J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 41, 527–551 f Cambridge University Press 2009
doi:10.1017/S0022216X09990174 Printed in the United Kingdom
527
Bringing the Economic Back In : Andean
Indians and the Construction of the
Nation-State in Nineteenth-Century
Bolivia*
E R I C K D. LA N G E R
Abstract. Using the example of nineteenth-century Bolivia, this article argues that
economic motivations need to be taken into account in understanding the role of
peasants in constructing Latin American nation-states, especially in the Andes.
Based on local archives, it considers the case of the altiplano region of OruroPoopó. From this perspective, during the half-century that followed independence,
Andean communities were mostly in favour of a free-trade regime. They were integrated into the nation-state, but in a subordinate position. By the 1850s there was
such prosperity in trading activities that community members refused to participate
as authorities in their communities due to the time it would consume. However, the
assault on community lands that began in the 1860s impoverished the Indians and
marginalised them as peasants, turning them into a threat to the new, racist nationstate.
Keywords: Bolivia, peasants, nationalism, free trade, nation building, Indian communities, espacio económico andino, nineteenth century
For about two decades historians have been eager to find out how peasants
participated in the formation of Latin American nation-states. In some cases,
like Mexico, scholars have shown that the peasantry was quite influential in
the establishment of the nation-state after the independence struggles, while
other scholars have argued that elsewhere, as in Peru, peasants – the vast
majority of them defined as belonging to Andean indigenous communities –
were excluded by a creole-dominated state that could not countenance the
active participation of what the elites considered a socially and racially inferior group.1 In the Andes in general it is assumed that indigenous peoples
Erick D. Langer is Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Service and History,
Georgetown University. Email: [email protected].
* The author would like to thank members of the Georgetown Department of History who
commented on the manuscript and also the anonymous JLAS reviewers, whose remarks
were very useful in improving the essay.
1
For Mexico, see Florencia Mallon, Peasants and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and
Peru (Berkeley, 1995) ; Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico’s National
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528
Erick D. Langer
South Central Andes
circa 1850
BENI
PERU
Lake
Titicaca
A
LA PAZ
MOQUEGUA
COCHABAMBA
Quillacollo
TACNA
Pichagas
Tacna
3
Cochabamba
Punata
Cliza
Paria
Oruro
N
BOLIVIA
Poopó
ORURO
Lake Poopó
SANTA
CRUZ
5
Challapata
Pampa Aullagas
Quillacas
Sucre
4
Potosí
Salinas de
Garcimendoza
TARAPACÁ
CHUQUISACA
POTOSÍ
D
San Cristóbal
Portugalete
2
Chorolque
Tupiza
1
San Antonio
de Lípez
Cobija
Yaví
San Antonio
de Esmoraca
TARIJA
LITORAL
E
PAC I F I C
O CE A N
ARGENTINA
Salta
S
Capital
City
Town
Copiapó
0
CHILE
Provinces
BENI Department
0
200 mi
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Lípez
Chichas
Carangas
Paria
Northern Potosí
(Chayanta)
200 km
Map 1.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
529
were not accepted as full citizens in the nation-state, but as subservient
beings whose political, social and economic development retarded the
building of new, modern states.
This new approach integrating subalterns into our understanding of the
formation of the nation-state in Latin America has been very influential, and
has inspired a generation of young scholars to examine whether and how nonelites influenced the nation-forming process. As a result, under the influence
of the subaltern studies model pioneered in India and Antonio Gramsci’s
ideas about hegemony, many studies have shown how peasants, women,
Afro-descendants, indigenous peoples and even slaves have affected the
discourse on nation building and thus the political structures that emerged
after independence.2 Despite the different groups that this literature has
encompassed, it has focused mainly on political issues and power, without
placing much emphasis on other factors such as the economic integration of
non-elites and the effects that this had on social and political incorporation.
The Bolivian case is illuminating on the topic of Indians and nation-state
formation. Before the explosion of works in the United States on peasant
participation, scholars of Bolivia had already discussed the integration
of indigenous communities into the republic. Unlike the ‘ new political’
approach discussed above, the Bolivian debate involved both political and
economic issues. Tristan Platt posited an influential model of Indian – state
relations in the Andes, in which highland indigenous communities interacted
with the state on the basis of an implicit ‘reciprocal pact’. His idea had
important fiscal and economic dimensions. The communities provided services and tribute to the state, in return for which they expected the state
to protect their lands. Significantly, Platt discovered this notion in northern
Potosı́, where indigenous communities remained relatively untouched by
2
State : Guerrero, 1800–1857 (Stanford, 1996). Also see Guardino’s The Time of Liberty: Popular
Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750–1850 (Durham NC, 2005). For Peru, see Mallon, Peasants and
Nation; Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial
Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham NC, 1997). For a different perspective, though for an
earlier period, see Cecilia Méndez, The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of
the Peruvian State, 1820–1850 (Durham NC, 2005). For an excellent summary of the position
of the Andean republics with regard to the ‘Indian question ’, see Brooke Larson, Trials of
Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910 (Cambridge, 2004).
For the connection to subaltern studies, see Florencia Mallon, ‘The Promise and Dilemma
of Subaltern Studies : Perspectives from Latin America ’, American Historical Review, vol. 99,
no. 5 (1997), pp. 1491–1515 ; Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Rossana Barragán, Debates post
coloniales : Una introducción a los estudios de la subalternidad (La Paz, 1997). For subalterns other
than peasants see, for example, Christine Hünefeldt, Liberalism in the Bedroom : Quarreling
Spouses in Nineteenth-Century Lima (University Park, 2000) ; James E. Sanders, Contentious
Republicans : Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Durham NC,
2004) ; Roger A. Kittleson, The Practice of Politics in Postcolonial Brazil : Porto Alegre, 1845–1895
(Pittsburgh, 2006).
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Erick D. Langer
hacienda expansion and had a strong agrarian base, planting wheat and exporting it to other regions within Bolivia.3 He asserted that the Indians of
northern Potosı́ were in favour of a protectionist regime because it protected
wheat farming; when the Bolivian state opened up to free trade, imports of
flour from Chile destroyed the flourishing wheat agriculture of the region.
Moreover, the circulation of a weak and adulterated coinage, the peso feble,
worked to the advantage of these Indians, since it kept out imports within
Bolivia. The northern Potosı́ community members received pesos febles in
payment for their wheat and paid their tribute with them as well.4
Marta Irurozqui examined these dynamics, though from the perspective
of the development of democratic culture, a difficult concept to manage for
the nineteenth century.5 Irurozqui’s emphasis on rebellions as a means of
fighting for rights within the republican context received further elaboration
in her analysis of the 1899 Aymara rebellion, in which she claimed that
the Bolivian elites refused to consider the Indians full citizens because they
belonged to corporate communities and thus could not act as full citizens
who were free of corporate influence.6 Part of the problem with Indians
was economic, in that their status as community members tied them
to communal properties, preventing them from acting independently.
Full citizenship, according to the concepts of liberal citizenship cited by
Irurozqui, implied an economic independence that Indians presumably did
not have. This distinction, according to Rossana Barragán, came from the
difference that emerged in the French Revolution between ‘ passive’ and
‘ active ’ citizens.7
3
4
5
6
7
Tristan Platt, Estado boliviano y ayllu andino : Tierra y tribute en el norte de Potosı́ (Lima, 1982).
Platt also provides a religious interpretation of the meaning of independence for Andean
Indians in ‘Simón Bolı́var, the Sun of Justice and the Amerindian Virgin: Andean
Conceptions of the Patria in Nineteenth-Century Potosı́ ’, Journal of Latin American Studies,
vol. 25, no. 1 (1993), pp. 159–85.
Tristan Platt, Estado tributario y librecambio en Potosı́ (siglo XIX): Mercado indı́gena, proyectos
proteccionistas y lucha de ideologı́as monetarias (La Paz, 1986) ; and ‘ Divine Protection and Liberal
Damnation : Exchanging Metaphors in Nineteenth-Century Potosı́ (Bolivia) ’, in Roy Dilley
(ed.), Contesting Markets : Analyses of Ideology, Discourse, and Practice (Edinburgh, 1992),
pp. 131–58.
Marta Irurozqui, A bala, piedra y palo : La construcción de la ciudadanı́a polı́tica de Bolivia, 1826–1952
(Seville, 2000).
Marta Irurozqui, ‘‘‘ Los hombres chacales en armas’’ : Militarización y criminalización
indı́genas en la revolución federal boliviana de 1899 ’, in Marta Irurozqui Victoriano (ed.),
La mirada esquiva : Reflexiones históricas sobre la interacción del estado y la ciudadanı́a en los Andes
(Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú), siglo XIX (Madrid, 2005), pp. 285–320.
Ibid., pp. 286–7; see Rossana Barragán for the best analysis of citizenship and voting based
on a reading of the Bolivian constitutions in Asambleas Constituyentes : Ciudadanı́a y elecciones,
convenciones y debates (1825–1971) (La Paz, 2006). Pilar Mendieta Parada analyses the differences
between Platt’s and Irurozqui’s arguments in ‘ En defensa del pacto tributario : Los
indı́genas bolivianos frente al proyecto liberal : Siglo XIX’, Revista Andina, vol. 41 (2006),
pp. 131–54. For other perspectives on Indians and nationalism, see Marie-Danielle
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Bringing the Economic Back In
531
The indigenous population of Bolivia was important in the nineteenth
century (as it is in the twenty-first) and is vital for understanding the construction of the nation-state. According to José Marı́a Dalence, the best
statistical source for the nineteenth century, there were almost 1.4 million
inhabitants in the country in 1846, of whom 659,398 were whites and 701,538
were Indians. Most of the Indians were concentrated in the economically
most vibrant area of the country, in the high Andes and altiplano of the
La Paz, Oruro, Litoral and Potosı́ departments. In this region, Indians outnumbered whites about three to one, or 550,292 to 183,309. In the altiplano
department of Oruro, where mining, commerce, herding and, to a lesser
extent, agriculture were the main economic activities, there were ten Indians
for every white person.8 The Indians in the Andes were largely merchants
and peasants, living in communities organised in classic Andean fashion in
ayllus, kinship-based organisations that stemmed from the pre-Columbian
period but had been heavily modified by the long colonial regime.
Some Indians lived on haciendas, which had been carved out from the
Indian communities during the colonial period. Until the late nineteenth
century, however, haciendas were less common in the core Andean departments on the altiplano than in the valleys ; they were most numerous in the
valley regions of Cochabamba, Chuquisaca and Tarija. In turn, the vast far
eastern departments of Santa Cruz and Beni (the latter created from the
former in 1842) were isolated subtropical frontier regions with a sparse white
population (less than 50,000), over which the Bolivian state had only marginal control. The indigenous population there, other than on the former
Jesuit and Franciscan missions, was largely unconquered.9 In other words,
the indigenous population in the Andean highlands participated within the
nation-state as part of peasant communities in ways that the sparser indigenous population in the valleys and the eastern frontier regions did not.
For this reason, this essay concentrates on the Andean Indians and in particular on community members in the Oruro region of the altiplano. In this
region indigenous community members were especially active as transporters
8
9
Démelas, Nationalisme sans nation ? La Bolivie aux XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris, 1980) ; and
L’invention politique : Bolivie, Equateur et Perou au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1992).
José Marı́a Dalence, Bosquejo estadı́stico de Bolivia (La Paz, 1975 [1848]), p. 201. Bolivia lost the
Litoral territory to Chile in 1879, during the War of the Pacific. Interestingly, Dalence does
not distinguish between whites and mestizos, unlike most of his contemporaries. Dalence
presumed that the children of whites with Indians were identical to whites (p. 206).
For the missions, see Pilar Garcı́a Jordán, ‘Yo soy libre y no soy indio : soy Guarayo ’: Para una
historia de Guarayos, 1790–1948 (Lima, 2006) ; Thierry Saignes, Historia del pueblo chiriguano
(Lima, 2007) ; Isabelle Combès, Etno-historias del Isoso : Chané y chiriguanos en el Chaco boliviano
(siglos XVI a XX) (La Paz, 2005) ; Erick D. Langer, Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree :
Franciscan Missions on the Chiriguano Frontier in the Heart of South America (Durham NC,
forthcoming).
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Erick D. Langer
of goods, herders, merchants and agriculturalists. Although perhaps not
typical of the country as a whole, the extensive participation of community
members in trade was a pattern that was common, especially on the altiplano.
The altiplano had the heaviest concentration of indigenous communities
in Bolivia (and the majority of the indigenous population). Since preColumbian times the people of this region had specialised in transport, given
the wide, open spaces that eased communication and the excellent conditions for the raising of llamas for hauling.
Indigenous Trade and Perceptions of the Nation-State
Adding economic interests to the political equation is essential for understanding the behaviour of indigenous people (and other subalterns) in the
construction of the nation-state in nineteenth-century Latin America. In the
case of Bolivia, Platt was correct with regard to northern Potosı́ in his
appraisal of the reciprocal pact and the importance of the communities’
commercialisation of wheat to the mining and urban centres, but for other
regions (and, I would argue, for the majority of the Indian communities in
Bolivia) the situation was quite different.
The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, many indigenous communities in
the Bolivian highlands, where the vast majority of Andean peasants lived,
participated in trade networks that took them beyond the formal boundaries
of the Bolivian state. Secondly, agriculture was an important part of the
Indian household economy, but it was often not the most important one. On
the Bolivian altiplano and further south, in the mining districts and marginal
lands of Lı́pez, Carangas, Paria and Chichas, commerce and the transportation of minerals were as important as agriculture in sustaining Indian
households, possibly even more so.10 While it was in the interests of the
Indians to have the peso feble maintain its dominance beyond the Bolivian
borders, their commercial connections beyond the nation-state gave them
little incentive to play on their role as Bolivian citizens rather than Indians.
This was the case because the utilisation of internal networks within indigenous communities made possible extraordinary commercial activity (and
prosperity) until the 1860s. Not all Indians in the Oruro area participated in
10
See for example ‘ No 112 Salinas de Garcimendoza 1858 ’, 1850–1856 Civiles; ‘ No. 68
1862 ’, ‘ Poopó: Civil Ejecutivo contra Marcelo Gutierrez por el apoderado José Marı́a
Castillo representante del Cno Eusebio Grandi 1861 ’, 1862–1865 Civiles, both in the
Archivo Judicial de Poopó (AJP). See also Tristan Platt, ‘ Ethnic Calendars and Market
Interventions among the Ayllus of Lipes during the Nineteenth Century ’, in Brooke Larson
and Olivia Harris (eds.), Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes : At the Crossroads of
History and Anthropology (Durham NC, 1995), pp. 259–96. Of course, these kinds of activities left more of a paper trail than subsistence agriculture. Subsistence agriculture is visible
in the documents in this region, but clearly subsidiary to merchant and mining activities.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
533
these networks, but it was one of the major revenue-producing activities
for community members. Many of the commercial activities in which community members participated were related to selling goods made in the
neighbouring states (rather than European imports). The indigenous communities thus continued to recreate, on a smaller scale, what Carlos Sempat
Assadourian has called the ‘ Andean economic space ’, centred, in the colonial
period, on supplying goods to Potosı́. As Antonio Mitre and others, including the present author, have documented, this regional economic activity
continued well into the nineteenth century.11 In this sense, highland Indian
community members were simply taking advantage of the economic opportunities that existed for them during that period. Other sectors of society
also took advantage of the Bolivian state’s lack of control of the domestic
market, especially import-export merchants and silver miners. Many of these
groups had ties to the outside and some undermined the Bolivian nationstate in a fiscal sense by profiting from extensive smuggling operations.12 As
we shall see, this involved the altiplano indigenous communities as well.
The highland Indian communities were very active in commerce with the
world outside Bolivia, as importers and exporters, transporters of most trade
goods, and smugglers. Most indigenous trade outside national boundaries
involved goods produced in regions close to Bolivia’s borders, known as
productos de la tierra or productos de estados limı́trofes. In 1836, for example, Indians
brought 468 tons of cotton in 879 trips from the valleys in Moquegua and
Tacna on the Peruvian coast, to sell to wholesalers in the Cochabamba
region (Quillacollo, Punata, the city of Cochabamba, Tarata and Cliza).13 It is
highly likely that the amount of cotton that community members brought up
from the coast was even greater, since the customs administrator claimed
11
12
13
Carlos Sempat Assadourian, El sistema de la economı́a colonial : Mercado interno, regiones y espacio
económico (Lima, 1982) ; Antonio Mitre, El monedero de los Andes : Región económica y moneda
boliviana en el siglo XIX (La Paz, 1986) ; Erick D. Langer, ‘Espacios coloniales y economı́as
nacionales : Bolivia y el norte argentino ’, Siglo XIX: Revista de Historia, vol. 2, no. 4 (1987),
pp. 135–60.
These are the kinds of ties that I have researched over the past couple of decades. See, for
example, Erick D. Langer and Gina Hames, ‘Commerce and Credit on the Periphery :
Tarija Merchants, 1830–1914’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 74, no. 2 (1994), pp.
285–316 ; Erick D. Langer, ‘Bajo la sombra del Cerro Rico : Redes comerciales y el fracaso
del nacionalismo económico en el Potosı́ del siglo XIX ’, Revista Andina, vol. 37, no. 2
(2003), pp. 77–94 ; Erick D. Langer, ‘ Contraband and Credit : Merchants and Miners in the
South-Central Andes, 1830–1930 ’, in Rory M. Miller and Colin Lewis (eds.), Consumption,
Markets and Trade in Spanish America, 1750–1950 (London, forthcoming).
‘Libro Manual Duplicado de la Aduana Nacional de Oruro del cargo del Administrador
Francisco Paula Belzu, Para la cuenta del año de 1836’, Biblioteca Municipal de Oruro
(BMO). In addition to 1836 there are similar books for 1830, 1832 and 1835, although the
ethnic breakdown of the sellers of the cotton is only available for 1832 and 1835. The
Indians did not pay customs duties, since presumably the cotton was the ‘second sale’ in
Bolivian territory.
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Erick D. Langer
that the ‘ Indians Calacotos don’t come by the customs house any more to
take out their permits [guı́as] for their cottons and peppers, because of their
malice they go directly to town [Paria] ’.14
During the nineteenth century, Indians, for the most part from the
surrounding communities, were also the transporters of minerals from the
mines to the mills. The probate records of the tribute-paying Indians consistently show the number of llamas, mules and burros they owned, as well as
the bags (costales) and ropes needed for transporting ore. For example, at his
death Pedro Idalgo of Ayllu Culli in Salinas de Garcimendoza owned 110
llamas, 100 costales and 80 ropes ‘to bring down metal’.15 This important
activity tied community members to the miners in their districts and created a
mutual dependence.
Although most of the merchandise traded by community members consisted of efectos del paı́s or efectos de paı́ses limı́trofes, indigenous intermediaries
also engaged in the transport and smuggling of silver and gold out of the
country. In most cases Indians were the transporters of the ore, and at times
they also smuggled for their own profit. The smuggling took place through
Argentina especially, but some ore also went to Peru. After all, community
members knew the hidden trails across the mountains and were able to avoid
customs officials. Pedro Idalgo, for example, also had in his possession 200
pesos in silver coins and ‘ some marcos of silver in bars [piña plata]’, a product
that a peasant such as Idalgo should not have possessed.16 The possession of
contraband silver went way back, as in the case of Agustı́n Nina, who in 1830
gave ‘some pesos’ to Cruz Gabriel to ‘ acquire [rescatase] marcos of silver ’ and
go to Tarapacá (Peru).17 Indeed, the region of Salinas de Garcimendoza, to
the south-west of Poopó and Challapata, was a region known for smuggling
its silver output to Peru and Argentina.
At times Indians were caught smuggling and had to pay the consequences.
In 1843 Manuel Osnaya and Domingo Gua, community members of the
Silpana and Olanique ayllus, along with five peons and a slave from Peru,
were caught smuggling 103 marcos of silver and 69 marcos of tin close to the
Pichagas customs post, which was located close to the Sajama trail to the
coast of Peru. The government embargoed their 50 mules, three horses and
34 wine skins. Although the Indians claimed they were only transporting the
14
15
16
17
‘ Libro Copiador de las Correspondencias con la Prefectura en el Año de 1832 ’, BMO,
1833, p. 17. Paria was the market town in Oruro where the Indians sold the Peruvian
cotton to Cochabamba merchants : see Joseph Pentland, Informe sobre Bolivia 1826 (Potosı́,
1975), p. 103.
‘ No. 112 Salinas de Garcimendoza 1858’, 1850–1856 Civiles, AJP, f. 3.
Ibid., f. 1. It was illegal for non-miners to possess piña plata, since the miners were obliged
by law to take the silver to the mining banks and have it converted to coin.
‘ Verbal ejecutivo seguido por Isidro Nina contra Cruz Gabriel, por cobro de pesos.
Año 1839 ’, 1834–1839 Civiles, AJP, f. 4.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
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metals for somebody else, whom they did not name, Gua was sent to jail for
five years.18 Indians suffered for transgressing the rules of the new nationstate when they smuggled goods. It is impossible to know whether Osnaya
and Gua really were smugglers of metals that they themselves possessed or
whether they truly were transporting them for others, but the state punished
them in either case.
Mine owners and import-export merchants, such as Gregorio Pacheco
from Tupiza, certainly hired Indian mule and llama drivers to take silver bars
illegally out of the country. From the 1840s to the 1860s Pacheco, who would
later become one of the country’s most important silver miners and president of Bolivia (1884–88), was an import-export merchant who exchanged
imported goods for silver ore. He had agents stationed in the important
mining centres of Chichas, who purchased the silver for cash or in return for
imported goods. Through his cousin in Salta, Argentina, he had the silver
piñas (as well as a bit of gold, when it was available) smelted in Salta and then
taken across the Andes to Copiapó in Chile, where his agents contracted
coastal vessels to take the smuggled silver to Valparaı́so, to trade for textiles
and other imports. Pacheco used muleteers to take the ore from the various
mining centres such as Portugalete, San Antonio and San Cristóbal to
Tupiza, and then across the border to Salta. These muleteers were members
of the Lı́pez and Chichas Indian communities, who specialised in crossing
the formidable desert conditions of the high Andes. Pacheco himself
had 2,424 and 1,805 marcos smuggled out in 1848 and 1849. By the 1860s
Pacheco had lessened his risk by having others, presumably many of the
same Indian llama drivers and muleteers, purchase the silver at the mines and
smuggle the ore out of the country. He had his agents purchase it from the
smugglers in the Argentine market town of Yavi, just across the border. In
1862 his agent there purchased 7,740 marcos of silver in this fashion.19 Other
merchants from Tupiza and other mining towns also engaged in this illicit
traffic, but unfortunately it is impossible to know how successful Pacheco
was in comparison to others. Nonetheless, the indigenous communities were
undoubtedly active in transporting the ore across the border, thus gaining
from the contraband trade.
Some Indians were also mine owners and, if the characterisation of the
silver miners as free traders holds true for mestizos and whites, it must for
Indians as well. Mine ownership by Indians was not uncontested, but it
18
19
5 Jan. 1843, Notary Angel Mno Delgado, Fondo Notarial, Corte Superior de Oruro.
For an explanation of this smuggling circuit, see Langer, ‘Contraband and Credit ’. This
information is based on copies of Pacheco’s correspondence located in the main university
library of the Universidad de San Andrés in La Paz. A marco equals 230 grams of silver.
Antonio Mitre discusses the transport of silver in Los patriarcas de la plata : Estructura
socioeconómica de la minerı́a boliviana en el siglo XIX (Lima, 1981), pp. 156–79.
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Erick D. Langer
clearly did exist. For example, José Manuel Idalgo, an ayllu member from
Carangas, worked as a partner with Don José Gregorio Iraola in the Socavón
de Machacamarca close to Poopó, mining silver and tin. When three whites
(the merchant Juan Cancio Lopes, the lawyer Dr Tomás Carpio, both of
whom were from Oruro, and the miner Manuel Muños from Potosı́) tried to
take away the mine from Idalgo, ‘indicating that I do not have the faculty as
tributary [Indian] to work mines ’, he provided his account book to the judge.
It showed that Idalgo supervised the work and had contracted up to eight
labourers, paying expenses and purchasing coca leaf, liquor and chicha (corn
beer) for them.20 Another mine was owned by Jerónimo Mamani and Biviana
Gomes. The couple, from the Quillacas ayllu, owned a silver mine in the
Atacama region in Litoral province until their deaths in 1860. The goods they
left, including 1,000 pesos in cash, almost 1,500 pesos in IOUs and a considerable amount of silver, was valued at over 5,000 pesos, without even
taking into account the mining concession.21
In 1855 the corregidor of Salinas de Garcimendoza estimated that more than
40,000 pesos worth of silver had been extracted from the province and
transported to Argentina without passing through the mining bank in Oruro.
The problem was endemic throughout the period. In 1860, the corregidor
provided the figures of mine production to the Oruro mining bank, in order
to calculate how much had actually been taken to the bank rather than
smuggled out, though this measure had little effect. There were similar
problems in Chichas, where state officials vainly tried to position their agents
to cut off the silver smugglers.22
In other words, many indigenous members of the altiplano communities
engaged in economic activities, both legal and illegal, that placed their interests more in line with the free-trade silver miners and import-export
20
21
22
‘ Poopó: Civil Administrativo Seguido por José Manuel Idalgo, Juan López y otros.
Pidiendo la adjudicación del Socabon de la mina de Machacamarca en el cerro Alcalá de
Poopó. Año 1853’, 1850–1856 Civiles, AJP.
‘ Civil : Sobre la entrega que hace el apoderado Antonio Rivera á los indı́genas Mariano y
Juan Gomes tutores de los menores Miguel y Manuela Mamani de los bienes pertenecientes
á estos de la Testamentaria de Jeronimo Mamani y Biviana Gomes. No 5 1863 ’, 1862–1865
Civiles, AJP.
For 1855, see ‘Libro borrador de Notas de los Corregidores. No 68 1855’, 1850–1856
Civiles, AJP, f. 11; for 1860, see ‘Poopó : Copiador de comunicaciones oficiales con las
Jefaturas Polı́ticas de la República, Año de 1860’, 22 Sep. 1860, AJP. For Chichas, see
Silbestre Villegas to Prefect, Cotagaita, 4 Jan. 1840, PD 352 ‘ Subprefectura de Nor Chichas
(1840) ’, Archivo de la Casa de la Moneda (Potosı́) and El Orureño, no. 6 (10 Aug. 1875), 1 :1,
M835, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia. Tristan Platt has noted this contraband in his
‘ Historias unidas, memorias escindidas : las empresas mineras de los hermanos Ortı́z y la
construcción de las elites nacionales, Salta y Potosı́, 1800–1880 ’, Andes : Antropologı́a e
Historia, no. 7 (1995–96), p. 200. For an example earlier in the nineteenth century, see
William Lofstrom, Dámaso de Uriburu, un empresario minero de principios del siglo XIX en Bolivia
(La Paz, 1982).
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Bringing the Economic Back In
537
merchants than with artisans, northern Potosı́ communities and other groups
that favoured protectionism. Not all silver miners or merchants were free
traders, but most were. Likewise, the Indians from Oruro maintained their
interest in unregulated borders when they acted as smugglers of silver,
transporters of smuggled silver and imported goods, and also silver miners.
Their interests reflected the continuation of colonial networks that transcended the new republican political boundaries, but it was more than
that. The extensive participation in these circuits was far greater than had
occurred earlier, and the alliances between Indian commoners (not just the
kurakas, or community headmen, as had been the case in the colonial period)
and creole free-trade interests were new to the post-independence era.
Economic and Political Integration
Given the economic context of nineteenth-century Bolivia, how did these
groups – and, in particular, the Andean communities – integrate themselves
into the (admittedly weak) nation-state? One means, discussed by Tristan
Platt, was through the payment of tribute and the implicit deal that put the
state on the side of the communities in defending their land base.23 This
situation created what Platt called ‘a hybrid tributary-citizen status ’, in which
Indian communities were seen as an integral foundation of the state, since
the latter depended on tribute for its fiscal survival.24 In other words, the
state was willing to accept community members, but only in a subordinate
position, not as citizens who had equal rights under the law with mestizo or
white citizens.
It is difficult to discern the extent to which indigenous community members felt part of the new nation-state anywhere in the Andes. Mark Thurner
has asserted that community members in the department of Huaraz argued
that they should be considered full citizens of the Peruvian nation-state as
peruanos, people born and indigenous to the new republic. He found the use
of the term republicanos, with a connotation that goes beyond the colonial
term república de indios, although the exact sense is not clear. Thurner argued
that while the Andean indigenous villagers wanted to be considered part of
the nation, Peruvian authorities and the local mistis did not want to accept
community members as full and equal citizens in Peru, as evidenced by
the bloody repression of the Atusparia rebellion in the 1880s. However,
Thurner’s extremely slim documentary basis for the usage of these terms and
23
24
See Platt, Estado boliviano.
Tristan Platt, as quoted in Larson, Trials of Nation Making, p. 212. The importance of Indian
tribute for nineteenth-century state finance was first discussed in Nicolas Sánchez
Albornoz, Indios y tributos en el Alto Perú (Lima, 1978), pp. 187–218.
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Erick D. Langer
the problem of distortion in terminology – what Andrés Guerrero, in the
case of Ecuador, has called the ‘ventriloquism’ of the non-Indians who
wrote the official documents – make his argument more hypothetical than it
might appear at first glance.25
In contrast, Charles Walker has claimed that the indigenous communities
of Cuzco did not support the Peruvian caudillo, Agustı́n Gamarra, against
Bolivian forces under the command of General Andrés de Santa Cruz in
the crucial battle of Yanacocha (1835). According to Walker, this was not
necessarily because of a lack of a sense of nationalism, but because the
constant turnover of the caudillo-led state had shown communities that it
was not in their best interests to die for a fickle cause. Despite this assertion,
it is clear from Walker’s account that the ties between creole caudillos,
even ones as popular as Gamarra, and indigenous peasants were loose and
probably not as close as in colonial times.26
Citizenship in Bolivia was a complicated affair, and differed from the
Peruvian case.27 It is important to note that even Bolivian creoles did not
always define themselves primarily as members of the new nation-states.
Many members of the creole elites thought of themselves more in ethnic
than national terms during much of the nineteenth century, as Tristan Platt
argues.28 Other Bolivian creoles also apparently had little sense of nationalism, as the almost complete lack of resistance to the Chilean invaders of the
Atacama region in 1879–80, during the War of the Pacific, appears to demonstrate.29 This contrasts with the legal terminology that the Bolivian state
used in legal documents. In all customs documents and in judicial records,
creoles or mestizos were identified as ciudadanos (citizens). Rather than signalling the self-identification of creoles, the use of this term was an artificial
one that the state utilised to create a national identification that did not
yet truly exist. The term ‘ciudadano ’ also helped mask considerable ethnic
diversity, since it included both those who considered themselves to be of
European extraction and mestizos, whom the state, for fiscal, cultural, or
racial reasons, did not consider Indians. In fact, in official correspondence
officials used the term cholada or cholo (mestizo) freely, indicating that beneath
25
26
27
28
29
Thurner, From Two Republics, passim; Andrés Guerrero, La semántica de la dominación:
El concertaje de indios (Quito, 1991).
Charles Walker, Smoldering Ashes : Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1840 (Durham,
1999), pp. 212–21.
For an overview of these differences, see Démelas, L’invention politique.
Platt, ‘Historias unidas, memorias escindidas’.
The exaltation in nationalist discourse of Eduardo Abaroa, who was one of the very
few who resisted the Chilean troops in Calama, seems to bear this out : see Roberto
Querejazú Calvo, Guano, salitre y sangre: Historia de la Guerra del Pacı́fico (Cochabamba, 1979),
pp. 289–306.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
539
the legal designations a racial hierarchy even within the category of ciudadanos was visible.30
Only Indians were characterised by ethnic terms, but this had both racial
and fiscal implications. In the legal documents they were called indı́gena,
indı́gena contribuyente or indı́gena originario. These terms were important for the
state, since they connoted a fiscal category : only Indians paid tribute. As
mentioned above, tribute was the most important source of income for the
Bolivian state for much of the nineteenth century.31 It is important to note
that, in items of documentation other than the formal legal ones, nobody was
identified as ciudadano, although the terms for indigenous peoples, including
indio and indiada, were used. The term ciudadano appears to have little resonance outside the official sphere, though racial classifications (combined
with their fiscal meanings) remained evident to the inhabitants of nineteenthcentury Bolivia.
It is hard to pin down what members of the indigenous highland communities thought of the new Andean nations, and whether they had a clear
conception of what this meant or what their status should be. Tristan Platt
argues that Andean Indians perhaps did not see independence as an important breaking point in their history.32 Nonetheless, Simón Bolı́var and the
other independence leaders had a liberal project in mind for Andeans in
which education and literacy would eventually bring about the integration of
highland Indians as full members of national society. For this reason Bolı́var
abolished tribute in 1824 and divided up community lands, with caciques
receiving twice as much land as regular community members.33 This agrarian
reform did not, however, endure, since the fiscal requirements of the Andean
republics necessitated the reinstatement of Indian tribute (usually renamed)
by governments desperate for revenue.34
30
32
33
34
See, for example, Jefe Polı́tico of Poopó to Prefect of Oruro, Poopó, 21 March 1860,
‘Poopó : Copiador de comunicaciones oficiales con las Jefaturas Polı́ticas de la República
31
Año de 1860’, 1860–1861 Civiles, AJP.
See Sánchez Albornoz, Indios y tributos.
See Platt, ‘ Simón Bolı́var ’, passim.
See Jorge Alejandro Ovando Sanz, El tributo indı́gena en las finanzas bolivianas del siglo XIX
(La Paz, 1985), pp. 9–28; see also Erick D. Langer, ‘ El liberalismo y la abolición de
la comunidad indı́gena en Bolivia en el siglo XIX’, Historia y Cultura, vol. 14 (1988),
pp. 59–95, and Démelas, L’invention politique.
Much ink has been spilled on Indian tribute in the Andes. For Bolivia, see Erwin P.
Grieshaber, ‘ Survival of Indian Communities in Nineteenth-Century Bolivia : A Regional
Comparison ’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 12, no. 2 (1980), pp. 223–69 ; Sánchez
Albornoz, Indios y tributos ; Gustavo Rodrı́guez Ostria, ¿Expansión del latifundio o supervivencia
de las comunidades indı́genas ? Cambios en la estructura agraria boliviana del siglo XIX (Cochabamba,
1983). For Peru, see Nils Jacobsen, ‘Taxation in Early Republican Peru, 1821–1851: Policy
Making between Reform and Tradition ’, in Reinhard Liehr (ed.), América Latina en la época
de Simón Bolı́var (Berlin, 1989), pp. 324–30 ; Vı́ctor Peralta Ruı́z, En pos del tributo en el Cusco
rural, 1826–1854 (Cuzco, 1991); Christine Hünefeldt, ‘ Poder y contribuciones :
Puno, 1825–1845’, Revista Andina, vol. 7, no. 2 (1989), pp. 367–407. For Ecuador, see
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Erick D. Langer
The nineteenth-century constitutions in Bolivia were ambivalent on this
question and continued to provide special categories for Indians. According
to Rossana Barragán, Indians in early republican legislation were considered
pobres de solemnidad (poor by nature), who had to pay tribute but who should
receive certain discounts for legal procedures.35 In 1838 the administration
of Andrés de Santa Cruz prohibited tribute-paying Indians from being impressed into the army because they ‘ caused prejudice and ruin to the State ’.
This order was reiterated in 1843 and 1860, and not rescinded during the
nineteenth century.36 Moreover, community members in Bolivia continued
to pay tribute to the national coffers until 1881, and into departmental
treasuries well into the twentieth century.37
It is important to move beyond mere rhetorical terms and examine concrete actions by the inhabitants of the new Latin American republics. Certain
groups among the indigenous communities felt part of the nation-state and
accepted that they occupied different positions in the nation-state from that
of the ciudadanos. In the case of the Andes, within the highland indigenous
communities the hierarchy of individuals had different ties and interactions
with the state. For example, the kurakas who collected tribute payments
and had frequent interactions with Bolivian officials had different ideas about
the nation-state from regular community members.38 Indians living in isolated regions where representatives of the state rarely appeared interacted
with the state in different ways from those living along the major trade
routes. The community members of the Bolivian altiplano who engaged in
many mercantile activities, most notably those who lived in Oruro, had a
more acute sense of the nation-state because of interactions with customs
officials, though these interactions probably did little to endear them to the
35
36
37
38
Mark Van Aken, ‘ The Lingering Death of Indian Tribute in Ecuador ’, Hispanic American
Historical Review, vol. 61, no. 3 (1981), pp. 429–60 ; Andrés Guerrero, ‘Curagas y tenientes
politicos : La ley de la costumbre y la ley del estado (Otavalo 1830–1875) ’, Revista Andina,
vol. 7, no. 2 (1989), pp. 321–66.
Rossana Barragán, Indios, mujeres y ciudadanos : Legislación y ejercicio de la ciudadanı́a en Bolivia
(siglo XIX) (La Paz, 1999), p. 53.
Colección oficial de leyes, decretos, órdenes y resoluciones supremas que se han expedido para el régimen de
República Boliviana, vol. 5 (Sucre, 1857), p. 231. For 1843 and 1860, see Meliton Torrico,
Indice general de leyes, decretos, resoluciones, órdenes y demás disposiciones administrativas de le República
de Bolivia desde 1825 hasta 1882 inclusive (Rosario, 1884), pp. 242–3.
See Sánchez Albornoz, Indios y tributos, pp. 187–218.
Also, not all tribute collectors were indigenous in nineteenth-century Bolivia : see Tristan
Platt, ‘ The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism, 1825–1900 : Roots of Rebellion in
19th-Century Chayanta (Potosı́) ’, in Steve J. Stern (ed.), Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness
in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison, 1987), pp. 280–323. The cleavage
between indigenous leaders and community members was not isolated to the Andes : see,
for example, Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala : A History of Race and Nation (Durham
NC, 2000), where the author shows the divides between the indigenous elites and
commoners in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
541
impositions of national authorities. These interactions, taken into account
with their role as tribute payers, their exemptions from impressment into the
regular army, and the state’s formal role in preserving their land, all created a
complex perception of the role of the state in their lives in which, I would
argue, economic issues predominated.
Given the amorphous nature of the sense of nationalism in Bolivia during
the nineteenth century, how can we analyse the sense of nationalism that
existed among the highland indigenous communities without falling into
useless generalisations or trying to find twentieth-century attitudes in the
nineteenth century? In my view the answer lies in the economic activities of
the highland communities and the way in which the state was made ‘ visible’
through community structures. This did not mean that these Indians did not
have a sense of national belonging, but I hypothesise that this sense of
belonging was mediated through the community. The highland communities
had complex hierarchies through which Indian families passed at different
stages of their lives, and all of these, in one way or another, were linked to the
relationship between the Bolivian state and the Indian community. To give
an example, a series of lists from the 1840s containing the names of the
individuals who served in various capacities in the canton of Challapata
shows the links between community, Church and state.39 Three postillones
carried the mail and the official correspondence from the post office at
Catarire. They were listed with their wives and each couple’s fiador (bondsman), who guaranteed the couple’s performance. There was also a list of the
minor offices, each with a fiador, including the ‘segundo who helps with
money [to pay] the total tribute [entero total ] of both semesters ’. The church
had a list with two alfereces (sponsors of the festivals of the Virgin of Rosario
and Saint Andrew) and two mayordomos of Saint Andrew and Saint Michael.
There was also a list of three ‘ Indians who will serve our adored nation
this year as mitayos’, one of whom was a bachelor, as well as a widower who
served as the llenero [ ?] of the parish priest, and a husband and wife who
served ‘ the state’. These men and women had been selected by the cabildo
‘ in the presence of the whole community’ and were to ‘fulfil their duty
without delay [and] in case that they fail to do so their bondsmen are coresponsible’.40 According to the document, the whole community selected
these individuals, based on its members’ previous services, using a cargo
39
40
In most cases the lists included both husbands’ and wives’ names. It appears that the whole
household worked as a unit in the various offices, in which men, their wives and probably
their children had duties.
‘Obrados seguidos por Romualdo Poquechoque contra el corregidor de Challapata.
Pidiendo se le deje pasar el Alferezco de San Juan. Año 1842 ’, 1840–1849 Civiles II, AJP,
fs. 1v–2.
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Erick D. Langer
system in which the officers worked their way up the ladder in prestige and
also in the amounts they were required to contribute financially.41
These obligations, despite their financial burdens, were often sought
after by community members. In the case above, the lists of all the offices
was entered into the court record because the corregidor, José Marı́a
Salinas, replaced an alferez, Romualdo Poquechoque, with his own godson,
Francisco Achu. Poquechoque complained to the court because he and his
wife ‘according to our custom have been elected in three cabildos in the
presence of the whole community of individuals by voice vote and without
having another person who solicits this service’.42 Salinas threw the community officials in jail when they supported Poquechoque rather than
his godson. In the end the corregidor prevailed, because he claimed that
Poquechoque had not yet passed through all the other minor offices and
‘ because the individual involved himself in the accustomed drunken orgies
[borracheras acostumbradas] that they called tinca and he, [though] justly elected,
was careless about this abuse ’.43 The judge ordered the cacique to return the
200 pesos that Poquechoque had given to him as part of the obligations of
his office and left Achu as the alferez.44 Presumably Achu also had to pay
this large amount for the privilege of becoming the sponsor of the town’s
religious festival.
Community members of the altiplano were able to make large monetary
payments such as the one Poquechoque and Achu paid because they engaged
in commerce that provided a sufficient surplus for them to do so. The
community offices and their financial obligations provided for the festivities
that bound the communities together as social organisms and also fortified
the commercial ties that community members had amongst themselves.
Festivals and trade went together, for festivals made the personal relations
possible that led to common enterprises among community members. The
judicial and notarial archives are full of probate records that show how the
Indians used other community members as ‘subcontractors ’ to transport
and sell their merchandise. The festivals provided the largesse for the rest of
the community and also showed that even the wealthiest (who tended to
be the sponsors of the festivals as alfereces) provided services to the community. Andean communities in the nineteenth century were composed of
households that varied considerably in wealth, but it is clear that the
41
42
43
This is a system that has been described in many places in the Andes. For some examples,
see Roger Neil Rasnacke, Domination and Cultural Resistance : Authority and Power among an
Andean People (Durham NC, 1988). For a description of groups in the area around
Challapata, see Thomas A. Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power : Ethnography and
History among an Andean People (Madison, 1998).
‘ Obrados seguidos por Romualdo Poquechoque ’, f. 4.
44
Ibid., fs. 6–7. The tinca was a sprinkling of alcohol as a libation.
Ibid., f. 7v.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
543
wealthiest felt an obligation (or were obligated) to contribute to those less
well off than themselves.
The state officials most visible to the communities were undoubtedly the
corregidores or subprefects (also called jefes politicos during the Linares administration between 1857 and 1861). They were selected by the departmental prefect and were the state’s lynchpin in the countryside. As Robert
Smale has pointed out with regard to the early twentieth century, the corregidor at times mobilised community members to act as a police force
against poachers and other interlopers in the altiplano.45 The communities
played this role in the nineteenth century as well, when the corregidor of
Salinas was ordered in 1855 to ‘without losing a single moment move all the
indiada of the canton and the vecinos [whites and mestizos] with their arms to
contain if necessary the invasion of the enemy, who should not be permitted
by any means of setting foot onto our territory’.46 In November 1860, the
jefe polı́tico of Poopó used the Indians to make sure that the revolutionary
José Marı́a Martı́nez, acting in support of Manuel Isidoro Belzu (president,
1848–55), was unable to enter his district from the valleys of Chuquisaca.
The jefe politico claimed that he had ‘ raised part of the indiada’ at Quillacas
and Pampa Aullagas ‘with the objective of spreading them throughout the
countryside’. He believed that if the revolutionaries dared to pass through
those places ‘they would be taken prisoners for sure [because of] the patriotism and loyalty of this indiada’.47 While Indians were generally not part of
the military, at certain points they nevertheless played important roles in
internal security for the state.
It is interesting that the jefe polı́tico used the term ‘patriotism ’ to describe
loyalty to a regime against an internal rebellion. Communications by the
official suggest that the Indian community members of the Oruro region
apparently supported the dictator José Marı́a Linares against his rival, Manuel
Isidoro Belzu. It is impossible to know from the material that has survived
how much the Indians were aware of or cared about the ideologies of either
leader. One assumes that the Indians were willing to be mobilised by the
jefe polı́tico because he had good connections with the community leaders
and tried to alleviate the impositions of the state on the communities in
his jurisdiction. Only a month before the rebellion the jefe polı́tico had
45
46
47
Robert Smale, ‘Above and Below : Peasants and Miners in Oruro and Northern Potosı́,
Bolivia (1899–1929) ’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Texas, 2005, pp. 150–5.
‘Libro borrador de Notas de los Corregidores ’, no. 68 1855, AJP, f. 2.
‘Poopó : Copiador de comunicaciones oficiales con las Jefaturas Polı́ticas de la República
Año de 1860 ’, 26 and 28 Nov. 1860, 1860–1861 Civiles, AJP. In fact, the Indians only
captured a hapless German mining engineer, Hugo Reck, and his entourage, who were
released once their identities had been established. For a short summary of this movement,
which began in Santa Cruz, see Nicanor Aranzaes, Las revoluciones en Bolivia (La Paz, 1980
[1918]), pp. 164–5.
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Erick D. Langer
complained to the prefect of Oruro about the difficulties the Indians had
in supplying pack animals to the troops passing through the area.48 The
corregidor’s action in aiding the communities probably counted for more
in helping him mobilise the ayllus than the frequent pronouncements of
the ever-changing presidents. However, state officials themselves defined
‘ patriotism’ not as actions against foreigners, but as supporting the current
administration. Indians could be patriots too, at least in this capacity.
Commerce, Tribute and Community Offices
The economic prosperity of the highland community members through
trade and the transport of goods for the mines eventually brought about
tensions between their tributary obligations, their ability to lead the communities, and their economic activities. Community leaders, such as kurakas,
cobradores (tribute collectors), postillones and mitayos, did not just serve in
their offices, but were usually responsible for paying for the privilege of these
positions through sponsoring fiestas and other events and with their labour,
and for making up any shortfalls. The cargo system that existed in the
communities required increasing commitments as members moved up in the
hierarchy of offices, as was usually the case.49 While their mercantile enterprises brought in more than enough to pay tribute, the more active (and
thus most prosperous) traders needed to be absent from their highland
communities for extended periods of time. Since the offices required some
personal resources, the community tended to pick the better-off members as
their leaders. Most offices obliged them to remain near their homes to collect
tribute, represent the community to state officials and resolve disputes between community members. Success in trade thus made the best members
valuable as community members at the same time that these individuals had
incentives to shirk the responsibilities of office.
In 1854, for example, Manuel Mamani of Ayllu Andamarca, which was
near the town of Challapata, close to Oruro, tried to evade his duties as
tribute collector. He was working as a merchant in the mining camp of
Chorolque, in Chichas province (southern Potosı́), when the community
48
49
‘ Poopó: Copiador de comunicaciones oficiales ’, 5 Oct. 1860.
The Andean cargo system is complex and varied across ethnic groups and also over time.
There are no good descriptions of cargo systems for the nineteenth century except for
fragments such as the one above. However, there are certain constants, such as the use of
wealthy members to occupy these offices and their collateral sponsorship of other activities
such as fiestas and reciprocal giving. The movement up the community hierarchy as a
household ages and increases in resources is a common feature. For ethnographic studies
within the region under study that include historical perspectives, see Abercrombie,
Pathways of Memory and Power, and Rasnacke, Domination and Cultural Resistance.
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Bringing the Economic Back In
545
officials of Andamarca named him alcalde cobrador. The alcalde cobrador was
responsible for collecting tribute, and therefore had to remain close to the
community for most of the year. In the colonial period many community
members would probably have jumped at the chance of collecting tribute,
since the collection of the head tax, with the possibility of requiring greater
payment from the tributarios than the state collected from them, made it a
potentially lucrative enterprise.50 But Mamani wanted none of this, because
he was making more money trading in the mining camps. He asserted that he
had already served three times as a tribute collector and twice as the head of
the posta in Ancacato, in which he ‘ had spent money and suffered losses in
his commerce’.51 Commerce, rather than collecting tribute, was for Indian
community members the most lucrative activity in mid-nineteenth-century
Bolivia.
The office of tribute collector was also a difficult job in some of the
communities of the highlands, especially those ayllus that had fields of wheat
and corn in the ecological archipelagos of the eastern valleys. Many, if not
most, of the indigenous communities in the highlands maintained agricultural lands in the lower valleys where they could grow maize, coca, peppers
and other foodstuffs that complemented their diets in the altiplano.52 Some
of the communities had transformed their lands in the valley into haciendas
by reducing the Indians living there permanently to hacienda peons (arrenderos). These arrenderos had to pay rent that was collected by the community
officials. In 1851 Agustı́n Carata, the indı́gena segundo cobrador of Ayllu Yucasa,
in the vice-canton of Huari, complained to the judge in Poopó that the
renters in the community’s Hacienda San Juan de Orca had refused to
pay their rents. San Juan de Orca was located in the subtropical valleys of
Chuquisaca, to the south-west. According to the complaint, 19 arrenderos
did not pay their rent in 1849 and another 13 refused to do so in 1850. These
types of problems undoubtedly made these offices less popular, especially if
other activities, such as commerce, were more lucrative. Indeed, the dispute
50
51
52
See, for example, Karen Spalding, ‘Social Climbers: Changing Patterns of Mobility among
the Indians of Colonial Peru’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 50, no. 4 (1970),
pp. 645–64 ; Sergio Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in
Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes (Durham NC, 2003).
‘Challapata : Obrados seguido por Manuel Mamani, sobre reclamo y exhimición del
nombramiento de alcalde cobrador, del Aillo Andamarca. Año 1854 ’, 1850–1856 Civiles,
AJP, f. 2v. Also see ‘ No. 189 1865 ’, 1862–1865 Civiles, AJP.
This is a pattern that goes back to pre-Inca days but has continued to exist up to the
present in many communities. For the pioneering work on this, see John Murra, Formaciones
polı́ticas y económicas en el mundo andino (Lima, 1975). For a twentieth-century analysis, see
Tristan Platt, ‘The Role of the Andean Ayllu in the Reproduction of the Petty Commodity
Regime in Northern Potosı́ (Bolivia) ’, in David Lehman (ed.), Ecology and Exchange in the
Andes (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 27–69.
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Erick D. Langer
came about in part because the previous tribute collector had refused to fulfil
his duties when his turn had come up.53
Thus despite the need for officers and the resulting benefits for the
community as a whole, by the 1850s there are indications that some of the
most prosperous and active members of the ayllus did not want to become
village authorities. They preferred to remain outside the communities, ranging widely in their mercantile activities. There are also indications of substantial community differentiation in terms of wealth. This is clear in the
valley agricultural lands, which the highland communities ran as haciendas,
with their own peons, as was the case among the creoles. As noted already,
the indı́genas contribuyentes who owned mines likewise engaged workers
who were paid in goods and wages, as in the mines owned by ciudadanos.
It is not clear how this differentiation and wealth affected the Indian
community members’ vision of themselves within the Bolivian state. Interethnic relations probably intensified as wealthy indı́genas lent money to
ciudadanos, making them feel more equal, or perhaps even superior, to nonIndians.54 Wealthy Indians used the services of the notary for their wills and
their descendants resorted to the notaries for probate, in which the state
provided certain services that also made the Indians more ‘ visible ’ to the
state. The fact that they engaged with state agencies does not prove that
Indians contributed to nation-state formation, however. They accepted the
use of state institutions, particularly the national courts when undertaking
litigation against other Indians and, most importantly, against non-Indians.
They had the wherewithal to pay for lawyers and courts and so had a better
chance of getting favourable verdicts. Indeed, there is no indication that the
courts discriminated against Indians in their verdicts, at least in the legal
papers that have survived.55 It is likely that the use of courts by wealthy
53
54
55
‘ Civil de Huari. Ejecutivo por cobro de pesos. Agustin Carata contra Mamani Choque y
Ocsa 1851 ’, 1850–1856 Civiles, AJP. These were not the only valley lands in this region
where many of the residents had been turned into arrenderos : see the case of Hacienda
Piosera, which belonged to the Urmiri de Quillacas community in the highlands ;
‘ Hacienda Piosera ’, No. 3745, Servicio Nacional de Reforma Agraria (Sucre).
There are many cases in probate records where creoles and mestizos owe money
to community Indians, although there are many more cases in which Indians owe
other Indians. See, for example, ‘ Ejecutivo seguido por Juan Beliz contra Guillermo
Sempertegui, cobrando pesos 1839 ’, ‘Ejecutivo : Agustin Nina contra Jacinto Orosco.
Cobro de pesos. Año 1834 ’, 1834–1839 Civiles, AJP ; ‘No. 4 Toledo Civil : Juicio de esperas
promovido por Gregorio Alarcon y que pide á sus acreedores 1871’, ‘ 1869: Manuel
Mamani contra Emeterio Gonzales, por coca’, 1869–1971 Civiles, AJP. See also Erick D.
Langer, ‘ Género y comercio a mediados del siglo XIX en Bolivia : El caso de Antonia Lojo,
una acaudalada mujer indı́gena en Challapata ’, Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia,
Anuario 2002 (Sucre, 2002), pp. 107–29, where one case is analysed in depth.
Since most cases were abandoned before final judgment, it is very difficult to know the
outcome of these disputes. One suspects that the use of the courts served as a device to
pressure litigants to settle and thus proved useful, despite the lack of final verdicts.
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community members against those members who were less well off had the
effect of solidifying the differences in economic status, since the wealthier
members could afford to sustain a case longer than their poor counterparts.
This is difficult to prove, however, given the paucity of systematic information on the effects of judgments.
Indigenous Economic Decline and the Rise of National Identity
By the end of the 1860s the economic picture had changed for the highland
communities. Mariano Melgarejo, who became president of Bolivia in a coup
in 1864, began a frontal assault on the prosperity of Andean community
members through land legislation that claimed the state’s rights over all
community lands and tried to sell them at auction to the highest bidder.56 We
do not have much information on the effects of these laws in the region
around Oruro; it appears they had the greatest effects further north, around
La Paz. There are hints, however, that the Oruro communities purchased
their own lands, thus depriving them of the capital that they had used for
commerce.57 The testament of one community member from Toledo sums
up the conundrum well. When Romualdo Choque had his testament written
in 1866, he claimed that he owned a number of burros and llamas for his
trade, some grazing lands, a house and a small field. However, he declared
that ‘I have no cash at all in my possession, nor any goods in kind [especies] of
major consideration worthy of mention. ’58
The assaults on their collective landholdings left the Indian communities
reeling, even in the cases where they were able to recoup their lands in 1871.
The civil war that raged in the altiplano from 1869 to 1871, when the
Melgarejo regime finally fell, also hindered trade. The 1872 law that permitted the free export of uncoined silver from the country also cut into the
altiplano Indians’ prosperity, since it meant no more smuggling of silver
across the border, in all likelihood a well-remunerated activity. The 1872 law
also made it possible for mining companies to dominate systems of credit,
which eventually helped destroy the rural credit networks, including those
of the community Indian merchants who had been able to keep some of
their capital.59 Another blow was the War of the Pacific (1879–84), which
56
57
58
59
For the best summary of the impact of Melgarejo on the communities, see Larson, Trials of
Nation Making, pp. 216–19.
Erwin P. Grieshaber, ‘Survival of Indian Communities in Nineteenth-Century Bolivia’,
PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1977, p. 199.
‘Toledo : Posesorio por Maria Choque del Aillo Pumasava 1870 Año 1879 ’, 1869–1871
Civiles, AJP. The testament in question was written in 1866.
For the argument on credit, see Langer, ‘ Contraband and Credit’.
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Erick D. Langer
temporarily cut off links to the Pacific coast.60 The subsequent construction
of the railway that took silver ore from Oruro directly to the coast (the line
was completed in 1892) reconfigured trade routes and began to marginalise
those who made their living from transporting these materials.
By the late nineteenth century the Indian communities of the altiplano had
been pauperised, and most had had to give up their wide-ranging merchant
activities. The Indian communities in La Paz again came under full assault by
mestizos and creoles for their lands.61 The Oruro communities by and large
had kept their lands, but at a great cost. They were reduced to working
mainly as agriculturalists on very poor fields. Their world had shrunk, from
encompassing a vast area from southern Peru to northern Argentina, to
comprising only their hamlets, and perhaps also the silver and tin mines to
which they migrated now not as merchants but as lowly mine workers.62
Rather than participating in the monetary circuit, many retreated to using
old pesos febles or depended mainly on bartering arrangements. The state
marginalised the Indians in other ways as well; the abolition of tribute that
became effective at the national level in 1881 meant that the mutual dependence between indigenous authorities and state officials declined. Whatever
commitment the state had made towards protecting the communities and
their land base had evaporated. A new ideology brought from Europe that
denigrated the Indians and proclaimed them racially inferior became popular
among the ruling classes of Bolivia.63
Not all Indians suffered equally, as a number either became wealthy
without sharing their resources, or tried to jump from indigenous to mestizo
status. It is no wonder that in 1899, when the Federalist War degenerated
into race warfare, that the leaders of Peñas, in the heart of the formerly
wealthy mercantile community region of the altiplano near Oruro, declared a
separate Indian republic. Not only that, but once the Peñas Indians had
rebelled against the state, they also began persecuting and murdering wealthy
Indians who were accused of being ‘ landlords and alonsistas [those who
followed the Constitutionalist president, Severo Fernández Alonso]’. They
accused these men and women of having abandoned communal practices
and usurped lands and goods from their communities.64
60
61
62
63
64
See, for example, ‘ Verval : Humire No. 255 1881’, 1880–1881 Civiles, AJP.
See Grieshaber, ‘ Survival of Indian Communities ’ (1977).
For an example of the effects by the early twentieth century in Chichas, see Ana Teruel,
‘ La desamortización de la propiedad comunal indı́gena: Pervivencias y transformaciones
en la estructura agraria de la Provincia de Sud Chichas’, Anuario del Archivo y Biblioteca
Nacionales de Bolivia (Sucre, 2007), pp. 639–80.
See Langer, ‘El liberalismo y la abolición ’, and Démelas, Nationalisme sans nation ?
On the 1898–99 Federalist War and the Peñas episode, see Ramiro Condarco Morales,
Zárate, el temible Willka : Historia de la rebelión indı́gena de 1899 (La Paz, 1966) ; Pilar Mendieta
Parada, Tupac Katari a Zárate Willka: Alianzas, pactos, resistencia y rebelión en Mohoza, 1780–1899
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Conclusion
Bringing economic issues back into the debate is important for understanding the roles that indigenous peasants played in the integration of the nationstates in Latin America and in the Andes. This essay has analysed the case of
the indigenous peasants of Oruro and western Potosı́ as a means of showing
the importance of economic issues as well as the diversity of responses by
indigenous communities to the new challenges of the early republican states.
Their case shows that scholars need to go beyond the vision of agrarian
peasants to understand better the dynamics of subaltern actions and alliances
that resulted in the conformation of republican societies.
Interestingly, the early Bolivian government, like most republican
governments as well as present-day scholars, erroneously categorised members of the indigenous communities as intrinsically poor. This generalisation
hid the strength and vitality of indigenous peasants in the nineteenth century,
who benefited from a state that imposed few fiscal burdens and from undefined and poorly controlled borders. Moreover, the ability to rely on
community resources (including social networks embedded in the ayllus)
permitted Andean indigenous communities to recuperate more quickly from
the devastations of the independence struggles. Their central role as transporters of most goods in the internal and the import-export trades, their
participation in regional commerce, and their role as miners and suppliers
of most goods for the mining camps and cities was crucial for economic
development in the first decades after independence.65
This also meant that the economic (and thus political) interests of the
indigenous communities diverged from being exclusively related to agrarian
pursuits. Many peasants were allied with the mining and import-export
merchant sectors and were in favour of free trade, or at least a relatively weak
state that had little control over political borders. These economic activities
also eventually created greater economic stratification within the communities, although initially both political and economic activities were mediated
mainly through the communities and the kurakas.
The assault on community lands and the strengthening of borders from
the 1860s onwards exposed the fissures within the communities. This was
especially clear in the Oruro region of the altiplano, which had depended
heavily on trade and transport for the communities’ prosperity. It led to a
65
(La Paz, 2001) ; Pilar Mendieta Parada, Indı́genas en polı́tica : Una mirada desde la historia (La Paz,
2008) ; Forrest Hylton, ‘ El federalismo insurgente : una aproximación a Juan Lero, los
comunarios y la Guerra Federal ’, Tinkazos: Revista Boliviana de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 16 (2004),
pp. 99–118.
See also Erick D. Langer, ‘ Indian Trade and Ethnic Economies in the Andes, 1780–1880’,
Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, vol. 15, no. 1 (2004), pp. 9–33.
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Erick D. Langer
mounting impoverishment of the majority of the indigenous population and
increasing marginalisation, both economically and politically. These fissures
created resentment between the majority and the small group of community
members who were able to remain wealthy or pass on to mestizo status.
Ironically, the Indians who were allied with the opposition Liberal Party
during the Federalist War, such as Juan Lero of Peñas, accused the wealthy
community members of favouring the Conservatives and, in a fit of class
and political violence, executed many of them. Indigenous autonomy was
thereafter to be associated with the marginalised poor, but in the decades
previously Andean communities had formed the backbone of the economic
system and had participated in many ways in the nation-state, although
they did not have full political rights. Indeed, their activities as miners and
merchants and as the transporters of legal (and smuggled) silver and imported goods, especially evident in the region under consideration, meant
that their economic interests lay with a weak state and poorly guarded
borders, just like the creole miners and import-export merchants who
favoured free trade.
Spanish and Portuguese abstracts
Spanish abstract. Utilizando el ejemplo de Bolivia en el siglo XIX, este artı́culo argumenta que las motivaciones económicas necesitan ser tomadas en cuenta para entender el papel de los campesinos en la construcción de los Estados-nación en
América Latina, especialmente en los Andes. Basado en archivos locales, considera
el caso de la región del altiplano de Oruro-Poopó. Desde esta perspectiva, durante el
medio siglo que siguió a la independencia, las comunidades andinas se encontraban
en su mayorı́a a favor de un régimen de libre comercio. Éstas estaban integradas
dentro del Estado-nación pero en una posición subordinada. Para los años 1850
habı́a tal prosperidad en las actividades comerciales que los miembros de las comunidades se negaron a participar como autoridades en sus comunidades dado el
tiempo que les quitaba. Sin embargo, el asalto a las tierras comunales que empezó en
los 1860s empobreció a los indios y los marginó como campesinos, volviéndolos una
amenaza al nuevo y racista Estado-nación.
Spanish keywords : Bolivia, campesinos, nacionalismo, libre comercio, construcción
nacional, comunidades indı́genas, espacio económico andino, siglo XIX
Portuguese abstract. Utilizando o exemplo da Bolı́via do século dezenove, o artigo
argumenta que é preciso levar em consideração as motivações econômicas para
compreendermos o papel dos camponeses na construção de estados-nações latinoamericanos, particularmente ao se tratar dos Andes. Baseado em arquivos locais ele
considera o caso da região do altiplano de Oruro-Poopó. Desta perspectiva, ao
longo do meio século que seguiu à independência, comunidades andinas em sua
maioria apoiavam um regime de livre comércio. Eram integrados ao estado-nação,
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embora ocupassem posição subordinada. Pela década de 1850 a prosperidade era tal
que membros comunitários se recusavam a exercer o papel de autoridade em suas
comunidades devido ao tempo que esta atividade consumiria. Entretanto o ataque às
terras comunitárias iniciado nos anos 1860 empobreceu os ı́ndios e os marginalizou
como camponeses, transformando-os em ameaça ao novo e racista estado-nação.
Portuguese keywords : Bolı́via, camponeses, nacionalismo, livre comércio, construção
nacional, comunidades indı́genas, espacio econômico andino, século dezenove.
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