Indian Problems, Indian Solutions: Incantations of Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Bolivia

Abstract

Indigenista writings marked an important shift in discourse regarding the majority indigenous population in early twentieth-century Latin America. Indigenismo was an ideological current that developed throughout Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century that focused on the Indian population and questions of nation and of citizenship. In Bolivia, penned in the wake of the 1899 Civil War in which the Aymara indigenous group played a central role, indigenista authors such as Manuel Rigoberto Paredes and the members of the Aymara Academy responded to this Indian initiative participating in national politics. The indigenista authors crafted a legitimizing discourse for the rising Liberal Party, headquartered in La Paz, that came to power as a result of the 1899 Civil War. The Inca became the axis within a liberal indigenista discourse that strove to address questions of progress and race. However, in this context the lauded ‘Bolivian Inca’ had an important ancestor: the Aymara. This indigenista effort to connect the Aymara past to the Inca past within the national historical narrative represents an alternative liberal discourse on the ‘Indian problem.’ In the wake of the war, the promotion of a specific Indian past was not the sole domain of the indigenista authors. As indigenista intellectuals crafted a glorified Inca past for Bolivia, residents of Aymara communities began to appropriate and enact theatrical performances of the indigenistas’ idealized Inca past in town celebrations, as demonstrated by the case of Caracollo, Bolivia.

Keywords:

• Bolivia
• 1899 Civil War
• Aymaras
• ethnicity
• nation building
• theater
• Incas

Acknowledgements

I thank the ERIP conference participants for their suggestions, Marc Becker for organizing the panel in indigenismo, and Nancy Postero for her work in assembling this special edition of LACES which focuses on Bolivia.

Notes

[1] In addition, Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson (2007, 54) suggest that Aymara communities may have seen General José Manuel, leader of the liberal forces, as an ally due to Pando’s participation in overturning the presidency of Mariano Melgarejo, who attempted to privatize communal landholdings in the 1860s.

[2] Negative perceptions of the Incas did exist during this epoch, ranging from Manuel Rigoberto Paredes’ ambivalent discourse on the controlling Inca state to the writings of Santa Cruz intellectual Gabriel René Moreno who thought the Incas were stupid and despotic (Moreno 1960). René Gabriel Moreno’s view of the Incas corresponds to the larger issues of race, region, and competing nation-building projects. Manuel Rigoberto Paredes’ discourse on the Incas is complex and ambivalent. See Paredes 1955 for an example of his critique of the Inca Empire. However, the majority of liberal intellectuals, including Paredes, employed a stylized Inca image to deflect attention away from the Aymara population and to deny the central role the Aymaras played in bringing the liberals to power.

[3] The use of the term ‘redeem’ is borrowed from and references Brooke Larson’s (2005) article.

[4] Thomson labels Paredes a mestizo, while early twentieth-century writer Arze y Arze was careful to disassociate Paredes from the negative combinations surrounding a mestizo identity. The very use of terms to refer to Paredes’ identity indicates the complicated place he held in Bolivian society as an Aymara intellectual, politician, and author.

[5] In Challacollo, a town south of the city of Oruro, the Inca play has been performed by the local elite throughout much of the twentieth century. According to interviews carried out by Margot Beyersdorff, the residents continue to perform an Inca identity and to make claim to an Inca past via the public venue of festival performances. The local town residents, however, also recognize the Uru roots of Challacollo, stating that Challacollo was an Uru town under Aymara rule prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. The decision to promote an Inca identity and past resonates with the case of Caracollo in suggestive ways, although further investigation is needed to determine when and in what historical context this happened.

[6] These statistics are based on the annual report of 1998 for Caracollo. Beyersdorff suggests that during the colonial era the parish churches and the tambos, or rest stops, spread the Quechua language. The plays proliferated especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, which Beyersdorff attributes to the migration of people from the valleys to work in the mines of Oruro. This does not explain, however, why representations of an Inca past were performed by and relevant to an altiplano audience in the early twentieth century, nor does it explain the differences between the Inca plays.

[7] From a bundle simply marked ‘Caracollo’ in the Monseñor Taborga Archive, Sucre, Bolivia. Significantly, there were no Bullaín figures on the list of vecinos, or notable residents, suggesting a certain reconfiguration of the local elite. Carlos Bullaín had been a large property owner who was killed during the events of the civil war in 1899.

[8] The festival of Rosario in Bolivia may indeed be older than the 1890s. Perhaps Yucra León means that the festival of Rosario was revitalized in Caracollo in the 1890s, although this is unclear. The connection between the festival of Rosario, Caracollo, the Inca play, and Liberalism is certainly a suggestive one.

[9] For example, the Virgin of Candelaria, celebrated on February 2, is an advocation of Mary. It is called Candelaria for Candelemas, or her purification. In Oruro she is also referred to as the Virgin of the Mineshaft because of her apparition in the mine to a repentant thief in 1789. It is in her name that the Carnival of Oruro is performed (Murillo and Revollo 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

E. Gabrielle Kuenzli

E. Gabrielle Kuenzli is at the Department of History, University of South Carolina, 817 Henderson St., 232 Gambrell Hall, Columbia, SC 29208 (Email: [email protected]).