ABSTRACT
Before the National Revolution in 1952, Bolivia’s indigenous highland peoples in the main still spoke primarily Aymara or Quechua, the languages of an empire eradicated by the Spanish four centuries earlier. The Spanishspeaking minority described these highlanders as Indios. With the Revolution, this denigrating and stigma-ridden word largely disappeared. Overnight, the Indian, allegedly inherently inferior and by nature condemned to the bottom of Bolivia’s caste2 system, became the worthy, hard-working campesino, the rural resident or peasant. It is easier to change names than realities. But the change in names did indicate a paradigm shift in political ideology embodied in Bolivia’s new constitution established soon after the Revolution. In this new social order the campesino had formal legal and political status equal to that of the country’s Spanish-speaking minority. Hence, in theory at least, he could at will escape peasant status. Nevertheless, the campesino started out no closer to socio-economic parity with the country’s dominant minority than the Indian had been. During the ensuing half century there has been much progress toward equality, although the remaining gap is still large. The Aymara and Quechua quest for parity in Bolivia’s economic and social life is the main theme of this chapter. The case of Bolivia has become instructive on another dimension. In
December 2005, Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian3 was elected President of the Republic with an absolute majority of 54 percent of the total vote rather than the usual victory by plurality. The majority vote was due to the overwhelming support Morales received from voters who identified themselves as Quechua or Aymara. In generating an unprecedented indigenous majority, the radical agenda of Morales and his party also gained an unprecedented legitimacy. Andean nationalism had brought the Spanish conquest to an end.
Indeed, at his inauguration on 22 January, 2006, Morales described his presidency as the beginning of a new era and the end of five centuries of colonialism. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the tactics employed by the resurgent Aymaras and Quechuans to gain political power and whether their initial uses of that power are likely to be conducive to closing the status/ income gap of the highlanders with the non-indigenous population. The Bolivian case is of interest for several additional reasons. First, the
Bolivian history of Spanish conquest and ensuing imposition of Spanish feudal institutions on indigenous majorities was replicated in many places including Mexico, Guatemala, and the other Andean nations. Findings from the Bolivian saga may apply to other Western-hemisphere nations. Second, Bolivia’s highlander campesino socio-economic “minority” is also the rare case of an apparent SRELIM that is simultaneously a numerical majority. As spelled out in the chapter, this has important consequences. Third, in the Bolivian case traumatic victimization is that of conquest, in distinction to the other studies which involve either slavery (US and Cuban black citizens) or outcastes (India’s Scheduled Castes and Japan’s Burakumin). However, analysis of the Bolivian case forced the conclusion that Bolivia’s
campesinos were less “deculturized” by traumatic victimization than typical SRELIM. True, Bolivia’s Aymara and Quechua are the descendants of groups that suffered traumatic conquest, loss of autonomy, ensuing stigmatization, lowest rank, and enduring exploitation. But they conserved their language and much of their pre-Colombian religion. They retained their agricultural way of life and homeland. They also kept many other elements of their preConquest culture, including moral code and prestige system, as well as numerous customs and norms such as safety nets for the destitute. Moreover in Bolivia, to the present, they have survived as a numerical majority while suffering minority status.4 Altogether these factors indicate that they have not suffered the cultural annihilation that SRELIM groups often experience. They have not been enslaved and dispersed abroad, nor reduced to fragmentary survivors in segregated communities, dispossessed of their homeland, and speaking solely the language of their exploiters. Rather, as discussed in the chapter, during the National Revolution in 1953,
Bolivia’s highland Indians seized control of the estates (haciendas) held by settlers of European culture to emerge with their traditional identity and way of life intact. The campesinos have absorbed much European culture but their indigenous culture continues to be of surprising vitality. In Xavier Albó’s phrase, they were “oprimido pero no vencido” (oppressed but not conquered). He and other anthropologists consider that a new and distinct society may yet evolve in Bolivia as the campesino majority finds its way (Albó 1988: 22). All in all, these considerations force the conclusion that contrary to my initial belief, Bolivia’s Quechua and Aymara are a poor fit for the SRELIM construct. Nevertheless, their mobility history remains pertinent in a study that concentrates on the problem of bringing SRELIM to socio-economic parity with their dominant groups.
