Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes (review)

This book falls into a long line of good, sometimes pathbreaking, literature about the empowerment and agency of Indians in the Spanish colonial empire of America. In this particular instance, the author explores the origins of the great Andean rebellion of 1780, known best for the actions of Tupuc Amaru II, its most famous leader. He was, however, but one of many leaders, coming from different regions of the Andes, each with its distinct set of cultural, political, and racial circumstances.

As Serulnikov argues compellingly, those regional differences sometimes produced different kinds of rebellion, though they often had a shared complexion. At the heart of his argument is that "while insurrectionary experiences greatly varied, the general roots of Indian rebellion could be found, in my opinion, in a long-term process of cultural and political empowerment of the Andean peoples" (220). Or, as was discovered long ago by students of the French Revolution, those who rose in revolt were not necessarily poverty-stricken and oppressed people but people with rising expectations, rising incomes, and a rising sense of power. The situation was not exactly the same in the Andes, but close enough. Serulnikov comments on the similarities: "Paraphrasing the explanation for the intensifying rural agitation prior to the French Revolution, the issue was not so much burden as such, but justice" (33).

Serulnikov's study centers on a province in the southern Andes called "Northern Potosí," which was thickly populated by indigenous communities and was a major source of labor for the mining communities of the region, principally its fabled silver mines. "Vale un Potosí" was a common synonym for wealth, much like "rich as a Rockefeller" became synonymous for wealth in mid-twentieth century America. In the old studies of the Spanish Empire, the rich Spaniards and Creoles grew richer and richer thanks to the poor Indian laborers in the mines, exploited, abused, and, lest we forget, downtrodden.

The antidote to that old view, which survived until the middle of the twentieth century, was a series of studies over the last two generations that dispelled the Indians and Spaniards of myth, and replaced them with a complex, multilayered, multiracial society in which Indian lords still governed alongside Spanish-born corregidors and allegiances and loyalties were affected by race, by birth, and by social relationships that transcended the old Spanish-Creole-Indian diagrams of society.

Serulnikov's study explores how the sources of rebellion in Northern Potosí differed from those of La Paz and Cuzco. He admits that the standard reasons for rebellion—forced buying of commodities and new taxes—certainly ignited the revolts, but long-standing disputes related to cacique legitimacy, distribution of wealth, and other causes all drove different elements of society to rebellion. The growing sense of economic and cultural self-reliance among indigenous leaders propeled the rebellion that devastated the central Andes in 1780.

Ironically, loyalty to the Spanish monarchy was espoused—probably quite sincerely—by all the early leaders, mestizos and Indians alike. They wanted the kind of justice in a system that they had been led to expect for two centuries. They wanted relief from religious demands that trespassed the essential doctrines of Christianity. At the start of the rebellion, they were not particularly interested in reestablishing the Inca Empire, then waning in the mists of collective memory. They wanted justice, justicia in Spanish, a richly endowed word that can mean not only justice but also righteousness.

In a way, the great Andean rebellion of 1780 was a tribute to Spanish ideals inculcated in the Americas. The American peoples—Indians, mestozis, and even some Creoles in the early stages of the revolt—expected justice and "good government." When the system failed to meet their expectations, they challenged it. Serulnikov's study deepens and enriches our understanding of the remarkable synthesis that occurred when Spaniards and Indians came together to make a new society.