Revolution for Our Rights

Gotkowitz Laura Gotkowitz

Description

A Revolution for Our Rights is a critical reassessment of the causes and significance of the Bolivian Revolution of 1952. Historians have tended to view the revolution as the result of class-based movements that accompanied the rise of peasant leagues, mineworker unions, and reformist political projects in the 1930s. Laura Gotkowitz argues that the revolution had deeper roots in the indigenous struggles for land and justice that swept through Bolivia during the first half of the twentieth century. Challenging conventional wisdom, she demonstrates that rural indigenous activists fundamentally reshaped the military populist projects of the 1930s and 1940s. In so doing, she chronicles a hidden rural revolution-before the revolution of 1952-that fused appeals for equality with demands for a radical reconfiguration of political power, landholding, and rights.Gotkowitz combines an emphasis on national political debates and congresses with a sharply focused analysis of Indian communities and large estates in the department of Cochabamba. The fragmented nature of Cochabamba's Indian communities and the pioneering significance of its peasant unions make it a propitious vantage point for exploring contests over competing visions of the nation, justice, and rights. Scrutinizing state authorities' efforts to impose the law in what was considered a lawless countryside, Gotkowitz shows how, time and again, indigenous activists shrewdly exploited the ambiguous status of the state's pro-Indian laws to press their demands for land and justice. Bolivian indigenous and social movements have captured worldwide attention during the past several years. By describing indigenous mobilization in the decades preceding the revolution of 1952, A Revolution for Our Rights illuminates a crucial chapter in the long history behind present-day struggles in Bolivia and contributes to an understanding of indigenous politics in modern Latin America more broadly.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Revolutions
• América del Sur
• Cultural studies
• Indigenous peoples
• South America
• Revolution
• History of the Americas
• Bolivia

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822390121
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

A REVOLUTION FOR OUR RIGHTS Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880–1952

Laura Gotkowitz

A Revolution for Our Rights

A REVOLUTION FOR OUR RIGHTS

Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880–1952

Laura Gotkowitz

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s Durham & London 2007

∫2007 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Minion Pro by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

TheauthorthankstheInstitutefortheStudyoftheAmericas,Universityof London,forpermissiontoreprintearlierversionsofportionsofchapters7and 8andtheconclusion,whichappearedinLauraGotkowitz,‘‘Revisitingthe RuralRootsoftheRevolution,’’in Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative PerspectivereliybMde.,anedlinGr.SeeognimoDraliPd (London:InstituteofLatinAmericanStudies,UniversityofLondon;and Cambridge,Mass.:DavidRockefellerCenterforLatinAmericanStudies, HarvardUniversity,2003).Earlierversionsofchapters7and8alsoappeared in‘‘‘UndertheDominionoftheIndian’:RuralMobilization,theLaw,and RevolutionaryNationalisminBoliviainthe1940s,’’inNilsJacobsenand CristóbalAljovíndeLosada,eds.,Political Cultures in the Andes, 1750–1950 (Durham:DukeUniversityPress,2005).

To the beautiful spirit of my sister Frances

In memory of my father, Joe

For my mother, Helen

Illustrations ix Acknowledgments

Introduction

1

xi

c h a p t e r o n e The Peculiar Paths of the Liberal Project 17

c h a p t e r t w o Indigenista Statecraft and the Rise of the Caciques Apoderados 43

CONTENTS

c h a p t e r t h r e e ‘‘In Our Provinces There Is No Justice’’: Caciques Apoderados and the Crisis of the Liberal Project 69

c h a p t e r f o u r The Problem of National Unity: From the Chaco War to the 1938 Constitutional Convention 101

c h a p t e r f i v e The Unruly Countryside: Defending Land, Labor Rights, and Autonomy 131

viii C O N T E N T S a

c h a p t e r s i x The Unwilling City: Villarroel Populism and the Politics of Mestizaje 164

c h a p t e r s e v e n ‘‘The Disgrace of the Pongo and the Mitani’’: The 1945 Indigenous Congress and a Law against Servitude 192

c h a p t e r e i g h t ‘‘Under the Dominion of the Indian’’: The 1947 Cycle of Unrest233

Conclusion and Epilogue: Rethinking the Rural Roots of the 1952Revolution 268

Notes 291 Bibliography Index 385

359

ILLUSTRATIONS

m a p s 1 Political map of present-day Bolivia 8 2 Topographic map of Cochabamba 70 3 Map of rural unrest in Cochabamba, 1939–47 133 4 Map of rural unrest in La Paz, 1946–47 248

f ig u r e s 1 Indigenous troops led by Feliciano Condori Willka 37 2 Sagárnaga Street, in the Indian quarter of La Paz 47 3 Caciques apoderados 52 4 Cargadores (haulers) in La Paz 80 5 A ‘‘chola’’ cook in La Paz 109 6 President Germán Busch 129 7 Hacienda colonos with landlord and administrator 136 8 Colono family dwelling, La Paz highlands 137 9 Corn harvest, Cochabamba 139 10 Corn grinding, Cochabamba 140 11 President Gualberto Villarroel and his cabinet 167 12 Founding members of the MNR 168–69 13 A market in the city of Cochabamba 183 14 President Villarroel and members of the Bolivian Indigenous Committee 198