La mirada esquiva. Reflexiones históricas sobre la interacción del estado y la ciudadanía en los Andes (Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú), siglo XIX (review)

Given the recent turn of events in Latin America, no topic on the region's history draws more attention these days than elections. Once a subject that elicited yawns from students of social and economic themes, the dipping of ballots into the urn now creates a level of excitement among analysts that rivals childbirth. The unprecedented heat generated by national election debates seems fueled as much by pan-Latin American relations and relations with the United States as they are by domestic issues. Yet central to the concerns of the citizens is the question of their place in the nation, and the state's role in their lives. The work under review here argues compellingly that it has been thus, with slight variations, since the late colonial period.

Marta Irurozqui has skillfully gathered together a group of essays intended to present the latest work on the electoral meaning of citizenship in an area where the term has had a convoluted history. She sets the tone by opening with a lengthy introduction on the historiography of citizenship, much needed for the nuances that guide debate since the 1990s. Her essay helpfully cites virtually every well-known work (and some not so well known) produced in the last twenty years in the field, coupling most of them to the major themes in the discourse of citizenship. Altogether the Introduction highlights the rocky road the idea of citizenship traveled in the nineteenth century Andes. The essays that follow come in two forms. One set exemplifies the avenues through which electoral politics may be traced; the other displays the contexts in which electoral debates arose.

In an instance of citizen politics in the Andes, Jaime Rodríguez analyzes the struggle between the Quito electoral elite, who were shocked by strong provincial resistance to their republican design in Cuenca, where fleeing Audiencia members found refuge, yet also where the new constitution was readily accepted. Cecilia Méndez studies the "armed citizen" of Huanta, Peru, who volunteered to join the caudillista army and operated as an erstwhile guerrilla in the Gamarra-Orbegoso era, mostly to protect municipal and village autonomy rather than from an effusion of nationalism. Guadalupe Soasti Toscano analyzes the politics of funding a national educational system in Ecuador as a backdrop for the establishment of a solid national citizenry. Françoise Martínez uses national festivals as a springboard for discussing the construction of a Bolivian nationality in the nineteenth century. Her examples include the commemoration of the birth of prócer Antonio José de Sucre, the steps taken to rename the República Bolívar, and more.

Jose Ragas Rojas makes sense of electoral anomalies in mid-century Peru, weighing in the process the importance of corruption against the will to vote. Examining the charges of fraud that emerged in the Peruvian presidential elections of 1849-1851, Ragas exhausts the sources to elegantly register a highly nuanced point: that corruption was the mirror image of the system formalized by the law. Marta Irurozqui further contributes to the volume by examining the often -overlooked distinction between civic citizenship and civil citizenship, and its impact on political violence. She illustrates her point with evidence of the shifting views held by Bolivians of the cantonal Indian forces allied with Liberal armies under the Aymara Willka Zárate in the so-called Federal War of 1898-1899, in which the Liberal Party was accused of relinquishing its conduct of the war to the "Indian hordes," thereby unleashing a rather condition of political violence upon that country. Ulrich Mücke concentrates on the political culture of 1860s-1870s Peru where, he argues, that the most surprisingly understudied institution is the state. He provides lucid examples of his meaning with illustrations from the...