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Survival of Indian Communities in Nineteenth-Century Bolivia: A Regional Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Erwin P. Grieshaber
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Extract

In describing the impact of haciendas on Indian communities of Meso-America and Andean America, historians generally have emphasized the hacendado's unrelenting appropriation of land and labor from native settlements, which were forced constantly to retreat in the face of this pressure. This view can be represented by James Lockhart's description of hacienda expansion. He saw the great estate as an ‘essentially unitary social institution [that] maintained constant its function as intermediary between growing Spanish towns and receding Indian villages. It evolved along two simple lines — constant rise in legal ownership of land and change in the balance of the labor force, as permanent workers increased and temporary workers decreased.1 As the hacienda expanded outward from the cities, said Lockhart, it gradually engaged the Indians in acculturative processes that made the great estate ‘the most powerful instrument of hispanization in Spanish-American culture’.2

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Articles
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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 1980 , pp. 223 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Lockhart, James, ‘Encomienda and Hacienda: The Evolution of the Great Estate in the Spanish West Indies’ HAHR, Vol. 49 (08, 1969), p. 427.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 425.

3 Conde, Roberto Corrés in The First Stages of Modernization in Spanish America (trans. from the Spanish by Talbot, Toby) (New York, 1974)Google Scholar described modernization as a process whereby Latin American nations became increasingly integrated into the North American and European economies through the development of an export product. This integration, in turn, produced significant internal political and social changes. In the late 1870s, Bolivian silver miners, as a result of new discoveries, increased production greatly. The effects of this silver boom occurred after 1880 and included the construction of railways connecting Bolivia to the Pacific coast and the emergence of silver miners as a national political force. This new governing elite destroyed the local power of Bolivia's caudillos, and, at the same time, forged a program of national consolidation. See Klein, Herbert S., Parties and Political Change in Bolivia (Cambridge, Eng., 1969), pp. 16–30.Google Scholar

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54 ‘Padrón de Carangas de 1867,’ expedientes, f. 197, ANB.Google Scholar

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57 Prior to the Spanish conquest, Cochabamba was a frontier zone of the Inca empire to which Incan lords sent colonists (mitimaes) to cultivate corn for shipment back to the altiplano population centers. For a description of the Aymara's ability to control different ecological zones see Murra, John V., ‘An Aymara Kingdom in 1567,’ Ethnohistory, Vol. 15 (Spring 1968), pp. 121–2.Google Scholar

58 For a description of Cochabamba's economic connections to Potosí, see de Espinoza, Antonio Vasquez, Compendium and Description of the West Indies (1628), trans. Clark, Charles Upson (Washington, D.C., 1942), pp. 618–19.Google Scholar

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60 In 1793 the population of the department of Cochabamba amounted to 144,398 inhabitants, only 45 percent of whom were Indian. Mestizos formed 33 percent, whites 16 percent, mullatoes 5 percent, and blacks 1 percent. For this population data and for a description of the mestizo occupation of communal lands in Cochabamba see de Viedma, Francisco, Descripción geográfica y estadística de la provincia de Santa Cruz de la sierra (3rd ed.), prologue by Salinas, Hector Cossio, (Cochabamba, 1969).Google Scholar

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62 For the best description of the early exploitation of altiplano Indians, see de San Miguel, Garci Diez, Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito en el año 1567 (palaeography by Soriano, Waldemar Espinoza) (Lima, 1964.)Google Scholar