted in the illiteracy of 80 percent of the adult population in Bolivia, in the complete absence of any technical education for the peasant producer, and through the contempt for artistic traditions, the values of national folklore, and the ethnic characteristics of the native worker; Due to such a state of servitude and consequent backwardness and ignorance, the indigenous population of Bolivia, housed in unsanitary and squalid homes, deprived of health care, malnourished, and impaired in a spiritual and economic sense, displays shocking levels of morbidity and mortality, as numerous national and foreign researchers have shown; Whereas: The national revolution, in its agrarian program, aims essentially to enhance the current production levels in the country, to transform the feudal system of land tenure and land use, imposing a fair redistribution among those who work it, and to incorporate the indigenous population into national life, validating it in its economic importance and its human condition; In compliance with these postulates, the Land Reform Commission created by Executive Order No. 03301 and composed of people with various points of view and different areas of technical expertise has, at the end of its labors, laid the historical, sociological, legal, economic, and administrative foundations for the reform; The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement—​­which is an expression of the majority of workers, peasants, and the middle class—​­in fulfilling its program of historic achievements, social justice, and economic liberation, and echoing the vigorous pronouncements of Congress and university federations and of leftist political parties and progressive sectors of Catholicism about this enormous problem, establishes work as a basic source of rights, as the manner of acquiring ownership of the land; In accordance with such antecedents, the fundamental objectives of the agrarian reform are to: Provide arable land to peasants who do not have it or have very little, provided that they work it, expropriating, for this reason, the land of landowners who have it in excess or who enjoy an absolute rent not coming from their personal work in the fields; Return the lands that were usurped to indigenous communities and cooperate in the modernization of their agriculture, respecting and taking advantage, to the extent possible, of their collectivist traditions; Free the peasant workers from their status as servants, outlawing unpaid services and personal obligations; Encourage the greater productivity and marketing of the agricultural industry by facilitating the investment of new capital, respecting small 282  Government of Bolivia

President Víctor Paz Estenssoro consolidated the MNR’s alliance with the indigenous peasantry. Courtesy of Archivo de La Paz (ALP).

and medium farmers, promoting agricultural cooperatives, providing technical assistance, and opening up the possibilities for credit; Conserve the natural resources of the territory by adopting the necessary technical and scientific measures; Promote the internal migration of rural population, now excessively concentrated in the inter-­A ndean zone, in order to obtain a rational distribution of people, to consolidate national unity, and to link economically the eastern and western parts of Bolivian territory; Whereas: Land reform should be assured through the application of scientific management systems in matters of planning, rationalization, organization, oversight, and the accurate attribution of essential faculties to the bodies responsible for their implementation; Whereas: Ultimately, the success of the national revolution, the liberation of the forces of agricultural production, the consolidation of democracy, unity, and social peace in the political and economic spheres depend critically on the full realization of the agrarian reform; With legislative approval,

“Land to Those Who Work It”  283

Decrees:

Part I: On Agricultural Property Chapter I: On the Fundamental Rights of the Nation Article 1. The soil, subsoil, and territorial waters of the republic belong by original right to the Bolivian nation.

Article 2. The state recognizes and guarantees private land ownership when it serves a useful function for the national community; it plans, regulates, streamlines, and aims toward the equitable distribution of land to ensure freedom and the economic and cultural welfare of the Bolivian population.

Chapter II: On the Forms of Agrarian Property Article 12. The state does not recognize the latifundio, which is rural property of large size, which may vary according to its geographical location, which remains idle or is exploited deficiently by the extensive system with the use of obsolete tools and methods resulting in a waste of human effort . . . so that its profitability depends on the disequilibrium among the factors of production, fundamentally dependent on the surplus value produced by the peasants in their capacity as serfs or tenant-­farmers, which is appropriated by the landowner as income, thus constituting a system of feudal oppression reflected in agricultural backwardness and a low standard of living and culture among the peasant population.

Part II: On Affected Property Chapter I: On Concentration of Land article 29. This legislative decree establishes the bases for the achievement of economic and political democracy in the rural area through the designation and grant of lands affected as established under its provisions. article 30. The latifundio shall be abolished. The possession of large agrarian property or of other forms of large concentration of land by private persons and by entities which, by their legal structure, hinder its equitable distribution among the rural population shall not be permitted.

Chapter VI: On Restitution of Lands Article 42. Those lands wrongfully taken from the indigenous communities from 1 January 1900 onward will be returned to them once their rights are proven according to special regulations.

Chapter XI: On Land Belonging to Indigenous Communities Article 57. Indigenous communities are the private owners of the lands in their joint possession. Family allotments resulting from [land] surveys

284  Government of Bolivia

or recognized by custom within each community shall constitute family private property. Article 60. Peasants in the indigenous community do not recognize any form of personal service obligations or the obligation to make contributions in kind. The political, military, municipal, and religious authorities commit the crime of abuse of authority when they demand such contributions.

Part V: On Grants of Ownership Chapter I: On Preference in the Right of Grants of Ownership Article 77. All Bolivians over the age of eighteen years, without regard to sex, who are engaged or wish to be engaged in agricultural labor will be granted ownership of lands where available, in accordance with government projects and provided that within the term of two years they initiate agricultural activities. Article 78. Peasants who have been subject to feudal work and a system of exploitation in their capacity as siervos, obligados, arrimantes, pegujaleros, agregados, forasteros, and so on, and who are over eighteen years of age, married males over fourteen years of age, and widows with children who are minors shall, on the proclamation of this decree, be declared owners of the parcels in their present possession and cultivated by them, until the National Agrarian Reform Service shall grant them all that they are reasonably entitled to in accordance with the definitions of small property or shall compensate them in the form of the collective cultivation of lands that will enable them to meet their family needs.4

Part IX: On Peasant Organizations Chapter IV: On Peasant Unions Article 132. The peasant union shall be recognized as an instrument for the defense of the rights of its members and of the maintenance of social progress. The peasant unions shall participate in the implementation of the agrarian reform. They may be independent or affiliated with central bodies.

Part X: Regime of Peasant Labor Article 144. The colonato system [labor-­tenancy on the estate] and all other forms of free or compensatory personal service shall be abolished. The peasant worker shall be incorporated into the nation’s social-­legal system with all the rights guaranteed by law.

“Land to Those Who Work It”  285

Part XVI: Final and Transitional Provisions Article 175. A translation of this legislative decree in the Aymara, Quechua, and Guaraní languages, usefully summarized and simplified, shall be published so that the peasant populations in all the rural districts may thoroughly familiarize themselves with the new rights afforded to them. Article 177. From this day, 2 August 1953, the system involving free labor service prevailing in agriculture shall be permanently abolished and the right to a grant of lands with title of ownership, in favor of all peasants of Bolivia, shall be proclaimed. Translated by Adriana Salcedo Notes 1. Yanaconazgo was the colonial institution of bonded Indian labor inherited from the Inca period. Yanaconas were Indians permanently attached to an estate and subject to the landowner. 2. The repartimiento was the allocation of Indian labor by the Spanish Crown to its colonists. In the Andes, the more common term for this practice became the mita. The encomienda was a grant of Indian vassals by the Spanish Crown to an encomendero, usually a conquistador or colonial officer. 3. Gamonalismo is an Andean term referring to exploitative local bosses, usually landlords, who exercised de facto power in the countryside, in the absence of effective central state government. 4. Siervo, obligado, arrimante, pegujalero, agregado, and forastero are various terms used for peasant laborers on estates.

286  Government of Bolivia

The Catavi Massacre Víctor Paz Estenssoro

With the onset of World War II, Bolivia’s tin supply became increasingly important to the U.S. war effort. Mineworkers were also increasingly aware of the value of their labor and began to organize and pressure for increases in their modest wages. The mineowners likewise pressured the government of President General Enrique Peñaranda (1940–43) to suppress trade-­union and strike activity. The conflict came to a head in Simón Patiño’s Catavi mine on 21 December 1942, when troops opened fire on a demonstration of workers. The government claimed that nineteen protestors died and thirty were wounded, while the opposition cited hundreds of casualties. The massacre generated international repudiation, including in the United States, where the social-­democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt administration found itself in the awkward position of importing tin stained with the blood of Bolivian workers. Within Bolivia, the incident provoked dramatic parliamentary debate in 1943, as the recently formed Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) and the Marxist Revolutionary Left Party (pir) denounced the nexus between a repressive government, mineowning plutocrats, and United States imperialism. The most compelling voice heard was that of a young mnr congressman from Tarija, Víctor Paz Estenssoro. Astutely, Paz Estenssoro sought to rehabilitate the image of the armed forces while condemning the government, and to distance the mnr from the Marxist left while seeking to represent proletarian workers. The massacre catalyzed major political changes in the country. The powerful movement within Congress to censure the massacre dealt a severe blow to the Enrique Peñaranda government, which, in late 1943, was overthrown in a coup that joined the ascendant mnr with dissident military officers led by General Gualberto Villarroel. In 1944, under the Villarroel government, the miners formed their first national labor organization, the Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers (fstmb). Its identity would be forever marked by the memory of the martyrs of Catavi. This analysis, perhaps wearisome, which I have carried out, leads to certain conclusions. The demand for a pay increase was justified from the start. This should simply have been negotiated between the workers and the company, with the intervention of the state, to determine the quantum of the increase. The company refused, opting for the route of violence; the government was 287

Mineworker in the Catavi mine in Oruro, owned by Simón Patiño, in 1938. He carries the instruments of his trade—an acetylene gas lamp and explosive material. He is fortified by a plug of coca leaves (acullico) in his cheek, but wears no protective helmet. Courtesy of the archive of CEPROMIN (Centro de Promoción Minera).

Indigenous women sorting ore on a belt in the mill. Courtesy of the archive of CEPROMIN (Centro de Promoción Minera).

its docile instrument. I maintain that in the massacre of Catavi the use of violence was a probe on the part of the company, to test the reaction of the Bolivian people. The analysis, which I have outlined, of the economic structure of Bolivia, of its system of government, as the cause of the phenomenon of the strike, does not mean to say that we congressmen of the mnr excuse the direct authors of the massacre from responsibility, which would be the equivalent of admitting that they acted impersonally and without responsibility as factors of capitalist barbarity. No, personal responsibilities cannot be discarded. I am not interested in defending the pir . Due to our nationalist feelings, we [of the mnr] have great divergences [from the pir]. What happened in Catavi, Messrs. Representatives . . . (A claque ready to impede the orator from continuing his speech bursts out shouting. Once calm is reestablished, he goes on.) It appears that the word Catavi touches the conscience of the government and its agents! I was saying, Messrs. Congressmen, that the conflict in Catavi is not a quarrel between the pir and the Interior Ministry. It is a much wider and more serious question. In the first place, we need to clear up the confusion that the press, in the service of mining interests, attempts to spread in public opinion when it claims that the events in Catavi have been left behind and [that] at present it is the pir’s communism the state is interested in destroying, for having caused the events in Catavi. Catavi is not a problem of the pir , Mr. President. The tragedy of Catavi, as I said before, has set a tragic reality before the eyes of the people. But not even that is the measure of the whole magnitude of the problem, Mr. President. What happened in Catavi is not even an exclusive concern of the workers; it is a problem for the whole of Bolivia. If the only way to react to the demand for a pay raise were violence, all possibility of improving the situation of the workers would be annulled. What happened yesterday, in that mining settlement, could happen again tomorrow in La Paz, in Oruro, wherever the workers, driven by hunger, attempt to improve their conditions. Railway workers, tram drivers, miners would never now be able to declare themselves on strike, because, subjected to bullets, they would suffer the same fate as their comrades in Catavi. (Applause) I was saying, Mr. President, that this massacre of workers is yet more serious. It concerns the nation, and is closer to the miscarriage of a vast plan to subordinate Bolivia. The action of the press, sowing Machiavellian confusion in the assessment of the fundamental problems of the country; the policy that tends to divide the revolutionary forces; the skillful maneuvers of the rosca inside the army—​­all these symptoms more than demonstrate a vast plot, vast and shadowy, aimed at liquidating the sovereignty of the nation. [The plotters] seek to introduce splits in the army and then, in virtue of the The Catavi Massacre  289

The Uru-speaking Chipaya people who inhabited the southern altiplano provided firewood that heated the furnaces to dry the mineral. Courtesy of the archive of CEPROMIN (Centro de Promoción Minera).

Railway built by Simón Patiño that connected the Catavi mining enclave to the OruroAntofagasta line, and thence to international markets. Courtesy of the archive of CEPROMIN (Centro de Promoción Minera).

decrees of December 1941, push it to intervene in social questions, all of this with a double aim.1 In the first place, to have at their disposal the weapon of violence, putting social questions in the hands of the army, which is not the conciliatory organ required for their solution. The army, by its very essence, is violence organized in the service of the state; in putting the conflict in Catavi in its hands, [the plotters] managed to precipitate a bloodbath, thus obtaining an effective benefit: not accepting a single percentage point increase in pay. The workers were given a warning, but at the same time, the second goal of the mineowners was obtained: to separate the people from the army. After Catavi, the working classes breathe hatred and rancor against Colonel [Luis Angel] Cuenca. It is the case that the people do not bother to consider details; they do not accept the explanations of the ministers; however they attempt to justify things, no one will extract from the hearts of the hundred thousand miners of Bolivia that Colonel Cuenca is the assassin of Catavi! (Loud applause) The goal of dividing the people from the army has been pursued by the rosca in a subtle, intelligent way, sure of annulling [the army’s] political possibilities, which coincides with the argument of the right-­w ing press, which denies that the military has a right to intervene in politics.2 This goal has been achieved in Catavi, Mr. President, but at what a price: the honor of the Bolivian Army! (Applause) At times, I feel sorry for the fate of Colonel Cuenca. In one of his reports he says that he is ready to sacrifice his military career before shooting at the people. Nevertheless, he had to shoot them; they put him in that dilemma, those were his orders. And Colonel Cuenca is now alone, like a damned soul, pursued by regrets for a crime that perhaps he did not commit but that torments him. Who will liberate him from the ghosts of the miners he massacred because he was ordered to do so? I have opened the wound of this topic, scandalous and delicate as it is, Honorable Members, and it is necessary to establish certain distinctions. The army is not composed of the few officers who aim to place the armed forces at the service of international capital. (Applause) The Bolivian Army consists of those leaders and officers who are training day by day in the study of national problems. It is those who seek to know what lies at the root, behind the façade of the political institutions of Bolivia. It is those who, when [Mauricio] Hochschild attempted to make use of the declaration of war and, on the pretext that the workers did not yield enough at work, requested the establishment of a new system of basic pay, proudly rejected his pretensions, demonstrating that he deceived his workers and the nation with the miserly salaries he imposed on the miners. That is the army of the nation, Mr. President. And neither the subtleties of the politics of the rosca nor the power of money will be sufficient to separate that army from the heart of the Bolivian people. (Applause) The Catavi Massacre  291

No less damaging is the campaign to discredit social leaders. The workers, the middle class, the artisans do not distinguish the subtle, subterranean motives that lie at the root of those campaigns. Hence, it will be the case that if they manage to shake the faith of the people, the people will abandon their leaders, and the masses will be incapable of taking any action for their own improvement. They will have no choice but to wallow in impotence, pain, and slavery. Economic interests attack social leaders, interests without feelings for the nation, interests that yesterday supported General [Francisco] Franco [of Spain]—​­that is to say, totalitarians, Nazis—​­and today are the champions of democracy, because the way the wind blows, and the magnet of easy money which turns pygmies into giants, thus determines it. (Applause) Those interests, following an old tactic, attack social leaders as they do the political leaders who are concerned for the masses. Dr. Canelas, commenting on this tactic of headhunting, mentioned this anecdote: a tyrant of antiquity, who had dominated his people for many years, when he was asked about the methods that he used to remain in power, took his interlocutors to a wheat field and set to cutting the ears that stood out above the rest. “This is all that I ever do,” he answered. There is no difference with what happens in many countries in Latin America. The tyranny of [Juan Vicente] Gómez in Venezuela is enough of a lesson.3 For how many years did he annul any possibility of citizen action in [Simón] Bolívar’s homeland! And why? So as to calmly hand over Venezuela’s wealth to foreigners. (Applause) They speak to us about discipline and order; but the concepts of discipline and order are neither good nor bad on their own. Discipline and order are good according to what they are used for. If order and discipline are conditions for the benefit of companies that exploit Bolivia, cursed be order and discipline in Bolivia! (Applause) We have very lengthy experience of this matter. The indigenous class in Bolivia has been oppressed for centuries. What is the result? The personality of the Bolivian Indians was destroyed, as was shown in the Chaco War. There is something else. A policy of absolute oppression leads to the absolute impoverishment of the nation, crushing it flat, making it impossible for the workers to react, and its goal is no other than guaranteeing the peaceful extraction of national wealth for the benefit of international capital. In addition, national capital also loses, because an impoverished country and a miserable people do not offer other possibilities apart from those of the great mines, whose wealth leaves and does not return. This is not a question that affects only the workers. Even those few servants of the great companies, who collect fat fees and salaries, will be hurt; they will have to receive less pay, because the country will be stunted. Once all resistance has been elimi-

292  Víctor Paz Estenssoro

nated, any bubble of social unrest will be eliminated; but the stipend of the Bolivians will be subject to the whims of the masters of Bolivia. The army will be replaced by a praetorian guard. No more arms will be purchased, because this translates into higher taxes. This does not interest international capital, which has no homeland, nor is it concerned with danger; today it has an understanding with one nation in order to exploit its resources, tomorrow with another, which it invades and takes over its wealth. . . . Even if this debate had turned out, as the minister of the interior hoped, to be the funeral of the Revolutionary Left Party, I believe that, even in that case, the danger of communism would not have disappeared in Bolivia. . . . The Minister knows that the Comintern infiltrates its agents in exactly those countries where greater poverty is evident, where there is more hunger, that breeding ground for the development of the communist virus. The minister of the interior complained of the weakness of the Bolivian state. Evidently, it is weak when it faces the great companies; but it is very strong when it faces up to the workers. We, the members of parliament of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, do not just take notes on what happens in politics. That is the task of those who collect data for history. We are political militants, and rather than writing, we prefer to make history. In that condition, as a coming historical force, I declare in its name, Messrs. Congressmen, that if General Peñaranda and his ministers are not punished for the massacre in Catavi, the people will have locked themselves in the chains of slavery. (Applause)

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The Peñaranda regime ordered that high levels of tin production be kept up in order to supply the United States as it entered World War II against the Axis powers. The regime militarized the mining camps and declared that any interference with production, such as strike activity, would be subject to military authority. 2. In the late 1930s, the Bolivian military had allied with the left to introduce important economic and constitutional reforms. 3. Juan Vicente Gómez was a famous Venezuelan strongman who ruled from 1908 to 1935, a period during which foreign interests (the United States primarily) came to dominate the country’s oil wealth.

The Catavi Massacre  293

Mines as Cemeteries Sergio Almaraz Paz

The metaphor and reality of death were central to Sergio Almaraz Paz’s eloquent political essay Requiem for a Republic (1969). A left-­nationalist critic of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, Almaraz (1928–68) felt that the revolution had succumbed even before the advent of right-­w ing military regimes in the 1960s. He also dedicated a chapter of his dark book to the grim destiny of mineworkers. In his account, the highland mining camps were cemeteries full of men who aged and died prematurely, whose bodies were poisoned, and whose labor enriched New York and London more than it did their own homeland. One has to get to know a mining settlement in Bolivia in order to discover how much man is capable of resisting. How do he and his offspring cling to life! There are poor suburbs in all the cities of the world, but the poverty in the mines has its own retinue: surrounded by eternal wind and cold, it curiously ignores man. There is no color—​­nature has dressed in grey. The minerals, contaminating the belly of the earth, have laid it waste. At four or five thousand meters above sea level, where not even bunchgrass grows, lies the mining settlement.1 The mountain, angered by man, wishes to expel him. Poisoned water wells from that metal-­fi lled belly. In the mineshafts, the constant dripping of a yellowish and evil-­smelling liquid called copagira burns the miners’ clothing. Hundreds of kilometers away, where there are rivers with fish, death arrives in the form of the liquid poison proceeding from the waste heaps of the ore-­processing mills. The ore is extracted and cleaned but the earth is dirtied. Wealth is exchanged for poverty. And there, in that cold, seeking protection in the lap of the mountain, where not even weeds dare to live, are the miners. Settlements lined up with the symmetry of prisons, low-­roofed shacks, walls of mud and stone lined with old newspapers, corrugated iron roofs, earth floors; the wind from the high plains creeps through the cracks, and the family huddled in improvised beds—​­usually a few sheepskins are enough—​­that doesn’t catch cold runs the risk of suffocating. Hidden behind those walls are the people of hunger and diseased lungs, those of the three shifts of the working day, the round of twenty-­four hours.2 Without past or future, this misery has swallowed everything. The settlement is 294

just lost there in some corner; outside it, loneliness; inside it, poverty. In this sordid eternity, its inhabitants recall the penal servitude of a Czarist village because one feels that they are equally segregated and a sentence hangs over their lives. It is the miners’ exile. This life cannot be borne for long. Workers aged thirty-­eight are already old. For each year of work in deep, hot, badly ventilated mines, they age three. The particles of dust produced by the drills driving into the rock remain stuck in the lungs, hardening them gradually until they produce, clearly and slowly, death. The shift has come to an end: shriveled, with a deathly complexion, inflamed eyes, overcome by huge fatigue, those who have taken their daily dose of annihilation return from the mineshaft. The disease for which there is neither a cure nor drugs is hidden as long as can be, but the burning eyes, the skin stuck like dry leather to the cheekbones, and the constant tiredness cannot be concealed for long. He and his comrades know what is going on; so do the women: when the first symptoms—​ ­vomiting blood—​­appear, they keep silent. There are no desperate gestures. The women understand and resign themselves to it. When they go to the chicha bar, they fondly say to their husbands, “Just have a drink.” And they drink to forget. In any case, they could not do much better adopting abstemious conduct, that is, if poverty were compatible with rich people’s virtue. Alcohol is the most innocent of the evasions and their only escape.3 The end will be brought on by a brief visit to the doctor; the certificate will say: “permanent and total incapacity.” This will be followed by a bizarre bureaucratic funeral in the social-­security offices in La Paz, where the dying man will struggle to achieve the qualification for a “pension” for incapacity, which will never be more than half his salary and often one-­third or a quarter. It is the way in which Bolivian society worries about the destiny of those who have been annihilated: the bacilli are thus reinforced by misery. The last days will take place in the hospital, where one day death will be produced by suffocation, given that those last remnants of lungs refuse to labor any more. At no point will the dying man have lost his lucidity. A short and intense existence has come to an end. It would have been an absurd adventure if at the moment of the final blink, the memory of those who will be left without protection did not piercingly penetrate that fading consciousness. Here is the reality: it is not the end of a solitary adventure. The man does not depart alone; his being is torn asunder because part of him will stay with his people whom he could not save from a fate for which he feels guilty. These condemned men are not the owners of the mineral. In truth, they never were. If anything really belongs to them it is death. They are not possessed by the “cursed thirst for gold” which Virgil speaks of; outsiders to their own fate, they have been nailed there by the mechanism of the world economy. Austere, more indifferent than resigned, they shield their hopes Mines as Cemeteries  295

behind a certain pose of skepticism. Neither sorrow nor bitterness. Often their interior tensions find relief in the chicha bar, where they can be seen merry and ready for a fight. In them it is not evident that “all the value that an oppressed man can have in his own eyes is understood in the hatred that he has for others. And friendship with his companions comes from the hatred which he feels for his enemies.” 4 They are of the lineage that does not live vengeance but rather life, and for them there is no time for rancor. The majority of miners is still made up of shy boys who, not long before, were working the land; the mine tempted them with wages and the pulpería [company store].5 In politics they are seduced by passionate causes because, contrary to all that is thought, they still believe in politics. If they could resist for a few months, they could cut off the flow of minerals and would crush the parasitic part of Bolivian society with an economic disaster. But they cannot do so: their food supply depends on the cities, and it is easy to defeat them through hunger. Despite everything, their skepticism is a slight thing with which to suffocate an ardent heart. Among them, love, friendship, loyalty are harsh and strong. Some women have been widowed three times. They seek out the widow of a dead comrade and ask her to take care of them. Their lives and feelings are purified. There are no showy gestures; morality, stripped of the unnecessary, is minimal and firm. A dark anxiousness for justice, an unconscious knowledge of their superiority predisposes them to solidarity with the human adventure. No mining family lacks someone to weep for. The men are accustomed to the idea of their premature end, but they do not renounce their condition; they simply accept it, and when they protest, it is for pay or against the excesses of the company. Let it be clearly understood: they gave up the greatest motive for rebellion when they decided to stay on as miners. Who would dare to ask them for more? Their demands do not invoke civilization. And they could well do so in a time of great words such as “human rights” or “defense of the dignity of man.” A hidden shame impedes them from establishing ideals or referring sentimentally to their misery. They prefer arrogance: it is the best way to display misery to the outsider who still dares to proclaim human rights in a country that insists on suppressing man. Their future has been delegated to their children, whom they would not like to see converted into miners. This is the most intimate expression of their rebellion. The austerity of their demands is the measure of their exile; the defense of their rights is foremost the drive to save their own from hunger. That at the very least . . . since against the harsh existence of the miners, against the overcrowding and dirt of the settlements, against illness and death, there is no defense possible. The vague idea that the outside world has of Bolivia is owed to tin and its men. The international division of labor and an economic order which is a reflection of the incoherence of the present day have imposed a double tax on 296  Sergio Almaraz Paz

them: more benefits are obtained from the fruits of their labor in New York and London than on the lonely mountain where it is carried out, and what little is left after the looting will serve to feed the parasitic part of a country that has no other existence than that of tin. Life in Bolivia would unfold in the harmony of a poor and solidary collectivity if its parasitic segment would recognize itself as such, but it has taken over the republic for itself and owns that power which is the extension of the international mechanism that has made the country into what it is. There is a monstrous reality: whoever has tin will have the country, but that possession signifies the destruction of those who produce it. Mining is the sinkhole through which the vitality of the country drains away. Over more than three centuries it left nothing, nothing at all. What was built for its service is already useless or soon will be.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Bunchgrass (stipa ichu) is a coarse, straw-­like grass that grows in thick clumps on the altiplano. 2. In the large mines, work is carried out in three shifts (puntas). The “round of twenty-­ four” (venticuatreo) is the working day of twenty-­four hours which takes place inside the mine, usually carried out by contract workers, workers paid according to the quantity of ore they extract, who in turn hire others. The maquipura, a temporary laborer, is a pariah; he has no rights and is a direct descendant of the mitayos and the mingados of colonial times. At present, in the nationalized mines, there are several thousand maquipuras. [Note in original.] 3. “There are approximately seven thousand miners with silicosis in different stages of the development of the disease who at present work for the Mining Corporation of Bolivia and private companies. Many of them die before starting the application for compensation or a pension from the National Social Security Fund. . . . There is a danger that the prevalence of silicosis and silicosis-­tuberculosis may increase in the mining industry, and the profits obtained may be insufficient to cover those persons damaged by the inadequate working conditions. In this way, it will determine the bankruptcy of government institutions such as comibol [the state mining company], the National Social Security Fund . . . with the consequent social and economic repercussions” (El Diario, 4 January 1968). In clinical terminology there is a new word for these diseases, “tin-­mine-­osis.” Thirty percent of the workers may suffer from it. [Note in original.] 4. Letter from Jean-­Paul Sartre to Albert Camus. [Note in original.] 5. Monopoly of foodstuffs and other articles, controlled by the mining company that sells them to the workers. [Note in original.]

Mines as Cemeteries  297

Mine Madness René Poppe

Tío is the name given to the numerous rough statues of the Devil that protect veins of minerals in strategic places in the mineshafts. The tío is always found sitting wrapped in streamers and confetti, with horns on his head and a big, erect penis. Miners sit with him during rest periods and chew coca leaf together, smoke, and share a drink. Miners are also the “devils” who come out at Carnival to dance in the streets by the thousands, above all in the mining city of Oruro. The tío is an adaptation to mining culture of old Andean agricultural beliefs about the fertile forces of the underworld that are both terrifying and sacred. The fortunes of the mines—​­whether a miner finds a rich vein or suffers an accident—​­depends on the tío. The miners who adhere to these beliefs can be at the same time militant revolutionaries. In times of repression, they often held clandestine meetings deep inside the mineshafts, near the tío. The interior of the mine is a sort of smelter where the Devil and Marx, the Andean imaginary and capitalist exploitation are amalgamated. It is said that one can go mad or die of fright if one encounters the tío while wandering through the mine. The unsettling short story that follows, by René Poppe, who himself worked in the mines in the Siglo XX district, reflects the workers’ belief that, after years underground, the miner becomes the Devil’s double. It happened to me when I went down into the mine. Not on the first shifts, because those days I was frightened, thinking that maybe the tunnels would collapse and in a minute the mountain would flatten me with its millions of tons. It was later, when I’d lost some of the fear. The day when, with the Toucan as my partner, the boss sent us off to cart loads from the ore-­heap behind the Capelina fault. In the tunnels, the Toucan complained in between explanations. He told me that the chunks of ore there were big ones, that there were a lot of bends to get around on the rails, that there were loads of stretches uphill over the ground, and the heat, hey, he warned me, it chokes you a lot and there’s no air. I was behind, lighting up his back with my lamp hooked on to my helmet, and keeping my eye on the solid rock all around us, I matched his paces, chewing my coca, smoking my kuyuna.1 Yes, sir, I replied, yes sirree, what a drag, and we went on walking. We went from one tunnel scattered with loose rocks to others with rails. We left this one 298

to another hot one, with a rain of gravel. To another, to another, to another, all different: short, long, narrow, wide, full of cold, hot, cold, warm, and in the surroundings always a touch of gases. The Toucan asked me if I was new, yes, sir, where are you from, from San Pedro, have you got parents, they’re in the harvest, sir, you got used to the mine, I listened to him, at first it’s tough, I said nothing, you can spot a new boy right off, and I listened to him, after a while you won’t even want to leave, arí, sir, come over here, son, what is it, sir?, come here, I’m going to show you.2 And that’s where I really got to know him [the tío], a few paces after that moment. Aboveground in the mine they’d talked and told me a lot of things about him. Me, before I got my order from the administration to go down the mine as a carter, I’d imagined him, feared and respected, but I didn’t know how he was in the flesh. That shift I got to see him, and face-­to-­face with him, I felt fear and attraction. He was sitting inside a cave hacked out of the rock. He had a kuyuna that had gone out between his lips. His eyes, made out of marbles with green, blue, and red streaks, impressed me. I was frightened and attracted by his long face, smooth, grey, reddish, and his pointed ears, standing up above the oval head. He was sitting nakedly and with the big member erect and thick. He had arms stuck to the sides of the thin body, feet without toes, the neck wrapped round with streamers, and around him bottles—​­lots of them were medicine bottles—​­f ull of quemapecho, coca leaves, and kuyunas, like other [statues] of him of different sizes I saw after that.3 “Tío,” the Toucan said to him. “Tío,” I said to him. Nothing else. We stayed there a moment, looking at him, and I felt like a fool. It was hot in that tunnel, and when I broke the spell and turned my head to look at the Toucan, my clothes were damp with the sweat of my body. “Tío,” the Toucan said to him again. I said nothing. I didn’t want to look again. I had him in my mind and I was impressed: I felt that inside my boots there were no toes, like on his feet. But the Toucan said tío again and asked me, Jaco?4 I followed him to the loading site, and that image wouldn’t fade away from me: I thought about him, and I thought as I returned, time and again, to reconstruct him in the shape I had seen. At the end of the shift, I felt pushed to see him again. I greeted him, and at night I dreamed of him. I don’t remember what about. The following shifts, and right at the start, before the boss assigned me a partner and a work site, the first thing I did was to go where the tío was. Tuesdays and Fridays, I took him coca, quemapecho, and kuyunas, which I lit between the lips already shaped to smoke. I stood opposite him, looking at him. I was obsessed by his eyes, his face, his whole figure. And if one day I hadn’t had to work, I’m sure I would have spent the whole shift staring at him and staring at him. But it wasn’t possible. We had to produce, and several times the boss called me on the carpet. “Why are you late, yana ullu?” 5 I gave Mine Madness  299

him my card duly marked. The boss assigned me to ore carting. So I tossed the chunks of rock from the heap, filled the ore cart, and with my partner we pushed it as far as the screen. We carted, and I didn’t stop thinking about the tío: his face, his ears, his body, his watchful stillness. That tío obsessed me and attracted me strongly. I only went to him and didn’t pay attention to the others, which were larger, smaller, or the same size as that one, in the other tunnels, on all the levels. I went only to him, and many times I ran down the tunnels from the mine entrance like a desperate man. I left all my workmates behind, they already called me khoya loco,6 mine crazy, khoya loco, mine crazy. I didn’t pay attention to them and ended my race face-­to-­face with the tío. He was always the same, and I, after lighting him a kuyuna, sat down in front of him, imitating him. I liked to observe him and put my body in the identical posture as his. Sometimes I felt I was quite a tío, and many other times I had to make an effort to break my stillness, acquire motion, and go off to cart ore. There was something in the tío that left me stone still, imprisoned in the imitation of his posture. But I didn’t think it was important until on one shift, no doubt because of the shaking from the explosions of dynamite, a piece of rock from the roof of his cave came loose and fell on his head, destroying part of it. That day I’d felt pains in my forehead, temple, ear, and part of my chin, on the same left side where the tío was missing his forehead, temple, ear, part of his chin. I arrived, and there he was, incomplete, as if he were waiting for me, with arrogance and reproach in his eyes, in the gleam of his marbles with green, blue, and red streaks. I see him, I get angry, I get desperate, and then I find myself scratching up mud off the ground until I have a pile in both hands. Then I quickly construct the parts he was lacking, as if creating him again. I leave him just as he was, I light him a kuyuna, and I go off to cart ore. That day I was cheerful, more than any other day in my life. Cheerful, full, and happy until the end of the shift, when I go to see him, to say goodbye like always and for a few hours, I’ll soon be back. I go to see him, stumbling with tiredness down the tunnels, and someone, going by, had lit him a new kuyuna. When I arrived, I saw that the smoke covered his face, and I suddenly couldn’t bear having him face-­to-­face with me and not seeing him. I went up to see him more closely, and from the tío I saw my own face desperate to get that smoke out of the way, I saw my face suddenly transformed into terror by the fear those eyes felt which wanted to get away from mine, which held them, sucking them in, I saw my gestures of obsession deformed into a crazy, strong, thin laugh, which didn’t emerge from my tío lips, I saw the body that before was mine move back with brusque, clumsy, disturbed, demented movements, most unusual, I heard him shouting down the tunnels, insulting, making dirty jokes, and since then, with such passion, someone else, who doesn’t stop to look at me, with such obsession, someone else, with

300  René Poppe

so much quemapecho, kuyunas, coca, someone else, with those fascinated eyes, looking at some other tío, someone else.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. A kuyuna is the cheapest kind of cigarette, hand-­rolled and filled with tobacco dust. 2. Arí is “yes” in Quechua. The narrator is the son of a peasant family in Potosí, and Quechua is presumably his first language. 3. Quemapecho (chest-­burner) is raw cane alcohol, the cheapest kind of alcohol available in Bolivia, and is consumed by the working classes, peasants, and miners. 4. Jaco is Quechua for “Let’s go.” 5. Yana ullu means “black prick” in Quechua. 6. Khoya means “mine” in Quechua; loco is Spanish for “mad, crazy.”

Mine Madness  301

The March to the East Wálter Guevara Arze

In the aftermath of the revolution, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) confronted dramatic economic difficulties. In January 1955, the government released its Plan inmediato de política económica del Gobierno de la Revolución Nacional, an “immediate plan” to address looming structural challenges. Significantly, the official who elaborated and signed the crucial document was the minister of foreign affairs, Wálter Guevara Arze, rather than the minister of finance, as might be expected. The document sought to meet two objectives: first, to justify to the United States that its financial and technical assistance was necessary; second, to provide guidance to the fledgling government’s own functionaries. The challenge was for Bolivia to overcome its heavy reliance on mineral exports and to diversify economically. The country would be perpetually in deficit unless it could boost petroleum exports, rather than rely on agricultural and energy imports. The immediate plan proposed to do precisely this, with joint Bolivian-­U.S. funding, through a march to the east—​­that is, by developing the lowland region of Santa Cruz. Key to the process was to develop a new road network linking Cochabamba and Santa Cruz and to promote agrarian colonization through foreign (European and Japanese) immigration and the coordinated migration of highland and valley peasants. The program thus met long-­standing eastern regional demands for attention and resources, and fulfilled the aspirations of administrators, going back to the late-­colonial Bourbon period, to colonize the lowlands. By providing the necessary capital, resources, and assistance for this transition, the United States quickly consolidated control over a revolution it had initially seen as a potential threat.

What Bolivia’s Economy Is Based On Bolivia’s economy for half a century has rested, just as it does today, on the following reality: The foreign currency available to the country (principally dollars) is almost exclusively provided by mineral exports. . . .

302

Essential Imports As is logical, to cover all the country’s needs for foreign currency, we can count only on the net surplus from mineral exports, which, after discounting the fixed costs [of extraction and transportation] from the gross income of US$97 million, amounts to US$53 million. On adding to this sum US$10.5 million, which correspond to other exports, such as oil, we have an available net surplus of about US$63 million. With this net surplus, all the other needs of the country must be attended to, needs which can be classified as follows: General imports, which include principally foodstuffs, raw materials, and the replacement of machines for industry and commercial services; Transport costs for imports; Government expenses and the attention of public services; Service of the debt to the Export-­Import Bank and of the delayed payments for goods acquired to foment production. Of the sum destined for “general imports” (foodstuffs, raw materials for industry, and commercial services), in 1955 58 percent will be invested in importing nine products of agricultural origin, seven of which are food products and fuel (oil, coal, and derivatives), all of which could be produced in the country in economically favorable conditions.

Absolute Dependence on Mineral Prices The net surplus in foreign currency which derives from mineral exports depends on the quantities that are exported and world market prices. When the latter, which are outside our control, fall, the result is the economic bankruptcy of the country, poverty, and the threat of political disorder. In circumstances like the present, in which there is overproduction, principally of tin, even the quantity of minerals that we can export is outside our control, given that it is regulated by international agreements. In this way, the country’s gross income in dollars is reduced by the double impact of low prices and the obligatory regulation of exports. This situation is worsened because the prices of manufactured items that we must import do not fall by the same proportion. The situation for 1955 is displayed in the following approximate figures: Income in dollars Spending in dollars

Total US$63,000,000 Total US$83,400,000

As can be seen, there is a deficit of 20 million dollars. Although the total of this sum could be covered in 1955 by American food aid, the basic fact is that The March to the East  303

Bolivia’s balance of payment, due to the structure of the country’s economy, has a permanent tendency to be in deficit.

How This Situation Can Be Resolved A similar situation will continue in the future until the moment when the country is able to solve the two following problems: Produce and export its minerals at a lower cost; Modify its situation of monoproduction by fomenting the production of [the principal imported items that could be developed in the country].1 In other words, Bolivia’s economic problem consists in obtaining more foreign currency (dollars), which signifies producing and exporting more minerals when market conditions allow, reducing as far as is possible the costs of this production and export; and in spending less foreign currency reserves by ceasing to import all that which the country can produce. This memorandum proposes to show how both things can be and are being done, with American aid and in view of the fact that, at present, appropriate conditions exist for doing so, which can be summarized as: The opening for traffic of the highway from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz, which for its completion should be paved; The investments which the government has made, in foreign currency, despite the country’s difficult economic situation, to advance the Program of Economic Diversification; Political stability; Appropriate planning (to overcome) these situations and the intention to solve them.

Oil and Hydroelectric Energy For any program of development and economic diversification, it is indispensable to count on, in the first place, sources of cheap energy. Bolivia has oil and the appropriate natural conditions for the installation of hydroelectric plants. ...

“Open Door” Policies The present government has an “open door” policy in this respect. Special contracts have been and are offered to private investors who are interested

304  Wálter Guevara Arze

in developing the oil industry in Bolivia. To carry out this policy, the government has signed a contract with an American company that is at present working in the southeast of Bolivia, and another important American firm is carrying out preliminary studies to the same end. A new general oil law is also in preparation in which adequate guarantees for private investment in this industry will be contemplated.

Basic Government Program The chapter on oil in the present memorandum, apart from putting forward the general possibilities of the oil industry in Bolivia, proposes to expound the basic government program on this topic, as part of the Plan for Diversification of the National Economy. ... The situation in 1952. Since the funds that had been destined for the development of the Camiri [oil] deposits were invested by the governments immediately preceding the present administration for other ends, the production of crude oil declined notably until in 1952 it reached only 1,037 barrels a day, versus a minimum of 4,000 to 5,000 barrels a day which is required to cover national consumption. Thus, the first problem that was put forward to this government was to increase the production of crude oil to the level needed to satisfy internal consumption. This was a vital necessity because US$8–9 million were being spent on the importation of petroleum derivatives. As well, the existing installations needed to be taken advantage of, since they were operating on an uneconomic basis due to the insufficient supply of crude oil. “1953 Plan.” The “1953 Plan” of [the state-­owned oil company] ypfb proposed this aim. The government provided this public agency with $US1,800,000, despite the lack of foreign currency which afflicted and still afflicts the country. This sum was invested in the purchase of three new rotating drills and materials to open twenty oil wells. It was estimated, as was expounded in the previous memorandum, that at the end of 1954 production would supply the total consumption of the country of automobile gasoline and kerosene and that the consequent savings in foreign currency would not be less than US$4 million a year. This plan has been carried out eight months in advance of what was foreseen, and today only high-­octane aviation fuel is imported. ypfb supplies the country with automobile gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, and fuel oil. The annual saving in foreign currency is close to US$8 million. ...

The March to the East  305

Development of the Santa Cruz Area

General Characteristics The best means for increasing in the short term the production of those articles that today are imported is to develop the northern area of Santa Cruz. ...

Immigration and Internal Migration The rapid settlement of a larger rural population in the zone is, without a doubt, one of the most important factors in its development. It is possible to have recourse both to European immigration and to the internal migration of farmers from the temperate valleys and the altiplano, where there is a considerable rural overpopulation. Foreign immigration. It is considered convenient to receive it, principally from European countries. ... For the economic reasons repeatedly expounded in the course of this memorandum, the government cannot count on the necessary foreign currency reserves to put this program into practice. In consequence, the only hope of organizing a systematic and qualified European immigration, at present and over the next five years, rests on the possibility of counting on substantial aid from the world agencies that handle this problem and perhaps also from the government of the United States. Internal migration. Without ignoring the benefits of the immigration of European farmers, it should be pointed out that the problem of internal migration is fundamental for Bolivia, with the immediate advantage that its solution is less costly in foreign currency. Due to the overpopulation of the valleys and the altiplano and the shortage of cultivable land, their inhabitants barely manage to produce for their family consumption. These groups, rather than providing the market with the products that are imported, instead act as consumers. The only possible remedy is to reduce the congestion of these regions, converting those who move to the area of Santa Cruz into providers of essential products instead of consumers. In a parallel manner, those who remain in their area of origin, on increasing the extension of the land they own, will be able to transform it into farms with commercial production. With this double opening in the subtropical zone, the altiplano, and the temperate valleys, not only will there be national supply, but a considerable sector of the rural population, at present condemned to the condition of consumers, will cease to be a drag on the country’s economy. There are some prejudices with respect to the aptitude of the farmers whom it is desirable to move, for they are mistakenly supposed to be Indians

306  Wálter Guevara Arze

in their totality, accustomed over centuries to a subsistence economy and without ambitions to prosper economically. In the department of Cochabamba alone, there are about 32,000 smallholders in the census, who almost all speak Spanish and are anxious to improve their economic and social condition, and who, in order to obtain additional income, which their land does not provide them, carry out diverse activities in trade and artisanry, and immigrate in search of better salaries to the mines and the agricultural estates in northern Argentina. In the past, the possibility of new lands in healthy regions did not exist for this population, because the lowlands that border on the valleys are in general [plagued by] endemic [diseases]. Access to Santa Cruz opens up new possibilities of progress for these frustrated farmers, and this seems the most appropriate moment to help them. With respect to the peasant population of the altiplano, ordinarily limited in its ambitions and its possibilities of progress by the small size of its landholdings, the agrarian reform has awoken in them an evident desire to get ahead. The Santa Cruz area represents the most practical possibility for this collective desire to become reality. Excess of personnel in the mines. In another part of this memorandum (the chapter on mining), it has been shown that there is an excess of personnel in the mines, which raises the costs of production. This problem is also due to rural overpopulation on the altiplano and in the temperate valleys, since most of the mineworkers are, or have been, peasants from these and other regions close to the mines. It is well known that many miners leave their work for the mining companies to tend their fields during the sowing and harvest seasons. Relieving the demographic pressure on the altiplano and in the valleys will create the basis for reincorporating into agriculture the laborers who today are so costly for the mining industry. The rural middle class. This group has extensive experience in agriculture which has been put to little use because their landholdings necessarily had to be reduced in size in order to grant land to the peasants in carrying out the agrarian reform. Among them, those who have capital are moving to Santa Cruz, but the majority do not have sufficient reserves to buy land and machinery at the same time and need special help. Their economic necessities and their capacity for work greatly exceed the land available in the regions where they live, and if their transfer is not facilitated, their standard of living will have to fall. In addition, they have to consume even when they are unable to produce. This middle class can work as well as any European farmer, something that has been demonstrated because they organized the best farms in the valleys and on the altiplano, competing with the immigrants. ...

The March to the East  307

Roads, Transport, and Communication In relation to the development and economic diversification of the country, the problem of roads, transport, and communication can be put forth as follows. It is necessary to reach the flatland, semitropical, and tropical regions of Bolivia in order to produce the articles that are currently imported and paid for in foreign currency and, at the same time, to allow for a more appropriate distribution of the population which is concentrated in a third of the national territory where the conditions for agriculture are generally inferior. This proposal signifies the following concrete things: a) Reaching the area of Santa Cruz, which has already been done. To complete this connection toward the east, a short road is lacking which, starting from kilometer 104 (65 miles) on the Cochabamba-­Santa Cruz Highway, would reach a permanently navigable port on the Ichilo River. b) Reaching the northern area of the republic, a region which almost completely lacks routes and means of communication, given that those which exist in the country lie to the south of the sixteenth parallel. The territory located to the north of this parallel corresponds to approximately half of the total area of Bolivia. In order to reach the northern area and connect the altiplano to the basin of the Beni River and its tributaries, we have to extend the actual La Paz– Coroico road as far as Caranavi and Puerto Salinas on the Beni River. ...

What Has Been Done since 1952 Since 9 April 1952, the government, considering its scarce resources, set the foundations of a policy for diversification and development of the country’s economy. Afterward, thanks to American aid, this program has taken a significant step forward. . . . ...

Oil Advances have been the most substantial in this area, since as a result of the “1953 Plan” around US$8 million are no longer spent on importing petroleum subproducts. In order to increase production, in 1953 three new rotating drills were purchased, which were used in Camiri with such good results that some oil and its derivatives are now exported. The drilling program in Bermejo was intensified with two new rotating drills. The geographical, seismic, and gravimet-

308  Wálter Guevara Arze

ric prospection in the southeastern oilfields is in progress, via a contract with specialized American and Mexican companies. ... A recently signed agreement with the republic of Argentina stipulates the export of oil with a value of US$15 million in three years, for which an oil pipeline 6 inches in diameter and 254 kilometers (158 miles) long, from Camiri to the twenty-­second parallel on the border, is under construction. The government is providing US$3,900,000 for this work, contracted to the American company Williams Bros. The same company is carrying out a study on oil pipelines from Cochabamba to Oruro and from Oruro to Arica for US$250,000. Each month, 1,400,000 liters (370,000 gallons) of automobile gasoline are being exported to Chile; to Brazil, 1,000,000 liters (265,000 gallons) a month of gasoline and 300,000 liters (80,000 gallons) of kerosene; and the export of small quantities of these products to Paraguay will soon begin. ...

Agricultural Development The government has placed its greatest interest in this sector and has invested in it the greater part of the sums received in aid from the American government. The following summary gives an idea of what has been done up until now: Santa Cruz. This is the zone in which progress has been most considerable: Migration Project 59 of the Bolivian Investment Corporation, which consists in transferring farmers from the valley of Cochabamba, is under way. The first groups transferred to Santa Cruz have deforested and are sowing 40 hectares (100 acres) in a region of virgin forest. A group of peasants from the altiplano has been installed in the region of Masicuri. Some Italian immigrants, settled in the surroundings of the sugar mill, are cultivating vegetables, which had not been done before in the region. In general, they are a good example for the farmers of the zone. To date the Bolivian Investment Corporation has invested 7,000,000 bolivianos in providing facilities to this group. The immigrants from Okinawa, some 403 people, have been settled in Río Grande, to the east of Santa Cruz, on the railway line to Corumbá. Over the next months 1,000 more people are expected to arrive. The Bolivian Investment Corporation has organized an internal migration office, which has prepared a plan to make use of the army as an instru-

The March to the East  309

ment for internal migration. This plan, which will be put into practice from April 1955, contemplates transferring 1,326 men to the regions of Montero and Bella Vista, where the corporation has purchased 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of land. ... With reference to routes of communication for the Santa Cruz development plan, the highway between that city and Cochabamba, which was begun in 1944, has been finished. Of a total of 13,000,000 cubic meters (17,000,000 cubic yards) of earth moved, 6,800,000 cubic meters (8,900,000 cubic yards) have been moved in the last two years, and 70 percent of the basic surface has been laid. Over this same period of two years, US$8 million and 1,700 million bolivianos have been invested in that highway. ... The Agrarian Bank has been reorganized by a supreme decree establishing supervised credit with technicians from a specialized American firm in charge, who work under the responsibility of the Interamerican Agrarian Service. The bank’s capital has been increased with funds provided by American aid and the government. As an incentive to producers, a price policy has been put into place for sugarcane, rice, corn, and coffee which consists in freeing these products from control and guaranteeing remunerative minimum prices for them. Rice production has increased by about 3,000 tons a year, that of corn by 4,000 tons, and cotton by about 100 tons. Cattle are being improved by the import of a new race through the Interamerican Agrarian Service. These figures for increases in production are low, but they constitute the beginning of a development process that originated no more than a year ago. ... Before ending this chapter, which summarizes all that has been achieved with the work over these past two years, it is necessary to point out the immense value that American government collaboration, both financial and technical, has had and continues to have for Bolivia in the planning and execution of the economic-­development program. The American personnel who lend their services in this country work with an efficiency and goodwill that merit the highest praise.

Translated by Alison Spedding Note 1. Bolivia’s principal imported goods were sugar, livestock, dairy products, cooking fat, vegetable oils, rice, wheat and wheat-­flour, cotton, lumber, and oil and coal.

310  Wálter Guevara Arze

A Beggar on a Chair of Gold United Nations Mission of Technical Assistance

As the new global order emerged in the aftermath of World War II, international institutions took up the dilemmas of what began to be called “development” and “underdevelopment.” Bolivia became an early test case for the United Nations Technical Assistance Administration, which in 1949 produced a country report based on a mission led by the Canadian official Hugh Keenleyside. The problem for the un mission was to understand how the country could be so poor when it possessed such great economic potential, given its rich endowment of natural resources. After visiting the country, the mission determined that Bolivia’s political and institutional instability was the critical factor that frustrated development, and it sought to correct for this by providing United Nations technical experts who could serve as administrators in the Bolivian government. The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) initially opposed such assistance as a violation of Bolivian sovereignty, but after taking power, in 1952, it reversed its position and accepted the un offer. In 1958, the United Nations General Assembly extended the Keenleyside proposal to other countries, inaugurating the Operational Executive (opex) Program. Despite the un ’s intervention, Bolivia would continue to be a primary recipient of international “development assistance” for the remainder of the twentieth century. The people of Bolivia display an unusual facility in the use of dramatic and picturesque phrases to describe their country, themselves and their ideas. Among their popular metaphors is that describing Bolivia as “A Beggar sitting on a chair of Gold.” Although Bolivia is too proud to beg, and although gold is not an important national product, the phrase is justified by the contrast that still exists between the relative poverty of the people and Government on the one hand and, on the other, the unquestioned richness of Bolivia’s heritage of natural resources. Few countries in the world have been endowed by nature with a greater diversity of raw materials. Bolivia is located not far below the equator and covers a territory that embraces wide areas of land at many altitudes varying from the luxuriant Oriente which averages a few hundred feet above sea level to the arid Altiplano that spreads endlessly between the highest ranges of the 311

Andes at an elevation of over 13,000 feet. It enjoys conditions of climate and soil that make possible the cultivation of almost every variety of vegetable or animal product. There are few material human needs that could not be satisfied by proper use of the rich soils, the mineralized rocks, the flowing waters of the Bolivian Republic. Food, shelter, clothing, power; all are available. There would seem to be no material reasons to prevent the people of Bolivia from living a life of reasonable comfort and contentment for many generations to come. ...

The Bolivian Paradox and a Recommendation . . . It is clear that Bolivia has within its boundaries all the resources necessary to provide a sound economic foundation for a national life distinguished by a wide diffusion of culture, by progress and prosperity. But these results have not been achieved. Due to a combination of geographic conditions, historic accident and human frailty, Bolivia has thus far failed to develop the kind of life that its national inheritance could reasonably be expected to produce. Along a hard and difficult road the people of Bolivia have, over the generations, made impressive progress. That progress is impressive, however, more as a justification of hope for the future than as a record of intrinsic achievement. The conditions of life for the great majority of the Bolivian people, heirs of more than one brilliant civilization and inhabiting a country of vast potential resources, are harsh, static, and largely devoid of present satisfaction or future hope. Agriculture is stagnant, and foodstuffs and raw materials that could be produced at home are being imported. The mining industry has reached a point at which, unless confidence can be created and considerable capital invested, a period of serious decline seems imminent. Oil and hydro-­electric energy cannot be adequately developed because the available resources have not even been surveyed. A large part of the population is illiterate and ill, and infant mortality is appallingly high. Existing highways and railroads are decaying for lack of maintenance, at the same time as ambitious new projects are being initiated. Meanwhile the country passes from crisis to crisis and from revolution to revolution. Many honest attempts are made to arrest this disastrous course of events—​­above all by the present Administration—​­but little stable progress is achieved. It was the first duty of the United Nations Mission to find a satisfactory explanation of this paradoxical contrast between the potential wealth of Bolivia and the failure of its people to translate that wealth into the concrete evidences of a prosperous national economy. It is now the belief of the Members of the Mission—​­and in this belief they are supported by the opinion of every Bolivian with whom the matter was discussed—​­that the explanation of the paradox is 312  un Mission of Technical Assistance

to be found in the governmental and administrative instability that has consistently marked the history of that nation. It may, of course, be argued that the failure to develop a firm, competent and responsible system of government has been the result as well as the cause of Bolivia’s economic under-­development. Whatever the priority, today governmental weakness and economic debility form the two segments of a single vicious circle; each supports and contains the other. The Members of the Mission accept the validity of this interpretation. But they are satisfied that after centuries of slow, intermittent and precarious advance the Bolivian economy has now reached a point in its development from which, under favourable governmental auspices, progress could be spectacularly rapid. They believe that a solution, or even a partial solution, of the problem created by constantly fluctuating official policy and erratic administration would make it possible to telescope into a single generation or less the economic and social advance that will otherwise involve a slow progression over many decades. They believe that Bolivia’s economic development could be assured, and the national standards of living progressively and substantially improved, if foreign and native skills and capital could be offered appropriate conditions for harmonious and mutually confident cooperation. It is quite clear that substantial and early progress will be impossible in Bolivia without external aid. Such aid is required in two forms. In the first place the rapid development of Bolivian resources requires the application of technical and professional skills that are almost entirely lacking within the country itself. Of equal and parallel importance is the necessity for the maximum mobilization of domestic financial resources and of the foreign exchange income of Bolivian industries for economic development. This effort however will not be sufficient and must be supplemented by the inflow of foreign capital. Without the employment of technical skills and a vast increase in capital investment Bolivia cannot expect the results that, with these aids, could mark an era of unexampled achievement. Technical assistance can be obtained under suitable conditions from the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies. They are willing and anxious to be of assistance. Capital, whether public or private, and whether from foreign or domestic sources, will not now be invested in Bolivia in any significant measure unless the prospective investors can be satisfied that there exists a persuasive prospect of reasonable security and profit. But even if arrangements can be made for technical assistance and capital investment, the results will still be meager in the absence of economic and political stability. There is neither economic nor political stability in Bolivia today. It might be possible to disregard the general facts that in 125 years of independence Bolivia has had some 60 Presidents, and that the governmental history of that country has been marked by constant and often violent change, A Beggar on a Chair of Gold  313

not only in personnel but in policy. Many other countries have had somewhat similar experiences and have at length solved or are solving the problem of governmental instability. But there is little evidence of a similar development in modern Bolivia. The recent trends are in the wrong direction. Prospective or possible sources of investment capital will not fail to note that no legally elected Bolivian President has served out his term in the last quarter century; that there have been seven Presidents and eight revolutions in the last ten years; that there have been eighteen Ministers of Labour in four years; that the Corporación de Fomento Boliviano has had five complete changes in its Directorate in the six years of its existence; that there have been eight Ministers of Finance within 18 months. These governmental changes have been paralleled and accompanied by a similar variability in policy and legislation, particularly in the fields of taxation, labour and fiscal administration, including the management of rates of exchange. Neither Bolivian nor foreign capital can afford to overlook these facts; yet both sources must be tapped in Bolivia if this generation is to make the progress that, given a measure of stability and peace, might be reasonably anticipated. Without such stability and peace, no responsible persons could seriously recommend investment in Bolivia; it can be accepted as quite certain that under present conditions risk capital will not become available in any significant measure. Faced with this problem the mission has had to examine both segments of the iron band that holds Bolivia in the strangling grip of governmental instability and economic under-­development. Until one or both segments are broken, Bolivia will remain a country of poverty, turmoil and depression. ... This situation leads to the first and the most important of all the recommendations upon which the Members of the Mission have agreed. It is a recommendation that has already been accepted with firm approval by the Bolivian authorities and has been adopted in principle by the Technical Assistance Board. It is proposed that the United Nations assist the Bolivian Government in obtaining the services of a number of experienced and competent administrative officials of unquestioned integrity drawn from a variety of countries, and that the Bolivian Government appoint these officials on a temporary basis to positions of influence and authority as integral members of the Bolivian civil service. It is an essential part of the proposal that in order to obtain persons of the required quality, adequate salaries and allowances be paid and that the United Nations provide financial assistance to the Bolivian Government for this purpose. The persons described above would not in any sense be officials of the United Nations. They would be experts hired by and responsible solely to the Bolivian Government. The United Nations would aid in their recruitment and assist in financing the project, but that is all. 314  un Mission of Technical Assistance

The Condemnation of Coca United Nations Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf

While coca leaf has been an integral part of Andean civilization since long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, it has been the target of attacks by Catholic priests, moralizing modernizers, and international drug warriors over centuries. In 1961, the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed coca on its Schedule 1 list of controlled substances, along with heroin and cocaine, and decreed that coca-­ chewing must be abolished within twenty-­five years. The basis for this attack was the report produced by the United Nations Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf in 1950. While the investigation was ostensibly an objective one, the commission’s final recommendation to eradicate coca consumption had been contemplated in advance. The commission’s methodology was loose and arbitrary, with little scientific foundation and scant field research (a mere three weeks in Bolivia), and the report was plagued by derogatory assumptions about Indians. Ultimately, its conclusions served the interests of the U.S.-­based pharmaceutical firms and regulatory agencies that sought to control the licit production and processing of the leaf, as well as the licit commercialization and use of cocaine for medicinal purposes. Into the twenty-­ first century, Bolivia has made repeated efforts to undo the ill-­informed international drug regulations applied to the coca leaf.

Social and Economic Aspects of Coca-­Leaf Chewing

Harmful Social Effects In the course of its study of the effects of coca-­leaf chewing, the Commission noted the existence of two schools of thought, one holding that coca-­leaf chewing increases the output of labor, and the other maintaining a diametrically opposed view. The first theory, advanced in most cases by landowners but also by a few engineers, doctors, and lawyers, appears to be based on the fact that under the influence of coca-­leaf chewing, Indians and miners (both Indian and mestizo) doing severe or arduous work are capable of greater effort. Many of those who put forward this view admitted at the same time that both the rural Indian and the miner suffered from a very inadequate diet, and that their living conditions and habits were untenable. 315

This manner of thinking was typified by the representatives of one mining company of Cerro de Pasco (Peru), who said that “a worker who chewed coca leaf had a higher output, since he could work longer without eating.” The same argument, it was replied, might lead to the conclusion that a worker’s output would be even higher if he never slept or rested. From the social point of view, those who directly and indirectly defended the continuance of coca-­leaf chewing failed to adduce any evidence to show that the habit had any beneficial effects. The view that coca-­leaf chewing has harmful social consequences had more numerous supporters. It was advanced by a considerable number of engineers (particularly mining engineers), by doctors, educators, some landowners, and without exception by all the workers’ representatives who were heard by the Commission. While it is not possible to detail here all the facts and opinions which the Commission noted and heard, the following may be stated: Coca-­leaf chewing makes social intercourse between the Indians and the other sections of the Peruvian and Bolivian people very difficult. Coca-­leaf chewers tend to shun society, and generally lack the little initiative required to establish individual or collective contacts. This does not signify that the Indian is innately anti-­social, but that he has acquired an asocial attitude by force of circumstances, which is not the same thing. In the course of its investigations the Commission heard that while criminality among the Indian population had some connection with alcoholism, it appeared to have no special relation to coca-­leaf chewing. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the inmates of the prisons in the interior are Indians does not mean that Indians are more anti-­social than others, but results from the generally bad conditions in which they live. In the course of its contacts with coca-­leaf chewers, both peasants and miners, the Commission almost invariably noted an attitude of reserve, due to a number of historical, social, and economic causes among which coca leaf appears to play an important part. In support of this view, the following facts may be noted: (1) A cursory comparison between a coca-­leaf chewer and a non-­chewer shows that the former, unlike the latter, shows little signs of sociability. Indian children and youths who do not chew coca leaf are as lively and sociable as those of any other country. (2) The Commission was told on repeated occasions that Indians who do not chew coca leaf make more rapid social progress. Important evidence to support this view was obtained at Cuzco, Tingo María, Trujillo, and Cajamarca (Peru), and at Batallas, Huarisata, Achacachi, and Catavi, Cochabamba (Bolivia).

316  un Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf

(3) Commanders and officers of the Peruvian and Bolivian armies agreed that the prohibition of coca-­leaf chewing during military service did a great deal to increase the Indians’ sociability. In most cases this is lost when, after the completion of military service, the Indian returns to his rural environment and relapses into the habit of coca-­leaf chewing.

The Condemnation of Coca  317

The Blood of the Nation General Alfredo Ovando Candia

In 1937, after the disastrous Chaco War, which was ostensibly fought over oil reserves near the border with Paraguay, Bolivia expropriated the holdings of the Standard Oil Company and formed its own state oil firm, y pfb . However, national control over natural resources declined after 1955, when the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) government, as a concession to the United States, passed a new petroleum code favoring U.S. companies. The Bolivian Gulf Oil Company soon became the largest hydrocarbon producer in the country. In the 1960s, under the right-­w ing dictatorship of René Barrientos Ortuño, new concessions were granted to private corporations, and by 1968, Bolivian Gulf Oil was producing forty thousand barrels per day and held reserves that were ten times larger than those of y pfb . For critics on the left, such as Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, Bolivian Gulf Oil constituted a new “superstate” comparable to the powerful tin-­mining bloc prior to the revolution of 1952. After Barrientos’s death, the moderate reformist General Alfredo Ovando Candia seized power in 1969. Influenced by the nationalist military regime in Peru at the same time, Ovando sought to court the left and the trade-­union movement and to stake a bold claim to popular legitimacy. With Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz as his minister of mines and petroleum, he dramatically declared the nationalization of Bolivian Gulf Oil on 17 October 1969. With the recuperation of Bolivia’s precious oil, Ovando proclaimed, “The blood spilled in the Chaco was not in vain.” Fellow Countrymen: In this decisive hour for the destiny of Bolivia, I address all Bolivians, without regional differences or party distinctions, because I know that all will respond to the call of the nation, forming a united front in defense of Bolivia. The revolutionary government has promulgated a decree by which the state finally recovers the concessions that were so ominously awarded to the Bolivian Gulf [Oil] Company and by which, in addition, all its assets are nationalized. This determination—​­taken after a profound analysis of the situation presented by this company, whose operations were regulated to the disadvantage of the country, according to a petroleum code written in its entirety by foreign lawyers who were moved only by private interest—​ ­recovers for our country the exercise of its full sovereignty and its dignity.1 For half a century, the Bolivian people were subjected to the infuriating 318

yoke of the great tin-­m ining companies. This trilogy, which was brought to an end in 1952, after prolonged sacrifices and bloody battles, was paradoxically replaced by another company that gained a political and economic predominance similar to that of the tin barons. Due to the conditions in which it operated and its huge profits, it turned into a new super-­state, capable of distorting our economic development and even influencing our political life. The days of contempt have come to an end for Bolivians. On assuming this attitude, the revolutionary government has measured with the greatest responsibility and calm the risks involved, just as it has foreseen the campaigns of defamation that will no doubt be waged inside and outside Bolivia by those interested parties that recall our prosperity and progress only in the moments when the Bolivian people, tired of being robbed and mocked, decide to demand their rights. Any nationalization measure implies the impossibility of a deal with the sector affected by this action. The revolutionary government could no longer allow a situation of dependence or accept the international blackmail with which they sought to intimidate us, using threats of economic sanctions, when we declared, without duplicity or underhanded calculations, the interests of the Bolivian people, to whom we owe our duty above all. Bolivia will arrive, with its gas and oil pipelines, to the borders of the neighboring countries; she will continue with a vigorous policy of exploration and will attract foreign companies as associates, on just and honorable terms, in the progress of the country and the development of its oil and energy wealth. On taking this historic decision, we are not acting in a dogmatic and exclusive fashion, but rather rectifying a policy that subordinated the Bolivian state and put it in the same condition as those colonial territories whose laws are dictated from a distant metropolis. The case of this company was thus unique due to the characteristics of its operation and the level of its profits in comparison to its modest tax contribution. For that reason, I must declare without hesitation and with the revolutionary government’s reputation for seriousness and firmness that the private sector of our economy has full guarantees to continue operating without fear or suspicion; on the contrary, the firm desire of the regime over which I preside is to enliven and assist the development of private mining, all branches of industry, and agriculture directed toward the satisfaction of the requirements for food and basic products of our population. I must also in this decisive hour invoke the patriotism of the Bolivians born in those departments, so dear in our feelings, where the exploitation of gas and oil originates and which benefit from percentages of the value of this production.2 We protect those rights already obtained, and we promise to provide state resources to assure the growing progress of those regions, which in so many ways have earned the recognition and the admiration of the rest of the country. The Blood of the Nation  319

Bolivian natural gas, 50 percent of which was under the domination of the Bolivian Gulf Oil Company, will now serve the vigorous advance of the development of our refineries and the steel industry, which the revolutionary government will set in motion as a first priority. At the same time, we are taking the necessary precautions to avoid interference or delays in the contract for the sale of gas to the republic of Argentina, preceded by the construction of the gas pipeline to Yacuiba.3 We will revitalize Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos [ypfb] , the enterprise so beloved to the Bolivian people, who saw in it, since its creation three decades ago, the will to self-­determination of the country and the instrument for the defense of that energy source. In the course of recent years, ypfb has been gradually decapitalized, leaving the state enterprise in a subordinate and intermediary position vis-­à-­vis Bolivian Gulf Oil. For the good of the country, this situation will be fundamentally changed from this moment onward. We will promote the state company, not only so that it advances in all aspects of exploration and exploitation of oil and gas reserves, but also so that it guarantees profits from the petrochemical industry, in its diverse branches, in favor of Bolivia. Bolivia has faith in its skilled workers, in its technicians, in its bureaucrats, who will take the management of what are now nationalized assets in their hands and will contribute to the development of the national oil company. The armed forces of the nation who handed over a revolutionary mandate to my government, a mandate that today we fulfill with pride, have occupied the installations of Bolivian Gulf Oil and will collaborate, with the seriousness and persistence that characterize them, so that the complex of production and export of our hydrocarbons will continue to operate normally. I warned in my message on the 26th of September that overcoming the situation we confronted obliged us to demand from everyone, governors and governed, a share of responsibility, austerity, and sacrifice, because freedom and development are not gifts fallen from heaven. In the face of slander and calumny, in the face of the discouragement and dismay of the pusillanimous and the timid who prefer to think of their private interests before the well-­ being and prosperity of Bolivia, the Bolivian people will form a united front. It will marshal its faith, its undeniable courage, its inexhaustible capacity for sacrifice when the fate of this land, which saw us born and which will receive us when we surrender our lives in its service, is in question, so that we may succeed in this campaign to recover our dignity and our honor. This is the people that built Tiwanaku; the people that fought for fifteen years, without ceasing for one instant, to achieve independence; the same people that groaned with rage and pain, abandoned in the sands of the Chaco, defending Bolivian oil inch by inch. This is the people that is now nationalizing the interests of Bolivian Gulf [Oil] and planting on the highest peak of our mountains the unconquered banner of nationality. 320  General Alfredo Ovando Candia

Bolivians! As on the 6th of August 1825, let us swear that we will not retreat one step in the defense of national interests, threatened by those who still consider Bolivia a colony that could content itself with the crumbs from the feast of petroleum exploitation. Let us be worthy of the shades that today preside over this solemn act, accompanying us with the example of their conduct and showing us the way to dignity and honor for Bolivia. Now we can indeed say that the blood shed in the sands of the Chaco, and which has flowed in the last thirty years seeking a route to liberation for the Bolivian people, has not been spilled in vain. Today is the culmination of that battle fought by the armed forces in alliance with the new political generation of the country. The Bolivian people has found in the revolutionary government the interpreter of its dearest ambitions. We will fulfill them, even sacrificing our lives if the nation demands it.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The Petroleum Code of 1955 was popularly known as the Davenport Code, after the New York law firm that drafted the legislation. 2. Ovando refers to the lowland departments of Santa Cruz and Tarija, which hold the country’s prime hydrocarbon reserves. 3. The city of Yacuiba is the capital of the Gran Chaco province of Tarija and lies three kilometers from the Argentine border.

The Blood of the Nation  321

This page intentionally left blank

VIII Revolutionary Currents

Beginning in the 1920s, indigenous, proletarian, and middle-­class social forces acquired a protagonistic role in the country. New political and cultural movements —​­indigenismo, socialism, feminism, anarchism, nationalism, and, later, indianismo—​­revitalized the arts, education, and public life. These movements articulated radical and novel demands, such as Tristán Marof’s slogan “Lands to the Indian, Mines to the State.” In the aftermath of the tumultuous events in Russia and Mexico in the 1910s, they also brought to the fore a powerful imaginary—​­the vision of revolution. By the mid-­1950s, popular political mobilization had wrought deep historical change. In much of the country, the democratizing tendencies had effectively broken up the old seigneurial order based on large landed estates and mining centers linked to foreign capital and export markets. In response to the ongoing expansion of the hacienda in the early twentieth century, indigenous communities in La Paz, Oruro, Potosí, Chuquisaca, and Cochabamba organized a national network of legal representatives—​ ­k nown as the caciques-­apoderados movement—​­to defend their lands, particu­ larly by relying on colonial and early republican property titles.1 At the same time, in the 1920s and 1930s, an elite movement in the arts, education, and political discourse emerged to defend and celebrate Indians as a vital national element. This indigenismo found exponents across the political spectrum and was partly taken up in official discourse by the government of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) in the 1950s. In the 1960s there arose an alternative movement known as indianismo, which was associated especially with the incendiary writer Fausto Reinaga. In claiming their self-­ determining role as revolutionary actors, indianista activists rejected white paternalism as well as any alliance with the creole or mestizo left. The workers’ movement developed late in Bolivia, with traditional artisanal and guild-­based organizations first finding support among urban anarchosyndicalist elements in the 1920s and 1930s. As socialism (and notably Trotskyism) caught fire in the same period, workers found urban leftist allies who helped establish unions in the countryside, mines, and cities. Urban Aymara women—​­cooks, flower sellers, market vendors—​­joined together in 323

the Federation of Women Workers (fof, 1927–65), which had anarchist tendencies. The mineworkers, whose labor powered the most profitable sector of the economy, founded their own national union in 1944. Two years later, in the mining center of Pulacayo, with vigorous Trotskyist orientation, they issued a bracing call to revolutionize the economy and society through proletarian struggle. By midcentury—​­due especially to the crucial economic role of the mineworkers, their compact union organization and militancy, and their decisive role in the revolution of 1952—​­the workers’ movement had become among the most powerful in all of Latin America. Bolivia’s utter rout at the hands of Paraguay in the Chaco War (1932–35) was a crucial turning point in the shift from an oligarchic to a national-­ revolutionary order. An estimated hundred thousand people on both sides lost their lives in the atrocious conditions at the front, one of the highest fatality levels of any armed conflict in the modern history of the American hemisphere. Yet despite the tragic losses, a popular sense of Bolivian national consciousness was forged in defeat. Men of the popular classes had joined together over and above their racial or ethnic, linguistic, or regional differences, and those who survived would prize their ties as veterans of a common national cause. They fought in opposition to a foreign adversary, but they discerned an internal one as well—​­the elite coterie that had exercised political and economic power for the benefit of the few and that had led the country into the disastrous war. With the political establishment discredited, Bolivia entered into the brief but effervescent era of “military socialism.” Coronels David Toro (1936–37) and Germán Busch (1937–39), young commanders whose reputations were made defending national honor in the Chaco, allied with former combatants, workers, and leftists to introduce progressive economic and social reforms. In 1937, Toro nationalized Standard Oil Company’s petroleum interests in the country, which the left deemed to be at the root of the territorial conflict in the Chaco. Bolivia’s constitution of 1938, influenced by Mexico’s revolutionary constitution of 1917, tempered private-­property rights by making them contingent on the “social utility” of the property. It introduced rights to health, education, and social welfare guaranteed by the state. Busch also instated a groundbreaking labor code to protect the rights of workers. In the 1940s, new political parties with middle-­class leadership and pronounced nationalist leanings, but otherwise diverse ideological agendas, came onto the scene. Occupying an ambivalent middle ground, with both leftist and fascist tendencies, was the mnr . The mnr helped bring an end to the conservative military government of General Enrique Peñaranda (1940– 43) and helped bring to power another military reformer, Major Gualberto Villarroel (1943–46). Villarroel sponsored the national Indigenous Congress of 1945, which responded to Indian and peasant pressures for agrarian change and anticipated the mnr’s 1953 agrarian reform. While the congress did not 324  Revolutionary Currents

go so far as to touch the property regime, it directly challenged servitude on rural estates. The mnr came to power through the epic route of armed popular insurrection in what it proclaimed as the national revolution of April 1952. If indigenous and peasant forces in the countryside had undermined the rural class order prior to 1952, mineworkers and the urban popular classes were decisive in toppling the illegitimate military junta of General Hugo Ballivián Rojas (1951–52) and sweeping Víctor Paz Estenssoro into power in the April insurgency. The slogan “Lands to the Indian, Mines to the State” quickly became a reality due to the pressures of peasants and mineworkers. But popular sectors throughout society also received the expanded democratic rights of universal suffrage and public education. While delegates to the constitutional convention had debated the citizenship rights of women and Indians in 1938, only now did they gain the full franchise. The mnr skillfully capitalized on its revolutionary prestige and consolidated its power through vertical corporatist channels. Its peasant and proletarian constituencies were organized within national trade-­union federations, with the powerful Bolivian Workers Central (cob), founded on 17 April 1952, at the apex. The revolution generated a range of international reactions. In the words of a young Argentine doctor named Ernesto “Che” Guevara who was passing through the country at the time, Bolivian insurgents “had given an example to the American continent.” Former Mexican heads of state acknowledged that Bolivia’s revolution was a sibling of their own. A British consular official in La Paz sniggered at the affairs of 1952 as a “divertissement,” while the United States watched and waited. The democratic and nationalist consequences of the revolution were far-­ reaching and enduring in many respects, most notably in terms of state control over natural resource extraction, the redistribution of land, the granting of the franchise, and free public education. Yet by the late 1950s, the legitimacy and hegemony of the mnr were eroding as its alliance with workers unraveled and with its chilling dependency on the Cold War power of the United States. Revolutionary aspirations would persist in popular politics, but the shadows of U.S.-­backed counterrevolution and military authoritarianism were lengthening.

Note 1. Cacique was the title of indigenous community leaders. The term apoderado refers to someone empowered to provide legal representation before the state for another party, in this case for Indian communities.

Revolutionary Currents 325  325

This page intentionally left blank

The Laws of the Land Santos Marka Tola and the Caciques-­Apoderados

The network of caciques-­apoderados (cacique legal representatives) sought to defend the lands of Indian communities threatened by the expansion of haciendas after the liberal agrarian legislation of 1866 and 1874 (see part V). This network emerged in five of the nine departments in the country, beginning in the late nineteenth century and lasting beyond the Chaco War (1932–35). The leaders, such as Santos Marka Tola, who signed the petition that follows in 1923, were accused of organizing subversion and revolt, and were subject to harassment by the landlord elite and their political allies. In battling adversaries in local power structures, the Indian movement in fact pursued sophisticated legal and political strategies, seeking to cultivate relations with progressive state authorities in the legislative and even the executive branches of government. In the document that follows, the communities presented their request for a nationwide inspection and demarcation of property, which would enable them to protect their own territorial boundaries. For this, they drew on earlier legislation. They invoked an 1874 liberal law for the inspection of lands, which originally had been used against the communities. They also relied on an 1883 decree, issued in response to community resistance to the liberal Law of Disentailment of 1874, which declared that community lands consolidated and titled during the colonial period could not be put up for sale. In this way, the title deeds issued by the Spanish Crown—​­the “old documents” referred to here—​­became the basis for the property rights of the communities in the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the indigenous leaders were taking advantage of both colonial and liberal legal resources in order to block the encroachment of the haciendas. For their correspondence and petitions, the caciques-­apoderados relied on scribes with little formal legal training and for whom Spanish was a second language. It can be difficult to translate these documents, since their syntax is often ambiguous and the sentences fragmented. We have not sought to smooth out all of the uneven textures in the following excerpt. Concerning the Composición Titles of the Spanish Crown. Composición for usufruct which entails exemption from land inspection.1 Sale and composición of native lands

327

with the Spanish Crown. Titles of the communities of the Republic, Renovation of Bolivia. Years 1536, 1617, 1777, 1825, and 1925. All the indigenous inhabitants of the republic from the departments of La Paz, Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosí, Oruro, from all the provinces, cantons, communities, unanimously all the caciques by bloodline, holders of large and small community plots, all the landholders together, we present ourselves before your high authority and say: in view of the situation in which our indigenous race finds itself, and since for consecutive years we have asked for our property rights as the only measure to avoid the litigation in which [our race] finds itself, we ask Sr. Prefect that there be named an inspection commission whose attributions and obligations should concern property rights so as to attend to the many tasks of determining the boundaries of the lands and repairing the boundary markers and the borders with neighboring owners. .  .  . [This should be done] according to our old titles, which in the archives manifest the legitimacy and right that we have to make demands, and since the laws concede the naming of that commission so that it may attend to us, and that the Supreme Government will order the general inspection of the entire republic, on the part of a special commission of an examiner, the subprefect of each province, his secretary, an expert surveyor with academic title, and the parish priest of each canton, [according to] Article 10 [of the Law of] October 1774,2 and who should take an oath before the prefecture and likewise [deposit] a guarantee of five thousand [pesos]. All our affairs and our documents, which in demand of justice [we bring] before the authorities of the republic, before the president, and before the Congress and ministry, and as all these case files are to be found in the archives in Sucre, Cochabamba, and in this city and in the principal provinces; our petitions which insofar as we are capable we present requesting guarantees for our goods and properties, with the aim of defending our peaceful existence and avoiding slanders with which every day they want to overwhelm our race, oppressing us, such that we have suffered the imprisonment and the exile to the Cajón River of our principal caciques, as is proved by papers in the Ministry of the Interior, at this date our companions in litigation exist in the prisons without any crime for which they could have been incriminated. In virtue of all these reasons, we ask . . . [that] you attend to us in justice, that we being poor and ignorant did not know how to ask for, nor did we know this law of inspection [of land titles], which no lawyer nor anyone else has advised us about, [information] which we have obtained by our own efforts and which we present: this writ after mature reflections among ourselves, [given] that the lawyers ask us for elevated sums of money to counsel us or to defend us, which we cannot pay since we find ourselves in the depths of poverty, due to the constant expulsions and abandonment which we suffer, the confiscation of our

328  Santos Marka Tola and the Caciques-Apoderados

herds and the demolition of our houses while our enemies accuse us with calumnies, and we find ourselves in this city to demand justice at times without the necessary food. For these reasons we present ourselves [to you], sirs, fathers of the nation who watch over the guarantees and the peacefulness of the inhabitants of this free country and that under this righteous regime that watches over all social classes we have had the good fortune to find this law [of 1874] which we do not doubt will be supported by the president of the republic and all the other authorities who watch over this unfortunate race, which in other previous times they prostrated us in slavery, for whose consequences we weep. We desire that the general inspection commission which will be named should carry out the inspection according to the old documents which exist in the office of property rights, the list of mining corvée laborers in Potosí, the general inspection [of land titles] on file . . . and [that] this commission will take charge of the inspection of these old archives, so that on that basis the new inspection in the whole Republic should be carried out. . . . . . . With the copy of the old laws which we present and the reasons which we expound before your righteous authority, we ask that we be attended to and that our petition be attended to so as to resolve with justice and protect the unfortunate indigenous race which pleads for justice. We accompany [this writ] with two tomes [of] documents which consist of six hundred and fifty folios from the provinces of Sicasica, Omasuyos, Pacajes, Larecaja, so that all the authorities and the Sovereign Congress may peruse them. La Paz 26th of April 1923. All the representatives of all the Indians of the republic. Santos Marca Tola, Pablo Conde de la Cruz, José M. Victorio, Manuel Chiqui, José Sirpa, Julián Siñani, Nicolás Mamani, Gregorio Aguilar, . . . Pedro Aruvire, Marcelino Tarui, Florencio C. Fernández Arroyo Sotomarca, Pascual Garlen, Delfín Ticona, Pedro M. Flores, Carlos Mamani, . . . Paulino Quispe, Tomás Quispe, Celso Hilario. Prefecture and General Command of the Department, La Paz, Bolivia, 28th of April 1923.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The composición de tierras was a way for the Spanish Crown to raise money by charging landholders for proper titles to lands that lacked them. It was understood as a settlement (composición) between two parties to consolidate landholdings. It was also used to auction off lands that were not properly titled or were perceived as being vacant and unused. The process often ratified the usurpation of Indian lands, and it resulted in the legal transfer of many community lands into private Spanish hands. In some cases, communities raised

The Laws of the Land  329

their own money to pay the composición fee to the Crown in order to secure legal control over lands they already held. They used the resulting titles to protect themselves from hacienda encroachment into the twentieth century. The land inspection (revisita de tierras) refers to the legal process by which landholders had to demonstrate their ownership; if they had no titles, or if their titles were considered inadequate, their lands were put up for auction. 2. This is in error. The law in question is the Disentailment Law of 5 October 1874, not 1774.

330  Santos Marka Tola and the Caciques-Apoderados

Resurrection of the Race Franz Tamayo

Franz Tamayo Solares (1879–1956) was a widely influential politician, public intellectual, and modernist poet whose political activities and sociocultural essays played an important role in a range of public debates during the first half of the twentieth century. Like the works of his contemporary Alcides Arguedas (1879–1946), Tamayo’s best-­known writings examined race and nation and particularly the potential for Bolivia’s indigenous majority to participate fully in public life. In The Creation of a National Pedagogy (1910), Tamayo drew from prevailing racial ideologies of the time—​­which were considered settled by science—​­to argue for the establishment of a new approach to education in Bolivia. Tamayo, who was himself a mestizo, rejected the dominant belief that Bolivia’s Indians had to be assimilated to a purely European model of cultural development, and instead celebrated the superior advantages of mestizaje, the mixing of people from European and Indian backgrounds. In other sections of his work, he concluded that the mestizo reflects the ideal combination of European rationality and Indian will and fortitude and therefore should form the basis for national culture and political life. But the following passage represents the contradictory “indigenista” aspect of his thinking. Although Tamayo’s use of simplistic racial categories seems antiquated or worse in historical perspective, it was novel at the time to argue that the influence of “Indian blood” in the veins of Bolivia’s population represented the “first step toward true national greatness.” In truth, one must acknowledge a prodigious vitality in the Indian in order to explain his tenacious survival despite all manner of destructive and deadly historical influences. It is not necessary to speak of the conquest and the colonial period, of which the republican period has been no more than a logical consequence. Elsewhere, we have already seen the spilling and disappearance of autochthonous blood under similar historical circumstances. Our Indian, by contrast, not only survives, but . . . continues to be the most solid foundation and the strongest element in the nationalities that he is helping to build at this time. This is due to the astonishing vitality of his blood. And that survival is a true victory. In fact, the Indian is reconquering, or, rather, is being called on to reconquer his usurped position. And despite all

331

Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas (1899–1950) was an imposing figure in the Bolivian cultural world in the first half of the twentieth century. His static, hieratic image Cristo aymara (Aymara Christ, 1939) exemplifies creole indigenismo in the arts in this period and expresses a nationalist fascination with the synthesis between Indian and Western cultural elements. Photograph of painting courtesy of Pedro Querejazu, photographer. Courtesy of Iván Guzmán de Rojas.

appearances, the mestizo who in our America constitutes numerically and qualitatively the superior and valid element of the race, that mestizo feels the unconquered and invincible Indian blood in his veins. We have said it already: this is like the subterranean revenge of history. Go to our parliaments, our universities, and our barracks and examine the few countenances that really make or promise to make some positive and not false . . . effort; examine their color, their physiognomic features: it is the Indian blood that is both the endangered reality and the highest promise. It is like the genius of the race is being resurrected, making its way slowly and surely to the future. . . . One can already see the weak side of the pedagogy of the Indian race: intelligence. Not only are their mental forces very far from having undergone the least development in the European sense, but also their very mental forms may not fully coincide with those of the white man. We would provide but a single suggestion: it is well ­k nown that language is one of the most direct and genuine manifestations of cerebral vitality. The physiology and the pathology of language are cerebral features. However, there is not a pure Indian who, having learned Spanish from early childhood, ever manages to pronounce it with the purity and precision of tone and accent of the mestizo or the white. In this, as in many other points, the Indian personality is marked with such intensity and with such force that it is only comparable to that of the English. It is well k­ nown how rebellious the latter is to the total and complete assimilation of a foreign language; the Englishman, whatever he speaks and however he speaks, always remains English. The Indian is the same; and the strange thing is that it is not only in this point that it is possible to establish parallels between the Indian and the English. . . . In this sense, the pedagogy of the Indian is a rather difficult matter. There is some sort of native inaccessibility in the powerful and personal nature of the Indian. All culture is a wearing down; . . . all culture is sculpture, and the soul of the Indian seems made of the granite of his mountains. This is its difficulty and its greatness. The Indian requires teaching; the cholo, an education. This would be the true psychological and pedagogical shade of both. What should be avoided is that the teaching imply a demoralization for the Indian, as has happened until now. Our absurd interpreters have also not understood us on this point. Spanish literature in itself cannot be less than good for the Indian, for when the Indian educates himself, he comes close to the cholo and the white man, and on coming close to them, he loses part of his good customs and acquires all or almost all the vices of the white man and the cholo. The ideal would be to make the Indian literate, to approximate him to the superior classes by means of this literature and, at the same time, ensure that he conserves his great moral qualities and features. This and no other is the issue. We need a prophylactic pedagogy with regard to the Indian, and in this sense our primiResurrection of the Race  333

tive, apparently paradoxical, and deeply scientific idea regarding the creation of a national pedagogy still stands: not only do we need to begin the pedagogy with the pedagogues; we need to educate the classes that purport to be the most educated part of the nation. . . . We need to begin reeducating all our whites or pseudo-­whites, then educate our mestizos, and then finish by instructing our Indians. Only like this can we destroy the moral poison that contact with the white man means to the Indian, and only a little less with the mestizo. Here, is it important to dispense with another very serious misunderstanding. We are told, quoting European scientific authorities, about the need to connect the Indian with the historically superior white man. We agree. But let’s understand each other, gentlemen educators: of which white man are we speaking? The one who is making the great future Germany, the one who has made the great England of today? Or are we talking about the poor, depraved, degenerate, lazy, bumbling, and insubstantial South American white man? . . . European science speaks of Aryan white superiority, and without a further thought, without much scrutiny, without opening its eyes on life, it imagines that European science also refers to the white men of South America! But open your eyes; compare the factors and compare the results. You can experience it in Europe and South America. . . . There is Buenos Aires, Santa Catalina, and Valdivia, not to mention others: everything creative in these places, large or small, belongs to the European immigrant—​­a white man; everything in these places that is marked by endemic laziness and backwardness belongs to the local South American—​­a white man! . . . Thus, everything that is said in Europe about the creative European white man and keeper of his present civilization cannot in any way be applied to our white man, who has been the destroyer of all civilization . . . and incapable of creating anything, since he has created nothing in three centuries. But then we will be told: this is to take the pedagogy too far. Without any doubt; however, one has to go that far to establish something stable and definitive. Do you imagine that with rural teachers and plagiarized regulations we can truly found the pedagogy of the Indian? I have to tell you another truth that is probably also new for you: the primordial evil and principal deficiency, concerning Indian pedagogy, is not in the Indian, it does not reside in him. It is and resides in us, those whom we call, and in fact we are, the directors and governors of all national life. The foundation of a national resurrection is in the reeducation of the superior masses . . . that is to say, the Indians. Only then will we be able to bring the Indian closer toward our white element, without fear and worry of moral contagion, which is a reality, no matter how much it hurts us to acknowledge this. Only then may we hope that the Indian, on acquiring literacy and interacting first with the mestizo and later on with the white man, need not lose his great qualities, but, on the 334  Franz Tamayo

contrary, preserving them, only needs a new intellectual instrument to develop them and put them into practice. This will truly be the first step toward true national greatness. . . . The Indian is probably a form of intelligence that has been dormant for centuries. In the midst of the superb moral conditions that have always characterized the history of the Indian, one always finds a deficiency of mental organization and the lack of a superior intellectual reach. The truth is that the Indian has always wanted much and thought little. Historically, the Indian has shown great will, but a small intelligence. Above all, the Aymara, from his legendary and prehistoric resistance to any political oppression to his present condition of tragic isolation, in the middle of his misery and his misfortune, has always demonstrated an unshakable will that has contrasted strangely with the lack of a governing and organizing principle of life throughout his historical evolution. It is this Indian intelligence that is a problem for all pedagogy of the future. Notice that this limited and undeveloped intelligence nonetheless offers undeniable conditions of superiority in what we would call the quality of the thought. The Indian knows few things, but what he knows, he knows better than anybody. We have already spoken of the accuracy and intensity with which the Indian develops his few mental conceptions. When the Indian learns to do a job, he always does it without the versatility of the cholo but without the superficiality of the white man; the work is even and its quality is always the same. This is a completely mental condition and shows the solid mechanism of the Indian intelligence. This is why the Indian is the ideal worker for certain routine tasks in the arts and trades. Teach the Indian to do something, and he will do it in the same way until his death. The issue is to teach it; therefore, the pedagogical problem with respect to the Indian becomes concrete. One has to wake up the Indian intelligence, and for him pedagogy should be above all instructive and prophylactic. The great pedagogical base of the Indian must be his character and his morality. It is on this ground that the educator must build. And then it turns out that the pedagogy of the Indian must be a patient and methodical work, rather than one of pure intelligence and reasoning. If you want to bring something to the Indian’s intelligence, concentrate above all on his will and his sentiment. The Indian more than anything demands an educator who is first and foremost a psychologist. The latter must above all know about the art of moving the will and bending it to the needs of the instruction. . . . The Indian demands a pedagogy of love and patience; the mestizo, a disciplinary, normative, and intellectual pedagogy. . . . The base of operation in the Indian is his character; in the mestizo, his intelligence. On the other hand, the pedagogy of both must be directed to compensating for their respective deficiencies. Thus, regarding the Indian, we need to contain his tendency to inner and outer isolation, to a morbid concentration that translates into antisocial Resurrection of the Race  335

feelings. Solitude is useful; but it is also good to communicate with one’s fellow man. And while it is true that excessive socialization depersonalizes the individual, it is no less true that it is the spirit of association that to a large extent has contributed to the development of the great European nations in every sense. It is necessary to wake it up in the Indian.

Translated by Adriana Salcedo

336  Franz Tamayo

A Voice for Women Adela Zamudio

Adela Zamudio, the preeminent female literary figure in Bolivian history, was born in Cochabamba to an upper-­class family in 1854. Beginning in the 1880s, in the aftermath of the War of the Pacific, she became an active educator, writer, and public advocate for women and children. She composed her poem “To Be Born a Man,” with its hard-­ hitting, mocking lines about gender discrimination, early in her writing career. Her epistolary novel Íntimas (Close Friends, 1913), written in a Romantic literary style that diverged from both the realist and modernist genres of the day, was a “novel about women for women,” she said. She protested the limits placed on young women’s educational possibilities and advocated for civil marriage and divorce. Against what she called “patriarchal primitivism,” she stood for women’s equality before the law and in the home. Zamudio engaged in a polemic with the Church over secular education, and one scandalous poem (“Quo Vadis”) denounced religious corruption and cruelty. For her outspoken public views, she came under fire from conservatives who accused her of atheism and anarchism. She died in 1928, just as the first generation of Bolivian feminists was gaining public visibility.

To Be Born a Man She does such work to correct the rude ways of her spouse, and in the home, (Pardon my amazement) as inept as he is vain, he is still the head because he is a man. If she writes verses, “Those verses belong to him, and she only signs below.” (Pardon my amazement) If he is not a poet, why such an assumption? Because he is a man. 337

A superior woman in elections does not vote, and the worst scoundrel does. (Pardon my amazement) Just knowing how to sign his name, an idiot can vote because he is a man. He collapses and drinks or gambles with a stroke of misfortune; she suffers, struggles, and pleads. (Pardon my amazement) She is called the “frail being,” and he is known as the “strong one” because he is a man. She must forgive if her husband is unfaithful, but he can take revenge; (Pardon my amazement) in a similar case he can even kill because he is a man. O, mortal! O, privileged mortal who enjoys secure reputation as being perfect and complete! What did you need for that? To be born a man.

Translated by Sinclair Thomson

338  Adela Zamudio

A Woman’s Work Federation of Women Workers

Beginning in the 1920s, anarchism was instrumental in the building of the Bolivian trade-­union movement. The Federation of Local Workers (fol) brought together workers from a range of trades who were influenced by anarchist “free-­thinking.” Artisans were especially prominent in the fol , and the movement created bridges with the indigenous cacique-­apoderado movement as well as spaces for female union organization. The Federation of Women Workers (fof) included cooks, flower sellers, urban market vendors, and rural marketers. The following oral-­history accounts of the 1930s and 1940s were recorded in the mid-­to late 1980s by the La Paz–­based Women’s History and Participation Workshop (tahipamu), and are interspersed with excerpts from historical documents of the period. The testimony of women active in the cooks union provides a vivid picture of what anarchosyndicalist organization meant in the lives of urban working women of popular Aymara background, commonly known as cholas.

Why couldn’t we ride on the trams? Doña Tomasita : In those days there were no buses or minivans; there were just little trams. There was first and second class: the first for the ladies of the house, the ladies dressed in Western fashions. The second class was for those de pollera: the cholas.1 When they went to the market together, the lady of the house went in first class and the cook in second. Likewise walking: the mistress in front, the cook behind. Now they go almost side by side. Now, if the maid is de pollera she wears an overall-type apron, so the pollera isn’t so noticeable, and her plaits down her back. No way, back then; we just had to walk behind and the mistress walked in front.

Doña Peta [short for Petronila]: One day, all of a sudden, I was going to the market and they didn’t let us get on the tram. The ladies said, “These cholas with their baskets tear our stockings!” There was an order not to let us get on the trams. Now there are markets all over the place; back then there were just two markets: one in San Francisco and another where the Club de La Paz is now. From there to up here on foot, maybe we got home 339

when it was already lunchtime; it didn’t leave us enough time [to prepare lunch].

[newspaper], 31 July 1935, “Avoiding Infections in the Trams ” el diar io

It is categorically forbidden to allow entry to the coaches with any voluminous burden which may enter into contact with other passengers, likewise to persons with evident signs of being unwashed or whose clothing may contaminate the other passengers or emits a bad smell. Any passenger will have the right to demand that the conductors oblige such persons to leave the coach. . . . The tram drivers are obliged at each tram stop to open the door on the pavement side, so that the passengers may enter and leave on the side that corresponds to them, being forbidden for those of the II class to pass through the I class carriage and vice versa. (Signed) V. Burgaleta, Engineer-­Director

Doña Peta : “What are we going to do?” We were talking in the market. Don José Mendoza, who would later be my partner, said to me, “You have to organize yourselves in a union. Get organized!” That afternoon it seemed easy to organize. We didn’t have a place to meet; so we just met in the market, in the empty stalls. We did the impossible to get out of the houses [where we worked]. When the police came, they told us to get out. Some women comrades loaned us a room, but how could we all fit in there? There were loads and loads of us! That’s how we founded the Union of Cooks [Sindicato de Culinarias], the fifteenth of August nineteen thirty-­ five. The fol was present. el diar io,

21 August 1935, “Cooks Union Petition ”

The guild of Cooks and Similar Branches has requested via a polite writ that the prohibition dictated by the [city] council for those who enter the urban trams should be left without effect.

Doña Peta : Rosa de Calderón collaborated in organizing us and forming our committee, an ad hoc committee. She was a great fighter, a woman who also knew how to speak in public. But at that time she was a bit cautious, because I don’t know how many times they’d arrested her partner. So she hardly ever took part, just from a distance. Once we had our ad hoc committee, I put the word out in the market: “Let’s go to Mr. Burgaleta, the head of the Electric [Tram Company]. We’ll be in the doorway of the town hall at such and such a time.” Cooks, cholas, little cholitas; the town hall was overflowing; there were hundreds of women. . . . All of them wanted to go inside, to meet the director. . . . A commission entered Mr. Burgaleta’s office, and we said, “Why can’t we 340  Federation of Women Workers

get on the trams when the trams are for the cholas, for the maids? Not for the ladies—​­the ladies travel in cars. The trams are for those who work.”

The freedom to speak Doña Peta : We said that we weren’t going to be a mutual society.2 Before there were only mutual societies. That’s what there was.

[magazine], no. 3, 21 June 1936, “ The Society of Cooks and Maids ” bander a roja

. . . The Society of Cooks and Maids, unique of its kind in all Bolivia, given that all its members are effectively workers and waged, has been organized with these aims: mutual protection, guarantees and provision of jobs to those out of work, vigilance and regularization in labor relations between coworkers and their employers; educate and promote the resurgence of its members in social and guild relations. For the time being, this is the minimal program of action imposed by the members of this first female institution. . . .

Doña Peta : In those mutuals, if you weren’t in agreement, even so you had to do as you were told. They dealt with work, just among themselves. While we, the unionists, we worked for everyone; we have more advanced ideas. So: “We’re not going to be a mutual society; we’re going to be a union.” We sent a request saying that the Union of Cooks and Similar Branches wanted to join the fol , so as to have more strength, because in the local workers federation there were shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, builders, mechanics, tin-­workers, everything. So that the fol would be larger, would have more strength, more resistance, we joined up. The local workers federation had libertarian, anarchosyndical tendencies, so that we came to be anarchosyndicalists. I was a free thinker, in the way of being, of living, to be as we are, be free, have that freedom of expression. Some of the women knew what a union was, like Felipa Aquize, a woman of steel. She argued well, she knew who was who, what they were like, who they were. Since we were anarchists they said, “Those women are communists. They get into the houses to steal. That’s why they’re in the union.” For us, the union was a free organization, emancipatory; we organized ourselves so that no one would tell us what to do or push us around.

“ Why don’t you join? ” Doña Exaltación: We formed the Union of Cooks because in those days we worked, but other Bolivians, our fellow countrymen, didn’t recognize

A Woman’s Work  341

that it was work. Any minute they would tell you, “You can go,” “You’ve stolen,” this and that. So then we formed a union.

[newspaper], 13 May 1941, “She Went to Complain and Was Arrested for More Than 24 Hours ” la calle

Francisca Pérez, cook by profession, was the victim of police injustice, because when she went to the central police station to complain against her former employer, who resides near the La Paz stadium, for not having wanted to pay her salary. Instead of having her demands attended to she was detained for twenty-­four hours, due to influences of a personal type. We hope that the superior police authorities will order an investigation of this case of denial of justice and will punish the person responsible.

Doña Exaltación: Doña Peta was the main one. She was the one who gave advice. She said, “We have to become cultured. We have to be educated. We have to be this and that, defend ourselves, not let ourselves be mistreated.”

Doña Peta : I liked to go from house to house to invite them [domestic workers], all over the city. Those of us who could went. We went to all the houses, and that’s why they called us “communists.”

Doña Tomasita : If I hadn’t been a young girl, I would have carried on with my aunt’s [market or street] stall, to sell. But I was still a silly little thing. I only knew how to run errands and listen, watch, accompany her. I went to the Federation of Women Workers with her. So I was with them as a curious girl who went with her aunt. They held meetings among adults. I was off in a corner listening, just a kid then, a girl. But she, my aunt, she took me around as if I were her bodyguard, my aunt’s friends, too. I was a lively one, a little scoundrel. So when she died, I would have given it all up because I went to work in a factory. But the women comrades said to me, “Why don’t you come? You must come!” “Okay,” I said, and I went. That’s how I joined [the Union of] Cooks and Related Branches. Back then nobody let you form a union. They [the mounted police] had us dragged around by the horses; they had us trampled on. Everyone, the authorities, the president, none of them wanted there to be this freedom. We should always have been dominated by all of them. And so, since we struggled so much, we formed the union.

“Do you have children? . . . Oh, no ” Doña Peta : Since we were women with children, we had nowhere to leave them; because they didn’t want us to come to work with children. “Do

342  Federation of Women Workers

you have children? . . . Oh, no,” they said. So we went to the Chamber of Deputies, taking a petition, some proposals. We filled the chamber and asked for a solution. We asked for nurseries so that in every district we could leave our children there while we were at work. They read it: “We can’t just read it and do something like that; we have to study it.” But it got done. The first nursery was called Matilde Carmona vda. de Busch [a former First Lady], up there near the [railway] station. Then we asked for another one near the Tambo Kirkincho, on the corner of Evaristo Valle [Street]; it had been a dance hall . . . but became a nursery. After that, there were others in various places. You didn’t have to pay, so we could go to work in peace. When we left work after midday, and we wanted to make them some food, we collected [our children] . . . and we took them home. Then we took them back and went to work again; at half past seven, at eight [p.m.], we left and collected them again, and so on. After that, there were nurseries in lots of places, due to the Federation of Women Workers, only they were named after bourgeois women.

[newspaper], 10 August 1942, “200 Children Receive Food and Care in Nursery ” tier r a

.  .  . It is lunchtime when the reporter from Tierra visits the nursery Matilde Carmona vda. de Busch, located on Avenida Perú and founded last year. . . .

Doña Graciela : One time, the house [where I worked] was empty because the gringa [my white employer] had gone on a trip, so I took my son to the house. I didn’t take care [to keep him out of sight], and when the gringa came back, she found my kid. “How are you, Graciela?” The little boy, her son, came downstairs too: “Ooh, Graciela has a little boy. Come on, let’s play,” he was saying. Kids always want to make friends, don’t they? And the gringa says to me, “No, daughter, I don’t want your child to be here.3 I don’t want you to feel bad about it, and I don’t want to feel bad about it either, because the children are bound to fight about something. Your little boy will wreck the plants, pull up the flowers, or something like that. I’ll give you a certified letter; you can put him in the nursery,” she told me. “You’ll take him at six [a.m.] and collect him at seven [p.m.].” “All right,” I said, to keep my job; and so I took him like that, to the nursery near the station.

Doña Peta : We also said that the children of a single mother had the same rights as the children of a married woman; we put out announcements in the newspapers, La Razón, Última Hora, Inti. The Catholic ladies said we were immoral if we hadn’t married. But the child, natural or legitimate, is the same; it’s a woman’s child. We also looked after other people’s

A Woman’s Work  343

children—​­how many times did we take in children, children who had been abandoned! I at least brought several little girls and boys home.

Doña Natividad: Yes, because it doesn’t matter if the mother is married or single; it’s just the same. And the Lord gives more whole loaves of bread to the child of a single mother than to that of a married mother.4 We also talked about this. No one can ever criticize or despise a single woman for having a baby, because she’s a mother just the same.

Doña Peta : Well, there’s nothing better than thought, than freedom: why must one always get married? Marriage is a business for the priest and for the civil notary. I don’t believe in the priests; I’ve never confessed or taken Communion, like the churchwomen sticking their tongues out to take the Host. The pope is a man just like any other man; he’s just in costume. That’s what I’ve always thought.

Then I woke up like from a dream Doña Peta : When I was a girl, I didn’t know what the fol was. When I was working, I saw a whole heap of people in San Francisco Plaza with red and black flags. I said, “What is it. What does fol mean?” Later, because they forbade us to get on the trams, that’s when I got to know about it. Then I woke up like from a dream. Once we were in the organization, we had to go in commissions, taking a petition or asking for a reply. So they nominated him and me; on purpose they nominated me with him: “Let Comrade Peta go with Comrade José.” He volunteered as well: “I’ll do the petitions.” “I’m very grateful, I’d like to know how much I owe you” [Petronila would say to him]. “It’s nothing, comrade, nothing at all; it’s my obligation, my duty to collaborate with the cooks.” I was totally innocent, but people had assumed I was living with him; he didn’t like that, and he told me that he wanted to get married. I said, “I don’t want to get married, we can just live together. If we get on, fine; if we don’t get on, we can have a friendly separation. We have to practice free love. Two people who love each other live together without the need to get married.” I had three daughters with him; I was very happy. As a father, he was a good father; as a husband a good husband; as a comrade a good comrade; as a friend a good friend. He was very intelligent. He also suffered; he protested to get me and other women comrades [out of prison], and I also protested to get him out of prison. In the fol they were all sound men, sound women. In the first place, we all have the right to be as we are; there’s to be no discrimination. For that reason we respected each other, among men as well as women com344  Federation of Women Workers

rades. The men comrades were fine with their wives; they didn’t even fight like happens elsewhere. In other homes, they go after each other with kicks, punches; the woman scratches the man; she clouts him with a bottle. We didn’t go through those things. You had to set examples, of a good father, of a good husband. What times those were and they will never come back!

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. The term de pollera means “with a pollera”: in the Bolivian context, the pollera is a full, pleated skirt with details of style and length that vary from one region of the country to another. Although it is in fact originally an eighteenth-­century European fashion, the ­pollera is used as metonym for traditional urban Indian (chola) dress for women. 2. She refers to mutual aid societies, where groups of workers paid dues to assist members who lost their jobs or fell ill and to pay for their funerals when they died, but these benefits were limited to those who had paid their dues; moreover, these organizations protested only on behalf of their members. Petronila (Peta) also suggests that the “mutual” had fixed rules and that members had to submit to them without the opportunity to disagree or propose changes. 3. In this context, daughter is a patronizing term, implying that the servant is in some sense underage, not a true adult, and thus should obey the employer as a child would. 4. Doña Natividad refers to the Bolivian proverb “Every child arrives with its bread under its arm.” The implication is that parents should not limit the number of children they have because they think they will not be able to feed them, for something will always turn up to feed each new child.

A Woman’s Work  345

The Business of War Tristán Marof

The earliest and brightest of the leading lights of socialism was the cosmopolitan intellectual Gustavo Navarro, who took the public name Tristán Marof. His time in Europe in the 1920s radicalized him, and in 1926, just before his return to Bolivia, he published The Justice of the Inca, a stirring case for revolution in Bolivia and Latin America that found common ground between socialism and indigenismo. Like the heterodox Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, whom he met in 1927, Marof sought to root socialism in Andean soil. He was an early and prominent advocate for nationalization of the mines and for agrarian reform to overthrow what he saw as the feudal order in the countryside. This program gained hold on the left, in the labor movement, and among military veterans in the aftermath of the Chaco War, and the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) would implement it in the revolution of 1952. While in exile in northern Argentina in the 1930s, Marof became a leading critic of the Bolivian government’s war against Paraguay, and he formed the Revolutionary Workers Party (por), of Trotskyist orientation. The Tragedy of the Altiplano, his brilliant polemic against the old regime, the rosca, the domestic influence of foreign oil companies, and the Chaco War, came out in 1935. While Marof himself held a left-­ nationalist position, he argued that the Bolivian and Paraguayan governments were cynically exploiting nationalist sentiment to the detriment of working-­class soldiers who fought in the arduous conditions of the Chaco and to the benefit of foreign interests, especially Standard Oil Company. While historians have since discounted the assumptions that the war was promoted by oil companies and that the Chaco territory in dispute contained significant oil reserves, these were common notions at the time in the popular press. Marof’s most famous work concluded with this open letter to the Bolivian proletariat.

Dear comrades: The government of Dr. Salamanca, genuine representative of all the rich, of the shameless exploiters of the nation, such as [Simón] Patiño, [Carlos Víctor] Aramayo, and their companions. . . . The Bolivian government, unconditionally submissive to Yankee imperialism, managed by 346

Standard Oil, which owns four million hectares of national territory, . . . The government that shoots Indians and workers, imprisons students, and vindictively pursues them . . . aims in the present moment to take us to war with Paraguay, whose government, just as enslaved as ours, equally cynical and criminal, deceives the Paraguayan proletariat in the same way, making [workers] conceive of it as a matter of “national dignity.” This grotesque comedy, interminable and ridiculous, of permanent war—​­with surprise attacks on fortresses, bellicose preparations, and murders—​­is already grown old, and was carried out with singular success by immoral heads of government such as [José Patricio] Guggiari and [Hernando] Siles. Today, it is staged once more by Guggiari and [Daniel] Salamanca, abusing the backwardness of the working masses of both countries.1 Siles was defeated by popular indignation; Guggiari was not. Siles made expeditious use of the Chaco question, in order to keep himself in power and make a personal fortune out of continual troop mobilizations. There are many in the top ranks of the military who ought to be held to account. Guggiari, the president of Paraguay, and some of his followers have resolved to maintain themselves in power and keep up their political influence by ordering periodic military attacks on [Bolivian] forts in the Chaco. Eusebio Ayala continues Guggiari’s policies now that he is in power. In order to consolidate his position and keep the support of the military bosses, he needs to stir up jingoism once more, while the oppressed and humiliated Paraguayan proletariat bears up under the worst living conditions, and the most severe, draconian, and inquisitorial laws are dictated in order to repress progressive and pacifist elements. President Salamanca, as you already know, has acted in the same way or worse. With his prestige unsteady, deprived of favorable opinions of his government, the country completely bankrupt, all freedoms suppressed, the proletarians and their leaders suppressed and martyred, in order [for him] to carry on with his policies of most miserable depredation, no road is left to him but to imitate Siles and wrap himself in the jingoistic flag, while, of course, he submits to the foreign companies who exploit Bolivia as if it were their hacienda. What will Bolivian proletarians defend if they march into this criminal war? What nation will they sacrifice their lives for? At present, Bolivia belongs to a dozen plutocrats and foreign companies, whose boards sit in New York, Paris, Geneva, and London. The dividends from their mines are shared out abroad. Patiño, Aramayo, and other millionaires are such “excellent Bolivians” and love the country so extraordinarily that all their enormous fortunes are deposited abroad. The magnate Patiño owes forty-­eight million pesos to the Bolivian state, but since the state is unable to collect them, since it has neither power nor force, every so often The Business of War  347

the magnate gives away a couple of airplanes to the government, and the official press applauds his philanthropy! All the presidents, including Salamanca, have got down on their knees before this exceptional man, whose income is greater than that of the government itself. Aramayo, for his part, has as much influence as Patiño. His mines are valued at seven million pounds sterling. His dividends surpass the sum of three hundred fifty thousand pounds sterling a year. The same occurs with the foreign companies which have amassed huge fortunes in Bolivia and never contributed a cent to the country’s health and progress. For Europeans and Yankees, our country is just a land of slaves to be exploited! What will Paraguayan proletarians defend? At present, they live exploited, poverty-­stricken, sunk in the oppression of the mate plantations, under the lash of their fellow countrymen, who render accounts to Argentine and British capitalists. Their painful situation has not varied since the terrible era that Barrett describes in his books.2 Naturally, they find themselves in the same sad conditions as the Bolivians. The two peoples, due to their backwardness and ignorance, provide sacrificial flesh, not only in peacetime, but also in wartime, while businessmen make great profits. We need to be distrustful. The lands of the Chaco are the unworthy trap laid by the heads of government of Bolivia and Paraguay to lead two brave peoples to their death, when their energy and courage should be used to free them from all imperialist supervision. “Honor and dignity” are tainted phrases in the mouths of the worst agents. Nor can the war be for territory. Both Bolivia and Paraguay have more than enough land, uninhabited and not colonized. But the Yankees and the British contend over the oil to be had in the Chaco or near it, moving their satellite governments like puppets. Standard Oil’s expansionary movements have stumbled because of the obstacle of Argentina. It is easier for the Argentine government to make use of Paraguay, as its vassal, to halt the influence and the preponderance of Standard Oil. If the Bolivian Army is successful, it will dominate the Paraguay River, subordinating Asunción and the northern provinces of Argentina to the power of Standard Oil. This company, despite its repeated denials, has a special interest in the war. It can only export “its oil” via the Paraguay River. Its dearest ambition is the pipeline via Bahía Negra. In this deal, Bolivia would obtain only a dubious 11 percent. The Paraguayan government, for its part, has made insinuations to the same company. Its policies are tortuous and three-­faced: with Argentine capital, with British oil companies, and with Standard Oil itself. The government of Paraguay has made an effort to displace its altiplano rival in the role of chief lackey. Never before have there been so many parties and banquets in honor of the Yankees in Asunción. But Standard Oil is not the only one to have possessions in Bolivia; the Guggenheims own 348  Tristán Marof

mines; our country is controlled by the Permanent Fiscal Commission, and its huge debt keeps it permanently tied to Wall Street.3 This is the real situation of both countries. In consequence, the proletariat has nothing to gain; it can only lose. It will spill its blood in vain, and American soil will be covered with ruins, poverty, and tears. Neither side will obtain the “proclaimed victory.” Bolivian troops will not reach the Paraguay River, nor will those of that country reach the altiplano. The only loser will be the proletariat, if it does not rebel in time, acting with audacity and energy. The dominant classes of Bolivia and Paraguay—​­who today give epileptic shouts of triumph and rub their hands together thinking of the feats of “their troops”—​­will harvest the crumbs and the kicks of the imperialists. Only as subordinates can they exist and profit. This absurd war raises a question for the proletarians of Bolivia and Paraguay. They have arms in their hands and can rebel. Bayonets should be used to sink them, not in the breast of an exploited brother, but in that of the exploiter. Bolivians and Paraguayans have a destiny to fulfill, if they recognize their own interests. We must not hesitate. War on account of imperialist masters leads to the massacre of the most unfortunate. Rich men do not fight. War is a business for arms manufacturers and those who supply the rations. The imperialists are preparing to feast on the skins of Bolivians and Paraguayans. Guggiari, Ayala, and Salamanca are merchants of death. For them, the soldiers’ courage and heroism are priced on the stock market. The proletarians of both countries can only shed their blood for their freedom and economic independence. Their struggle can have but one end: to strip the feudal lords of their privileges and expel the foreign companies from their nations. Down with the criminal war! Long live the uprising and the installation of councils and committees of workers, students, peasants, and soldiers! (From exile: Tristán Marof)

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. José Patricio Guggiari, founder of the Constitutional Party, was the Paraguayan head of state between 1928 and 1931. Hernando Siles Reyes, linked to a faction of the Republican Party, was in office between 1926 and 1930, a time when tensions with Paraguay began to mount. Daniel Salamanca came to power through an alliance between the Genuine Republican Party and the Liberals. He pushed Bolivia into the Chaco War during his term, from 1931 to 1934. Eusebio Ayala of the Liberal Party was president of Paraguay between 1932 and 1936.

The Business of War  349

2. Yerba mate is a plant native to South America which produces a stimulating tea that is very popular in Argentina and Paraguay. In the early twentieth century, the leaves were produced on large estates by workers in conditions of debt peonage. The Spanish writer Rafael Barrett (1876–1910), who settled in Paraguay and adopted anarchist politics, wrote a series of articles exposing the slave-­like labor conditions on the mate plantations. 3. The Permanent Fiscal Commission was set up at the insistence of U.S. banks in 1922, when Bolivia agreed to a $33 million loan. It was composed of one Bolivian government official and two representatives of the banks, and it exercised administrative control over national revenue and taxation.

350  Tristán Marof

The Ayllu-­School Elizardo Pérez

One of the most innovative popular-­education projects in Latin America in the 1930s was the ayllu-­school of Warisata, located near Lake Titicaca in the foothills of the eastern cordillera of the Andes. A creole educator with socialist leanings, Elizardo Pérez, teamed up with a respected Aymara leader, Avelino Siñani, and the indigenous community of Warisata to build an autonomous intercultural educational institution, despite the opposition of the local landlord class. The school was grounded in the collective organization of the traditional Aymara community (ayllu) and sought to go beyond the mere inculcation of literacy—​­which was the key focus of other educational efforts in the period—​­by linking education to productive communal labor and collective civic engagement. The school’s ethos was egalitarian and its democratic governance was based on assembly-­style deliberation among elected council members. While the experiment stirred interest in Peru, Mexico, and the United States, Warisata was shut down in 1940, nine years after its founding. It was not only the return of conservative government under General Enrique Peñaranda (1940–43) that was responsible, but also ostensibly “progressive” bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education who were hostile to its culturally pluralist principles and who favored the incorporation of Indians into a modernizing nation as culturally assimilated “peasants.” Elizardo Pérez’s passionate narrative of the founding, flourishing, and destruction of the school is tinged with the paternalism of a tutor writing about his pupils. Yet it is also a vivid first-­person account, full of ethnographic texture, and it helped secure the school’s later iconic reputation. The Warisata experience was reclaimed by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) in the 1950s, as part of its agrarian and educational reforms, and by the rising indigenous movement in the late twentieth century, as an example of rural struggles against the hacienda regime and the autonomous potential of the ayllu. It was 1917. As inspector for the Department of La Paz, I visited the schools in my district, including the indigenous Saracho schools.1 . . . That’s how I got to know the Warisata region, where one of these humble public schools was located, and which, as can be supposed, had nothing special about it. My visit

351

would not have had any greater significance if I had not found in the same region another little school, run by an Indian named Avelino Siñani. When I refer to this man, I do it with barely contained excitement. I am not a writer: my pen is unable to transmit to the reader the feelings that come over me when I remember this example of the highest human virtues. In another setting or in another time, Avelino Siñani would have been honored by society; but he was born and lived in the sordid environment of the feudal altiplano, degrading and obscurantist, adverse to his kind of spirit. And he was an Indian, meaning an individual of the lowest social condition in the common view. Nonetheless, underneath his austere exterior, eternally kolla, was hidden a soul as pure as a child’s and as strong as a giant’s. It didn’t matter that he barely understood the alphabet and that his Spanish was basic. His culture did not reside in Western settings; it was the culture of the amautas of the Inka age, of the indigenous wise men of yesteryear, capable of penetrating not only the mysteries of nature but also those of the human spirit.2 Avelino Siñani was the incarnation, to an unsurpassed degree, of the doctrine ama sua, ama llulla, ama kella.3 Forced to circulate in his small world, he opened a school, extremely poor just like himself, but with grand aims, since he proposed nothing less than the liberation of the Indian by means of culture. It is not that Siñani was not in solidarity with the peasants who were prone to rebellion: he understood perfectly the rage that blinded the revolutionary, in which the centuries of oppression and misery manifested themselves. But as a modern man with keen vision, he also understood that that sacrifice was sterile and unwise, at least at that period. A different path needed to be followed. The masses needed to be trained, illuminated with sacred fire, prepared for future days. That was the essence of his school, in whose humanity I silently contemplated the most radiant of new beginnings for Bolivia.

Before the creation of the school, the peasants were sought after by creole politicians in order to obtain their electoral support, which was often decisive. Of course, once it was obtained, no one remembered the “citizens” in the countryside who had made possible the victory. A year after [Warisata] appeared, if I’m not mistaken, I was visited by the two contending politicians in the election for congressional deputy. Each of them tried to win my support, as they could see the magnitude of my influence in the area. I won’t mention all the marvelous things they offered me. Who were these men? It doesn’t matter who they were—​­they represented an entire historical process that the school sought to liquidate forever. Was I going to obligate myself to someone for the promises they made me? Not at all—​­I rejected outright the role of electoral agent with which they tried to seduce me, and I let the peasants know. They approved of my outlook and 352  Elizardo Pérez

perfectly understood the trap into which they fell by playing along with the dirty “democratic” game that gave them every so often the faculty to elect their own executioners. Thus, it was established that they would not go to vote until they could do so freely and on their own behalf, either through their own representatives or those fully identified with their cause. This made us realize the necessity of familiarizing the Indian with democratic practices, and we agreed unanimously that the indigenous authorities in the school, or council members, would be elected by direct vote among the members of the community. It’s not that this was foreign to them, since the Indian already had an old democratic tradition, and he understands the exercise of politics. The precolonial ulakas and the cabildos of the colonial period, which have lasted with the same name to our time, were no other than this.4 The Indian is not simply one who carries out orders; rather, he possesses a profound capacity for analysis and observation, in the service of a strong volition. Our evening meetings—​­which were the embryonic stage of the large administrative councils and of the Amauta Parliament—​­had a political component.5 During these meetings, our points of view on education, agriculture, government, the economy, and so on were discussed, and the various initiatives presented were approved based on majority vote, thereby constituting the laws of the school. Thus, the collectivity was definitively incorporated into the life of the school.

. . . [Before the establishment of the ayllu-­school,] the llokallas (children) gathered together noisily in the chapel next to the cemetery. Alongside, in a hut of stone masonry no larger than four meters square, was a mechanic’s workshop. The mechanic-­teacher alternated between banging his hammer and working with the spelling book. We don’t need to go into the inappropriate conditions of the location that served as our school, barely four-­by-­n ine meters in surface area, with neither sufficient lighting nor ventilation and with a dirt floor. We improvised adobe benches and seats, where the children copied sentences or words that were given to them as examples in the morning. The mechanic maintained order by popping out of his shop every once in a while. . . . I did not go to Warisata to drill the alphabet into the heads of students shut up in a room with their spelling books in front of them. I went to set up an active school, full of light and sun and oxygen and the breeze, alternating work in the classroom with time in the workshops, fields, and construction. But the indigenous community did not think this way yet; the Indians still had the mentality of Saracho and the normalist schools, and believed that schooling consisted only of learning the alphabet.6 They objected to having the kids leave their studies to work on a construction project. “That’s what we’re here for,” the Indians said, willing to carry out any project as long as The Ayllu-School  353

the kids were not distracted by tasks that, according to them, were a waste of time. We slowly overcame their resistance, through persuasion and the examples that life offered us. In our evening meetings, we discussed this question at length. We had to make them understand that the alphabet in and of itself was not a solution to anything. Though it was a slight distortion of reality, I gave them the example of Avelino Siñani, whose economic and social situation, despite his knowing how to read and write, was exactly equal to that of Juan Quispe, who did not, and that in the town and the city, they were subject to the same treatment. The same abuses were committed against both, and one being literate did not make them very different. “This school,” I said to them “has to equip the children with all kinds of knowledge in order for them to elevate their condition through work and effort that produce well-­being, wealth, and dignity for the individual. I want all of you, your children, your grandchildren, and the coming generations to improve your lives by residing in comfortable and clean homes, sleeping on comfortable beds, dressing in good clothes, and eating better and more abundantly.” This could all be attained by working in the fields to get the best results from the resources available, for example with modern techniques and tools, complementing the art of construction with that of manufacturing based on regional resources, and so on. In our classrooms, constructed to be ample, full of light, with beautiful large windows, superior to those in Achacachi and even in the city of La Paz, children and young people would open their spirit, giving flight to thought, going beyond the mere alphabet and gaining access to higher disciplines. This wasn’t all: we would gear our educational activities so that the Indians themselves would be the conductors of this profound social movement, and in time the teacher’s college would open up for them. Indian teachers would graduate from it, regardless of whether or not they were the children of Warisata, and go on to educate their people; but also the universities would open for them, so that those who deserved it because of their talents could dedicate themselves to higher education, as their capabilities permitted. “For the fulfillment of this program,” I told them, “it was necessary to put actions first, meaning work and efforts from the most tender age, in order to acquire good habits and discipline.” If it were not done in this way, our efforts would be in vain, because, with what specialized elements would we carry out this project for progress? Should we import them? No. It had to be the children of the community who would make it their task. In this way, we would conquer the future. “I do not want,” I said, “to prepare doctors and priests just as exploitative as the others. Our mission is to form competent men, whole and capable men, to raise up this prostrate town. That is what we want, and it is what, in reality, you aspire to.” The environment that surrounded me, the misery of the Indian, the in-

354  Elizardo Pérez

justices to which he fell victim, as well as his favorable reaction to progress, his sense of responsibility and his organizational qualities, his fighting spirit, and his love of liberty, and finally, his love for institutions, or better said, for his homeland, constituted for me a world of revelations. I realized this and understood how intellectuals had slandered the Indian, even those who called themselves indigenistas. Even the poets! Because the truth is that the Indian was always praised, with repugnant sentimentality, not in his bursts of freedom nor in his titanic deeds, but in his condition as a subordinate, a pariah, and someone defeated. The analysis of these facts led me to reflect on the ethnic, geographic, and political unity that was Bolivia, a country of workers, of suffering people strengthened through constant struggle for life. Under the shelter of its laws, however, white pigment imposed itself as if by natural rule, by colonialist constraint, over copper-­colored pigment, maintaining a despotic and degrading predominance. Our social sensibilities made us loathe this antihistorical state of things, and for this we began to believe that the education of the Indian should be the beginning of a national pedagogical unity, based on agrarian roots, to create a single philosophy and an educational technique for the Bolivian of the countryside as for the Bolivian of the cities. We had to create the Bolivian school with the elements of our own cosmos; we had to create a Bolivian teacher with the elements of our own necessity; and all of this imposed on us a highly patriotic obligation: that of conserving those ancestral systems of organization that, modernized, could give character to our state as a people and make us receptive to the most recent currents of human progress. For this purpose, we announced our plan of future action to the Indians. We were extracting our plan from the factors of our environment, and for this reason, we tenaciously insisted on the necessity of education of the child in the school of work and effort, in intimate contact with nature. The Indians listened to me attentively and with interest. They began to modify their conceptions of school, and slowly they began to perceive the importance of work consecrated as educational practice; in the end, they identified with these ideas to the extent that they could not conceive of any other kind of schooling, and on more than one occasion, they would critique teachers who “only taught how to read and write.”

Translated by Jean Friedman-­Rudovsky Notes 1. Juan Misael Saracho was the public-­education minister during the administration of President José Manuel Pando (1904–9). He introduced the practice of traveling instructors who attended to multiple schools, which emphasized basic literacy.

The Ayllu-School  355

2. Amautas is the Quechua term for sages who were responsible for education in Inka society. 3. Ama sua, ama llulla, ama kella is Quechua for the fundamental ethical precepts said to have prevailed in Inka society: “Do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy.” 4. Ulaka is a preconquest Aymara term for a political assembly, and cabildo is the Spanish term, introduced in the colonial period, for a political council. 5. The ayllu-­school in Warisata, drawing on Inka references, introduced the Amauta Parliament as a governing body of community elders. 6. The escuelas normales, introduced by the Belgian pedagogue George Rouma during the period of Liberal government the 1910s, trained rural schoolteachers in Bolivia.

356  Elizardo Pérez

Front Lines Oscar Cerruto

In 1935, at the young age of twenty-­three and in the immediate aftermath of the Chaco War, Oscar Cerruto published his first and only novel, Aluvión de fuego (Torrent of Fire), which blended political critique, realist social description, and penetrating subjective portraits. Cerruto depicts the external battle fought on the front lines between Bolivians and Paraguayans and even more so the internal battle between a repressive government, indigenous communities subject to landlord violence and forced military recruitment, and the persecuted working class and political left with which he identified. Aluvión de fuego would become one of Bolivia’s most celebrated novels, and Cerruto (1912–81) went on to a distinguished career as a poet, short-­story writer, journalist, and diplomat. The novel includes letters written by a wounded middle-­class soldier who is a friend of the protagonist. In a poetic and reflective vein, the following letter captures the shift from civilization to savagery that the soldier undergoes at the front, and tells of the humanity and violence in the relations between Paraguayan and Bolivian soldiers in the trenches. Only in the first combat is a man capable of retreating, of giving way. After that the intoxication of blood takes him over. I left La Paz six months after you did. The enthusiasm of the send-­offs had decayed: no more military bands or groups of misses with confetti. We left at half past eight amid a silence not at all stimulating. You know the journey. First the altiplano, as wide as it is sad; that day, rainy and desolate. On the train, the soldiers made an effort to frighten nostalgia away, trying to appear unconcerned and cheerful. Songs, pointless laughter, and always with guffaws; oaths, cheers, noisy merrymaking. Riotousness in a drunkenness without alcohol, which is not riotousness of the soul. Their hullaballoo was sadness instead. We hardly stopped in Oruro. Under the feeble sun the chill of evening bit the sand flats of the plain. We arrived in Uyuni in a ­rainstorm—​­lightning and thunder—​­and the curtains of rain escorted the military convoy until it neared Atocha. The landscape changed and began to suggest the climate of the valleys of Tarija. Then Tupiza, later on Villazón. There we left the train and settled into the trucks that would take us to Villamontes, via Tarija. The landscape is new to the dweller of the high plains, 357

whose sensibility awakes at each contact with this dense, uncomfortable climate, which dampens the skin and gives the heart, used to the laborious march of high altitudes, an unfamiliar repose. The jungle lies behind and wafts its hot breath over the settlements that take refuge in the last folds of the Andes. In Villamontes, there was not room for the troops in the barracks, so that I was destined, together with another contingent, to a pahuichi, a rustic construction of jacaranda or algarrobo trunks. That night I arrived at my lodging after rations, ready to rest; I was worn out, and more than worn out, downcast. The soldiers, meanwhile, those who had come out of the boiling marsh, with death squeezed in their hearts and their lips smeared with blood, and those who were entering hell, rushed, muddled together, to extinguish their fever in the white houses, in the circuits of alcohol, and in the alcohol of mercenary flesh, which opens its fainting arms to them, perhaps for the last time. I threw myself down then, without undressing, on a pallet, but suddenly leapt up like a spring, with an involuntary shout. Among the roof beams, huddled on the rafters like parrots, swinging their tails in the air, rats snoozed in their nest, looking to me the size of sheep. The soldiers, whom we had found already installed in the pahuichi, laughed carelessly, but they objected en masse when I tried to frighten the revolting animals away. It was then that I noticed that the corners of the dwelling were also inhabited by other filthy residents: some hairy and big-­bellied spiders with high bent legs. I was horrified, and my sympathetic nervous system hurt with the tension. My companions gave me some explanations which I did not understand too well: the uncomfortable fauna constituted something like the hygienic police of the precinct, organized against mosquitoes and other kinds of poisonous insects. “There’s no mistaking that you’re new here!” they concluded, smiling with certain protection. I sought to hide my repugnance, but I didn’t sleep that night. That was my first dog’s night on campaign; since then I have been through many, but very different. I have put up with lice, sleeping on sticky, sweaty pallets; my sense of smell has got used to bad smells, among people not used to bathing and with feet stinking like corpses; I have put my skin in contact with dirty clothing already used by other sick soldiers. But those rats above my head, and their vaguely musky smell penetrating to the base of my brain, was a terrible test for me. Some harmless rats! How I laugh about it now. Since then I’ve seen them run under my legs, as familiar as little yapping dogs at mealtime. But the resistance of the senses is not greater than that of the spiritual habits. Gradually, one by one, one forgets all the acquisitions of civilization and of hygiene. First the clean shirts, later, the socks, the handkerchiefs; and afterward, insensibly, the habit of shaving, of cleaning one’s teeth, of washing in the morning, of cutting one’s fingernails, of cutting up one’s food. Why bother with all that? Bah . . . politeness, refinement. That’s fine for salons, for brightly lit dining rooms in the city, for comfortable life. Here one does not 358  Oscar Cerruto

To arouse patriotic sentiment, the Center of Propaganda and National Defense released one hundred postcards with messages about the military campaign in the Chaco. This one reads, “Bolivia’s effort has plowed the virgin forest.” Drawing, 1933, by Roland Kuhnle. Photograph of postcard courtesy of Pedro Querejazu, photographer.

miss them. Any day a bullet comes and it all goes to the devil. And death does not care much about good manners. This neighborhood of death is what lowers men. It sinks them, gradually but swiftly, in the most degrading abjection. In the first combat, the civilized man still holds out. It is the man of the city, polite, clean shaven, smiling, well educated, who plays golf, dances, follows the progress of science and debates European politics, who trembles as battle approaches and feels that the rifle burns in his hands. The first shots are heard; the storm is upon him. Volcanoes that he has not seen erupt in sleeves of fire in the night. The artillery thunders, the rockets burst, rifles and machine guns noisily spit forth their deadly load. Human bodies leap at his side, like puppets, and fall inert; mutilated limbs, bloody stumps, heads separated from the body by a burst of machine gun fire, fall here and there, fly in the air once again with the explosion of a grenade which opens the Front Lines  359

The painter Raúl G. Prada (1900–1991), of Cochabamba, was among the Bolivian artists whom the state charged with the task of representing the conflict in the Chaco. Yet their work often disturbed any heroic patriotic vision. This drawing, from 1934, imagines a terrified gunner in the Battle of Cañada Strongest, which took place in May of that year. Photograph of painting courtesy of Roberto Andia, photographer. Original sketch courtesy of the family of Raúl G. Prada.

belly of the earth; trees fall with a heavy racket, blackened by shells. The poor man does not belong to himself; his instrument of death hangs useless in his hands. The rattle of the machine guns sounds in the box of his brain, the groans, the shouts, the whistle of the shrapnel, the grumble of the cannons, all the thunder of battle unfolds inside there, on the narrow stage of his soul. What a tiny, cowardly animal he is then! Clinging to the ground, overcome by shock, he suddenly feels abandoned, situated face-­to-­face with the blackness of the unknown, defenseless. A violent impulse throws him into the crossroads where all the winds cross swords, where directionless currents beat against all sides of the soul, and the self, maddened, perplexed, unarmed, spins in its delirium. No sudden act is then possible, no thrust that can save him from the fall. The illuminated part of the soul collapses; crude wolf packs of uncertainty assault reason. This is when his poor chaos appears, his shapeless interior, his elementary confusion. This is no longer introspection, a more or less clear-­sighted call to consciousness; rather, it is consciousness itself that threatens to shatter its geometry and leave exposed the miserable skeleton barely covered by false appearances, the varnish of culture, the mechanisms of routine. In the depths, far in the depths of the self, it is possible to spy the abstract man, emerging from the filthy slime, announcing a life that he never came close to suspecting: still a larva, but full of true light, by the side of whose hot forms, his own, those of all those who are 360  Oscar Cerruto

exterminated together with him, appear sadly frozen . . . It is the last magnesium flash that crosses the night of his bent and ungoverned spirit. His terrified soul now stretches out as if emerging into the sun; but it will never now be able to leave off crouching. Nothing will happen until the next combat. And by then the wild beast has new fangs. Now the rifle points and settles on a target. Now he knows that over there the enemy is moving. [. . .] But am I writing this letter for you? Will it ever reach you? You must forgive me if I have let myself be swept along by this torrent of impressions. I see that my temperature has risen again. You will, probably, find some of my fever in what I write; explain its disorder thus. Many times I wanted to send these very lines to you from the Chaco; but now I see that they would never have been the same. There, another pulse, other strange energies move the depths of our souls. It is, we could say, life in a tunnel, like a termite, in a sewer, only that it is also furious and delirious. I remember that one night, in the midst of hostile fire, in the enemy trenches, fifty meters from ours, sounded the bass strings of a group of guitar players. A Paraguayan polka, and straight away a waltz, any old Viennese waltz, languid and evocative. Without mutual agreement the triggers of our rifles halted. The night was clear and fell gently over the grasslands; slid down the light of its stars; behind us rose the islands of trees, with their dark green masses, and for the first time, unthreatening, domesticated, almost decorative. The melody ran through the grasslands like a warm breeze, coming from far behind, from a shining world that once was our world and now, sunk in memory, was a beautiful allegory and nothing more. As occurs in dreams, as swiftly and intensely, the brain’s screen was crossed, scene by scene, by the life of that world, our own life, sunny and calm, in which the tiniest episodes, which one thought to have entirely forgotten, buried in the underworlds of the unconscious, stood out in a powerful light, with the new light, moving and full of a remote poetry. And for the first time, too, we examined ourselves mutually, smiling and a little amazed: overgrown and uncared-­for beard, sunken eyes, and in the gaze a gleam without goodwill, which sharpened the dirty, dusty skin and the bizarre flapping of the torn capes. Without knowing how, we found that we had left the trench, into the grass; the Paraguayans were there too. We observed their scrutinizing, though friendly, glances; no doubt our eyes investigated them in the same way. We were almost amazed to find ourselves face-­to-­face with men like ourselves. We asked them if it was the same for them. They laughed joyfully. The pure truth! They looked as dirty and ragged as we were, perhaps worse; some without shoes. We exchanged provisions: biscuits, coffee, yerba mate, cigarettes, dried meat; we also exchanged some gifts “as a souvenir”: cigarette holders carved in rosewood, badges, pens, or simply buttons pulled off jackets. When we retreated to our respective positions, after having embraced each other with a certain sympaFront Lines  361

thy, we were deeply moved. We had regained the feeling of the man moving within us! The machine guns began to rattle again, as if unwilling to do so; later on, the artillery, with each time greater fury. Balls of fire crossed the space with deafening noise and fell on the plain as if to split the planet in two; far away, in the shadows, the forest caught fire from time to time in sudden thunderous spouts of flame, as if the hidden mouths of a hundred volcanoes were vomiting burning lava over the jungle. Amid the racket of the automatic weapons, the rifles unfolded their curtains of death, aiming surely: they know that where the flash has opened, there behind it is the target. The ground shook underfoot; the earth rolled, tumbling, down a cliff. That was one of the bloodiest battles in which I took part. At four in the morning, shortly before dawn, we received orders for a bayonet attack on the enemy trenches; like an exterminating flood, like an avalanche studded with cannibal teeth, a blind and demented horde, we fell on their positions. Howls, point-­blank shots, curses, pleas, bloodied knives sunk once and ten times in unfortunate flesh, contracted bodies, frenetic arms that strike with redoubled frenzy, arms that fall aside, groans, soft bodies, flesh that creaks as it tears, eyes that burst like bubbles on the point of machetes, spurts of blood that splash over the assailant and soak his clothes, hands that cling to ankles or to the hem of a cape, hands already dead, and the taste of blood, the taste of hot blood which lasts for days in the mouth. The adversary retreated in defeat. Now we occupied the trenches from which, the night before, the Paraguayans had offered us their serenade. And here a soldier runs through the reddened mud of the position raising a guitar he has stabbed with the bayonet of his rifle. I don’t remember, now, if the smile with which we applauded his feat disguised a vague unease.

Translated by Alison Spedding Note In this piece, unbracketed suspension points are in the original; bracketed ellipses indicate abridgment of text.

362  Oscar Cerruto

Leaving for the Front Alberto Ruiz Lavadenz

The traditional musical form known as the huayñu is a part of everyday life in the Andes. It is commonly heard over the radio and performed on frequent festive occasions. The kacharpaya is a dance performed especially at the end of a festival, and lyrics about parting and absence are its familiar subjects. This kacharpaya, written as a huayñu by the composer Alberto Ruiz Lavadenz (1898–1949), is well k­ nown in Bolivia, although few are aware that it refers to the Chaco War. Like many other huayñus, it combines Spanish with a native language, indicating a sense of shared cultural identity across other ethnic and class boundaries. The Aymara verse in this song also produces a keen emotional effect. In the final two lines, being chulla suggests a loneliness, the incomplete state when one thing—​­like a shoe or a sock—​­lacks its matching pair. The lyrics convey poignancy, as the soldier says goodbye to his lover and heads off to a distant war from which he may never return. The tone of bewilderment and loss of agency here—​­“Where are you leading me?”—​­might also be interpreted as a subtle critique of the rulers responsible for the forced recruitment and transfer of Indian and peasant troops.

Cacharpaya del soldado

The Soldier’s Farewell

Mañana cuando me vaya De la loma te he de escribir Con la sangre de mis venas Y en alas de una paloma (bis)

When I leave tomorrow I’ll write you from the hill With the blood in my veins And on the wings of a dove

El día en que yo me muera Morirán todas las flores, Y en la loza de mi tumba Cantarán los ruiseñores (bis)

The day I die All the flowers will wither, And on the stone for my tomb The nightingales will sing

Kauquirura sarjañani? Kaukirura irpitata? Jumampi ampe kolita

Where are we going? Where are you leading me? With you my love 363

Jumampi sarkaskakiwa Naya chulla mediasani Juma chulla zapatuni

Translated by Sinclair Thomson

364  Alberto Ruiz Lavadenz

I’ll be going with you Me and my single sock You and your single shoe

The Death of Servitude Francisco Chipana Ramos

Faced with growing unrest in the countryside, the de facto military head of state Gualberto Villarroel convened the first Indigenous Congress in early 1945. The congress, which assembled some 1,500 indigenous peasant delegates, can be seen as a populist attempt by the state to coopt peasant social forces. But it led to important legal reforms, the most dramatic of which was the abolition of pongueaje, or servile labor by peasants on haciendas. This included the abolition of “personal services,” which they were obliged to carry out in addition to cultivating the landlord’s fields, such as domestic service, transporting the landlord’s produce to the city, and selling it there. The services abolished also included those that peasants in free communities were obliged to perform for local state authorities, such as transporting the mail on foot or on horseback, which were often illegally extended to cover working as domestic servants for those authorities. In the aftermath of the congress, its president, Francisco Chipana Ramos, gave a colorful interview to the magazine Revista de Bolivia. While stressing his Indian identity, the interview also highlighted his nationalist outlook, shaped by his experience as a combatant in the Chaco War. Though in fact he had worked closely with the government during the congress, he skillfully presented the event as controlled by the delegates themselves. Notably, he makes no mention of the more radical demands for redistribution of the land which were sidelined by the organizers of the congress. After 1945, landlords refused to accept even Villarroel’s moderate changes to the labor regime, but ongoing indigenous peasant mobilization to enforce those changes and to push for redistribution eventually brought about the major agrarian reform of 1953. The daily press has described in abundant detail how the first National Indigenous Congress was carried out, and how one figure towered over it: that of Francisco Chipana [Ramos], who skillfully presided over the sessions of that assembly, with an ample sense of patriotism and, above all, without intention of provoking the indigenous race to rebellion. Chipana Ramos spoke whenever it was necessary, using beautiful concepts, which have been received with sympathy. Revista de Bolivia wished to know, in order to transmit them to its readers, 365

about the life and the concerns of the indigenous leader, who was born in Escoma, in Camacho province [La Paz]. So here we are face-­to-­face with an example of the bronze race. A robust man of regular stature (1.65 meters), with sallow skin tanned by the winds of the altiplano. His homespun clothes are covered by a faded colored poncho to which an artistic medal is pinned. “[This medal] is a present,” he tells us, “from a locksmith in La Paz, who said he was very happy with me. It’s pretty, isn’t it?” “I should say so. Would you like to talk to us frankly, Chipana, about your life and activities?” “No problem,” he replies cheerfully, and adds, “Is it for the press? I’ve already been with a load of journalists.” “But none of them has shed light on what people really want to know. First of all, Chipana, are you a serf on an estate or a member of a free community?” “My community was Challapata, in Escoma.” “Challapata isn’t a community any more?” “Not any more. It broke up for several reasons. But I’ve never left off farming, ever since I was a yuqalla (boy). In the lapse between the sowing and the harvest, I was also awatiri (a shepherd). Later on, I learned to read and write in Spanish.” “So you speak Spanish?” “Yes, sir. . . .” And from that moment the dialogue was carried out in our language, mixed with genuine Aymara terms, many of which cannot be translated. Chipana continues:

In the Chaco “We were called up in the Chaco war, and I answered the summons to the ranks along with several waynas (young men) from my town. I was assigned to Detachment 100, and once I was in Villamontes, they included me in the Forty-­First Regiment, which attacked the Arce Fortification. I took part in [the campaigns of] Nanawa and Campo Vía, where I was wounded. Once I had recovered, I joined the Lanza Regiment and reached the position of aide-­de-­camp of my Captain [Germán] Busch.1 Once again I was wounded in Nanawa, and when I returned to active service in the Florida [Regiment], I was taken prisoner in Campo Jurado. They took me to Puerto Casado, then to Asunción [the capital of Paraguay] and to Villarico.”

Captivity “What do you have to say about your time in captivity?” “It was very tough, sir. But it was useful for all us prisoners to teach us to 366  Francisco Chipana Ramos

love our nation, which is so different from that hostile setting. I and my comrades in misfortune thought that Bolivia, a huge and rich nation, ought to recover its heights like the mallkus [condors], for the happiness of its children, who have all they need within their reach. When we returned from the Paraguayan camps, I didn’t want to stay in the city as so many of my comrades did and preferred to go back to farm work, exchanging the weapons of war for the hoe and the plough.” Chipana Ramos expresses himself thus. His lively eyes light up the altiplano landscape, hieratic, unique and wide, all matter and spirit.

The Depopulation of the Countryside “And why do you think that the rural workers remained in the city?” “Because it was comfortable,” he answers on this point, “to get away from the obligations in the countryside, which are tough, there’s no doubt about it, but which offer the compensation of what they produce and above all, are obligations we have inherited from our achachilas, sacred obligations.2 You will have noticed,” he adds, “the damages due to this desertion. There was a lack of peasant laborers, and life became more costly. There was no produce to take to the cities, and we felt the shortage of chuño, potatoes, animals, and on top of that, as punishment from Mother Earth, the drought got worse. The Indians became consumers [of foodstuffs from the market], making the situation worse. It’s obvious that in the city the Indians easily found a place, because they are intelligent and quickly learn how to work, especially in construction; they have a clear mind and soon learn what they are taught; but the countryside was depopulated.” Chipana’s declarations are amazing. One immediately observes that he understands the situation of the context and confronts the economic and social problems that affect the country. . . .

The Indigenous Congress “Are you satisfied with the congress over which you presided?” “I am very happy with the results of this congress. I will tell my comrades how their problems were treated. I am happy with the four decrees that the president of the republic has signed and which were fully approved. Now we will be able to work content and without being bothered. But what has most restored our trust is that now we will be free. [The decrees] have caused our condition of slavery to disappear. The four decrees satisfy the demands that we have been making ever since the Spaniards arrived. In the past, we have been abandoned for centuries as if we were animals. Without laws, without guarantees, only beasts of burden and work. But from now on, The Death of Servitude  367

with the chance we have had to shake hands with President Villarroel, with the ministers of indigenous affairs, the interior, labor, and so on, we have faith. Nothing similar has ever happened in history. It’s certain that there have been desires to attend to the Indians. We have known of some campaigns and “Crusades for the Indians” which collected donations and money for the Indian problem, sums which we don’t know where they ended up. When it became known that the Ministry of Education had incorporated the Indigenous Affairs section into its work, hope came to the Indian masses. Soon the rural indigenous schools appeared, but after that nothing more happened. The abuses of the local authorities, the landlords, and the priests went on. We were so loaded down with taxes that when we didn’t have the money to pay the taxes and rent, they obliged us to give up the produce that was our own food.”

The Government’s Decrees “Which are the decrees you are talking about?” “There are four of them, sir. The first says that there will be an agricultural labor code which will be under the ministers of labor, health, social planning, agriculture, livestock, and colonization.3 The obligatory labor that we had to do on the haciendas will not be more than four days a week.4 We will not be obliged to work for free nor on other haciendas. Shepherds will not be obliged to work for the estate. When the landlord wants extra work to be done, he will have to pay daily wages. This agrarian labor law will be ready by the end of 1945. “The second law protects us in the services we provide as peasants. We’ll work willingly for the hacienda because since we own the harvest, we can do as we want with it, selling it or making use of it as our property. There will no longer be the obligation to hand over lambs, wool, chickens, and other things for free. “The other law says that we will have schools everywhere, principally where there are agricultural, mining, rubber, and industrial enterprises, or farms or haciendas. Teachers from the cities will go to those schools and the government will use the property tax to build schools. “And the last law, the most important one, which will grant us happiness, refers to the death of pongueaje. That means, sir, that we will no longer have to work for weeks or months in the landlord’s house as pongos for free.5 Nor will our wives have to work as mitanis, cooking or otherwise working for periods in the landlord’s house without being paid.6 From now on, our services will be paid for like any other occupation or work.”

368  Francisco Chipana Ramos

Chipana Explains to the Peasants “I think that there will be no misunderstanding on the part of the landlords because this only gives us the rights of the civilized. Besides, it was not only the delegates; we were helped by our brothers from the cities who saw the sorrow of this slavery, which began with the mita in the mines. We have returned to our condition of men who live in a free and democratic nation. “On our return, as delegates, we will guide our comrades. We must orient the peasantry and avoid conflicts. We wish for others to know that we act in good faith, and that is how we will talk to our people and those who wish to listen to us. If it is not in good faith . . . we should be punished. After all, we are responsible for what might occur. ... “We are leaving happy, and we only hope that the laws are carried out. I want to thank all the gentlemen who helped us in writing and in the sessions of the indigenous congress, the president of the republic, and his intelligent and hard-­working ministers.”

Dionisio Miranda At this moment, we are approached by an indigenous representative of the valleys. He is Dionisio Miranda, sixty years old, a native of Sipesipe [in Cochabamba]. While the congress was in session, due to his age and experience, he was named its vice president. He tells us, “I also want to thank Colonel Gualberto Villarroel for having permitted free and correct proceedings in our sessions. We owe the revindication of our rights to his good will. In this way, the conflicts have been brought to an end, and now the country can advance directly to conquer progress and shine like Tunari, Illampu, and Illimani [peaks in the eastern cordillera] when the sun rises, the sun of freedom.” Thus was concluded the interview with the leaders of the indigenous congress. As they left, they asked us repeatedly to send thousands of copies of our magazine to the altiplano, the valleys, the lowlands, and every corner of the republic, to make the indigenous masses aware of the palpitations of our national life.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Germán Busch later became head of a military government (1937–39) with socialist orientations. 2. The Aymara word achachilas means literally “dear grandfathers,” but usually refers to the earth spirits, the most powerful of which inhabit the highest snow peaks.

The Death of Servitude  369

3. “Colonization” here refers to the establishment of new settlements and the distribution of land for farming in the sparsely populated tropical lowlands inside Bolivia. 4. “Obligatory labor” refers to labor tenancy (as distinguished from the personal services that were abolished by the congress), that is, working for the landlord in exchange for land to cultivate. 5. Pongo literally means “door” in Quechua and refers to male peons who served on a rotating basis as doormen on the hacienda and who performed household services. 6. Mitani literally means “the one whose turn it is” and refers to the pongo’s wife, who performed other household labors for the hacienda owner during the labor turn.

370  Francisco Chipana Ramos

Trotsky on the Altiplano Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers

After the Pulacayo silver mine was rediscovered in 1833, Aniceto Arce acquired it in 1856, and it became the foremost holding of his Huanchaca Company. While serving as Bolivian president (1888–92), Arce established railroad connections between Pulacayo and Antofagasta on the Chilean coast in 1890 and with Oruro in 1892. After 1927, the tin magnate Mauricio Hochschild held possession of the valuable mine. Given the economic importance of Pulacayo, it is no coincidence that the site would become a leading center for the organization of mineworkers. The Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers (fstmb) was founded in 1944, and in November 1946, conscious of the workers’ pivotal role in national production, it issued the radical document that became known as the Thesis of Pulacayo, which was delivered at the site during the union’s First Special Congress. Its demands transcended the typical concerns of trade-­union struggle—​­salary and working conditions—​­to address national and international conditions and the strategy for a revolutionary seizure of power. It carried the Trotskyist stamp of the Revolutionary Workers Party (por) and followed the party doctrine of “permanent revolution.” The theory held that in an underdeveloped country like Bolivia, there was no bourgeoisie to carry out the initial transition from feudalism to capitalism, and therefore it was incumbent on the proletariat, joined by the peasantry, to seize power and introduce democracy, agrarian transformation, and freedom from imperialism while simultaneously ushering in socialism. The por —​­led by Guillermo Lora, the principal author of this “thesis,” and by the trade-­union representative Juan Lechín—​­carried great weight within the fstmb , and the Pulacayo document functioned as the organization’s guiding light until the 1980s.

I. Basic Principles 1. The proletariat, in Bolivia as in other countries, constitutes the revolutionary social class par excellence. The mineworkers, the most advanced and the most combative section of this country’s proletariat, determine the direction of the fstmb’s struggle. 2. Bolivia is a backward capitalist country; within its economy different

371

stages of development and different modes of production coexist, but the capitalist mode is qualitatively dominant, the other socioeconomic forms being a heritage from our historic past. The prominence of the proletariat in national politics flows from this state of affairs. Bolivia, even though a backward country, is only one link in the world capitalist chain. National peculiarities are themselves a combination of the essential features of the world economy. 3. The distinctive characteristic of Bolivia resides in the fact there has not appeared on the political scene a bourgeoisie capable of liquidating the latifundia system and other precapitalist economic forms, of achieving national unification and liberation from the imperialist yoke. 4. These unfulfilled bourgeois tasks are the bourgeois democratic objectives that must unavoidably be realized. The central problems facing the semicolonial countries are: the agrarian revolution, that is, the elimination of the feudal heritage, and national independence, namely, shaking off the imperialist yoke. These two tasks are closely interlinked. 5. “The specific characteristics of the national economy, important as they may be, are more and more becoming an integral part of a higher reality known as the world economy. This is the basis for proletarian internationalism.” Capitalist development is characterized by a growing interlinking of international relations, expressed in the growing volume of foreign trade. 6. The backward countries are subjected to imperialist pressure. Their development is of a combined character. These countries simultaneously combine the most primitive economic forms and the last word in capitalist technology and civilization. The proletariat of the backward countries is obliged to combine the struggle for bourgeois democratic tasks with the struggle for socialist demands. These two stages—​­democratic and socialist—​ ­“are not separated in struggle by historic stages; they flow immediately from one another.” 7. The feudal landowners have linked their interests with those of world imperialism and have become unconditionally its lackeys. From this it follows that the ruling class is a veritable feudal bourgeoisie. Given the primitive level of technology, the running of the latifundia would be inconceivable if imperialism did not support them artificially with scraps from its table. Imperialist domination is inconceivable without the aid of the national governments of the elite. There is a high degree of capitalist concentration in Bolivia: three firms control mining production, the heart of the country’s economic life. The class in power is puny and incapable of achieving its own historic objectives, and so finds itself tied to the interests of the latifundists as well as those of the imperialists. The feudal-­bourgeois state is an organ of violence destined to uphold the privileges of the landowners and the capitalists. The state, in the hands of the dominant class, is a powerful instrument for crushing its enemies. Only traitors or imbeciles could continue 372  Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers

to maintain that the state can rise above the classes and paternally decide what is due to each of them. 8. The middle class or petite bourgeoisie is the most numerous class, and yet its weight in the national economy is insignificant. The small traders and property owners, the technicians, the bureaucrats, the artisans, and the peasantry have been unable up to now to develop an independent class policy and will be even more unable to do so in the future. The country follows the town, and there the leading force is the proletariat. The petite bourgeoisie follow the capitalists in times of “class peace” and when parliamentary activity flourishes. They line up behind the proletariat in moments of acute class struggle (for example, during a revolution) and when they become convinced that it alone can show the way to their own emancipation. In both these widely differing circumstances, the independence of the petite bourgeoisie proves to be a myth. Wide layers of the middle class obviously do possess an enormous revolutionary potential—​­it is enough to recall the aims of the bourgeois democratic revolution—​­but it is equally clear that they cannot achieve these aims on their own. 9. What characterizes the proletariat is that it is the only class possessing sufficient strength to achieve not only its own aims but also those of other classes. Its enormous specific weight in political life is determined by the position it occupies in the production process and not by its numerical weakness. The economic axis of national life will also be the political axis of the future revolution. The miners movement in Bolivia is one of the most advanced workers movements in Latin America. The reformists argue that it is impossible for this country to have a more advanced social movement than [do] the technically more developed countries. Such a mechanical conception of the relation between the development of industry and the political consciousness of the masses has been refuted countless times by history. If the Bolivian proletariat has become one of the most radical proletariats, it is because of its extreme youth and its incomparable vigor; it is because it has remained practically virgin in politics; it is because it does not have the traditions of parliamentarianism or class collaboration, and lastly, because it is struggling in a country where the class struggle has taken on an extremely warlike character. We reply to the reformists and to those in the pay of the rosca that a proletariat of such quality requires revolutionary demands and the most extreme boldness in struggle.

II. The Type of Revolution that Must Take Place 1. We mineworkers do not suggest we can leap over the bourgeois democratic tasks, the struggle for elementary democratic rights and for an anti-­ imperialist agrarian revolution. Neither do we ignore the existence of the Trotsky on the Altiplano  373

petite bourgeoisie, especially peasants and artisans. We point out that if you do not want to see the bourgeois democratic revolution strangled, then it must become only one phase of the proletarian revolution. Those who point to us as proponents of an immediate socialist revolution in Bolivia are lying. We know very well that the objective conditions do not exist for it. We say clearly that the revolution will be bourgeois democratic in its objectives and that it will be only one episode in the proletarian revolution for the class that is to lead it. The proletarian revolution in Bolivia does not imply the exclusion of the other exploited layers of the nation; on the contrary, it means the revolutionary alliance of the proletariat with the peasants, the artisans, and other sectors of the urban petite bourgeoisie. 2. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the expression at the state level of this alliance. The slogan of proletarian revolution and dictatorship shows clearly the fact that it is the working class that will be the leading force of this transformation and of this state. On the contrary, to maintain that the bourgeois democratic revolution, as such, will be brought about by the “progressive” sectors of the bourgeoisie, and that the future state will be a government of national unity and concord, shows a determination to strangle the revolutionary movement within the framework of bourgeois democracy. The workers, once in power, will not be able to confine themselves indefinitely to bourgeois democratic limits; they will find themselves obliged—​ ­and more so with every day—​­to make greater and greater inroads into the regime of private property, in such a way that the revolution will take on a permanent character. Before the exploited, we, the mineworkers, denounce those who attempt to substitute for the proletarian revolution palace revolutions fomented by various sections of the feudal bourgeoisie.

IV. The Struggle against Imperialism 1. For the mineworkers, the class struggle means above all the struggle against the big mining trusts, against a sector of Yankee imperialism that is oppressing us. The liberation of the exploited is tied to the struggle against imperialism. Since we are struggling against international capitalism, we represent the interests of the whole of society, and our aims are shared by the exploited the world over. The destruction of imperialism is a precondition to the introduction of technology into agriculture and [to] the creation of light and heavy industry. We are an integral part of the international proletariat because we are engaged in the destruction of an international force—​­imperialism.

374  Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers

2. We denounce as declared enemies of the proletariat the “leftists” who have sold out to Yankee imperialism, who talk to us of the greatness of the “democracy” of the north and its worldwide domination. You cannot talk of democracy in the United States of North America, where the sixty families dominate the economy, sucking the blood from semicolonial countries, ours among them. Yankee dominance throws up a vast accumulation and sharpening of the antagonisms and contradictions of the capitalist system. The United States is a powder keg, waiting for just one spark to explode it. We declare our solidarity with the North American proletariat and our irreconcilable enmity toward its bourgeoisie, who live off plunder and oppression on a world scale. 3. The policies of the imperialists, which dictate Bolivian politics, are determined by the monopoly stage of capitalism. For this reason, imperialist policy can mean only oppression and plunder, the continued transformation of the state to make it a docile instrument in the hands of exploiters. “Good-­ neighbor relations,” “pan-­A mericanism,” and so on are just a cover which the Yankee imperialists and the creole feudal bourgeoisie use to dupe the Latin American peoples. The system of mutual diplomatic consultation, the creation of international banking institutions with the money of the oppressed countries, the concession to the Yankees of strategic military bases, the one-­sided contracts for the sale of raw materials, and so on are so many devices used by those who govern the Latin American countries to shamefully divert the riches of these countries for the profit of voracious imperialism. To struggle against this embezzlement and to denounce all attempts at imperialist plunder is a fundamental duty of the proletariat. The Yankees will not stop just at dictating the composition of cabinets; they will go much further: they have taken on board the task of directing the police activity of the semicolonial bourgeoisie. The announcement of the struggle against anti-­imperialist revolutionaries means nothing less than that. Workers of Bolivia! Strengthen your cadres in order to fight Yankee imperialist plunder!

Translated by Jean Friedman-­Rudovsky

Trotsky on the Altiplano  375

Nation vs. Anti-­nation Carlos Montenegro

The most compelling intellectual exponent of revolutionary nationalism was Carlos Montenegro Quiroga, a cofounder and leading ideologue of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) before his death in 1953 at age fifty. As a journalist in the 1940s, he edited the party’s influential newspaper La Calle. His famous treatise Nacionalismo y coloniaje (1943) won first prize in a competition on the history of the press in Bolivia. Written in a philosophical and existentialist vein, the most original feature of the essay was his use of literary genres—​­epic, drama, comedy, and novel—​ ­to classify the stages of the country’s historical development and social consciousness after independence in the early nineteenth century. Montenegro elaborated the idea that Bolivia remained a semicolonial society and had yet to attain true consciousness of itself as a nation. He held that only a revolution, extending the initial promise of independence, would allow the nation to fulfill its historical potential.

I This book [Nationalism and Colonialism] aims to be a reply to the historicist mode that inspires almost all written to date concerning the Bolivian past. The way in which it is composed, as much as its essential content, responds entirely to such a proposition. In consequence, Nationalism and Colonialism has avoided falling into the mere reiteration customary in national historiography, in which at times it becomes evident—​­as [Benito Jerónimo] Feijóo says—​­that “a hundred authors are no more than one; that is, that ninety-­n ine are no more than echoes which repeat the voice of the one who was the first to print the news.” It has likewise avoided falling into the vice of “furious self-­denigration” which—​ ­in the words of the Mexican Carlos Pereyra—​­the historians of certain Indoamerican peoples are given to. In sum, this book lacks the peculiarities that, in their generic—​­ not ­general—​­mode are typical of Bolivian historiographical works. Nationalism and Colonialism replies to this genre of historiography without being exactly a work with a thesis. Herein, therefore, lies its motivation. This book aims to reestablish the truth of Bolivia’s coming into being, ignored or falsified by 376

the anti-­Bolivian thoughts and feelings with which a great part of national history [la historia patria] is conceived and written.

II This anti-­Bolivian feeling is, in sum, a flagrant expression of colonialism. In effect, it is evident at first glance that the historiographical genre to which this book replies is essentially and in substance a product of the colonial period, in benefit of the colonizers and damaging to the colonized. The history of the New World was made thus by the chroniclers and Spanish informants of the conquest and the colonization. The Indians, for these foreign narrators, were the synthesis of vice and spiritual degeneration, as are today the Bolivians in the judgment of our antinational historians. It is not excessive to say that the colonial spirit of this creation exposes its roots in psychic complexes through the fundamental contradiction imprinted in its origins. This contradiction reveals it to be made more for foreigners than for Bolivians. It expresses not only obedience to and the virtual exaltation of what is alien to Bolivia, but also the systematic denial—​­a denial that is, in addition, disguised—​­of what is native. The foreigner, in this way, ends up being the exclusive subject and object of the history of Bolivia, and it is he, and not the Bolivian, who is elevated, ennobled, and strengthened by it. This creation is rooted, as has been said, in the psychological conflicts that lie under the surface. The critique of Bolivian historiography, remiss or shortsighted, has not sought in such sites the original equivalences of the anomaly implicit in this history of Bolivia written in opposition to Bolivia.

III Two abnormal psychological motives—​­two at least—​­display in their roots the anti-­Bolivian nature of our historical culture. One resides in the spiritual dualism that saturates its creation; the other, in the frenzy with which individualist sentiment makes itself present. The historians of this genre make bloody and prolonged efforts to write history, with the sole aim—​­since they achieve no other—​­that the national past should figure in it as repugnant as it could appear only to the most infuriated imagination. Their dedication to their labor and their aversion for the subject of their labor are thus made manifest, betraying the first psychological conflict. This is not a case of simply ambivalent feelings of love and hate for a single object, but rather a case of duality that signifies an unstable psyche. The perseverance in recalling what one detests is in itself the symptom of a psychological disorder. “Man,” Jung emphasizes, “evades everything disagreeable and tries to avoid it as far as possible.” In addition, it is not a secret that this historiographical modality owes its Nation vs. Anti-­nation  377

existence, in great measure, to the stimulus of an exalted individualist sentiment. The extreme impulse of this sentiment feeds the urge to destroy what others love, since, as is well known, individualism, in its maximal tension, is in itself opposed to collective sentiment. Exacerbated individualism—​­as [Alfred] Adler says—​­satisfies itself imagining a repulsive fictive world, in contrast to which it takes pleasure in pointing out the lofty idea it has of its own existence. The desire for fame, initially inoffensive and ridiculous, conceals the destructive potential of this individualism which is hostile to the community. It is illustrated in legend by Herostratus, who burned down the temple of Diana because he could not make himself famous by any other route. Are not such impulses reproduced in the historicism that aims to destroy the Bolivian past?

IV The influence of these original anomalies is vitally reflected in the contradictions that, in more objective form, appear in the anti-­Bolivian historiographical work. While it destroys collective beliefs—​­in particular, the beliefs that in some way fortify the sentiment of nationality—​­it has absolutely no interest in replacing what it has destroyed. Its objective—​­tacitly, at least—​­seems for the same reason to be the elimination of every historical notion among the people. The truth is that it does all it can with this aim. Even the zeal with which it praises the virtues of what is foreign could be said to be directed toward this end. The devastating results that the destruction of the past has for a community can be conceived. They can be conceived, of course, only in their objective probability, without, however, guessing the great depth that they reach subjectively. Nevertheless, Bolivian reality, in the recent past and in the present itself, offers more than one indication along these lines. The dispirited national feeling spoke of this, in a fatally pathetic way, in international conflicts ever since anti-­Bolivianism took over Bolivian culture. It is spoken of today, as well, in the servility with which the nutritive resources of the community are sacrificed to foreign profit. It is spoken of, in a more significant expression, in the immorality with which political representatives grow rich while the nation is impoverished. At the root of the process which, morally and economically, leads Bolivia down the road to degeneration is to be found, without a doubt, the seed of anti-­Bolivianism, the child of the psychic complexes [that] originated in the colonial period and the pupil—​­oftentimes, the agent—​­of antinational interests.

378  Carlos Montenegro

V All that has been said is evidence that this reply to anti-­Bolivianism in the history of Bolivia is not inspired by sentimental stimuli except insofar as sentiment drives one to defend one’s own community. We Bolivians cannot any longer remain unfeeling with respect to the action which, in opposition to the destinies and interests of the Bolivian community, is projected by the historiography this book objects to. We know exactly in what degree this serves the ends of the antination [antipatria]. Our reaction is, thus, a deed more than an ideology, a deed that takes on a belligerent nature. It is necessary to recognize in anti-­Bolivian history an inclination, perhaps the most dangerous one, that provokes the economic and political forces which, signifying in totality the antination, cooperate consciously or passively with foreign imperialists, opening the route of conquest for them. It is well understood that the self-­denigration of the country is equivalent to an invitation, if not a summons, to foreigners. This self-­denigration, effectively, gives rise to the pretensions to supplant in one way or another the existential structure of Bolivia. From the powerful economic interest of international plutocracy to the ridiculous and inferiorizing imitative enthusiasm for universalistic ideologies, the efforts to dominate Bolivia are based on the fact that Bolivia, in the judgment of the anti-­Bolivianists, is vitally incapable of affirming its existence in itself and by itself. The vitalist proof of the past therefore constitutes nothing less than the grand bulwark behind which the authentic destinies of Bolivia can entrench themselves to detain and repel the invasion that has facilitated, consciously or un­consciously, the colonialist psychology that creates anti-­Bolivian sentiment.

VI This is not the only or the first attempt in Bolivia to carry out the aim of restoring national history [historia patria]. It is urgent to emphasize that what is here called “national history” does not refer to what has been written about our history, but rather to history itself, that is, the totality of events of the past. Among the previous attempts, we may point out, as being similar, those of Isaac Tamayo, Ismael Vásquez, and José Macedonio Urquidi. Recently, we have those of Humberto and José Vásquez Machicado and those of Rigoberto Paredes. It is probable that we have not mentioned all of them, but we have surely indicated the most notable. . . . Nationalism and Colonialism demands, nevertheless, a separate place among the efforts mentioned, in virtue of being—​­and boasting of it—​­the one that, for the first time in the history of Bolivia, in a sense not only circumstantial but with a view to the future, offers a total scheme of the Bolivian past, enNation vs. Anti-­nation  379

dowing it with the continued life attributed to it by the concept of the nation as affirmative historical energy and, as such, creative and perpetuating. Nationalism and Colonialism believes, finally, that it is a book explicitly for Bolivian consciousness in whose service it seeks to confirm itself as a book loyal to that consciousness. . . .

The Novel May my name not perish together with this nation.—​­Bolívar

In the Chaco, Bolivianist sentiment returned from its half-­century of collapse.1 Groaning with pain and rage, it had crawled for the space of three years through the tangles of the deadly forest in whose inclement breast thousands of lives were cut down. The people in arms who were tossed into that desert derived a correct intuition of the nation from its solitude and abandonment. The Chaco, rather than a symbol, was a bloodstained mirror of Bolivia’s fate: a land in the power of strangers, a land with the dismal destiny of being lost.2 Alien to her, the privileged caste displayed its proper self in such a mirror, with the unmistakable sign of its anti-­Bolivianism. The raw, desperate reality of the nation, which lacked the resources even to feed those who defended its frontiers, revealed the destruction caused by the lengthy empire of the oligarchy. This evidence of their blame for the ruin of the country, and the perennial instinct of the people, marked the new course of collective sentiment, giving a concrete sense to the defense of nationality. Each soldier who returned from the front bore within himself a molecule of the affirmative desire of Bolivia, a breath of the ambition to survive, a spark of revolutionary autonomy. There where it should have perished, the spirit of Bolivia was remade. The Nietzschean slogan “That which does not kill us, only makes us stronger” expresses the psychological repercussion of the Chaco storm in the consciousness of the Bolivians. This consciousness rediscovered its true image, its autochthonous image, in all the existential manifestations of the country, manifestations in which the slashes of the war stripped away the country’s artificial dress. In the Chaco, the stupefying drugs of the press, of oratory, of law turned out to be useless to perpetuate the fiction of a rich and civilized Bolivia. The pathless jungle and the economic misery of the people in the rearguard spoke the truth, in contrast to the opulence of the mining barons immune to the pain and the demands of the war, that is to say, alien to the destiny of Bolivia. The catastrophe, which dismantled the constructions of the comedy, exposed to the eyes of the people, for the first time since the days of [Andrés de] Santa Cruz, [José] Ballivián, and [Manuel Isidoro] Belzu, the real and attractive image of Bolivianness which until 1935 had been concealed by foreign-­ styled costumes.3 What is so prodigious in the Chaco War is expressed in this 380  Carlos Montenegro

revelation of Bolivian authenticity to the collective consciousness, a phenomenon equivalent to the psychological repair of the people, via the recuperation of national sentiment. The Bolivians could see themselves, then, with the painful and proud evidence of their frustration and of their possibilities of affirmation and redemption, of being able to reach immortality. It was the same vision that Franz Tamayo’s genius had clearly discerned, in a text previous to the war, behind the still intact stage-­d ressing with which ideological colonialism concealed the real Bolivia. “This real Bolivia,” as Tamayo put it in 1931, “[is] where almost all the population is Indian and where all the public and private questions appear afflicted by the same manifold suffering of the essential race [Indians]: an incipient culture, incomplete or null means of civilization, undefined and impotent aspirations, ignorance of its own bad situation, illusions of the future in a death agony, delusions of hope which in each new disappointment make us more impotent—​­in sum, that paradoxical and astonishing state which we are in today: an undeniably great territory and a great race, and with all that a history that never escapes poverty, impotence, and hopelessness.” This return to reality puts an end to the historical stage of comedy. The succession of events in Bolivia immediately takes on the essential qualities of the novel, that is to say it is animated by the sense of purifying exaltation with which the novel ennobles life, selecting the elements it reflects. To put it another way: our history acquires the power to make illusions real, which is not a daydream, but rather the desire for affirmative achievements, and it develops with the ordered and anxious process—​­such is its humanity—​­of the plot of a novel, without fracturing the pre-­established cosmological concordance between Man and his environment. The central inspiration of this new event is also identical to that of the novel. In itself, it is the ambition of existential reality, “pursuing another life”—​­as [Roger] Callois has called the creative impulse of novel writing. Pursuing another life—​­it seems useless to repeat it—​­which does not mean, either in history or in the novel, the desire to substitute real existence for that of fiction. It is, rather, an expression of the vitalist instinct that seeks an adequate form to obtain its plenitude, which it aspires to make effective in agreement with its own intimate orientations.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. “Half-­century of collapse” refers to the period of oligarchic rule prior to the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–35). 2. “A land with the dismal destiny of being lost” refers not only to the territory that Bolivia lost to Paraguay in the Chaco War, but also to the northern Amazonian territory (Acre) lost

Nation vs. Anti-­nation  381

to Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century, and to the Pacific coast lost to Chile in 1879, during the War of the Pacific. 3. For Montenegro, the genre of comedy prevailed in national history between the catastrophic wars of the Pacific and of the Chaco. After the Chaco debacle, the nation was finally ready to begin the mature historical stage associated with the genre of the novel. Andrés de Santa Cruz was president from 1829 to 1839. José Ballivián was president from 1841 to 1847. Manuel Isidoro Belzu was president from 1848 to 1855.

382  Carlos Montenegro

The Sudden Upheaval British Ambassador John Garnett Lomax

The events and consequences of the insurrection of April 1952 captured international attention. While the United States followed developments anxiously, the British ambassador in La Paz, John Garnett Lomax, could afford more detachment. His annual diplomatic report, intended only for other British missions, offers the in-­house perspective of an informed outsider. His remarks mix superior bemusement and skepticism about the prospects of the revolution with elements of honesty and insight. On one hand, he suggests that popular revolts in Bolivia are a predictable form of light political theater. On the other hand, he admits that the April uprising was unexpected, and he senses that the results could be profound and enduring. While he is unexpectedly impressed by the maturity of some of the revolutionary leaders, he also notes that the burdens and challenges of change were formidable. Bolivia: Annual Review for 1952 Mr. Garnett Lomax to Mr. Eden. (Received 12th February) 26th January, 1953 1. The year was a just edition of the Bolivian pageant. Nothing was missing from the complete divertissement: conspiracy all-­round; revolution; general uproar; bloodshed; flight of exiles; Hosannahs for the new era; purge of predecessors; Galahads for every good job; feverish preparation for distant election; economic grand reversal act; and finale—​­the anticlimax glissade of faction, disillusion; and, at length, the curtain scene with everything the same—​­including the shadows of another revolt. 2. The appearance was, even so, perhaps deceptive. The results this time may prove more permanent. The defeated side—​­the upper class—​ ­may never recover. The landowners, professionals and wealthy whites, who had governed the country since the Spaniards, were greedy, blind and selfish: unable to combine even in self-­defense, their defeat was total; their reign is at an end. It has happened elsewhere in South America: this year it befell Bolivia. 3. In other South American Republics, second-­generation immigrants and commercial magnates have tended to replace the landed classes; but in Bolivia, the middle class is negligible, and their place was taken by 383

organised Labour, in a coalition with the political, military and social riff-­raff which formed the pro-­A xis Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (M.N.R.) in 1941. 4. The political problem therefore remains, now complicated by an administrative over-­burden arising from nationalising the major mines, and the promise of agrarian reform and universal suffrage. These set new and gristly tasks for 1953. Internal Affairs 5. The regime of the Junta Militar seemed tolerably secure when the year began. But, it was unconstitutional: it had nullified the elections of May 1951, in which the M.N.R. candidate had headed the poll; and had failed to hold new elections. Its crowning folly was to neglect the ordinary precautions of vigilance, so necessary in view of its irregular origin and lack of popular support. As a team it took its tone from the President. General [Hugo] Ballivian [Rojas], a genial mediocrity. Only one of its Cabinet was really alert, and he—​­the half Arab General [Antonio] Seleme—​­had all the ear-­marks of a traitor. Ballivian had good reason to know that he was intriguing with Buenos Aires, and hand in glove with the Labour leader [Juan] Lechin—​­another Arab. But nevertheless he kept him in the key post of Minister of the Interior. 6. Between rising costs of living and frozen wages, labour was restive; also the Minister of Labour was actively courting the workers’ vote with explosive promises. The economic position was over-­shadowed by the refusal of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (R.F.C.) to buy tin at Bolivia’s price. Nevertheless the best observers judged that affairs would limp along until the President should think it well to call a new election. There was no obvious dissension within the junta team. 7. The sudden upheaval of April therefore came as a complete surprise. 8. It is now known that the M.N.R. had timed a revolt for Good Friday. Learning this, Seleme corrupted the national police and conspired with Lechin to forestall the outbreak by two days. His plan—​­to capture the whole Cabinet—​­miscarried. They escaped: but instead of taking their place with the troops, most of them fled straight to the nearest diplomatic mission. 9. Their initial plot having failed, Seleme and Lechin thereupon delivered the entire contents of the national armoury to the mineworkers, who thus became the strongest force in the Republic. With the ignominious flight of its leaders, the army made a pitiable show: and, after three days fighting, chiefly by the junior officers and cadets, it was routed. Meanwhile, the resident leader of the M.N.R., [Hernán] Siles Zuazo, had taken charge of the revolt: for Seleme quickly lost his nerve and fled into the Chilean Embassy. By Good Friday the fighting had ceased, and Siles 384  British Ambassador John Garnett Lomax

Zuazo was proclaimed provisional President until Dr. [Víctor] Paz could be fetched from the Argentine. Lechin, whose miners had turned the scale in the fighting, emerged as a major partner in the victory. 10. The Great Powers and most of the South American countries viewed the Bolivian revolution with misgiving, and hesitated to “recognise” the new Government. The exceptions were Argentina, Guatemala and Spain. Other powers took their line largely from Washington where it was, at first, doubted that the regime could rightly claim effective control of the country. To neighbouring republics, especially Peru and Chile, the M.N.R. victory was unwelcome. For these reasons general “recognition” was postponed until the United States and United Kingdom took the lead during the first week of June. 11. A coalition emerged from the revolution: with three Ministers from the Left-­w ing—​­nominees of Lechin—​­the remainder of the Cabinet were leading members of the M.N.R. Thus the balance of the parties remained until the year end. 12. Dr. Paz had undoubtedly made a political pact in this form with Lechin before the 1951 elections. But the balance had changed in one vital respect which the M.N.R. had certainly not foreseen: Lechin’s mineworkers had most of the arms in the country. They had become a private army, more powerful than the national army, which indeed emerged from the fighting reduced, demoralised and divided. 13. Contrary to expectations, this alliance of M.N.R. and Labour has worked together remarkably well throughout the year. Probably both Dr. Paz and Lechin realised that a break between them would only strengthen their extremists. Certainly much of the credit for the stability goes to Lechin. This strange man, universally distrusted by the Right, assumed to be wholly on the make, an adventurer and probably a Communist, has shown much good sense, modesty and moderation. During the past nine months he might well have found a pretext to overthrow Dr. Paz; and few doubted that his miners could have defeated the national army. Generally he has played a conciliatory part. At the same time he has exacted from Dr. Paz, as the price of his support, the full performance of a project which, for good or evil, will rank as the major event in Bolivian history—​­namely the nationalisation of the mining properties of [Mauricio] Hochschild, [Simón] Patino, and [Carlos Víctor] Aramayo, which produced about 60 per cent, of the minerals output. 14. Probably the design to take over these mines had also been agreed between Dr. Paz and Lechin before the 1951 elections. Dr. Paz announced this plan as the major plank in his programme the day after his arrival in La Paz. Later he seemed to hesitate—​­as well he might—​­but after a gentle turn of the screw he returned to his agreement, and at length on 1st November the mines passed into national ownership. The Sudden Upheaval  385

15. It must have been obvious from the outset that this adventure was full of risks. The three mineowners would expect compensation; the decree acknowledged the principle, but postponed the settlement for a year. Failing some satisfaction they might well obstruct the sale of Bolivian minerals in the world’s markets. The mines are a vast and complex enterprise, technically, commercially and as to their administration, supply and financing. Virtually no preparations had been made to cope with this impressive task, and meanwhile, during the months after nationalisation, the vast majority of the foreign specialists, technicians, accountants, storekeepers, &c., left the country en masse. 16. The outcome of all this belongs to 1953; all that can be said here is that when the year closed 70 percent of normal mineral exports had been suspended, and that the authorities were hard pressed to find the means to finance immediate food imports. 17. The Government has also set on foot two far-­reaching reforms, whose impact on this tottering State, promises to enliven the process of government during 1953. They have committed themselves to a plan of agrarian reform, thereby arousing the wildest hope amongst the Indian and peasant population—​­a large majority, but otherwise incalculable. To salt this explosive brew, they have decreed universal suffrage for the next election. In the 1951 elections, there were less than 200,000 voters in a population of 3 million. The prospect implicit in this design is full of interest, seeing that perhaps 75 per cent of the population are illiterate and non-­Spanish speaking.

386  British Ambassador John Garnett Lomax

The People versus the Rosca Juan Lechín

Juan Lechín Oquendo (1914–2001) was the legendary and virtually lifetime leader of the Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers from its founding in 1944 to its crisis in 1987. From 1952 onward, he was also the head of the Bolivian Workers Central (cob). Initially a member of the Trotskyist Bolivian Workers Party (por), he led the section of his party that allied with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) at the time of the revolution in 1952, bolstering the left wing of this multifaceted nationalist party. In the early years of the revolution, he was the incarnation of the so-­ called co-­government between the mnr and the cob . He was also a minister and vice president under Víctor Paz Estenssoro during the latter’s second term (1960–64). He was always known for his political flexibility and ability to maneuver strategically. This allowed him to remain a significant player under the most varied circumstances, despite periods of exile under the military dictatorships. He delivered a high-­flown speech on the Illimani state radio station at two o’clock in the morning after the triumph of 9 April. The speech’s euphoric tone reflects the heady enthusiasm of the victors and their sense of the national and continental significance of their revolution. The following excerpt captures the prevailing nationalist and leftist discourse that pitted “the People” against the rosca, the small oligarchic elite and the politicians and public figures who had long catered to its interests.

Fellow citizens, comrades of the mines, Bolivians: The Federation of Union Workers (fst), whose secretariat I head, declares in the name of the mining proletariat its absolute and full identification with the popular revolution that the people of La Paz, without distinction of social classes, has just consummated. . . . Today the people have taken command of their own destiny and have given America a lesson for all time, demonstrating that the unconquerable spirit of the heroic race that six centuries ago extended its civilization to the furthest reaches of the eastern lowlands lives on in the ranges of the altiplano. Overcoming the designs of the rosca, which for sixty years has strangled our economy, today a brotherly and sincere embrace has united the working people, the vanguard of the mnr , the patriotic national army, 387

The debonair Juan Lechín Oquendo led the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) in the heady days of the 1952 revolution. Source: Archivo de La Paz (ALP). Used by permission of the family of Lucio Flores, photographer.

and the police corps, categorically demonstrating that over and above the power of money, which suffocates and blinds consciousness, there is the clear vision of the people, who know, at the cost of hunger, death, and misery, that their social, economic, and cultural improvement can come about only with the destruction of the mining rosca. The mineworkers who had gallantly earned a place in the vanguard via an epic struggle splashed with blood on the fields of María Barzola, Huanuni, Siglo Veinte, Uncía, Incahuasi . . . with me as their intermediary say to you, the working people of La Paz, that they envy the historic fate that today brought you into the streets. . . . I promise you that I will struggle without cease to consolidate the national revolution and return the control of its riches to Bolivia.

Translated by Alison Spedding

388  Juan Lechín

“They Fought without Holding Back” Ernesto “Che” Guevara

As the first of the postwar social revolutions in Latin America, Bolivia’s popular insurrection captured the attention of observers around the hemisphere. A young traveler at the time was Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who would later meet his death in Bolivia while attempting to repeat the insurrectionary feat of 1952 and that of the Sierra Maestra in Cuba a few years later. In 1953, Guevara wrote a letter to a friend, expressing his budding admiration for the heroic sacrifice of insurgent Bolivian workers. Lima, 3 September [1953]

Dear Tita,1 . . . I should tell you that in La Paz I ignored my diet and all that nonsense, and nevertheless felt wonderful for the month and a half I spent there. We traveled quite a bit out into the surrounding area—​­to Los Yungas, for example, very pretty tropical valleys—​­but one of the most interesting things that we did was to study the intriguing political scene. Bolivia has been a particularly important example for the American continent. We saw exactly where the struggles had taken place, the holes left by bullets, and even the remains of a man killed in the revolution and recently discovered in the cornice of a building—​­the lower part of his body had been blown away by one of those dynamite belts they wear around their waists. In the end, they fought without holding back. The revolutions here are not like those in Buenos Aires—​­two or three thousand (no one knows for sure how many) were left dead on the battlefield. Even now the fighting continues, and almost every night people are wounded by gunfire on one side or the other. But the government is supported by an armed people, and there is no possibility of liquidating an armed movement from outside. It can, however, succumb to internal conflicts. Note 1. Berta Gilda (Tita) Infante was a fellow medical student at the University of Buenos Aires and an active member of the Argentine Communist Youth, as well as a close friend.

389

History Redeemed

The revolutionary nationalist spirit found expression in the arts, much as it had in Mexico earlier in the century. Following the Mexican example, talented artists such as Walter Solón Romero (1927–99) and Miguel Alandia Pantoja (1914–75) worked with the new government, painting dramatic murals that depicted a history of popular struggle dating back to the time of the conquest and anticipating a future of social harmony and equality. Shown here are details from the grand murals in the Museum of the Revolution, inaugurated in 1964, imagining the colonial past and the postrevolutionary future.

In his mural La lucha del pueblo por su liberación (The People’s Struggle for Liberation [1964]), Miguel Alandia Pantoja depicts a ghostly Tupaj Katari being drawn and quartered in a scene of colonial violence. Used by permission of Miguel Alandia V. Photograph of mural courtesy of Pedro Querejazu, photographer.

390

In his mural El futuro de la Revolución Nacional (The Future of the National Revolution [1964]), Walter Solón Romero depicts a young boy learning literacy in the postrevolutionary era, with an archetypal and animate figure of Tupaj Katari behind him. Photograph of mural, painted using pyroxylin technique, by Pablo Solón (detail). Courtesy of Fundación Solón.

Requiem for a Revolution Sergio Almaraz Paz

Sergio Almaraz Paz (1928–68) began his political activities as a young man in the “Liberty Study Center” run by Angélica Ascui, an important middle-­class activist linked to anarchist and feminist causes. He entered the Revolutionary Left Party (pir) and then, in 1950, at the age of twenty-­two, cofounded the Bolivian Communist Party and became its first secretary-­general. He resigned in 1956 because his antidogmatic, humanist outlook did not square with the party’s intellectual program—​­René Zavaleta later remarked that Almaraz preferred to read Camus rather than Soviet theorists. Almaraz thereafter adopted a left-­nationalist position and developed his style as an uncompromising and lapidary political essayist. After penning key works on the extraction of natural resources (oil and minerals) and the structure of power in Bolivian history, he published Requiem for a Republic (1969). The book portrayed in devastating terms the prerevolutionary ruling economic clique, the old rosca that “felt it owned a country it simultaneously despised.” It criticized the reversal of the national revolution, which unfolded as the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) capitulated point by point to the pressures of the United States. By the time of the right-­w ing military coup in November 1964, Almaraz considered the revolution already a cadaver and the new rosca a pale shadow of the old oligarchy and fully subordinate to U.S. interests.

Psychology of the Old Rosca They felt themselves to be the owners of the country, but at the same time they despised it. At no time did they think that the money and the power that they possessed were owed to a people that had accepted them passively, unconsciously, without resignation or rebellion, because they issued from the decomposed bowels of feudalism. They descended from the same historical line of moneyed creoles who arrived at the National Assembly in 1825 to proclaim the independence of Upper Peru, after the guerrilla fighters of Upper Peru had been liquidated in the fifteen years of struggle against Spanish power. The republic was proclaimed in a vacuum: its creators were dead. The creoles thus found themselves living in a small, poor country of Indians, which, without competition from Spain, they totally dominated. But 392

this did not mean that they accepted it. The oligarchy, after 1850, initiated its psychological divorce, encouraged by contact with Europe which introduced ideological and cultural elements that accentuated their separation. Fundamentally, they felt offended by their country. This is the intimate motivation of the works of [Alcides] Arguedas.1 They wanted to live in a European-­style setting, modern, clean, with Indians who wore overalls and shoes, without suspecting that capitalist Westernization was not possible precisely due to the feudal power of which they were the material expression. For as long as feudalism persisted, the peasants would be dirty and halfway to being idiots. This oligarchy, which was the cause of so much poverty and backwardness, created step-­by-­step a self-­justifying psychological mechanism through which it adapted itself to the country it lived in without accepting it, and it provided itself with the elements that distinguished the elite from the common people. Ideologically the confrontation between Catholics and positivists (conservatives and liberals), a characteristic shared with almost all the oligarchies of Latin America, does not define the internal reality of the Bolivian oligarchy. The manner in which they understood the country, how they rejected it at the same time as they located themselves within it, the links within the core of the elite and its relations with the external context, the values and the myths that reflect relations that are historically determined, in sum, the social psychology proper to a small group, is the only way to encounter the specific quality of an oligarchy whose most powerful segments fused, via diverse routes, with the mining industry from 1850 onward. Land and the mines are the material base. Mineowners have high incomes, but none of them ceases to build palatial rural residences, to buy land or to invest in the land they already owned. [Aniceto] Arce, [Gregorio] Pacheco, and [Severo Fernández] Alonso possess landed estates.2 The tin miners also have them. [Carlos Víctor] Aramayo owns the estate of Chajrahuasi; [Simón] Patiño owns Pairumani.3 [Mauricio] Hochschild, who is German, is not interested in a “country mansion” and prefers Buenos Aires and Viña del Mar to Bolivia.4 This is a country in which old-­style prestige is given with and by land, that is to say on the basis of the past and tradition, and in which people of “standing” make an effort to discover Spanish grandparents, so the link with the land is fundamental; it is the only thing that separates parvenus from families of rank and tradition. This is one way in which the mining oligarchy is inserted into Bolivian society, but it is also an external feature of a mining industry that emerged more or less soldered together with feudal landowning. It is logical: the activity of mining does not require an internal market and in consequence it is not only uninterested in eliminating the obstacles that put a stop to the country’s progress, but rather is favored by their persistence insofar as they result in a cheap labor force to work the mines and equally cheap supplies of farm produce. Here an interesting paradox Requiem for a Revolution  393

emerges. The mineowners more or less openly despise the routine attitudes and the mediocrity of landowners who plough the land using the money they have and do not bother to install a flush toilet in their country houses.5 But, in order to consecrate their prestige, they adopt some of the symbols of these same landowners, and among them, the most important is owning an estate. As is natural, the modern and comfortable country estate of a rich mineowner is a luxury with little productive value. But that is exactly why the mineowner likes to have it, so that he can act the part of the exhausted businessman who retires to the countryside for a rest. The silver-­m ining oligarchy differed from the tin miners because it had greater links between mining and landownership, which is to say that the most prosperous mineowners were also rural landowners. They were in the past and continue to be so. With the passage from silver to tin, differentiation begins. There is an oligarchy, but that part of it which remains in this country is made up of functionaries and lawyers of rural origin. They are mere employees. They are in the service of the great mineowners but do not form part of their group. Nevertheless, together with the mineowners themselves, they compose the elite. It is an evident fact that the lawyers and upper management of the mining cartel do not own shares in the companies; and if this should exceptionally be the case, the number of shares they own is minimal. Investment in tin, due to the introduction of technology and the volumes extracted, was much greater than in the case of silver, for which rural landowners had the conditions to form small mining companies that operated with a few dozen workers. This elite is what was called the mining rosca. . . .

The Time of Small Things “What in effect is difficult is to witness how a revolution loses its way without losing faith in its necessity.” “To extract the necessary lessons from the decadence of revolutions, one has to suffer along with them, rather than rejoicing over this decadence.” —​­A lbert Camus

The government of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement before its fall lived through the time of small things. A stunted spirituality enveloped everything. A party magazine, a year later, would express this in a phrase: “Laicacota, a third-­class funeral for a revolution on its knees.” 6 A government already overcome by disillusion and exhaustion could not resist. It was alone. In the forty-­eight hours that preceded its fall, it had to pay for abuses and mistakes. The people stood waiting, trapped in a gloomy doubt. Abandoned by their leaders, they too were alone. 394  Sergio Almaraz Paz

The history of Bolivia was never so overwhelmed by the extremes of logic and absurdity. In Laicacota, the bullets hit the corpse of a revolution. The driving impulse of the revolution was dead. The revolution shrank and shrank until it fitted into the measurements indicated by the Americans, whose proportions were discovered in the country’s own poverty. It was thought possible to make the revolution using American money. The Alliance for Progress, harmonizing with this philosophy, showed off its glass beads: a latrine, a health post, or motorcycles for the police.7 It was the time of least resistance. The time of small things, “sensible and within reach,” as was often repeated. History would be simple if the advances and retreats corresponded exclusively to the game of alternating between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary governments. The revolution headed by a government may also surrender through slow, at times imperceptible, backward steps. An inch is enough to separate one side from another. One may give in over this or that, but there is a point that changes everything; from then on, the revolution will be lost. Hence, it sounds false to proclaim that history is irreversible when one confuses the totality of the process with one of its particular instances. Effectively, Bolivia will not return to what it was in 1952; in this sense the totality of history is irreversible. But there should not be the least doubt that the denationalization of the mines is on the way; in this other sense, reversion has been easy and possible. The Bolivian revolution shrank, and with it, its men, its projects, its hopes. Policies were established on the basis of concessions, and there are only subtle differences between this and defeat. When was the wrong path taken that led to surrender? First of all, we should ask: were those in charge conscious that they were surrendering, did they notice that they had arrived at the point after which there was no possibility of return? In 1953, the first food supplies arrived from North America. In 1957, the monetary stabilization plan was imposed. Later on, the army was organized once more.8 North American advisers were accepted in the most important mechanisms of the state. The Petroleum Code was voted into law. One thing led to another. In this most complex of games, submission alternated with defense. Lucidity was not absent: “We stand firm here in order to give way there; this is more important than that.” These evaluations, products of given circumstances, had the disadvantage of escaping from the government’s own control. In 1953, the government was ready to make certain concessions in exchange for North American aid, but it would have seemed madness to accept a plan such as that which the International Monetary Fund imposed four years later. In 1957, it would never have been thought that in order to put into action a loan destined for the nationalized mining industry, the use of force against the workers could have been imposed as a condition. In 1960, it Requiem for a Revolution  395

would have been considered stupid to accept the free purchase of minerals in exchange for a loan for the Mining Bank.9 Six years later, before receiving a single dollar in loans, free purchase had already been decreed. When oil reserves were handed over, it was believed that the Americans would leave the nationalized mines in peace; previously, in order to protect these mines, compensation for their former owners had been accepted. At the time it was thought: “They’ve taken the oil, but they leave us with the tin.” With the passage of time, oil, and the twenty-­t wo million dollars as compensation to former mineowners were lost, the economy and the organization of [the state mining company] comibol were ruined, [the state oil company] ypfb was weakened through the confrontation with Gulf Oil, and the way was also prepared for losing control over tin. As was logical, the concessions became larger and more frequent in a dynamic in which it is not possible to distinguish the seriousness of each step taken. Each time something was ceded, the degree and measure were more compromising than before. The revolution did not collapse under a sole blow; it fell little by little, one piece after another. The counterrevolution did not sweep over the country like a bulldozer, and if its effects were demolishing, it took several years to cast down what it encountered in its way. Because there was resistance. It was a poor resistance, weak and confused, but it was resistance. Alexander Firfer, head of the American economic mission, on returning to Washington after November 1964, said of the military: “With this government we will work much better. . . .” The discussions with [Víctor] Paz Estenssoro went on for months and sometimes years. For his part, Paz Estenssoro thought: “Our position was evident in the details.” . . .

Psychology of the New Rosca What defines the substance of the November coup is the return of the oligarchic mentality. November was catalyzed by the return of that mentality. The North Americans could not act alone, nor was it necessary that they do so. It was a regrettable return to the stage, both because René Ballivián and his friends in the Industrial Bank could never match up to Patiño—​­who when he was the owner of the country behaved as such—​­and because there are fundamental differences between the mentality of the lord and that of his hired administrator.10 Since the mining troika no longer exists in the condition of exclusive lord of this country, what is left of it and the bargain-­basement bourgeoisie fabricated in the last years of the government of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement and animated after November (owners of medium-­ sized mines, traders in imported goods, and a few incredibly shortsighted factory owners) see that the country is more than they can cope with.11 It is a double phenomenon: on awakening in 1952, the popular masses grew, and at 396  Sergio Almaraz Paz

the same time, the oligarchic mentality lost ground. It was far beyond their [the elites’] grasp to understand what was going on, and they lost their way. If they were unable to overcome the restriction of their ideas to a particular social stratum before November, it was impossible that they should achieve it afterward in view of an apparent victory. The vulnerability of this right wing lies in its material misery and its inconsistent and ambiguous ideological reflection. As a mentality that barely managed to survive after 1952, now mixed up with North American reinforcements, it has engendered a repertory of ideas that fits in a nutshell: private initiative and free enterprise, denationalization of the mines, integration, and development. They do not manage to have a precise image of the country, nor is the class-­based force of their ideas sufficiently vigorous for them to be able to reclaim for themselves the benefits of free enterprise. They are content with the crumbs left by the North Americans, recognizing that oil, road building, or metallurgy are businesses too big for them. Patiño would have grinned; he knew that the country was as large as he was. The men of November know that they have been overtaken and humbly accept the place that the Americans indicate for them. This lack of energy uncovers the weakness of their class roots: a Bolivian bourgeois who manages a tiny bank and owes money to the North Americans or a factory owner on the edge of bankruptcy has neither the ambition nor the perspective of stronger bourgeois classes. They do not even dream of defending themselves from the North Americans whose policy of taking control of national resources kills the weak roots of the Bolivian bourgeoisie. While the North Americans will do a billion dollars of business with Bolivian oil in ten years, these poor bourgeois will accept a few cents. And the truth is that they deserve no more: they were born at the wrong moment, and history has condemned them.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Alcides Arguedas (1879–1946) was a Bolivian writer whose essay Pueblo enfermo. Contribución a la psicología de los pueblos hispano-­americanos (A Sick People: Contribution to the Psychology of the Spanish American Peoples, 1909) denounced at length the many defects he perceived in the Bolivian national character and in its population in general. 2. Aniceto Arce (1824–1906) was president of Bolivia from 1888 to 1892. Gregorio Pacheco (1823–99) was president from 1884 to 1888. Severo Fernández Alonso (1849–1925) was president from 1896 to 1899. 3. Carlos Víctor Aramayo (1889–1981) controlled numerous mines, especially in the southern part of the Department of Potosí. Simón Patiño, born in a humble family in Cochabamba, discovered a rich tin mine in Uncía (Potosí) and became an international mining magnate.

Requiem for a Revolution  397

4. Mauricio Hochschild was a Jewish immigrant from Austria. He, Aramayo, and Patiño were the most famous of the “tin barons” who headed the cartel of mining companies and their political retinue known as the rosca. 5. That is to say, such landowners are content to recover the money spent in each agricultural cycle and have no interest in using it as capital that will generate constantly increasing profits. 6. On Laicacota, a strategic hilltop in the city of La Paz, a group of armed civilians of the mnr attempted a desperate resistance on the 4th of November of 1964. The government had fallen two hours earlier. The redoubt was bombed and strafed by the air force, and its occupants died or were forced to flee. The action was unnecessary and bloody, and has no other explanation than the combative ardor of some military aviators. The militiamen would have lain down their arms had they been given the chance. But there were some people who wanted to see on the 4th of November the formal overthrow of the government, with their adversaries definitively crushed, their blood on the streets, and left reeling in humiliation and defeat. But since the government was too weak to offer resistance, it succumbed blandly, leaving the most aggressive groups of the counterrevolution dismayed and panting for more. A few hours later, they revenged themselves by heckling General [Alfredo] Ovando [Candía, a coup leader] in the Plaza Murillo. They considered him an accomplice of the mnr for having facilitated the exile of President Paz Estenssoro. [Note in original.] 7. “Glass beads” refers to glass beads and other trivial objects with which the colonizers historically bought off Indians and obtained their territories. 8. The army had opposed the revolutionary uprising of April 1952 and, as a result was formally dissolved, being replaced by militias of armed civilians for the first few years after 1952. 9. With “free purchase” (rescate libre), the government resigned control over mineral sales. Ore producers, whether nationalized mines or independent firms, could sell to any buyer at the price the buyer offered. Formerly, they were obliged to sell to the government at an established price, and it could then negotiate the conditions of sale to international buyers. 10. René Ballivián Calderón (1909–79) had been an executive in the Aramayo mining company, and in the 1960s he represented various private banks. 11. “Mining troika” refers to the triumvirate of mineowners: Aramayo, Hochschild, and Patiño.

398  Sergio Almaraz Paz

Iconoclast and Prophet Fausto Reinaga

Fausto Reinaga (1906–94) was Bolivia’s first prominent intellectual to adopt an overtly “Indian” political identity. His forceful writings, from the 1960s and 1970s in particular, continue to shape the thinking and rhetoric of today’s generation of radical indigenous students, social leaders, and politicians. In 1962, Reinaga founded the Partido de Indios Aymaras y Keswas, later the Partido Indio de Bolivia, based on a sociopolitical philosophy known as indianismo. Reinaga combined an anticolonial perspective inspired by writers such as Frantz Fanon with an original and critical view of Bolivia’s past and present. His brief for indianismo was marked by fierce and visionary language. He argued throughout his life that indigenous beliefs and practices were superior to those of the decadent West and that a violent revolution was needed to sweep clear the vestiges of colonialism that oppressed Bolivia and kept its indigenous populations in shackles. In his most famous work, La revolución india (1969), Reinaga used a critique of the statues and street names in La Paz to reveal how Spanish and European colonialism had distorted the identity of the nation. Such alienation justified his full-­throated affirmation of Indianness and his radical call for Indian liberation. A bitter reflection is imposed on us: The statues that stand upright in the plazas and streets of the cities have a supreme social function: they are the paradigm, the example, the sacrosanct model; in the end, they are the mirror in which the men of a society, people, nation, or state should see themselves. Greece [and] Rome are peopled with the statues of their great men. France, U.S.A., Russia . . . likewise. But here in Bolivia something exceptional occurs. Let us look at the capital of the republic, La Paz, where there are statues that are monstrosities, such as that of Christopher Columbus, and others that are bogus, such as the one that stands in the Avenida Peru, which is the image of a gringo, although on the plaque one reads the name of a Bolivian who died in Paris. The statue of Germán Busch is not of Busch; it does not represent that youth who breathed vitality from all his pores and shone in the glorious adventure of struggle in defense of Bolivia. That statue is one of a wrecked

399

spirit and a defeated life. .  .  . The statue in the main plaza [Plaza Murillo] whose plinth bears a lion and three mythological representations—​­Peace, Union, and Glory—​­does not correspond to, is not what Pedro Domingo Murillo was in life, in flesh and bone. Pedro Domingo Murillo was an energetic native son of the city of La Paz: he dressed in local homespun; he wore sandals and a poncho, an Andean knitted cap, and a hat of sheep-­wool felt with a corduroy hatband; he never wore his thick hair in a ponytail [like European men of the day]; nor did he wear flat leather shoes, nor did he cover his thighs with velvet breeches, nor his shoulders and back with a bullfighter’s cape. That statue in the central plaza of La Paz is of a Spanish toreador, not of Pedro Domingo Murillo.1 The thirty-­t wo busts and one statue that, like a sculptural Tower of Babel, stand in the Courtyard of Honor in the Military College in Irpavi, which is the highest institution in the school of civic consciousness, clearly declare, with irresistible eloquence, the lack of a compass or a direction to tutor and guide the formation of the armed forces of the republic. Beginning on the rim of El Alto [above La Paz] and ending in the suburbs of La Florida and Calacoto, this is the procession of statues in the capital of Bolivia, La Paz:

1. Sacred Heart of Jesus 2. Kennedy 3. Alonso de Mendoza 4. Simón Bolívar 5. Simón Bolívar (Avenue Saavedra) 6. Simón Bolívar (Palace of Government) 7. Columbus 8. Marshal Sucre (Plaza of the Student) 9. Marshal Sucre (Plaza Sucre) 10. Isabel the Catholic 11. Cervantes 12. Baden Powell 13. San Martín 14. José Artigas 15. Humboldt 16. Melvin Jones2

The plazas of the city of La Paz, under a rigorous colonizing logic, bear the names of the statues. Thus, we have: 1. Plaza Sucre; 2. Plaza Isabel the Catholic; 3. San Martín; 4. Humboldt; 5. Cervantes (or Spain); 6. Bolívar (or Venezuela); 7. Powell; 8. Jones; and so on. There are also the plazas: 9. Columbus; 10. Lebanon; 11. Israel; and so on. Just one plaza bears the name of someone with Indian blood, Plaza Mu-

400  Fausto Reinaga

rillo. But it has another historic denomination: the Plaza of Arms. .  .  . In conclusion, not one plaza has a national name. Returning to the statues, to the sixteen mentioned must be added eight in Plaza Murillo, eight in the legislative palace, marble statues of Greek hetaeras, three mythological statues that surround Murillo’s plinth, and one in Plaza Antofagasta. They total thirty-­six statues of gringos, thirty-­six monuments to foreigners, versus three (three) native statues: Murillo, Abaroa, and Busch.3 We have thirty-­six statues of foreigners versus three statues of national people with mixed Indian blood. . . . There is not one statue of the great Indian heroes, such as Tomás Katari, Tupaj Katari, Bartolina Sisa, Manuel Cáceres, Juan Wallparimachi, [Pablo] Zárate Willka . . . and, even worse, there is not one statue of the true forgers of Bolivian nationhood: that is to say, the great mixed-­blood guerillas of the independence war, such as Juana Azurduy de Padilla, Manuel Ascencio Padilla, [Gregorio García and Manuel Victorio García] Lanza, [Ildefonso de las] Muñecas, [Ignacio] Warnes, [Eustaquio] Méndez, and so on.4 There is not one statue of the 102 guerrilla fighters who offered their lives to forge Bolivia. Bolivians do not only put up statues to gringos, but also write books and publish magazines to the liking and taste of the gringos. The mixed-­blood intelligentsia carries out its sacred function as imperialist lackeys to the bone. They write books on Bacon’s Idols, Rilke, Marxist sociology, and publish magazines: Nova, Spartacus, Praxis, Sign, Sisyphus. . . . Is there a better proof of the colonization of the nation? Generals and lawyers! You carry Europe in your brains like a malignant tumor. Lawyers and generals, you grotesquely imitate Europe. Tame monkeys, with your backs to your fatherland, you serve Europe on your knees . . . and there is more. In this servitude, happy to be yoked as vile lackeys, happy in their paradise of criminal servility, generals and lawyers, with the pleasure of the gods, devour each other like scorpions. The governments of Bolivia, from 1825 to 1970 [the date of writing], have been at the service of the racist West. A “little bunch of whites” perform a grotesque imitation of Europe. Strongman and clan, hero and group “read, write, think, govern in opposition to their country.” They forget Bolivia and defend Western culture, without “sharing the attributes of the era of what is called Western civilization.” From Casimiro Olañeta until today they are an unbroken chain of evildoers.5 They have auctioned off the nation bit by bit: Bolivia, mutilated on its four sides, enclosed without hope, shivers alone and naked in the Andes. Bolivia is a people without a future. It is a “comic-­opera nation,” a nation that exists only in the abstract, a state “without power.” Young people! You do not have to bear the consequences of the works of

Iconoclast and Prophet  401

this clan of prostitutes. It is unjust for them to wish to make you responsible for others’ blame. Your rebelliousness is holy. And it is just for you to punish this society of robbers and murderers! Bolivia, laden with hunger and colonized consciousness, is a people that has been annihilated! Here we have the Bolivia of the cholos and the half-­breeds: a putrefied Bolivia! The Indian Bolivia remains! The Indian Bolivia remains! . . .

Spain, whose spirit “bears an obscure passion for the destruction of life,” and the America of the white/mixed-­blood/cholos and Indians converted into cholos, who are “a colony of starving, fierce beggars who deny their ancestors,” form and make up the Hispanic identity. Confronted with this Hispanic identity is Indian identity. Is Spain the motherland, and do we Bolivians have the obligation to be loyal to Spain? We Indians are not opposed to the white/mixed-­blood/cholo Bolivians who hold their loyalty to Spain sacred. That is their business. We Indians are something else, that which is opposed to Spain. We are Indianness opposed to Hispanicness. Indianness is the blood, the spirit, the cosmic force of the Andes which animates the Indian in his resistance to the West and his persistence in being. Indianness is the Aymara and Quechua languages, the religion of telluric wisdom (Pachamama and Inti [Mother Earth and the Sun]), which have kept the Indians united over the four centuries of their slavery. Indianness is the inextinguishable fire of freedom that burns in the Indian’s heart; the idea-­force, idea-­obsession that beats incessantly inside his skull. Indianness is the cosmic breath that impregnates and saturates every human being who is born or inhabits the lands of America. It is what led [José] Vasconcelos to write Indología, [José Carlos] Mariátegui to write Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, [Franz] Tamayo to write Creation of the National Pedagogy, [Benjamín] Carrion to write Atahuallpa, [Luis Eduardo] Valcarcel to write Storm in the Andes, [José] Uriel García to write The New Indian, Ricardo Rojas to write Eurindia, and Guillermo Carnero Hoke to write A New Theory of Insurgency. Indianness is the fairy godmother who watches over the spirit of the race from Mexico to Argentina. . . . When the white/mixed-­blood/cholos realize—​­in Paris, New York, or Moscow—​­their mental penury, their lacerating cultural orphanhood, they look back to the snowcapped Andes and turn into Indians, and as if they were beings of Inka lineage, with pride they talk in this way: “We who built Tawan­ tinsuyu .  .  . we will give the world a new culture. . . .” This is Indianness talking through the spurious mouth of a bastard! 402  Fausto Reinaga

Indianness in Bolivia is a submerged nation: a people of four million Indians, which rises up ready to break the chains of four centuries of slavery. Indianness is the flapping of the wiphala, the sounding of the pututu [Andean horn] which announces the volcanic cataclysm of the Andes.6 It is the flash of light that floods the darkened consciousness of millions and millions of human beings. It is the faith that has begun to burn in empty breasts. It is the polestar of hope for the hopeless souls who groan in this “vale of tears.” Indianness is genesis opposed to the West. It is the new culture, which will replace the Hellenic-­Christian culture, which today is sinking in the midst of the shadow of nihilism, hunger, and fear of the dismal lightning of the Atomic War. Indianness is the millennial history without history, the spirit and biological force of the race. Indianness is the idea-­force that burns in the Indian’s consciousness in opposition to Spain. It is the thought and action of our titans: Pachakutej, Manco II, Tupaj Amaru, Tupaj Katari, Pablo Atusparia, Pedro Ushcu, [Pablo] Zárate Willka . . . who confronted the West and steered Universal History.7 Indianness is the will to tear out the roots of the dark and medieval Spain from Bolivian life. It is the libertarian cry vomited by four millions of slaves in a country with four and a half million inhabitants. It is the shout of hatred and vengeance against Spain that emerges from four million throats and from eight million clenched fists. It is the sworn will to exile Spain truly and definitively from America. It is the urgent resolution to expel murderous Spain from America! Indianness is the war without truce against Hispanic identity. Spain today is a country oppressed by a horrendous military and clerical dictatorship.8 Spain is the Middle Ages in the middle of the twentieth century. The Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has gone forever. Spain today is completely decadent; it has not one great man. It counts for nothing in the world. It has no weight as thought, nor as politics, nor as science, nor as technology. Hispanic identity is the jargon of the academies of Spanish language and history. Academies of “bad language” and “bad history.” Hispanic identity stinks of the tomb. Meanwhile, Indianness is Manco II, Tupaj Amaru, and Tupaj Katari. It is Pablo Atusparia, Pedro Ushcu, and Zárate Willka. It is the racial rebellion of thirty million human beings that will soon become an Indian Revolution. Indianness is the Third World revolution that burns in the instinct and the consciousness of thirty million Indians in the Tawantinsuyu of our century. Indianness is the flapping of the wiphala and the sound of the pututu announcing the storm in the Andes. Indianness is the imperative of consciousness and the cry of freedom: meanwhile, Hispanic identity is the evening prayer of those who follow the way to the cemetery. Hispanic identity is sunset . . . and Indianness is the dawn! Iconoclast and Prophet  403

... Bolivian communism and liberalism do not recognize us; they ignore us. For that reason, both only wish to assimilate us to the West. Liberalism and communism, brought from Europe, want to assimilate us to Europe. And what the Indian wants is, precisely, to liberate himself from Europe. The ideal of the Indian is to be, not to disappear. To be integrated to what is “white” implies his disappearance. To be integrated is to be alienated; it is to be alien to oneself; it is not being oneself, but rather to be another different from oneself. Assimilation, integration is alienation. And otherness signifies: alienation. And in opposition to the alienation of man, the greatest brains and the greatest hearts of humanity have risen up. From Buddha to Jesus, from Socrates to Marx, from Spartacus to Tupaj Amaru, from Lumumba to Luther King, from Gandhi to Che Guevara, the highest peaks of heroism and holiness did not struggle for the alienation and the racism of the “wild white animals” of the West. They sacrificed themselves for brotherhood and the complete fullness of man. The man who is segregated, racialized, vivisected, cut into pieces, amputated from himself, that is to say alienated, has to be unified, completed, totalized. Man must be uprooted from his slavery, from his fear and hunger, so that he can become a man in freedom. No to the alienated enslaved man. Yes to the complete man. And the Indian is a man; thus, he has no reason to integrate himself with another man; he has no reason to assimilate himself to anyone; he has to be himself: i n d i o. He has to be a person; he has to be a being, and not a thing, a slave, a shadow; he has to be a man, and not a folkloric poster, one who gets drunk, who talks, who fights, and is massacred by some white political “boss”; not a laboring donkey nor a political serf. The Indian’s revolutionary cry is not assimilation; it is liberation. The Indian’s hope is not to continue as a laboring donkey or a political serf; the Indian’s hope is to free himself. The Indian has to break with the four centuries of his slavery, to conquer his freedom. And the only way to conquer it is to make his Revolution: the Indian Revolution. One must be what one is. Be oneself and not another. Be in oneself and for oneself.9 Therefore, our name must be our name, a faithful expression of our being and our historical reality, in blood and in spirit. Our name should express our own presence, our history, our flesh and our soul. In sum, our name should be the expression of our historical condition. And the word peasant, which comes to us from Europe, is alien to us, strange, exotic, foreign, gringo.10 . . . It does not express our color, nor our blood, nor our spirit, nor our historical being. Peasant means a social class that works for a salary in the countryside, a class exploited by the rural or ter-

404  Fausto Reinaga

ritorial bourgeoisie.11 Since this bourgeoisie does not exist in Bolivia, it is thus absurd to suppose that an exploited class exists without an exploiting class.12 The Indian is a race, a people, a nation, and as such the Indian is oppressed by another race, another people, another nation. The Indian is oppressed, exploited, and enslaved by the half-­breed, by the cholo, and by the gringo. Indian has been our name for four centuries. Columbus called us Indians, and that is what we are: indians. Yes, he did call us that by mistake, due to his ignorance or bad faith; but we were baptized with that name, and we have lived with that name for four centuries. The word peasant is a white disguise. When they call us peasants, they disguise us. Just as they have dressed us in shoes, a shirt and tie, they also want to impose on us or make us believe that they have given us another face, another skin, another soul; in sum, instead of our personality, they want to give us another personality. That is a crime. The Indian was an Indian, is an Indian, and has to liberate himself as an indian.

Translated by Alison Spedding Notes 1. Pedro Domingo Murillo was a leader of the revolt against Spanish colonial authorities in La Paz in 1809. 2. Reinaga’s list includes: Alonso de Mendoza, Spanish founder of the city of La Paz; Robert Baden-­Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts; José de San Martín, hero of South American independence; José Artigas, hero of Uruguayan independence; the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt; and Melvin Jones, founder of the Lions Club. 3. The statue of Eduardo Abaroa, hero of the War of the Pacific, is in the plaza that bears his name, but Reinaga has omitted it from his list. 4. Tomás Katari, Tupaj Katari, and Bartolina Sisa fought in the Indian insurrection of 1781. Juan Manuel Cáceres led an anticolonial movement in 1810–11. Juan Wallparimachi was a Quechua poet who fought in the independence wars. Pablo Zárate Willka led Indian troops in the Federal War of 1899. 5. Casimiro Olañeta was a creole military leader who fought on the side of the Spanish Crown during the wars of the independence, but who then passed over to the victorious American side. 6. A wiphala is a flag of forty-­nine (seven-­by-­seven) squares bearing the seven colors of the rainbow arranged around a central diagonal of seven white squares. The first government of Evo Morales adopted the wiphala together with the traditional red, yellow, and green tricolor as a national flag, which since the 1970s has symbolized Andean Indian and peasant movements. 7. Reinaga invokes a range of Indian warriors throughout history. Pachakuti Inka conquered extensive territory throughout the Andes prior to the Spanish conquest. Manqu Inka rose up against the Spaniards in Cuzco in the sixteenth century. Pablo Atusparia and Pedro Uchcu Cochachin led a rebellion in Huaylas (Peru) in 1885. 8. Reinaga wrote when Spain was governed by the dictator General Francisco Franco in collaboration with the most reactionary elements of the Catholic Church.

Iconoclast and Prophet  405

9. In this phrase, Reinaga echoes Marxist theory, which argues that the working class, in order to liberate itself, must exist as a class “for itself ”—​­explicitly conscious of its class position and its political implications—​­and not merely be a class “in itself ”—​­existing objectively as a social fact but whose members do not consciously assume this as a guide for political action. Reinaga declares that Indians should assume that they are Indians both in themselves (objectively) and for themselves (subjectively and politically). 10. Here Reinaga is attacking specifically the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement government from 1952 to 1964, which substituted the term peasant for Indian or indígena as the politically correct term for rural inhabitants who worked in agriculture. 11. Reinaga’s definition does not match that of most social scientists. By conventional definition, salaried agricultural workers are a rural proletariat, not peasants; and peasants are agricultural producers who draw principally on unpaid household labor, that is, family members who do not receive a salary. 12. When Reinaga wrote this text, the most obvious “exploitative class” in the countryside —​­that is, hacienda landlords—​­had ceased to exist, but exploitation continued via mechanisms such as the low prices for agricultural produce. While commercial intermediaries did not form a compact and overt “exploitative class” as the landlords had, their actions still shaped the structures of exploitation.

406  Fausto Reinaga

IX Dictatorship and Democracy

As the old regime collapsed in April 1952, popular militias of mineworkers, peasants, and the urban working class routed the demoralized Bolivian Army. Five years later, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) acceded to U.S. pressures and reconstituted the army as one of the conditions for its economic “stabilization” package. By 1964, U.S. military aid surpassed $1.5 million and 1,200 Bolivians had received military training at the School of the Americas in Panama.1 The U.S. aim, framed as part of its Cold War strategy in the hemisphere, was to counter the ongoing influence of revolutionary forces in the country. But the mnr’s bid for control over radical trade-­union and leftist forces was double-­edged. In 1964, the Bolivian military under General René Barrientos threw out the mnr and seized power for itself, with the tacit acceptance of the United States. The following two decades of authoritarian rule were a dark time of haunting violence, but also one of persistent popular struggles for democracy. The mnr’s strategy to ally with the United States, rebuild the armed forces, and contain the trade-­union movement relied on one other crucial element. It used the agrarian reform to consolidate its political base in the countryside and thereby drive a wedge into the revolutionary alliance between proletarian workers and peasants. The subsequent military regimes of General Barrientos (1964–69), General Alfredo Ovando (1969–70), and General Hugo Banzer Suárez (1971–78) relied on the very same strategy, in what became known as the Military-­Peasant Pact. Working-­class forces, especially in the mining camps, where revolutionary and socialist ideals remained most vibrant, were left isolated and vulnerable to repeated and brutal state repression. During the Massacre of San Juan, in 1967, shortly after the emergence of Che Guevara’s guerrilla force in the country, Barrientos sent in troops to quell the miners’ growing political movement and to prevent its alliance with the guerrillas, leaving a toll of eighty-­seven deaths, including women and children. That same year, Bolivia appeared in headlines throughout the world as the military (with direct U.S. support) dismantled Che’s ragged guerrilla band operating in the border region between Santa Cruz and Chuquisaca. Gue407

vara believed Bolivia was a crucial site not only because of its revolutionary past—​­which he had witnessed firsthand as a traveler in 1953—​­and the depth of poverty and exploitation in the country. It was also, in his view, a strategic geopolitical center from which armed struggle to overthrow capitalism and imperialism on the continent could radiate out. But aside from the unfavorable odds to begin with, Guevara’s campaign suffered from a multitude of additional problems—​­including the arduous geographical terrain around Ñancahuazú and isolation from the local peasantry as well as from the mining and urban centers where it was beginning to gain support. The autonomous operations of the Cuban-­led guerrilla foco generated resentment in the Bolivian Communist Party leadership, but it won the sympathies especially of many younger, urban, and middle-­class leftists.2 Even after the military fiasco of Ñancahuazú, the moral power of Che’s example and the illegitimacy of the authoritarian state prompted a new, and equally disastrous, guerrilla campaign by mostly young Bolivian university students at Teoponte in 1970. Most of the sixty-­seven dead were executed after their capture by the Ovando regime. The scale and intensity of the violence inflicted by the dictatorships in Bolivia from the 1960s to the early 1980s never reached the dimensions found in other Southern Cone countries in the same period. Yet censorship, arbitrary arrest and abduction, torture, execution, disappearance, and exile were part of the repertoire of state terror, and they cast a pall over civil society and political life. The Banzer regime—​­part of the coordinated military repression in the Southern Cone known as Operation Condor—​­and the brief reigns of terror of General Alberto Natusch Busch, in November 1979, and General Luis García Meza, in 1980–81, produced hundreds of fatalities. García Meza’s head henchman, Coronel Luis Arce Gómez, counseled leftists to “go about with their wills in hand.” State political power also grew increasingly enmeshed with sinister fascist elements—​­the former Nazi Klaus Barbie circulated freely in the country and worked closely with different reactionary regimes to crush left-­w ing forces. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, culminating with the narco-­d ictatorship of García Meza, the corrupt military command also battened onto a new stream of revenue through deals with cocaine cartels operating in the eastern lowlands. In rural areas, the solidity of military rule, sustained by the Military-­ Peasant Pact, began to erode gradually after the Banzer regime massacred peasant protestors in the Cochabamba valley in January 1974. Shortly before, critical voices within the peasant trade-­union movement and other Aymara leaders and intellectuals had issued the Manifesto of Tiwanaku, which decried ongoing forms of colonial domination as well as capitalist exploitation in the country and invoked the example of eighteenth-­century insurgent leader Tupaj Katari as a contemporary symbol for indigenous peasant struggle. The peasant trade unions gradually staked out an autonomous political position and 408  Dictatorship and Democracy

reunited with the Bolivian Workers Central (cob), in 1979, in the mobilizations against the bloody Halloween coup of Natusch Busch and the economic package of Interim President Lidia Gueiler Tejada (1979–80). The movement also increasingly came under fire from the state. Genaro Flores, the katarista leader of the Trade Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (csutcb) who was also serving as executive secretary of the cob, was paralyzed from the waist down after a military patrol shot him in 1981. Despite the fierce repression unleashed on them and the often clandestine operations of their leadership, the cob and the Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers (fstmb) offered consistent opposition to the dictatorships throughout this period. In the last days of 1977, with the Banzer regime coming under pressure from U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s calls for democratic elections, five leaders of the Housewives Committee of the Siglo XX (including the well-­k nown figure Domitila Chungara), along with their fifteen children, launched a hunger strike, soon supported by Bolivia’s Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, that eventually forced General Banzer from power in 1978. Principled resistance came from other sectors of political and civil society as well. While a member of parliament, in 1979, the brilliant Socialist Party leader Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz launched a virtually single-­handed legal challenge against the malfeasance, corruption, and human rights violations of the Banzer regime. Quiroga was subsequently shot in cold blood during the coup d’état of García Meza in 1980. Progressive members of the Catholic Church also acted in solidarity with the mineworkers movement and bravely stood up to the military despots. The Jesuit priest Luis Espinal, director of the weekly paper Aquí and leading human rights advocate who had also participated in the 1978 hunger strike, was detained, tortured, and executed under the orders of García Meza. By the early 1980s, the reunification and galvanization of the trade-­union movement, the corruption and misgovernment of the military regimes, the repudiation of dictatorship by civil society, the distancing from the regimes by the United States,3 and a darkening economic panorama all combined to bring an end to the period of de facto rule. In 1982, General Guido Vildoso handed the government over to Congress. It in turn confirmed Hernán Siles Zuazo—​­head of the center-­left Popular Democratic Unity coalition and victor in the previous two elections, which had been aborted by military coups—​­as the new constitutional president. While the cob still looked toward a socialist horizon, its immediate concern and perhaps its greatest accomplishment was to restore democracy. Since those heady days of mass celebration, the military has remained within its barracks and respected constitutional government. But the festivities soon gave way to a new source of desperation. As economic conditions in the country deteriorated drastically and the political climate spun out of control, the country entered into a new stage of crisis. Dictatorship and Democracy 409  409

Notes 1. James Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952–1982 (London: Verso, 1984). 2. Guevara’s foco model of guerrilla warfare was based on his experience in the countryside of the Sierra Maestra, during the Cuban revolutionary struggle of the late 1950s. According to the theory, the bold actions of a small unit (the foco) of armed cadre could trigger a broader insurrection, even in the apparent absence of “objective conditions” for social revolution. 3. President Jimmy Carter began by pressuring Banzer, but even President Ronald Reagan refused to back the “Cocaine Coup” of García Meza.

410  Dictatorship and Democracy

Cold War Strongman General René Barrientos Ortuño

The national revolutionary cycle that commenced in 1952 came to a close with the U.S.-­backed military coup of General René Barrientos Ortuño in November 1964. Barrientos combined personal charisma and patronage tactics to establish the socalled Military-­Peasant Pact, which isolated the trade-­union movement. His government initiated a new cycle of de facto authoritarian and anticommunist regimes that would last until the restoration of democracy in 1982. Barrientos composed “Meditation for Bolivians,” which follows, in early 1967, several months before the government’s massacre of mineworkers who had been celebrating the nighttime vigil of San Juan to mark the winter solstice. Despite the reactionary nature of the regime, Barrientos framed his project as the continuation of the national revolution and identified with celebrated earlier military leaders, especially Coronel Germán Busch (1903–39) and Major Gualberto Villarroel (1908–46), who had allied with popular forces and introduced significant legislative reforms. His denunciation of “demagoguery,” implicitly targeting Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (mnr) politicians and the left, rationalized the attack on democratic institutions and expression.

Busch and Villarroel, Founders of the New Nation Busch and Villarroel were great leaders of the people. They were never reduced to the cowardly dealings of cheap and superficial demagogues, which so captivate the narcissists of opportunistic verbiage. Justice, progress, well-­being on the basis of the development of our resources and in benefit of the majority: that was the creative course of the great and tragically eliminated presidents, which no one will be able to destroy despite temporary setbacks, because the people always overcome their exploiters. After Busch and Villarroel, it is not possible to speak in Bolivia of a plutocratic oligarchy, because they dissolved it creating new forces of political and economic power among the peasantry, the working classes, the middle class, and in professional circles. It is true that there remain small groups with the mentality of a rosca [clique] or a masonic lodge; they should not delude themselves with insub411

stantial mirages, because they will be swept away by the irresistible advance of the social majorities which no longer accept monopolies on the part of political parties or social classes. Unfortunately, after the era of the plutocratic oligarchy came the predominance of irresponsible demagoguery, which was perhaps even worse. Crime, violence, abuse, impositions, pretense, blackmail, theft, and systematic deceit were its typical characteristics. Demagoguery corrupts the worker and provokes degeneration in the union leader. It persecutes the technical expert and applies extortion to the businessman. It controls the economy to benefit small cliques, who break the law with impunity and spread terror in the home, preventing the free and honest life of those who do not join the ranks of the ruling regime. Demagoguery demoralizes the citizen and causes capital to flee the country. It prefers the flatterer and not the efficient man. It gives the highest place to its fellow party member, although he may be perverse and incapable, and punishes those who are capable and independent. It leads civil society into moral decomposition and the economy into bankruptcy. In sum: it destroys the country and flagellates its people. While the plutocratic oligarchy aimed to strip the country of its wealth and the people of their liberty, setting up certain extractive industries which fostered the emigration of capital without ever achieving an economically solid process of industrialization which would contribute to diversifying the economy and rooting wealth in the country, demagoguery, in turn, demoralizes the nation and its inhabitants, strips them of faith in themselves, weakens their confidence in their own capacity, and spreads discouragement and fear, in sum, terror, which is the great enemy of the nation-­state, because it consumes it from within and blackens its reputation abroad. A grave meditation for Bolivians: why should idealistic and constructive heads of state have to see themselves surrounded, threatened, and finally in danger of being brought down by the Gorgons of rapacious plutocracy and corrosive demagoguery?

The Great Frustration from 1952 to 1964 If the exaggerated ambition for power, attempts to impose a one-­party state, and demagoguery had not devoured the popular soul of the national revolution, the vast historical process which was born on the 9th of April 1952 and breathed its last on the 4th of November 1964—​­twelve immense, tragic, devastating years—​­would have served to construct the new nation, that Second Republic which has been the dream of the new generations. Revolutionary action should have culminated in great political and social conquests, in economic advances in infrastructure and development, in a new, advanced, and soundly established national society, capable of lifting the country out of its centenary prostration. 412  General René Barrientos Ortuño

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Twelve years of absolute control of power, of the economy, of the media; the four hundred million dollars of American aid; practically without opposition, having at their disposition police and party organs of repression that maintained exceptional conditions of internal security; with initial support both unanimous and generous from the people; having in its hands all the means to set in motion and carry out the great work of political, economic, and social transformation which the country longed for, the mnr failed to answer to the hopes of all Bolivians, foundering in moral disaster and economic bankruptcy. I shall not repeat the history so many times related in books, essays, articles, and conferences which reflect the national repudiation of movimientista misgovernment. Neither shall I commit the injustice of forgetting that the nationalization of the great mines, the agrarian reform, universal suffrage, educational reform, as well as other conquests in the social field are the positive facts of the great political and workers movement of April 1952, which we have incorporated in the Constitution of 1967, because they are not the achievements of a party, but rather conquests of the Bolivian people, in all its majority sectors of labor and civil activity, which no rational citizen can ignore and much less have no knowledge of. During those twelve years, we had presidents, vice presidents, ministers, senators, members of parliament, presidents of independent state entities, great or supposedly great union leaders, and a great many bosses, bullies, hired killers, and executioners. But which of them thought of the country and of the people? I recall that not long ago a leader of the Factory Workers Federation of Santa Cruz said these words, which express with brilliant precision the critical and justice-­seeking sense of the people: “Those of the mnr had the fate of the mines, the oil, the railways, agriculture in their hands, and it’s all bankrupt.” For the economists and technicians who apprehend political events via statistics, one datum demonstrates the mnr’s catastrophic management of the country. The income per capita in 1955 was US$120; at the end of 1964, the per capita income reached US$92. The pay rises were in fact false, because due to the galloping inflation, the money that the workers received in exchange for their work had ever less buying power. Tyranny and wastefulness were the outstanding characteristics of the regime which was deposed in 1964 by the will of the people under the direction of the armed forces. Let us all reflect on why the Bolivians endured twelve years of one-­party dictatorship headed by [Victor] Paz [Estenssoro] and [Juan] Lechín [Oquendo], which left the country completely disorganized and economically bankrupt.1 Cold War Strongman  413

A Revolutionary in the Service of the People In one of my frequent dialogues with workers, one of them asked me this sincere question: “General, are you on the side of the rosca, of the multinational companies, or are you on our side?” It is possible that this humble worker did not know my previous history of struggle over twenty years together with the peasants, the workers, and my comrades in the armed forces, who fought for a free nation. I answered him firmly: “I am a revolutionary in the service of the Bolivian people. I am not a member of the rosca or a demagogue, but rather a convinced democrat who defends the rights of the humble.” . . . I believed in the mnr [Revolutionary Nationalist Movement], as did the great majority of Bolivians, when the mnr incarnated the revolutionary hopes of the people. A few years after the great popular movement of the 9th of April 1952, on seeing that the social and economic gains were being undermined, I began to distance myself from Paz Estenssoro, Lechín Oquendo, and their cliques. I insisted that government decrees should not just remain on paper. I called for morality, tolerance of adversaries. I made efforts to bring the massacres among peasants to an end.2 I struggled against corruption, persecution, and the cult of personality. I had to endure various criminal assaults for opposing dictatorship. After 1962 I prepared, together with General Ovando and other distinguished leaders and comrades in the armed forces, the great popular uprising of the 4th of November, which has restored to its proper course the Bolivian revolution, which Paz Estenssoro and Lechín Oquendo were at the point of liquidating. I am a man of the Christian left, nationalist as regards the economy, a democrat by doctrine, but a believer in a democracy that is just, active, belligerent, and dynamic, and I am profoundly revolutionary because I seek only social justice and happiness for the peasant, worker, and middle-­class majorities; in sum: the happiness of the people. I tell you, meditate on how we soldiers have returned freedom and rights to the Bolivian people; we have institutionalized the country; we have returned the political management of the nation to civil forces; and we have established the foundations for a new nation that is based on respect for the law and the dynamic of development. Revolution with responsibility, equally distant from the oligarchs and from the demagogues, seeking only the common good. This is my political position and that of my government, which is honored to have restored the glorious revolutionary and popular line of Busch and Villarroel.

Translated by Alison Spedding 414  General René Barrientos Ortuño

Notes 1. Víctor Paz Estenssoro was reelected as president in 1964, with Barrientos as his vice presidential candidate, but Barrientos deposed him a few months later in a military coup. Paz returned to the presidency by democratic election from 1985 to 1989. Juan Lechín Oquendo, as leader of the Bolivian Workers Confederation (cob ), had almost as much influence as the president from 1952 to 1964, when the cob participated in government. Lechín was also Paz’s vice president (1960–64). 2. “Massacres among peasants” refers to the series of armed skirmishes and ambushes, known as the Ch’ampa Guerra, that broke out in the late 1950s between communities and towns in the Upper Valley of Cochabamba. Barrientos himself was from Tarata, a town in this region, and had a great deal of influence with the local inhabitants, which helped him to act as a peacemaker.

Cold War Strongman  415

A Continental Vanguard Inti Peredo Leigue

Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1966 and 1967 achieved global notoriety, and the guerrillas themselves were an international force. Of the 52 participants, 29 were Bolivian, 16 Cuban, 3 Argentine, 3 Peruvian, and 1 French. The movement also pursued grand international objectives: to extend the revolutionary cause around the continent from the strategic center of Bolivia, at the heart of South America. Guido Alvaro “Inti” Peredo Leigue (1937–69) was the highest-­ranking Bolivian and the second in command overall in the guerrilla army. His text “My Campaign with Che” was published after his death, based on drafts that were reworked by the Chilean journalist Elmo Catalán to inspire future revolutionary action. Inti was one of five combatants who managed to escape the Bolivian military’s close siege in the final phase of the campaign in 1967. In 1969, after time abroad, he was in hiding in La Paz writing up his notes and also preparing with other comrades a new urban guerilla struggle when he was discovered and killed by security forces. This passage recounts his first encounters with Che in Ñancahuazú. It reveals the guerrillas’ initial idealism and ambitions, as well as the tensions that existed within the Bolivian Communist Party.

1. Che in Ñancahuazú Che was seated on a tree trunk. He had a cigar in his mouth, and was relishing the fragrance of the smoke. He was wearing his cap. As our group arrived, his eyes lit up with joy. Imperialism’s most wanted man, the legendary guerrilla, worldwide strategist and theorist, symbol of struggle and hope—​­this was the man calmly seated right in front of us, in the heart of one of the most oppressed and exploited countries of the continent. It was the night of November 27, 1966. His trip to Bolivia had been one of history’s most fascinating secrets. Soon his enemies and the entire world would witness his “resurrection.” This image came to mind as I recalled that imperialist news dispatches had already written his death certificate, “a victim of Castro’s firing squad.” 416

I was struck by a number of different reactions: confusion because of the respect I had for him (and always will); deep emotion; pride in shaking his hand; and a satisfaction, difficult to describe, in the certain knowledge that from then on I would become one of the soldiers in the army to be led by the most famous of all guerrilla commanders. Che—​­or Ramón, as he was introduced to the troop—​­greeted us warmly. Extending his hand, he said to me, “You must be Inti.” I felt more at home. Some comrades, knowing I would be arriving in that group, had told him of my background. For my part, I too knew that Che was in the mountains, waiting for us. Even so, I was unable to control my feelings. We sat down on some tree trunks. Within a short time, Pombo gave me an M-­2 carbine (my first weapon) and my combatant’s gear. It was all incredibly simple. Nevertheless, that night was the beginning of my life as a revolutionary. Conversation came easily, with lively discussion on general topics. I spoke little, still under the impact of that first meeting. Moments later, the group made a toast to the success of the guerrilla struggle, confident in the final victory. When it got late, Tuma, a man who over time would become one of the most beloved among us, helped me set up my hammock. We had no time to sleep. Shortly before two o’clock in the morning, with some of us still awake, we were initiated into the “gondola,” a term that would become popular around the world as the war went on. The gondola consisted simply in going from our camp to the zinc house to bring back food, weapons, and munitions. It was a difficult task, but Tuma, with his cheerful personality that energized our column, christened it the “gondola.” This was an ironic comparison with the ramshackle buses that made their way through the streets of Bolivia’s cities, and which carried that name. The night was very dark. At the zinc house, Che gave us his first practical lesson of how a modest and capable leader should act: he chose the heaviest sack and put it on his back to begin the return trip. In the course of the journey, he tripped and fell, due to the poor visibility. He picked up his load once again and continued on to the camp. We followed his example. The guerrilla army was beginning to take shape.

2. Bolivia: Country in the Vanguard My last day in La Paz was November 25, 1966. Close to midnight, I left in a jeep with Joaquín, Braulio, and Ricardo. In another vehicle, farther ahead, were Urbano, Miguel, Maymura, and Coco. Twelve hours later we were in Cochabamba. There I bid farewell to my wife, who was living at my father-­ A Continental Vanguard  417

in-­law’s house. The conversation was relaxed, free of melodrama. She already knew of my definitive departure into the mountains. Before leaving, I kissed my children. My decision to join the armed struggle was a product of a series of considerations that had long been maturing. Together with Coco, I had been a member of the Communist Party [cp] of Bolivia since 1951, and knew very well that party’s strategy, tactics, and internal workings. In addition, because I had worked closely with the party leaders, I was perfectly aware of their mentality. However, it must also be pointed out that as long as there were no real perspectives for armed struggle in Bolivia, we participated in and fully agreed with the decisions of that leadership. This is an experience that we believe can be of use to members of other Communist parties in Latin America who confuse “unconditional loyalty” with allegiance to principles. For us, principles are the only thing of lasting value. The policy of the majority of Latin American Communist parties is to go right up “to the edge of armed struggle.” In this dangerous game they have become masters. As soon as they reach the edge, they stop short and return to their original position of conciliation, submerging themselves in parliamentarism. As soon as they have gone right up “to the edge of war,” they sell their principles, forget their dead, and come up with theoretical justifications for their reformist or traitorous conduct. The Communist Party of Bolivia was not, and is not, an exception. Committed over many months to preparing for and participating in the guerrilla struggle in our country, it had selected a group of comrades for this work. But the leadership, acting in a two-­faced manner that we grasped without difficulty, was always indecisive, always waiting. We lost confidence in these leaders, and I personally did not believe that the cp as a party would join in the war or offer its wholehearted collaboration, or that it would loyally exert every effort on the struggle’s behalf. Nevertheless, the group assigned to the preparatory work—​­Ñato, Loro, Rodolfo, Coco, etc.—​­had a clear view of what our single and unwavering strategic course had to be. Our resolve to struggle to the end remained firm. This is natural and has occurred in other countries as well. Many members who are placed right “at the edge of war,” rather than retreating together with their conciliatory leaders, take the decisive step and put themselves in the vanguard. Then a new, dynamic, aggressive, and courageous force arises: the guerrilla unit. Taking a look back at our history, we knew we were on the verge of an opportunity that could mark a new stage in Bolivia’s destiny. For us, the separation of Upper Peru from the Spanish empire was an emancipation struggle that was interrupted. The social foundations were not altered. Political and economic power was transferred to the local aristocracy 418  Inti Peredo Leigue

of Spanish descent and to the wealthy Spaniards living in the country. The people, the principal actor in this struggle of the nineteenth century, did not enjoy even the crumbs of power. However, over the course of almost a century and a half of struggle, they have fought to break their chains. The historic opportunity to obtain genuine and definitive independence was now at hand. It was embodied in the development of the guerrilla struggle, whose seeds were germinating in the jungles of Bolivia. This form of struggle has deep roots in the tradition of the people. For 15 years—​­from 1810 to 1825—​­guerrillas such as [Manuel Ascencio] Padilla, [Eustaquio] Moto Méndez, the priest [Ildefonso de las] Muñecas, [Ignacio] Warnes, Juana Azurduy, and others fought heroically against the Spanish colonists, unfurling the continental banner of emancipation of Bolívar and Sucre. We of course understood and are fully aware that conditions are different. The patriots of the nineteenth century confronted an imperialism in decline, one that was being pressed by other rising imperialist powers with ambitions of world domination. At the present time, on the other hand, we confront a dominant U.S. imperialism, the strongest military-­industrial power in the world, which rules cruelly and unscrupulously, in a brutal, rapacious, and genocidal fashion. In addition, the motives of the struggle are different. Now we are fighting as the vanguard of the people to conquer power, in order to build socialism and help form the new man, eliminating imperialism and its lackeys. It is also necessary to caution that a strong sense of chauvinism has grown up among the people of Latin America, stimulated primarily by imperialism. This deformed nationalism has been employed as an instrument to divide the peoples and involve them in fratricidal wars. The traditional parties of the left, far from combating this tendency, have encouraged it and even defended it as an elementary principle, thereby abetting the tactic imposed by the enemy. And Bolivia, at this stage of the guerrilla struggle, was no exception. This idea passed through our minds as we became convinced with more and more certainty that the Bolivian Communist Party would not join in the guerrilla struggle. In any case, we had decided to fight to the end, regardless of the attitude taken by the cp. When we learned that Che would be leading the struggle, we were absolutely certain that the revolutionary process would be genuine, without sellouts or backsliding. For that reason, when I saw Ramón on that November night, the emotion I felt was tremendous. The following day he called Coco, Loro, and me over to discuss the character of the struggle. This was my first political discussion with him, and like all the ones we had during the war, it was interesting and profound. The first concept that came through clearly and categorically was the continental nature of the struggle. With his usual frankness, Che explained A Continental Vanguard  419

that the struggle would have the following characteristics: it would be long, harsh, and cruel. Therefore, no one should set their minds on a “short-­term” perspective. He then went on to explain why he had chosen Bolivia as the theater for the war. The choice, he stated, was not an arbitrary one. Bolivia is located in the heart of the southern cone of our continent, bordering five countries, each with a political and economic situation becoming increasingly critical. Bolivia’s geographic position thus makes it a strategic region for extending the revolutionary struggle to neighboring countries. It must be kept in mind, he went on, that Bolivia cannot win its liberation alone, or at least it would be very difficult to do so. Even after the army and the state power are defeated, the triumph of the revolution is not assured. The servile governments, led by imperialism—​­or imperialism directly, with the collaboration of the servile governments—​­will try to destroy us. Nevertheless, if in the course of the struggle we are faced with the opportunity of taking power, we will not hesitate in assuming that historic responsibility. Clearly this would entail a great quota of sacrifice on the part of the Bolivian revolutionaries. Later, Che explained to us what he meant by “quota of sacrifice” on the part of the Bolivian revolutionaries. He told us he had written a document for the Tricontinental meeting of the peoples that would be held in Havana in July 1967. In that document, he stressed, the following ideas are spelled out: “We will be able to triumph over this army only to the extent that we succeed in undermining its morale. And this is done by inflicting defeats on it and causing it repeated sufferings. “But this brief outline for victories entails immense sacrifices by the peoples—​­sacrifices that must be demanded starting right now, in the light of day, and that will perhaps be less painful than those they would have to endure if we constantly avoided battle in an effort to get others to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for us. “Clearly, the last country to free itself will very probably do so without an armed struggle, and its people will be spared the suffering of a long war as cruel as imperialist wars are. But it may be impossible to avoid this struggle or its effects in a conflict of worldwide character, and the suffering may be as much or greater. We cannot predict the future, but we must never give way to the cowardly temptation to be the standard-­bearers of a people who yearn for freedom but renounce the struggle that goes with it, and who wait as if expecting it to come as the crumbs of victory.” For Che the “quota of sacrifice” signified the Bolivian people’s role as standard-­bearers of the guerrilla struggle, and never the postponement of the seizure of power. In other words, we were becoming a vanguard people that would obtain its liberation in battle, and not as a “crumb of victory.” 420  Inti Peredo Leigue

3. Toward a New Vietnam Che was also correct in spelling out for us the relationship between the struggle of the heroic people of Vietnam against U.S. imperialism and the guerrilla war in our continent. The war in Vietnam, he stated, is one part—​­although the most important—​­of the worldwide struggle against imperialism. The war in Vietnam is our own war. Imperialism has converted that heroic country into a laboratory experiment, so that the techniques of military destruction developed there can later be used against the peoples of our continent. In Vietnam one can see clearly how imperialism not only violates a country’s borders, but erases them entirely, claiming its “right” to chase after the patriots of the armed forces of the peoples of Indochina through Cambodia or Laos, bombing villages in these countries, and extending its brutal genocide with impunity. The same thing will happen in Latin America, Che explained. Borders are artificial concepts imposed by imperialism to keep the peoples divided. Any people that recognizes these borders is condemned to isolation, and their liberation will be slow and painful. The concept of borders must be broken through action. As our guerrilla movement develops, governments in neighboring countries will first send arms, advisers, and supplies, and will try to surround us. Later they will coordinate their actions, uniting in battle against the guerrillas. As they become incapable of defeating us, the U.S. Marines will intervene, and imperialism will unleash all its deadly power. Then our struggle will become identical with the one being waged by the Vietnamese people. The revolutionaries will understand, even if they do not yet feel this imperative, that it is necessary to unite to confront the oppressors in a coordinated manner, as a single force. Many of the things foreseen by Che came to pass. The rest of them will also undoubtedly be confirmed in practice, since imperialism at that time had carefully studied the writings of our commander, and understood very well the strategic direction of his thinking. Che was also conscious of this question. . . . Unfortunately, the “progressive” forces, or those calling themselves “vanguard,” were extremely nearsighted or cowardly. They recoiled from, distorted, or failed to understand the meaning of the struggle. During the course of the war, the United States sent to Bolivia a large quantity of modern arms, with immense lethal power that had already been tested out in Vietnam. They also sent “advisers” with considerable counterinsurgency experience. The job of the latter was to turn the soldiers into sadistic automatons, into inhuman beings without scruples. This was proven later on. On the other hand, in a crude move, the cia installed its command headA Continental Vanguard  421

Che Guevara holds the two children of Honorato Rojas, the peasant farmer from Valle Grande who provided for the guerrillas their first stable contact with the local population. The photo, taken by one of the other combatants, seems partly staged and partly spontaneous. Rojas looks at ease next to the guerrilla commander as he plays with or whispers to his children, while Che poses with his gaze fixed on the camera. In his diary entry, Che presciently noted that Rojas was “capable of helping us, but incapable of foreseeing the dangers that threaten him and for that reason potentially dangerous.” Rojas provided substantial assistance