Trials of Nation Making - Cambridge University Pressassets.cambridge.org/97805215/61716/frontmatter/9780521561716... · Trials of Nation Making ... Brooke Larson paints vivid portraits

Trials of Nation Making

This book offers the first interpretive synthesis of the history ofAndean peasants and the challenges of nation making in the fourrepublics of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia during the turbu-lent nineteenth century. Nowhere in Latin America were postcolo-nial transitions more vexed or violent than in the Andes, where com-munal indigenous roots grew deep and where the “Indian problem”seemed so daunting to liberalizing states.

Brooke Larson paints vivid portraits of Creole ruling elites,mestizo middle sectors, and native peasantries engaged in ongoingpolitical and moral battles over the rightful place of the Indian ma-jorities in these emerging, but still inchoate, nation-states. In thisstory, indigenous people emerge as crucial protagonists throughtheir prosaic struggles for land, community, and “ethnic” identity,as well as in the upheavals of war, rebellion, and repression in ruralsociety.

At the level of synthesis, this book raises broader issues aboutthe interplay of liberalism, racism, and ethnicity in the formationof exclusionary “republics without citizens” over the nineteenthcentury.

Brooke Larson is Professor of History and the former director of theLatin American and Caribbean Studies Center at Stony Brook Uni-versity. Her books include Cochabamba, 1550–1900: Colonialismand Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia (2nd ed., 1998), and theco-edited volume Ethnicity, Markets and Migration: At the Cross-roads of History and Anthropology (1995).

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Trials of Nation MakingLiberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910

Brooke Larson

Stony Brook University






University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521561716

© Brooke Larson 2004

Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written

permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004Reprinted 2005, 2007, 2008

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataLarson, Brooke.

Trials of nation making : liberalism, race and ethnicity in the Andes,1810–1910 / Brooke Larson.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0-521-56171-x – isbn 0-521-56730-0 (pbk.)1. Indians of South America – Andes region – Government relations.

2. Andes region – Politics and government – 19th century.3. Andes region – Race relations. I. Title.

f2230.1.g68l37 2003980´.004´98–dc 2003041956

isbn 978-0-521-56171-6 Hardbackisbn 978-0-521-56730-5 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,

and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.






To my Stony Brook graduate students,for wonderful years of collegial friendship,

inspiration, and dialogue.

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Contents

List of Illustrations page ixAcknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1 Andean Landscapes, Real and Imagined 202 Colombia: Assimilation or Marginalization of the

Indians? 713 Ecuador: Modernizing Indian Servitude as the Road

to Progress 1034 Peru: War, National Sovereignty, and the Indian

Question 1415 Bolivia: Dangerous Pacts, Insurgent Indians 202

Conclusion: Postcolonial Republics and the Burdenof Race 246

Bibliographic Essay 255Index 291

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Illustrations

maps

1. The North Andes pagexiv2. The Central and South Andes xv3. Topography of the Andean Highlands 234. Quechua and Other Ethnic Areas 31

figures

1. The Burden of Race, ca. 1960 672. Cargueros of the Quindio Pass in the Province of

Popayan, ca. 1827 743. Campsite of the Comision Corografica in the Province

of Soto, ca. 1850 784. Harvesters of Aniseed: Mestizo and Indian “Types,”

Province of Ocana, ca. 1850 795. Obraje Workers, Province of Imbabura, ca. 1890 1096. A Jesuit Priest with His Flock of Indian Students,

Pinchincha Province, ca. 1890 1167. Otavalan Women 136

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x Illustrations

8. An Indian Water Carrier in the Market of Cajamarca,in Northern Peru, ca. 1880 168

9. A Married and Rich Market Vendor of Puno, ca. 1880 17010. A Peruvian Foot Soldier, His Rabona, and a

Cavalryman on the Eve of the War of the Pacific 18111. Portrait of a Quechua Man in Cuzco, ca. 1909 20012. Quechua-Speaking Indians and Mestizos of the

Southern Province of Chuquisaca and Environs,ca. 1833 209

13. General Willka Condori and His Troops in Arque,1899 232

14. The High Ministers of Zarate Willka’s Army andGovernment, 1899 235

15. Sample Cartes de Visite Featuring Aymara “IndianTypes,” 1910 240






Acknowledgments

As with any interpretive synthesis, this book builds largely on thefine-grained archival work of many scholars. Footnotes are kept toa minimum, although the extended Bibliographic Essay offers anoverview of the historical and anthropological literature that hasshaped, or is currently shaping, our understanding of indigenous so-cieties under modernizing Andean republics during the nineteenthcentury. However, this book is not intended as an historical surveyin the conventional sense. In keeping with the original aims of theCambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, it offersa “synthesis of current knowledge and approaches that is accessi-ble to a wide range of scholars [and students], as well as to expertsin the field.” Necessarily this book is somewhat idiosyncratic – re-flecting my own scholarly background, concerns, and lapses, aswell as the richly suggestive but still extremely fragmented “stateof the field.” Even if set against the larger field of Latin AmericanStudies, the subfield of Andean Studies remains relatively neglected,especially for the nineteenth century. But its rich interdisciplinarytradition in history and anthropology (and more recently in literarystudies) has immeasurably enriched my own work in Andean Stud-ies over many years. My approach in this book tends to privilege

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xii Acknowledgments

two sorts of scholarly literature: a classic historical and anthro-pological literature on Andean peasant history, political economy,and state formation (produced mainly in the 1970s and 1980s) andthe recent turn toward cultural forms of power, representation, andcontestation that, in turn, influence “new political histories from be-low” currently flourishing among historians of postcolonial LatinAmerica. Where possible, this study also weaves nineteenth-centurysources and images into the book’s four case studies of Indians andnation making in the Andes.

My greatest debt lies with those Andean scholars whose schol-arly work and political commitment have continued to inspire mesince I first encountered Andean Studies in the early 1970s. It is theirongoing research, as well as my own, that forms the basis of thisinterpretive synthesis. Although the focus of my own research hasshifted across time, my enduring fascination with Andean historyand contemporary peasant politics has kept me anchored to thisspectacular region long after I might ordinarily have gotten restlessand moved on. My commitment to Andean Studies also springsfrom the enduring friendships and collegial support that have sus-tained me in this and other research projects. I continue to drawdeep inspiration from my Bolivian colleagues, for whom the recov-ery of the past continues to guide their ongoing struggles for socialjustice in the present. And what would I do without the wonder-ful companionship of other Andean scholars in the United Statesand Europe who share these idiosyncratic inquiries and passions?(You know who you are!) I am also grateful to my original ed-itors of the South American volumes of the Cambridge Historyof the Native Peoples of the Americas, Frank Salomon and StuartSchwartz, for giving me an opportunity to move in new intellec-tual directions, as well as for undertaking the monumental projectin the first place. I also thank Stuart Schwartz, in particular, forhis enthusiastic support of the idea of expanding the original essayinto a book. That process was guided by Cambridge Social Science






Acknowledgments xiii

editor, Frank Smith, and by the expert editorial work of CamillaKnapp and Sara Black. I also appreciate Brenda Elsey’s help withthe book’s index. I thank them all.

Closer to home are the wonderful friends, colleagues, and grad-uate students with whom I have been so privileged to work in theHistory Department at Stony Brook over the past many years. Therehave been so many graduate students with whom I have worked in-side and outside the classroom that I dare not try to name them all.But may they know how much they have nurtured and inspired meby their own research projects, critical commentary, honest ques-tioning, and warm collegiality over many years. This study is thericher for my having studied Latin American history and anthro-pology with them.

Finally, as most scholars realize, it takes a village not only to raisea child but also to write a book. And no acknowledgment wouldbe complete without loving recognition of the many friends, bothnear and far, who inhabit my everyday life and help yank me out ofthe cloistered isolation of scholarly writing. Above all, I am gratefulto my extended and immediate family – to my loving parents andstep-parents; my dear sisters, Kim and Jodie, and brothers-in-law,Mike and Johnny; my wonderful sons, Josh and Devon; and mylife’s companion, Carter Bancroft. They continue to mean the worldto me.






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Acknowledgments xv

Map 2. The Central and South Andes. Peru and Bolivia after Indepedence.






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Trials of Nation Making

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Trials of Nation Making - Cambridge University Pressassets.cambridge.org/97805215/61716/frontmatter/9780521561716... · Trials of Nation Making ... Brooke Larson paints vivid portraits