Bolivia In Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture (Latin America In Focus) - Softcover

Van Lindert, Paul; Verkoren, O

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0906156912 ISBN 13: 9780906156919

Publisher: Latin America Bureau, 1994

Synopsis

Bolivia In Focus is an authoritative and up-to-date guide to this fascinating land.

About this title

About the Author

O. Verkoren

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Bolivia

A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture

By Paul van Lindert, Otto Verkoren

Practical Action Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 1994 Royal Tropical Institute/Novib and Paul van Lindert and Otto Verkoren
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-906156-91-9

Contents

Introduction Chuquiago – To have and have not, 5, 
1 History, 
2 The new Bolivia, 
3 Economy and society, 
4 Culture, 
Conclusion, 67, 
Further reading and addresses, 69, 
Facts and figures/Reference map, 70, 

CHAPTER 1

HISTORY

Conquest, revolution and dictatorship

* Cultures of the plateau

From the earliest times, most of Bolivia's inhabitants have lived on the Altiplano, the windswept and inhospitable highlands which form the highest plateau in Latin America. At an average height of 4,000 metres, the so-called 'roof of the New World' has had human settlements much longer than the more fertile lowlands. Groups of wandering hunters and gatherers were probably to be found there some 20,000 to 22,000 years ago.

It is likely that the first established settlements date from between 200 and 300 AD – three thousand years later than in Peru. They were situated a little to the south of Lake Titicaca, around Tiahuanaco. The remains of Tiahuanaco culture make it clear that the inhabitants had reached a high degree of development and organisation. Remains of massive stone buildings and monuments, elaborate textiles and exquisite pottery suggest a sophisticated culture. Sustained by forms of intensive arable farming, including the use of terraces, the Tiahuanaco region became one of the most densely populated areas of the Altiplano. Civilisation reached its high point here around the year 1000 AD, after which a period of decline set in leading to the complete and unexplained collapse of Tiahuanaco culture probably about the year 1200. The causes of this collapse can only be guessed at.

The Aymara kingdoms

A new period in Bolivian history was heralded by the rise of the Aymara kingdoms. For some 300 years, up to the arrival of the Spaniards, the Aymaras played a leading role on the Altiplano. Their various kingdoms, of which those around Lake Titicaca were the most important, each enjoyed a powerful organisation based on a collective and military model.

At the centre of Aymara society were the ayllus, groups based on kinship which owned and worked the land collectively. The Aymaras were primarily farmers, cultivating potatoes and cereal crops in the harsh Altiplano environment. They also kept llamas and alpacas for meat, milk and wool, while llamas also served as pack-animals.

Although the Aymaras' centre of economic and political power lay on the plateau, they maintained important connections with related communities in the (upper) valleys of the Valles. The region of the Valles (literally. valleys) is a transitional territory between the Altiplano and the low-lying Llanos (plains) in the east of Bolivia. It is a region of sharp mountain ridges and deep valleys and contains a great variety of climates and flora as a result of the differences in altitude. The lower the valleys lie, the higher the average temperatures and the more sub-tropical the vegetation. A lively exchange of crops and products took place between the inhabitants of the cold, barren plateau and the valley dwellers; fruit, vegetables, maize and coca from the sub-tropical zone were exchanged for potatoes, meat and wool from the Altiplano.

The Inca empire

During the 15th century the Inca empire began to expand outwards from the Cuzco valley in present-day Peru. Slowly but surely the Quechua-speaking Incas conquered the Aymara kingdoms and incorporated them into the powerful provinces of Collasuyo and Antisuyo. Although they offered obstinate resistance, the Aymaras were no match for the military might of the Incas, not least because they were divided among themselves.

The Inca empire respected the languages and the cultures of the subjugated peoples and only insisted on imposing its religion. This did not prevent a certain amount of Quechuanisation emerging, even if it differed in degree from region to region. In the heartlands of the Aymaras, for instance, around Lake Titicaca, their language and culture remained practically intact. But the cultural and linguistic traditions of other peoples of the Bolivian plateau were almost entirely displaced, especially as groups of Quechua-speaking Incas were brought over from Peru to live and work in Collasuyo.

Despite their power and influence, the Incas never managed the annexation of all the then peoples of Bolivia. Even the formidable Inca armies did not succeed in defeating the semi-nomadic peoples in the lower-lying Valles and the eastern plains, such as the Guaranís. Inca culture was tied to the uplands; the zone in which the temperate and sub-tropical Andes became the tropical rain forests and prairies of the low-lying Llanos formed the natural frontier of their power. The Spaniards would also run into difficulties here.

* Alto Perú

The Conquista

The landing of the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro on the coast of Peru in 1532 signalled the end of the Inca empire. Cuzco, the political centre, fell in 1535, and soon afterwards the conquistadores began the conquest of Collasuyo. The Spaniards called the region Alto Perú.

As elsewhere in the Spanish colonisation of Latin America, towns were founded and grew with surprising speed. Within some seventy years the foundations were laid for the present-day urban pattern of Bolivia. A number of places had a primarily administrative function, such as La Plata (1538, present-day Sucre) or La Paz (1548). Others were in the first place mining centres, such as Potosí (1545). Eventually a number of settlements were established between 1571 and 1574 along the frontier of the territory then ruled by the Spaniards. These towns, including Tarija and Cochabamba, at first formed a kind of defence line.

In the Llanos the colonisation process developed rather differently. Here the Spaniards, like the Incas, experienced enormous difficulty in conquering the Indians. Apart from a number of reducciones, Jesuit mission settlements, the Spanish presence in the Llanos remained limited to the town of Santa Cruz (1561). This situation was to last until the end of the colonial period.

Colonial society

At first the Spaniards left the existing socio-economic structure more or less undisturbed, taking over the fine-mesh network of village communities and local and regional leaders and placing it under their control. They also adopted the system of compulsory labour (mita) which the Incas had imposed on the conquered peoples, but with much more brutality.

Gradually, however, Spanish rule became more aggressive, with profit the most important motivation. The barter economy and communal working of the land were increasingly replaced by a society based on the extraction and exportation of wealth, the backbone of which was mining and the ownership of large estates (haciendas).

The mining town of Potosí, with its famous Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain), occupied a central position during the Spanish period. This town grew in a relatively short space of time to become a centre of some 200,000 inhabitants, making Potosí for a long time by far the largest city in Latin America. The Cerro Rico yielded enormous quantities of silver which, together with the precious metals from smaller production centres such as Oruro, were crucial to the maintenance of the Spanish empire. With the silver sent back from Bolivia the Spanish kings financed their wars in Europe.

Many thousands of Indians were set to work in the mines. Around the year 1600, for example, some 13,500 forced labourers were working in the Potosí mines alone. As well as being used as miners, countless others were being forced under the mita system to work in trade, in workshops, as carriers or on the haciendas.

The Spaniards were scarcely, if at all, interested in the welfare of the Indian population whom they regarded as inferior. The suppression of Indian culture went as far as making it compulsory to dress in Spanish-style clothes (this, according to popular legend, being the origin of many of Bolivia's distinctive hats and the cholas' skirts). Working conditions in the mines were atrocious and the mortality rate among the miners and other Indians was high. The death toll was also caused by European diseases, against which the indigenous population had insufficient resistance. By the middle of the 17th century the Indian population had been practically halved in numbers to about half a million.

There was some Indian resistance to Spanish colonialism, but it was less intense in Bolivia than in neighbouring Perú. The most important uprisings took place between 1780 and 1782, led by Tupac Katari, and at the same time, Tupac Amaru led his uprising in Cuzco, promising the end of the Potosí mita. The revolts were eventually crushed by the Spanish authorities.

During the course of the 18th century many of the silver veins became exhausted, and Potosí and with it the colony of Alto Perú lost much of its preeminence and influence. Agriculture increased in importance, as reflected in the growth of trade and government centres such as La Paz and Cochabamba.

* Independence

The American and French revolutions at the end of the 18th century had provided the criollos, the descendants of Spaniards born in Latin America, with food for thought. Their economic and political aspirations were increasingly at odds with those of the administrative bureaucracy sent from Spain. The so-called peninsulares imposed restrictions on trade, levied huge taxes and as a matter of course placed the interests of Spain above those of the colonies.

When in the years 1808-1810 Spain was besieged by the armies of Napoleon, the colonies enjoyed unprecedented independence and commercial autonomy. But when in the following years Spain tried to restore its rule, a criollo rebellion was inevitable. Under the leadership of the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar, the commercial elites of the colonies took up arms against the Spanish authorities and declared their independence one by one. In. 1824 Bolívar defeated the Spaniards in Perú, and subsequently his general Antonio Jose de Sucre liberated Alto Perú.

Independence was proclaimed in La Plata (now Sucre) on 6 August 1825. In honour of its liberator, the young nation was given the name República de Bolívar, soon to be altered to República de Bolivia. La Plata became the capital, as it had been in the colonial period; Sucre became the first president.

Shrinking nation

From the outset the independent nation had to struggle with enormous political problems. Internal unrest alternated with quarrels over frontiers with neighbouring countries. Between 1835 and 1841 two wars were necessary to determine the frontier with Perú. The regional great powers, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, were determined that Bolivia should not become too powerful. In 1867, for example, Brazil succeeded in seizing a large section of the Bolivian Amazon region and a part of the eastern Llanos (Mato Grosso). Argentina had already occupied the Chaco Central. Subsequently Bolivia lost to Chile its access to the sea (the Province of Litoral) during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883). Argentina helped itself to another share of Bolivian territory by the acquisition of the Puna de Atacama. During the first decade of the 20th century the greater part of Bolivia's northern territories passed into other hands; Brazil acquired Acre in 1903 in exchange for free Bolivian passage to the sea via the Amazon, and in 1909 Bolivia recognised Perú's claim to Purus.

Finally the bitter Chaco War (1932-5) led to the loss of the Chaco Boreal to Paraguay. By the year 1935, just over one hundred years after the proud declaration of independence, Bolivian had lost more than half its original territory!

Caudillos and tin barons

Although the egalitarian ideas of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence had played a considerable part in Latin American decolonisation, such noble principles did not survive for long. This was especially the case in Bolivia, where the military power-brokers soon revealed themselves as defenders of the political and economic status quo. With the disappearance of the colonial authorities and export monopoly, the interests of the white criollo elite of estate-owners and mine owners were paramount.

Under the caudillos (military 'strongman' leaders) or, from 1884, the presidents of the Liberal and Conservative parties, there was little interest in the development of economic or social problems which might lead to a more just society. When the Bolivian elite was not engaged in conflicts with neighbouring countries, then internal power struggles consumed all its energies. In Bolivia the administrative and political chaos to which many ex-colonies in Latin America fell prey now became proverbial. Not for nothing does the country feature in the Guinness Book of Records with 188 coups d'état in 157 years (between 1825 and 1982).

After the War of the Pacific the political elite put an end to the existence of the ayllus, the communal Indian lands. By public sale or annexation by force many Indian lands were simply swallowed up into the huge ranches (latifundios) of the white squirearchy. The Indians, who had previously been subject to the mita, the system of compulsory labour, now simply became serfs, as their lives and labour were pressed into the service of the estate-owners. The gruelling conditions in the countryside and the oppression of the Indians by the white or mestizo landowners have been penetratingly described by the Bolivian author Alcides Arguedas in his novel Raza de bronce, written in 1919.

In the mining industry the emphasis shifted with the decline in silver production to the mining of tin (fuelled by the rise of the food-preserving industry). The Bolivian Simón Patiño and the foreign Aramayo and Hochschild families built up powerful mining empires and became extremely wealthy. In 1902 tin's export earnings exceeded those of silver for the first time.

The Chaco War

In the 1920s the US Standard Oil Company was drilling for oil in the Bolivian Chaco. The Bolivian government and the oil company had set their sights on the (Río) Pilcomayo to transport the oil to the coast. It also seemed likely that there were further reserves lying under the ground in other parts of the Chaco plain, an inaccessible and thorn-covered wilderness. The Bolivian frontier with Paraguay in that region had not, however, ever been precisely defined. From 1928 there were border clashes with Paraguayan army patrols and in 1932 the Chaco War broke out. The Paraguayans knew the terrain much better than the Bolivian soldiers, who for the most part were from the Andes and who were completely unused to the hot, sultry climate. In 1935 Bolivia had to cede practically the whole of the Chaco, leaving behind 55,000 dead on the battlefield, but it did keep the oil-fields. Moreover Paraguay – with Shell in the background – hardly won more than a symbolic victory. No oil has ever been found in the Paraguayan Chaco.

Political aftermath

The outcome of the Chaco War was a national trauma for Bolivia. Writers such as Raúl Botelho Gosálvez and Augusto Céspedes, in their books Coca and Sangre de mestizos (Blood of the Mestizos), bitterly attacked the consequences for the ordinary soldier. Social relations in Bolivia were writ large on the battlefield; Indian soldiers had to take orders from white or mestizo superiors who in the ensuing battle nearly always emerged unscathed. Once again, it was the poor, and particularly the Indian population, who paid the price for the elite's political ambitions. Not surprisingly, the Chaco War became a breeding-ground for the emergence of new, reform-minded political movements.

After demobilisation thousands of Indians refused to return to the countryside and back into serfdom. They settled in the towns where they played a large part in the political radicalisation of the population. Peasants and miners established federations and unions. The government saw itself forced under popular pressure to strengthen its hold over key sectors of the economy and nationalised the hated Standard Oil Company in 1937.

At this time young intellectuals were setting up the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR. Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) which claimed to stand for the emancipation of the poor masses. From the start, the MNR was not a heterogeneous movement, the political persuasions of its various factions ranging from the extreme left to the extreme right. It contained, for instance, a fascist movement – Hitler's Germany had, after all, helped Bolivia in the Chaco War. In 1944 Víctor Paz Estenssoro, a key party leader, was instrumental in taking the MNR into the radical government of young army officers led by Major Gualberto Villarroel. When in 1946 Villarroel was overthrown and assassinated, Paz Estenssoro fled to Argentina, where his friend General Perón was in power.

• Revolución Nacional

The social unrest continued unabated throughout the following years. In 1946 Augusto Cespedes published his political novel Metal del diablo (The Devil's Metal) in which he condemned the exploitation of the miners. Bolivia's tin baron Simón Patiño was the model for the main character in the book which had an enormous influence and paved the way for the nationalisation of the mines.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Bolivia by Paul van Lindert, Otto Verkoren. Copyright © 1994 Royal Tropical Institute/Novib and Paul van Lindert and Otto Verkoren. Excerpted by permission of Practical Action Publishing Ltd.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Latin America Bureau
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0906156912
• ISBN 13: 9780906156919
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 76