Parias de la Patria: el mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia (1825–1890) by Wolf Gruner (review)

When Upper Peru achieved independence in 1825, it was a far cry from the liberal nation envisioned by Simón Bolívar. Even with the removal of the Spanish peninsulares, the population was deeply divided among criollos, mestizos and indígenas. The project set forth by the new Bolivian government had two aims: effective management of the population and the negotiation of bilateral agreements of mutual recognition with the new states north and south. Unfortunately, the cause of universal individual rights, specifically those of indigenous peoples, was sacrificed in the process.

Wolf Gruner details the process by which indigenous groups were systematically disenfranchised by the new Bolivian state. Having removed the yoke of feudal control, the new elite enacted laws and policies that both redefined and reinforced the exclusion of the majority population from political engagement. Education, military, and labor tribute changed significantly after the revolution. In the process, feudal domination of indigenous communities was transformed into bureaucratic disenfranchisement based on ethnic identity.

Gruner’s work systematically explores the range of policies and practices that the elite Bolivians of Spanish decent used to exclude and exploit the rural Aymara and Quechua. From the first constitution of 1826 there were powerful forces to limit indigenous communities’ equality under the law. Policies that limited the vote to persons who could read and write effectively restricted their voice in politics. Promises to educate the masses failed, brought down as much by conservative fears of indigenous power as by bureaucratic ineptitude.

When schools failed, military service became the standard escuela de la nación, but it too was limited to men who could claim at least some Spanish blood. Rather than serve in the military, Aymara and Quechua were drafted into labor tribute to the government and Church. The work differed from pre-independence tribute in that it restricted personal servitude to individuals. Nevertheless, functionaries continually abused the system, they both benefitted and reinforced the hierarchy of ethnic power that dominated the rural zones. Perhaps the greatest threat to indigenous communities, and the greatest struggles on the nineteenth century, revolved around attempts to usurp Aymara and Quechua lands. Liberal efforts to liquidate the communal holdings failed in the first Bolivian constitution, but the debate continued throughout the century. Not the least of these, the government of the infamous Mariano Melgarejo (1864–1871) rose and fell over the attempts to displace the rural majority from their fields and farms.

Gruner fills a gap in Bolivian ethnic history, detailing the institutionalization of indigenous disenfranchisement during the process of early state formation. The work focuses on state policy and the debates surrounding indigenous rights and the structures designed to limit them. Sources are primarily archival state records, and a worthy aspect of this work is the comprehensive list of laws and policies promulgated by the state concerning indigenous groups between 1825 and 1890.) In approaching the issue from the perspective of institutional politics, the book complements the existing literature (for example, Langer in 1989) that tends to detail economic and regional aspects of the process.

One notable lacuna in the work is the absence of lowland Guaraní groups from the analysis. As a fifth ethnic group, these isolated foraging groups contrasted markedly with Aymara and Quechua, and as such were often considered by the elite as savages beyond the pale. It would be useful to know the extent to which the developing state attempted to pull these nomads into the realm. Perhaps the absence speaks to Guarani invisibility to the formal structures and the policies those structures promulgated.

Gruner, a historian of genocide and Holocaust studies, brings a clear eye and considerable documentation to argue that liberal equality before the law did not stop ethnic elites from establishing policies that restricted the majority indigenous population from the vote, education...