Professional Documents
Culture Documents
* Andean Oral History Workshop (La Paz, Bolivia). Translation by Charles Roberts.
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Bolivia. The colonial cycle, which began in 1532, left a legacy of ethnic
domination which continues to the present. The liberal cycle began with
the reforms of the late nineteenth century, which set forth the notion
of citizens as 'free and equal individuals' without communal links or
solidarity. It was this concept of citizenship which, at least in theory, was
to be the basis upon which the institutions of liberal representative
democracy were to be built. Finally, the most recent cycle began with the
1952 nationalist revolution. I call this the populist cycle, in view of the
large-scale incorporation of the hitherto excluded masses of workers and
indigenous peasants into the political arena, through universal suffrage
and parastatal unionism.
The article focuses on northern Potos, one of the most traditional areas
of Bolivia. In contrast to other regions, where the nineteenth century
liberal reforms promoted the expansion of latifundia and the forced
transformation of the ayllu communards into hacienda colonos, northern
Potos has represented a bastion of ethnic resistance that only recently
began to yield to the impositions of the dominant society. The 1952
nationalist revolution and subsequent agrarian reform generated an
unprecedented organisational, ideological, and identity crisis. Paradoxically, in the 1980s progressive and leftist parties and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) have continued the largely unfinished task of
dismantling and marginalising the forms of organisation and representation particular to the ayllu. The implications of these processes for the
future of rural democracy is one of the central concerns of this analysis.
The article is divided into four sections. The first describes the complex
internal structure and functioning of the ayllus. The rules of collective life
and political representation particular to the ayllus constitute a realm of
democratic practice that has been threatened constantly, be it by liberal
reformers, nationalist revolutionaries, or leftist parties, unions, and
NGOs. The second section analyses the liberal and populist reform
periods. The argument here is that they shared a common liberal understanding of the individual as the basis of economic development and
political democracy; in attempting to displace and undermine indigenous
forms of social and political organisation, they shared a common colonial
character as well. The third section examines the disjunction between
union structures and the ayllus in northern Potos. Even as an indigenous
union movement successfully combined union and ayllu forms of authority
and representation elsewhere in Bolivia, northern Potos unions continued to reproduce mestizo/creole domination over the ayllus. Finally,
the fourth section analyses the impact of the clientelist interaction
between the ayllus and the progressive parties and NGOs on the internal
functioning of the ayllus, as well as the forms of resistance that have
developed in response to these threats. The article concludes with a
discussion of the weaknesses of a democratic system built around the
liberal concept of citizenship, particularly its structural inability to
recognise the political practices of Bolivia's indigenous majority.
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The ayllu is the basic cell of Andean social organisation, dating back to
pre-hispanic times. In northern Potos, the ayllus have retained many of
their pre-hispanic features, including an internal organisation based
on dual and vertically-organised segments, communal distribution of
resources, and a 'vertical' land tenure system which includes the use of
non-contiguous puna (highland) and valley lands [Murra, 1975].
The internal organisation of the ayllu is like a set of Chinese boxes.
Each territorial and kinship unit is part of a larger ethnic unit, within
a framework that culminates in a large dual organisation whose two
moieties relate to one another as complementary opposites: abovebelow, masculine-feminine, older-younger, etc. In northern Potos, there
are generally three or four levels of segmentation, and therefore the same
number of levels of ethnic authority. Adopting the denominations proposed by Platt [1978:1083], the smallest residential and kinship unit is the
ayllu mnimo, or minimal ayllu; locally it is known as a cabildo or jatun
rancho. It constitutes an independent hamlet, which may have one or
more small hamlets subordinated to it (juch'uy ranchos), subject to the
authority of the Alcalde or the Jilanqu, depending on whether the ayllu
has the intermediate level of ayllu menor, or minor ayllu (see below). The
internal hierarchy between principal ranchos and subordinated ones is
determined by the existence of a system of mantas (communal lands
subject to coordinated cycles of rotation) and shared ritual spaces [Harris,
1982:5; Godoy, 1983: Ch.2]. The next level up is the ayllu menor or minor
ayllu, which is not apparent at first glance. Its territory is discontinuous, in
both the puna and the valley, and it is subject to the authority of the Jilanqu
or Jilaqta. This level has disappeared in some ayllus, in which case the
Jilanqu would be the authority of the cabildo. Then comes the ayllu
mayor, or major ayllu, which has a continuous territorial unit in the puna,
and a discontinuous one in the valley (hence the validity of the 'archipelago' image proposed by Murra, 1975), subject to the authority of the
Segunda Mayor. In the province of Bustillos there are eight major ayllus;
this is the highest level there, due to fragmentation of the area since
colonial times. In contrast, Chayanta province has a higher level, the ayllu
mximo, or maximal ayllu (the Macha ayllu, studied by Platt, is an
example), which is organised internally in two opposing and complementary moieties, which cut vertically across all levels of ayllu. The
authority for this level of the ayllu is vested in two Kurakas, corresponding to the two moieties, and know as Alasaya-Msaya, PatasayaManqhasaya, or by other local names.
One of the most important functions of the ethnic authorities is to
ensure equitable distribution of productive resources among the families
at each level of the ayllu. Depending on their placement in the hierarchical
structure just described, the authorities may settle disputes between
major and minor ayllus over access to distant valley lands; regulate the
cycle of rotation and distribution of puna communal land parcels used by
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The liberal reforms of the late nineteenth century and the populist reforms
of the post-1952 nationalist revolution shared a liberal understanding of
the role of the individual in economic and political modernisation.
Because they both imposed an alien, creole/state rationale on the ayllus,
they also recreated and reinforced colonial forms of domination over the
indigenous majority. This section provides an overview of the liberal and
populist projects with reference to the ayllus, focusing on their common
rejection of the legitimacy of indigenous identities and practices.
The liberal reforms of 18751900 were preceded by a lengthy debate
among the republican elite over the fate of the 'backward' territories
possessed by the ayllus since pre-Hispanic times. Opposing interests were
at stake in this debate. On the one hand, the dominant crele elite wanted
to expand their haciendas into traditional areas, which would require the
destruction of the ayllus which controlled most of the arable land. On
the other hand, the state relied on the indigenous tribute paid by the
communities for some 50 per cent of tax revenues until the mid-nineteenth
century. When a recovery in the mining sector generated new sources of
revenues in the 1870s, the state was finally able to attempt reforms aimed
at abolishing communal forms of land ownership, legitimating its actions
through a liberal rhetoric which equated the abolition of the tribute with
the achievement of equal citizenship by the Indian population. The liberal
project was carried out through the 1874 Law of Expropriation, which
decreed the abolition of the ayllu, the parcelling of all communal lands,
the distribution of private property titles among community members,
and a tax reform that theoretically would replace the old colonial caste
tribute with a modern tax on landownership for all citizens, whether
Indian or crele [Rivera Cusicanqui, 1978: 31-2; Mitre, 1981: 43-5;
Longer, 1988: 63-8].
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The military-peasant pact of 1966-77 increased the internal contradictions of the parastatal trade union structure inherited from the MNR,
leading to the formation of several rural opposition movements in the
1970s. The most important of these was the katarista trade union movement of the Aymara altiplano. The kataristas developed a programme
based on economic grievances particular to the peasantry as a class, the
defence of ethnic identities, and opposition to the military-peasant pact.
In linking class and ethnic identities, they brought together vast sectors of
the country's indigenous peasantry, and challenged the political and
ideological bases of the post-1952 state. This process culminated in
1979 with the founding of the Trade Union Confederation of Bolivian
Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), organised around the new Aymara trade
unionism.10 Having developed a trade union programme, the kataristas
divided into political currents, based on different views on the relationship between ethnicity and class in the peasant-indigenous struggle.
The most representative of these currents was the Tupaq Katari Revolutionary Movement (MRTK), which led the CSUTCB from 1979 to 1988
[Rivera Cusicanqui, 1984,1985].
The kataristas opposed state intervention in rural unions and clientelism
more generally, the latter identified as 'political serfdom'. However, they
fully accepted the trade union structure, once freed of state tutelage. The
kataristas believed that unions could be authentic organs of peasant
power, because they assumed that union structures could be articulated
with the organisational traditions of the ayllus.11 In effect, this was the case
in the altiplano. Locally, the Aymara unions of the altiplano creatively
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combined the direct democracy particular to the ayllus with the representative democracy of the union, thus forming powerful federations
capable of acting in unity while respecting a certain organisational and
cultural diversity.
In northern Potos, in contrast, historical barriers impeded the process
of union dmocratisation that began elsewhere with the katarista movement. By the late 1970s, when the katarista movement began to have an
impact in northern Potos, there already existed considerable opposition
to state intervention in rural unions and to the military-peasant pact more
generally.12 Together with other factors, including a shared experience of
repression under the Banzer dictatorship, this opposition led to a cautious
rapprochement between miners and peasants, on the basis of a shared
anti-military outlook. In this context, a new leadership headed by former
miner Florencio Gabriel took the reins of the regional union movement,
encouraging a total break with the military-peasant pact and closer
relations between the peasant and miners' movements. The new themes
of unity and cultural revindication were expressed in the choice of a new
name at the 1979 Chayanta congress, the Union Federation of Peasant
Workers of Northern Potos (FSUTCNP), and in the choice of the
organisation's official logo, which included the image of Toms Katari,
the eighteenth-century Kuraka rebel.
Nevertheless, there was considerable continuity between the new
leadership and past patterns of manipulation by the MNR and military
governments.13 The disarticulation between the union movement and the
ayllus was somewhat obscured in the brief democratic period of 197880, given the military threat to the democratic process and the initially
bewildering effect of the coalition between peasants and miners after
many decades of mutual isolation. The contradictory nature of the unions
became much more evident after 1982, when popular protest brought the
leftist Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP) coalition to power after two
years of bloody and unpopular military dictatorship. The UDP initiated
a convulsive period of government marked by internal differences among
its three member parties: the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement of the
Left (MNRI), the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB), and the Movement
of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).
The 1983 Second Congress of the FSUTCNP, held in Chayanta in
February 1983, was particularly revealing in terms of the relationships
between the ayllus, the unions, and the parties.14 The UDP viewed such
trade union congresses as important vehicles for consolidating its base of
support; its member parties all tried to control the autonomous tendencies
within the CSUTCB and the MRTK,15 thus continuing the clientelist
political style typical of the crele political class.16 The left's failure to
develop alternative forms of political recruitment and socialisation was
particularly evident in northern Potos: its main interest was to control the
powerful mine workers union, and, at a fundamental level, the left shared
the mestizo/creole elite's contemptuous refusal to recognise the cultural
and organisational practices of the ayllus.
The federation's congress was thus the scene of an open confrontation
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This section explores how unions, NGOs, and political parties interact in a
clientelist system which actively undermines Bolivia's 'other democracy'
in the name of progressive politics.
The ideology of trade unionism and development promotion is based
on a radical lack of familiarity with the complex internal structure of the
ayllu and its workings. Development institutions distinguish only two
levels: the ayllu (corresponding to the maximal ayllu, or the major ayllu,
in Plait's classification), and the 'community' (corresponding to the
principal or subordinate hamlet). To the extent that the intermediate
levels (minor ayllus) are not recognised, and the cabildos are confused
with their subordinate ranchos, their promotion work profoundly distorts
the organisation of land tenure at the various levels, as it fails to recognise
the interlocking land distribution among cabildos and ayllus, both in
the communal highland plots and in the 'islands' shared by various
ayllus in the distant valleys of other provinces.20 In promoting greater
commercialisation of communal production, the NGOs fail to take into
account the ayllus1 long historic experience of confrontation with the
market, as well as the forms in which products and labour circulate in the
'ethnic economy'.21
The division of the ayllu population into different tributary categories
is another source of misunderstanding. At first glance, this division
appears to express profound inequality, since it is associated with very
clear differences in access to land and other resources. However, as
demonstrated by several ethnographic studies, the internal stratification
determined by the tributary categories is a flexible system of adapting
family life cycles to the availability of resources [Platt, 1982:55-7; Harris,
1982: 6\. Changes in tributary status, whether through negotiations with
the ethnic authorities over vacant lands, or through inter-family agreements or marriage strategies, are quite common. In this way an originario
may become an agregado, or vice versa, or a kantu runa may accede to a
higher tributary status, so long as the number of available family members
is sufficient for cultivating the total lands allocated, and for fulfilling the
duties that accompany the new tributary status. These duties not only
imply the payment of tribute, the ultimate symbolic manifestation of a
network of internal social relations, but also carrying out duties such as
serving in positions of authority, sponsoring festivals, etc. In addition, the
ayllus have strong moral sanctions against individual accumulation. For
example, families with more land have an obligation to lend it to families
without enough land [Harris, 1982: 6]. Thus the apparent stratification
implicit in the tributary categories is but a mechanism for balancing the
rights and duties of each family vis--vis the collectivity.
The unionists and development workers consider payment of tribute to
the state to be a barbaric form of submission incompatible with the
communards' dignity as citizens and to their revolutionary 'duty'. The
ethnic authority system, on the whole, is seen as nothing but an appendix
of the state at the local level, serving to 'domesticate' the ayllus and
guarantee their subordination to the government.22 The enormous importance attributed to the fulfillment of a cycle linked to a ritual calendar, and
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The ayllus view the NGOs as sources of resources parallel to the state to
which partial concessions must be made, such as accepting instructions to
vote for one or another candidate in union, municipal, or national
elections. There is a great deal of evidence confirming the politically
contingent nature of NGO services and resources. The 'electoral geography' of the 1985 national elections and the 1987 municipal elections
points to the decisive influence of NGOs on the left parties' electoral
results. Far from the sovereign exercise of individual free will, therefore, voting is the product of clientelist transactions in which access to
resources, whether of the state or the NGOs, depends on pacts entered
into with the communities, and in which the communities vote collectively
in the expectation of obtaining the best possible negotiating terms with the
creole-mestizo sectors that hold political power.
NGO-promoted unions, in so far as they involved only one sector of the
families in each minimal ayllu and only some minimal ayllus in each major
ayllu, have become a parallel and competitive organisational form that
erodes the ethnic authorities' regulatory function in the areas of resource
distribution and dispute settlement. Tensions have grown between the
older and younger generations: the latter have seen the NGOs as a way to
escape collective social controls and to seek individual subsistence alternatives, such as migration, which have a direct, negative impact on
communities' productive potential.
The distribution of food assistance through the unions promotes corruption, distrust, and divisiveness, because the communards of northern
Potos have no way to hold the externally-imposed union leadership
accountable. The distribution system does not reach all families, but
instead is limited to those registered in the assistance programme and
affiliated with the unions. Since several institutions operate simultaneously in the region, and unionisation is not the precondition for
providing 'assistance' in all cases, an intense internal factionalism has
arisen within the ayllus among ranchos and among groups of families
affiliated with one or another organisation, thus leading to a profound
crisis whose implications for the very survival of the communal organisations are difficult to predict.
In addition to this organisational crisis, an ideological crisis has shaken
collective mental structures to the point of provoking a loss of selfconfidence and self-respect, above all in the younger generation. Because
of the activities of the NGOs and urban mestizo elites, the communards
have internalised a denigrating view of their own culture and ancestral
customs. Thus the young unionists have acted as the spearhead of the
crele nation-state project, as unconscious bearers of a dominant culture
based on negating the Andean cultural 'otherness* to the point where even
the human condition of the ayllu people is negated. Because of their
proximity to nature, their 'idolatrous' religious practices, and a series of
physical and cultural traits, the indigenous people are pressured to
abandon their moral and psycho-social frames of reference in order to
achieve a minimum of respect and treatment as 'equals'.
All these factors weakened the communal systems of land tenure, crop
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defensive mobilisation of the ayllus against the NGOs took the apocalyptic form of mythical revival. The circumstances that sparked this
movement have passed, and the agitation has subsided. Nonetheless, the
latent problem of incompatibility between the NGO and union model, on
the one hand, and the psychic and organisational universe of the ayllus, on
the other, persists. The cultural gap that has existed for centuries does not
appear to have found a harmonious and viable solution in this new phase
of modernisation. On the contrary, each modernising step appears to
generate defence mechanisms in the communards, at the deepest substratum of the collective memory, where the oldest wounds still bleed,
where the memory of the invader who altered the invaded society is still
painful. This memory is set off by the continued destructuring work of the
invaders' modem heirs.
CONCLUSION: THE COLONIAL NATURE OF THE IDEA OF CITIZENSHIP
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NOTES
1. We think of the one million victims of the Mexican revolution, the approximately
250,000 killed during la Violencia in Colombia, and the untold massacres and popular
revolts of contemporary Bolivian history, to cite only a few examples.
2. Platt proposes the idea of a 'reciprocity pact' between ayllus and the state, to interpret
the communards' defence of the old tributary regime and their opposition to the Law of
Expropriation [1982: 100]. We radically disagree with that interpretation, because it
suggests a continuity between the Inca state and the colonial state, failing to recognise
the profoundly traumatic and destructuring impact of the European invasion, and
minimising the impact of colonialism. The notion of an 'understood truce', on the other
hand, is more in line with the communard perception of an as yet inconclusive battle
between colonised and colonisers, with partial and temporary agreements - among
them the payment of tributes - as a means of defending a status quo of territorial
occupation by part of Andean society [Rivera and THOA team, 1989: 15; Lehm, nd.].
3. According to a rural survey done in 1978, the results of which were presented and
analysed by Tristan Platt, only 25 per cent of the families surveyed in 18 cantones of
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
northern Potos had direct access to puna and valley lands, but many other families had
access to the valley's products through ties of kinship, reciprocity, barter, and other
means [1986: 49-76].
This movement, which took place between 1957 and 1959, is studied in detail by Harris
and Alb [1986: 73-90].
Runa and jaqi are the terms for 'people' in Qhichwa and Aymara, respectively.
This was particularly evident from 1962 to 1964, when, in the context of a traditional
ritual fight or tinku (Qhichwa for 'encounter' or 'meeting'), violent confrontations
between two ayllus worsened. With the support of pseudo-peasant leaders, the
government used the tinku as a pretext for a military intervention aimed at tightening
the circle around the 'communist' mines in the region. This situation endured until the
late 1970s [Harris and Alb. 1986: 90-99].
It is essential to bear in mind that apparently universal and neutral concepts such as 'free
will' and 'citizenship' are deeply tied to a specific cultural historical configuration of
ideas and beliefs, in this case liberalism, and are therefore neither universal nor neutral.
Oscar Cspedes, a resident of Toracar and former policeman of the mining locale
of Unca, was 'elected' executive secretary of the National Federation of Peasant
Workers, and kept that post throughout the Banzer period [Harris and Albo, 1986: 959].
This Weberian conceptualisation of the Bolivian state system was suggested to me in a
recent work by Malloy and Gamarra which describes the form of domination established during the Banzer government as 'neopatrimonialist' [1988: Ch. 3]. In addition
to removing the prefix, I believe that the patrimonialist nature of the state, in its castelike or estamental form [Weber, 1964: 11-773], is precisely one of the manifestations of
colonial continuity in the contemporary political system, and that it has been reinforced
by the 1952 revolution.
The CSUTCB's mobilising capacity was revealed in its successful opposition to a 1979
coup attempt, which was followed by a mass mobilisation seeking more favourable crop
prices. The road blocks of November-December 1979 were one of the most impressive
mobilisations in recent history. Tens of thousands of indigenous peasants mobilised
nationwide, cutting off supply channels to the cities and establishing an iron 'fence'
around the urban areas. No doubt the logic of siege was also present in this mobilisation, both in the tactics of the indigenous peasantry and in the collective perception of
the urban creole sectors, who viewed it as a revived version of 'racist' practices (that is,
aimed at eliminating the ' whites' from the scene) of indigenous leaders of the past, from
Tupak Katari in the eighteenth century to Zrate Willka in 1899, including the rural
militia of the 1950s [Rivera Cusicanqui, 1984: 157-60; Hurtado, 1986: 159-86; Alb,
1987: 379].
This explains the kataristas' emphasis on the liberation of colonially oppressed nations,
based on multiple forms of indigenous self-rule operating in the countryside, which
were to be 'combined' without dissolving the unity of the state, but radically transforming its centralist and colonial character [CSUTCB, 1983].
The ayllus' continued rejection of the liberal tax reforms attempted since the early
1960s revealed clear limits to trade union manipulation: the ayllus were willing to make
certain concessions to the new forms of social and political control in the countryside as
long as these did not imply a radical change in their forms of collective landholding,
which were guaranteed by the continuation of the symbolic payment of the ancient
tribute. Today this yearly tribute is equivalent to the value of approximately 12.5
pounds (half an arroba) of potatoes, at urban prices.
Florencio Gabriel was a former miner of rural origins who was politicised in the
increasingly radicalised miners' movement. As was the case with the leadership of the
1957-59 valley mobilisations, Gabriel's ties with the mines led him to adopt radical
language and methods of struggle. He did not, however, attempt to articulate the union
structure with the forms of authority and representation particular to the ayllus.
Disdain for the ethnic authorities, however, did not prevent Gabriel from succeeding in
mobilising the population. His personal charisma and ability to communicate with the
communards sparked massive indigenous participation, together with the miners, in
the mobilisations of 1979 and 1980.
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14. The base of data for analysing this congress is found in various tapes in the author's
personal files, as well as her participatory observations throughout the event The tapes
have been translated by the author in collaboration with Filomena Nina and Franklin
Maquera of the Andean Oral History Workshop.
15. In the 1978 elections the MRTK supported the UDP, but was treated in a discriminatory and offensive manner in the negotiations to determine parliamentary slates. Since
then tensions have heightened, especially with the MIR [Rivera Cusicanqui, 1984:151
2; Hurtado, 1986:125-30].
16. The governing UDP parties controlled all routes of access to these structures of
traditional clientelist mediation, through the lower-ranking political authorities, the
local administrative posts, and even the miners' unions and rural teachers. Even the
MIR, which at that time was splitting from the UDP, had its own clientelist networks in
the countryside, through non-govemmental organisations operating throughout the
country. In the town of Ocuri (province of Chayanta) the MIR directed a powerful
institution, the Toms Katari Polytechnical Institute (IPTK), which since 1976 had
been offering educational and health services to the region's rural residents, with the
clear intent of recruiting more rural militants.
17. The electoral outcome of the Congress was also defined beforehand: two union
candidates had been proposed, and the distribution of provincial representatives was
determined by the desired electoral outcome. Thus, of the 490 delegates to the
Congress, 204 represented the province of Bustillos, site of the region's main mining
centres and a stronghold of the UDP cantonal and provincial authorities. These
delegates would invariably vote for the MNRI candidate as a counterweight to the
delegates from Chayanta province, who had been massively instructed by the MIR to
attempt to impose their candidate. In this context, the MRTK intervened as part of the
stronger electoral 'machine' and, drawing support from the MNRI and the PCB,
committed itself to supporting the candidate backed by these parties, in exchange for
having one of its militants receive the second-ranking union post.
18. When a delegate from the grassroots raised the need for bilingual education in their
native language in the school system, he was harshly criticised. A former deputy prefect
of Chayanta, who was a member of the presidium, responded: 'For how much longer
will you refuse to become civilised? How long will you continue to dress in ojotas and
lluch'us, continuing with your customs, like animals? You must join civilisation, and
that is why Spanish must be taught in the schools.'
An ojota is a leather sandal that is part of the traditional peasant attire in the Andean
zone; a lluch'u is a multicolor woven cap, the design of which is distinct in each ayUu in
northern Potos.
19. During the serious drought that affected vast stretches of Bolivia in the 1982-83
agricultural season, the impact of development organisations such as IPTK of Ocuri,
Po XII of Siglo XX, and Accin Cultural Loyola (ACLO) of Potos and Chuquiasca
grew enormously. A partial list of the institutions that operate in the province of
Bustillos alone indicates that in addition to Po XII and the IPTK, beginning with the
1983 drought the following projects began to work in the region: European Economic
Community, Ayni Ruway, USAID, CARITAS, Fundacin contra el Hambre, World
Vision, and Plan de Padrinos, in addition to the aid programmes managed by various
evangelical churches. Of all of them, the IPTK and Po XII are unquestionably the most
important, both because of the amount of funds they administer and the spatial and
demographic coverage of their activities. They are also the mainstays of the union
organisational model in the region.
From May to October 1986, the Andean Oral History Workshop evaluated the
Peasant Agricultural Recovery Programme (PRACA), which was being carried out by
the religious institution Po XII, based in the mining town of Siglo XX. The data for this
section are from that study, to be published under the title Ayllus y proyectos de
desarrollo en el norte de Potos [Rivera and THOA, nd.].
20. In addition, the jurisdiction of the trade union leaders does not cover the families at
other ecological levels, since they belong to other provinces, as well as to a level of trade
union organisation autonomous and distinct from that of the highlands.
21. Harris [1982:15] has described the ethnic economy as a complex of activities based 'on
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kinship and on the cultural expressions common to the entire ethnic group'.
22. In the 1987 Departmental Federation of Potos Peasant Workers, the union congress
adopted this view of the ethnic authorities as part of the organisational platform: 'The
political authorities such as corregidores, curacas, and alcaldes, shall be directed by the
union people and elected democratically by the union organisations. The authorities
should not practice bad customs that are harmful.'
23. This is shown in the testimony of a union leader from Bustillos province:
The natural authorities are elected in accordance with the customs that our ancestors
have left us; those customs are always ck'allas, they are not elected by a majority
consensus of all the people; since they assume their position by those customs alone,
they are natural authorities. (Translation by Ramn Conde.)
24. The data on which this description is based were taken from the work of Federico
Aguil, a Jesuit who worked with ACLO-Sucre [Aguil, 1983]. The author was also
able to obtain additional information through field work carried out in 1986, as well as
from Carmen Avila (personal communication).
25. From the Qhichwa and Aymara, respectively: lik'i=fat; kharia=to cut. Both
expressions mean 'he who cuts (or extracts) the fat'.
26. Such tendencies undoubtedly exist, but have not fully developed. In several ayllus of
Bustillos and Chayan ta, processes of coordination of functions between ethnic and
trade union authorities have emerged which could offer an alternative. At the higher
levels of the CSTUCB, there is also a growing consciousness of the need to put in
practice its principle of 'unity in diversity', developing organisational forms which are
appropriate to the indigenous peasantry.
REFERENCES
Aguil, F., 1983, 'El lik'ichiri', Paper presented at the III Encuentro de Estudios
Bolivianos, Cochabamba, 5-7 Sept.
Alb, X., 1987, 'From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari', S. Stern (ed.), Resistance,
Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World: 18th to 20th Centuries,
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin.
Bloch, E., 1971, 'Efectos polticos del desarrollo desigual'. Lenk (ed.), El concepto de
ideologa, Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.
CSUTCB (Trade Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers), 1983, 'Tesis poltica
aprobado en el Segundo Congreso de Unidad Campesina, 26 de junio al 1 de julio',
reproduced in S. Rivera, 1984, Oprimidos pero no vencidos: Luchas del campesinado
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121