The Revolutionary Traditions of the Andes II: From Indigenismo to Katarismo

The turn to the Native in the intellectual productions of the cities, the self-organization of Indigenous militants, and the rise of uniquely Andean and Pan-Indigenous political outlooks.

Aphorism 137 from The Golden Fish [1957]
By Gamaliel Churata

A basic statement of the Peruvian-Bolivian Surrealist and indigenista’s outlook on history.¹

Ever since the brilliant and freezing Friedrich Nietzsche established that "historical exposition" not only has a historical object, but also a historical subject, historical disciplines have overcome metaphysics, syncretism, anecdotes, tending to become biological. Thus it is concluded that if the historical object is the Past, the historical subject will be the Present. And if the subject is the "Ego,” and there is a vital phenomenon within that determines it, and not by its free decision, the subject is the object, fatum lex [the law of fate], as long as you-are-naya. Not as [Hans] Freyer argues, "that the Past has to be 'interpreted' by the energy of the Present," because if the Present is lived as energy, what is that energy but the energy of the Past? The present is a state of force; and one who lives, lives from the Past, inasmuch as the Present is accumulated energy, and not the interpretation of energy.
More digestible, but not the lettuce.
For no other reason than this, historicism, starting from "father" Thucydides, although it was more appropriate starting from the Ezra of Leviticus, "has led to the epic,” invading mystical areas, and the same premises of perhaps not always bad theatrical ossuary.

History is not of something, but in something; so where there is no subject there is no history. And it will be the same to say that where the Present is missing there is no past; vice versa; they must coexist, and, more properly, you-are-naya, or you are not. We will not delve into history "after the spiritual vein of the things" ([Leopold von] Ranke) to find the headwaters of the historicist Nile, to go after the arterial systems, sure to find the spiritual vein in the broth of plasma. "A consciously preserved past (kept in vacuum cans in order to avoid the proliferation of mold), in order to construct a consciously directed future" ([Ernst] Troeltsch) is, inevitably, within only the anti-architectural; if, as can be less considered, M. Cuvier had reconstructed the megatherium with the few fossil bones that were supplied from that toothless one, it does not authorize one to maintain that he had set it to walking the streets of Paris; nor less than the maxilla of the Pekingese, who seemed to "intuit" the osatura of the Chinese anthropopithecus, suppose that they have given them a seasick card for the future.

The only way to find the Pekingese is to look for it in the fertile blood of today's Pekingese. Otherwise history would be—and is, unfortunately—paleomania, a mania of the mentally retarded; because if nothing, and no one, lives dead, it is logical that the historical is only that which is lived. To obtain the reality of man today is to have already found in him the history of man.

We are flustered with the deceased Tawantinsuyu... But, if death is a myth, at this point indigestible, Tawantinsuyu can only be in Tawantinsuyu; especially since it fell not because of the limits of age, but because of the commission of murder. And the best way to make a "dead man" stay alive, and kick, and get angry, is to murder him with felons and hitmen. If the plebs would ignore it... She says that the soul of the unjustly quartered, is sorrowed; and sorrows in the blood of its areches.
To be [Ser], then, is to exist [estar]. And so history is what exists, and which exists today.
From the man of today to the man of yesterday; by this the historical "document" has to reveal nature, its condition being a capacity that is digestive, locomotor and no less germinal. In this way, Maese Pedro's altarpiece will not end up being history, before which the hidalgo de rocín should be calm so that he does not draw his sword and cinch the threads of the trap together.

If there is, or there exists—and here all logical elasticity is fine—death, the cult of the dead is a demonstration of implacable human imbecilities; if commending hecatombs and hallelujahs to what does not exist fits in obstructed brains. Fortunately the cult of the dead, if not the oldest of the human groups, one of them, reveals that man knows by saliva that he does not die; and thus his funeral rites deep in the cell, religion and feeling of the puerperium. It can't be any other way, it feels that it lives. And if in life, no germinal feeling, then nothing.

The ovarian Necrademia; the way of the Necropolis. Or what is the same, the eardrum does not sound by resonances of the spirit. The voice of the Pithecanthropus that strikes it, strikes them. Like what we so improperly call thought, their sensory architectures. In short, our sensodynamics of space.
A world that the discoverers did not discover.

The Republic of Indians and the Republic of Whites [1900-1947]
By Roberto Choque Canqui

An account of the early 20th century self-organizing movements among the Natives of the Andes, especially in Bolivia.²

Introduction

The struggle between Indians and whites, due to their ethnic and cultural characteristics, has had its social and political implications. The route taken by the Indigenous movements was developed between 1900 and 1947 in different stages of struggle. The demands of the Republic of Indians were: justice, education, syndical organization and the abolition of servitude. Faced with these demands, the Republic of Whites, constituted by the landowners, the authorities and the oligarchy, as the oppressors of the Indigenous, employed the help of the state apparatus and repressed all indigenous rebellions with public force.

In 1899 the Indigenous rebellion in Mohoza declared its autonomy from the struggle to recognize Pablo Zárate Willka as the Indigenous President, breaking its dependence on the politicians in the struggle for political power. In 1930, the educator Eduardo Nina Quispe, as president of the Republican Society of Qullasuyu professed his struggle for "the renewal of Bolivia.” In 1945, [Gualberto] Villarroel was declared President of the Republic of Whites and Luís Ramos Quevedo as President of the Republic of Indians. In 1947, in Caquiaviri, in the midst of the Indigenous rebellion, a Republic of Indians was created with the red flag, appointing Manuel Tuco Zavaleta and Eusebio Rondo as "President of Indians.” In this way, the path of the rebellion of the Indigenous peoples oriented itself towards their liberation struggle, so as not to continue carrying on with "the pain of outrages" and "dragging the miserable chain of slavery" in order to maintain the aristocracy that had only "the tone of being civilized.”³

The Indigenous Rebellions (1899-1932) and Their Path of Struggle

At this stage the routes are presented in this way:

1.) The spatial route of the rebellions (1899) comprised the following districts: La Paz-Mohoza-Corocoro-Ayoayo and Caracollo (Oruro). 2.) The uprisings of Jesús de Machaca (La Paz, 1921) and Chayanta (Potosí, 1927). Both involved political and social changes in the Indigenous movement. 3.) The Republican Society of Qullasuyu-Qullasuyu Educational Center (La Paz, 1928-1932) established its connection with the Indigenous educational issue to create its movement with the representatives of each department of Bolivia. 3.) After the Chaco War (1932-1935), "the legal existence of the Indigenous communities" (the Ayllus) was restored with the Political Constitution of the State of 1938, which helped to emphasize the struggle for the reversion of lands to the community.

The Indigenous Rebellion Against the "Republic of Whites"

The Indigenous uprisings of 1899-1900 opened a route (thaki) of struggle that traveled through the districts of Corocoro, Jayujayu and Mohoza (La Paz) and Q'araqullu (Oruro) before the political parties contesting with each other for power. The so-called civil war of 1898-1899 between conservatives and liberals forced the Indigenous masses of different districts to participate as a war auxiliary in favor of the Liberal Party. Clashes between Indians and the government forces of the Constitutional Party (conservative) led to struggle between Indians and whites. In the development of the events, the Indigenous masses, when facing the military forces of the conservative government, perceived that they were being used by the Liberal Party that was seeking power; then they understood that their participation made no sense. According to Domingo Huairaña, the situation in the country at that time "was very bad" and there was a need to change with another government. With this objective "many estancias arose" in the Arellano region, but the Indians of the heights (altiplano) had already defined their political position for ending the domination of the white race: protesting that "neither [Sévero Fernández] Alonso nor [José Manuel] Pando will be President, but [Pablo Zárate] Villca."⁴ In that sense, in the course of the civil war between federalists and unitarians (North and South), the Indigenous masses who participated in different confrontations with the military factions would have been defined by their autonomous struggle against the political interests of the oligarchy.

The Indigenous Uprisings of Jesús de Machaqa (1921) and Chayanta (1927) Towards Political Change

The Indigenous masses that participated in the civil war of 1899 continued on their path of struggle with the Indigenous uprisings of Jesús de Machaqa of 1921 and Chayanta of 1927, in the departments of La Paz and Potosí. Jesús de Machaqa attempted a local power structure to replace the mestizos of the State, choosing the authorities of that pueblo constituted by the Indigenous in the following way: first a priest, a first parish mayor, second a parish mayor, a third mayor and a municipal agent (Choque Canqui 2005: 159). The people of Chayanta with their joint fighting force, ranging between community members and hacienda settlers, overcame President Hernando Siles by obtaining a pardon for the Indigenous people involved in that uprising (Ibid. 71). Two years later, Indigenous protest was expressed more forcefully through the manifesto of "The Voice of the Peasant" of 1929:

“It has been more than a century and thirty years that we have been suffering the most iniquitous slavery that could happen, in the republican hour that offered us independence, that took our lives and Indian blood to get rid of the Spanish yoke that made us groan for more than four hundred years or four centuries. The garrote danced with wonder, the kicks in our backs in those years of barbarism continue today, when the brutality is repeated with more force in the middle of the century of liberty.”⁵

Eduardo Leandro Nina Quispe and the Republic of Qullasuyu

Between 1928 and 1932, Eduardo Leandro Nina Quispe as the first Indigenous teacher was able to organize the Republican Society of Qullasuyu and the Qullasuyu Educational Center in 1930 to continue the Indigenous struggle through an Indigenous educational project promoted from out of the city of La Paz. To that end, he brought together Indigenous representatives from all over the country, opening the way for the liberation of the Indians by the Indians themselves. He maintained his position of struggle by pointing out: "Our subjects are reduced solely and exclusively to educational propaganda and to protecting our fellow human beings from the abuses and exactions of which they are objects, both from unscrupulous people accustomed to exploiting the Indian, and from some subordinate authorities, who are not fully aware of their duties."⁶ Obviously, his project of Indian education, with a teaching of a higher culture of struggle, meant “a danger" for the ruling class of the time (Lorini 2006: 130).

Luís Ramos Quevedo and the Indigenous Congress on the Path of The Liberation of the Indian

After the Chaco War (1932-1935), Ramos Quevedo (1938-1945) was the protagonist of the Indigenous struggle and organizer of the Bolivian Indigenous Committee, whose objective was to organize the First Bolivian Indigenous Congress with the idea that the Indian himself would be the actor of his own struggle. In this difficult situation, Gualberto Villarroel was considered President of the Republic of Whites and Luís Ramos Quevedo as President of the Republic of Indians. The Bolivian Indigenous Committee marked "the hour of the awakening of the Bolivian Indian" and their future with the assistance of Indian delegates of the republic to the Indigenous Congress. For those of the Bolivian Indigenous Committee, after such a long wait, the time had finally come for the Indian to work and fight for the conquest of violated rights. Thus, the route of the "time of the freedoms and the rights to be claimed had begun: the land left by our grandparents from the time of the Inkas for the use of the Indians who work it.”⁷ The announcement of the Indigenous Congress provoked the worries and concerns of the gamonales who exploited their settlers with the provision of pongueaje and mitanaje services. Despite the resistance of the landowners, the First Bolivian Indigenous Congress was held under the auspices of the Villarroel government but without the participation of Ramos Quevedo.⁸ The result of the Indigenous Congress and its resolutions converted into supreme decrees provoked gamonal resistance and Indigenous rebellions in different parts of the country, especially in the departments of La Paz and Cochabamba with attacks on the haciendas.

As a result of the resolutions of the Indigenous Congress, the complaint of the landowners regarding Indigenous sabotage in the agricultural tasks of the countryside was grounds for requesting refuge through a commission to explain and notify the settlers about the scope of the supreme decrees of May 15, 1945 concerning the abolition of the personal services of pongueaje and mitanaje. For Vicente Mendoza López, as a result of the Indigenous Congress, the enjoyment of rural property had been fundamentally altered, article 289 of the Civil Code, which substantively enshrined the right to property, having been left without application. The agitators of the city of La Paz would keep at their service an assortment of delegates from the Tocopa de Mendoza hacienda, making it understood that the time had come to recover their lands and that the entire Indigenous mass was tending the lordship of the land and that the whites or owners would not have the right to one more span of land. This immediately meant that the settlers had to disobey every order of the owner. Therefore, a commission was needed to be constituted in the treasury and explain the scope of the current decrees, as well as the purely deliberative significance of the Indigenous Congress.⁹ The perpetrators of the subversion should have been subject to the established legal sanctions for subversion and non-compliance with obligations inherent to agricultural tasks to the detriment of production and ignorance of the property right of the Tocopa farm, located in the understanding of Copacabana. In addition, the government could order the removal and isolation of the ten settlers who had led the subversion from the Tocopa hacienda.¹⁰ This meant eviction of those settlers from the hacienda for their insubordinate attitude.

Faced with this employer retaliation, the representative of the settlers of the Tocopa hacienda, Antonio Narváez, presented the following complaint to the Constitutional President of the Republic, Lieutenant Colonel Gualberto Villarroel:

“The employer of the hacienda, Vicente Mendoza López, had three of his colleagues locked up in the Investigations Division. After having them flogged in Copacabana, Mendoza had the three taken to his house and in collaboration with the lieutenant and corregidor sent them to La Paz. The reason for this reprisal was for their having attended the Indigenous Congress. The aforementioned boss took away the books and pamphlets referring to Indigenous education that were given to them at the Ministry of Education and ordered them to leave the hacienda because he commanded all the peoples of that region, who laughed at the Villarroel government because he was known in all countries as a great lord who was able to do whatever suited his gain.”¹¹

The Indigenous Struggle Towards Their Path of Liberation

The Government received numerous complaints from the affected indigenous people from the various regions of the Republic, especially from the departments of La Paz, Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Potosí and Oruro, demanding justice and guarantees against the abuses, exactions and persecutions they suffered both from the owners of rural estates and their employees, as well as from the provincial and cantonal authorities. The settlers denounced the sub-prefects, intendants and corregidores for not complying and enforcing the provisions contained in the issued Supreme Decrees and the recommendations approved by the First Indigenous Congress. Rather, they were partial to the employers who forced them to continue providing their services by imposing fines and other sanctions in cases of just complaint. For their part, the community members complained against some authorities who continued to demand the provision of free personal services, the provision of fuel, the sale of livestock, domestic animals and food products at low prices, etc. These facts, apart from constituting true transgressions of current legal norms, violated the most elementary principles of social justice, discrediting the administrative function and contradicting the lofty purposes of the Villarroel government that resolutely addressed the so-called "Indian question.”¹²

The representatives of the Indigenous communities told Villarroel: "Why speak, Your Excellency, of the phobia that the white man feels about the education of the Indian." School mayors were dragged away as criminals, denounced as promoters of uprisings and then imprisoned.¹³ In this situation, after the death of Villarroel on July 21, 1946, the subversion that would occur on August 2, which was "the Day of the Indian,” was sensed throughout the department of La Paz. As the denunciations became more accentuated every day, the prefect forced himself to ask the Minister of government to request the Chief of the General Staff, in conjunction with the armed forces, to adopt measures to protect public order and guarantee property and persons.¹⁴ Generalized fear was evident in both the new government and the landowners, because a general uprising was coming.

The Indian Uprisings of 1947 and the Creation of the Republic of Indians

After Villarroel's death, the route of the Indigenous rebellions was located in two departments: La Paz and Cochabamba. The Indigenous uprisings totaled by then 47 years of Indigenous struggles (1900-1947). The press of the time published suggestive headlines regarding the events of the Indigenous uprising and the mobilization of police, the army and aviation. The actions of the Indigenous uprising more urgently demanded the reversion of lands (undoubtedly in accordance with the 1938 Constitution) and the abolition of Indigenous servitude, generating conflicts between settlers and landowners. As the uprisings developed, the conflict between the Indian and the white was accentuated, until the creation of a new Republic of Indians was conceived of as an identity of Indigenous struggle against another oppressive republic.

The Indigenous Uprising in the Department of La Paz

Five months and 26 days after the fall of Villarroel, the great Indigenous uprising broke out that lasted about two months, being suppressed by police forces, army troops and reconnaissance aircraft. The important epicenters were located in Pukarani in La Paz (closest to the seat of government) and in Ayopaya in the department of Cochabamba.

Between February 11 and 13, 1946, the neighborhood of Tiwanaku, in the department of La Paz, was very alarmed in view of rumors of an Indian uprising, collecting their belongings to vacate the population as a precaution. For this reason, the sub-prefect of the Ingavi province asked the prefect of La Paz to order the referral of four carabinieri with their respective cartouches.¹⁵

Subsequently, the sub-prefect of the Camacho province (La Paz) informed the prefect that he had knowledge of an alleged Indigenous agitation in that province. The reason was due to the circulation of rumors that the social laws that guaranteed Bolivian agriculture had been abolished; such a rumor spread by interested people ended up discrediting the work of the Governing Junta. This situation created an atmosphere of anxiety among the Indigenous population. However the prefect, through the sub-prefect, tried to deny the aforementioned comments and rumors, making the Indigenous people understand that their rights were largely guaranteed by the constituted authorities, by declaring into force the existing laws in favor of the Indigenous population and decrees 318 and 319, issued on May 15, 1945, especially in relation to the abolished free personal services: the pongueaje and the mit'anaje.¹⁶ However, the landowners did not respect these provisions and increasingly accentuated their outrages.

Indigenous Uprising in Los Andes Province: Pukarani

The Indigenous uprising of the altiplano was supposed to have started on the fifth of January 1947, but it was neutralized by the armed forces in the altiplano. For the government authority, the Indigenous uprising was a political maneuver, linked to the forces that acted in the shadows and that intended to attack the security of the country, "unleashing a blind force that neither they nor anyone could control later." Meanwhile, the Indians had brought in members of the Local Workers’ Federation [Federación Obrera Local (F.O.L)] to facilitate the syndical peasant organization of the Agricultural Federation in the Department of La Paz. This federation had launched its circular calling on all the "comrade peasants" of Cucuta [Kukuta] and Carapata [Q'arapata] to fulfill their obligations to organize the union in order to have their right to demand for rural schools that would be of benefit; especially for their children, since they were willing to seek the improvement of their social conditions through the trade union.¹⁷

The beginning of the Indigenous uprising in the province of Los Andes occurred on January 10, 1947 in Puerto Pérez, Pukarani and Laja. The military were mobilized to neutralize it and the air force planes made reconnaissance flights, because the uprising was with a view to spreading to other parts of the country so as to provoke a general mutiny. Faced with this situation, the authorities of the cantons were distraught waiting for the central government to help the populations that were threatened by the Indigenous rebellion. Evidently, since January 9, 1947, army planes were flying over the cantons of Puerto Pérez, Pukarani and Laja. For his part, the Minister of Government ordered the mobilization of police detachments and also requested the cooperation of the Army General Staff in order to have military personnel to neutralize any plan that endangered the lives of the inhabitants of these regions.¹⁸ Evidently, on January 11, 1947, to the cry of "long live unionization" and "down with pongueaje,” 4,000 Indians surrounded the neighborhood population of Pukarani of the department of La Paz and 1,500 Indians of the department of Cochabamba joined them, demanding the distribution of land. To protect the security of the neighborhood, on January 10 of that year 310 carabinieri were constituted in Pukarani. In this way, the inhabitants of that town were up in arms to repel any attack by four thousand revolted Indigenous people, whose main foci were in Carapata [Q'arapata] and Chojñacollo [Ch'uxñaqullu). However, 200 Indigenous people at a meeting that took place in a location near Pukarani had decided to address the authorities to ask for unionization, the opening of indigenous schools, and the total abolition of pongueaje.¹⁹

For the Bolivian Rural Society (the organization of landowners), the Indigenous uprising was fomented by the Villarroel regime and called for the arrest of the leaders of the uprising. Of the 16 Indigenous people arrested, they had declared that they were sworn to attack the mestizo populations. For its part, the press emphasized the existence of a vigorous political agitation of foreign elements among the rebelling Indigenous people. The most notable were the uprising bonfires and the slings that frightened the mestizo neighbors of the rural villages. However the authorities came to understand in principle that the Indigenous people rather wanted schools, expressing in Aymara: munapxtwa iskuilanaka.²⁰ Some 300 Indigenous people from Coripata [Quripata] were demanding teachers and schools saying "we want syndicates" to end the pongueaje that was subjecting them to inhuman servitude.

The leaders of the uprising were arrested by the police to give their statements and some were detained in the public prison. Thus, in February 1947, eight Indigenous leaders of Pukarani were arrested and taken to the city of La Paz for prosecution, considered as agents of the MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario; Revolutionary Nationalist Movement] politicians who had no qualms with returning illegally, which they did in December 1943 with Villarroel. The aforementioned Indigenous people, with their supposed promises that "they will receive the lands of their bosses as a gift," had been deceived by launching into a bloody adventure simultaneously with the maneuvers that had been taking place in Potosí on January 28, 1947. There was a MNR group living in Arequipa that had never remembered the Indian when it was in government and did not even admit them any visits, closing the doors of the public offices.²¹

The Indigenous Uprising of Carapata [Q'arapata] and Tacanoca

The conflict between the bosses and the settlers of the Q'arapata hacienda was one of the most prominent events in the jurisdiction of Pukarani with the sit-down strike, trade unionism, education and politics. Since before September 5, 1945, the settlers of that property had declared a sit-down strike, ceasing to fulfill the obligations inherent to every settler, harming the interests of the Aliaga bosses. The estate of Q'arapata was a property constituted for more than 150 years and would have been acquired as an inheritance from his grandparents of Hernán, Zenón and Luís Aliaga García.²² This hacienda would practically be the epicenter of the union organization and the rebellion of settlers with its deeds of blood in the department of La Paz.

Faced with this situation, the Aliaga owners, before initiating civil and criminal actions against their settlers who were reluctant to the fulfillment of their obligations, requested the presence of the employees of the prefecture, Hugo Valdez, Lieutenant of Carabineros Humberto Bilbao La Vieja and two police carabineros (forming a commission of the prefectural government), in order for them to be constituted in the Q'arapata hacienda so that they could explain to them in their own language and make them aware of the scope of the Supreme Decrees of May 15, 1945 as a result of the conclusions of the Indigenous Congress. The aforementioned employees of the prefecture on September 4, 1945 arrived at the property of Q'arapata without being able to find the settlers. Then, the lieutenant of carabineros highlighted a commission to the settlers, who a short distance from Q'arapata's house were meeting at the battle school with Preceptor Rigoberto Ayala to tell them to report to the treasury house, where the members of the prefectural commission were waiting. The response received by the aforementioned prominent commission was negative, so the owners and the prefectural commission went to that place where they were received with an attitude of resistance, resulting in confrontation. Due to the warlike attitude of the Indians, the aforementioned employees of the prefecture and the owner Zenón Aliaga had to make a hasty escape. According to the report of the Head of the Hacienda Section, Hugo Valdez, in charge of the Indigenous conflicts that had been turned into battles in order to arrest the ringleaders, when he arrived there, he found all the Indigenous people gathered at the school. He asked them what had been the cause for them to have disobeyed his orders. Without any response, and noticing the state of aggressiveness, he tried to arrest the syndicated ringleaders; to which he heard the words in Aymara that said Taqpacha sayt'asiñani mayajaqiki: we will all stop as one person, vocally repeated by all of them, who immediately started to stone all of the prefectural commissioners, the result of which was a seriously wounded carabinieri. Mr. Valdez stated that he did not have a single weapon to defend himself, although the carabinieri had his rifle albeit without cartridges. It is for that reason that when they were attacked, he suggested to Zenón Aliaga to let off some revolver shots in the air, since he had a revolver but the cartridges he had were loaded only with gunpowder and without bullets. The only suspect of disobedience in this case would be Professor Ayala de Batallas, who for about three weeks had been in continuous meetings with the Indigenous people of Q'arapata and had a unique ascendancy among the entirety of the Indians. The services of pongos, mitanis, etc., had already been suppressed in compliance with the supreme decrees of May 15 of that year.²³

More than half a year after that event, according to Gerardo Campos, owner of the Kutusuma hacienda,²⁴ the Indigenous settlers of the Q'arapata farm had organized an Indigenous union with the purpose of appropriating the neighboring haciendas and all those that were in the altiplano, seeking the return of the hacienda lands to the power of the Indigenous. At the same time they would proceed to the distribution of the plots of land, livestock and products among the Indigenous leaders and those who joined the said Indigenous movement. In this case, the Q'arapata hacienda was the main focus of the uprising and the headquarters of the members of the Indigenous Union, who, led by the settlers of that farm Esteban and Marcelino Quispe, incited the Kutusuma settlers to join the union and expel the boss, under the severe threat that the settlers reluctant to such instructions would be punished, and that they would also burn their houses or dwellings and their livestock and property would be distributed.²⁵

Twelve days from then the unexpected would happen. On the night of June 1, the Tacanoca hacienda was attacked by Indigenous people from the Q'arapata hacienda and its owner, Dr. Agustín Prieto and his niece Ana Vilela, who were staying there, were victimized.²⁶ In the early morning of June 4 of that year, the corpses of Dr. Agustín (or Abel) Prieto and Anita Vilela were taken to the city of La Paz, transferred to the morgue of the General Hospital where the autopsy was performed by the forensic doctor and then the police authorities took on the proceedings of the case. It was found that Dr. Prieto died due to a total fracture of the sternum and ribs, with fractures of the forearm. Vilela's death was due to hanging with a rope and suffocation.²⁷ This fact impressed upon the people of La Paz.

On June 5, 1947, on the occasion of the burial of the remains of the victims of the Tacanoca ranch, the people of La Paz expressed their regret for the events of the country due to the Indian uprisings. There was a large turnout, mostly women from all walks of life, proceeding in a company from the Plaza San Francisco to the general cemetery. When most of the public assembly, estimated at two thousand people, had arrived at the Plaza Mayor, they gathered in front of the government palace, where the remains of the victims were deposited and those present insistently requested that the President of the Republic, Dr. Enrique Hertzog, speak. A group of people entered the palace, the President of the Republic came out on the balcony and expressed that the country was experiencing hours of unrest and that he was deeply touched by the events. "He said he had issued instructions for the perpetrators of the events to be vigorously punished and said he is ready to put an end to the violence. For this he demanded the support of the people." These words of the first president were answered with expressions of approval from those who made up the funeral cortege.²⁸

This event generated the reaction of the population against the detainees. On June 7, 1947, a small crowd including relatives of the Tacanoca [or Tacanoque] victims, Dr. Prieto and Anita Vilela, went to the police station where sixty Indigenous people were detained to be tried for that crime, before the ordinary justice system. The aforementioned crowd, with shouts of indignation and condemnation for the instigators, tried in a moment of exacerbation to get the prisoners out and do justice by the hands of the people, lynching them, saying: “If we have hanged whites, we can also hang Indians!” (remembering the hanging of former President Villarroel and his collaborators in 1946). There were women among the demonstrators. The police authorities managed to stop the angry crowd, preventing further violent events from being recorded, since the detainees were under the jurisdiction of the justice system.²⁹

The Indigenous Uprising in the Province of Pacajes

The Indigenous uprising in Pacajes had occurred with assaults on the farms of Anta, Aypa-payuru (or Airaparullo), Botijlaca, Cariquina Grande and Ajnuqullu. All these events led to the creation of the Republic of Indians and the raising of a red flag, undoubtedly with the active participation of the Local Workers' Federation of La Paz.

The Indigenous Uprising of Caquiaviri and the Creation of the Republic of Indians

The Anta assault occurred on May 18, 1947, in the jurisdiction of Caquiaviri, Pacajes province of the Department of La Paz. The administrator of that farm, Andrés Montes, was beaten to death by the Indigenous rebels of the region. Then, the carabineros forces assigned to the region of Caquiaviri were sent to suppress the rebelling Indigenous people who committed ferocious acts throughout that region. They found the body of the administrator of the hacienda, Mr. Montes, buried in the riverbed. The authorities then arranged for Montes' corpse to be transferred to the town of Nazacara [Nasaq'ara], where he was given a Christian burial.³⁰ The Indigenous strike was increasing in severity, although there was an apparent calm. Thus, on June 6, the Indigenous people on strike cut several telegraph and telephone lines between populations of the altiplano. There were a lot of looted haciendas. On the same date, the Ponquín farm, owned by Mrs. Benigna Málaga de Calderón, from the jurisdiction of Corocoro, had been attacked by the strikers, who committed new acts of vandalism. The hacienda house was totally destroyed, the belongings destroyed and the species stolen. The Indians completed the assault and then fled in a threatening manner to other farms near Ponquín.³¹

Two weeks after that event, the Indigenous man Manuel Tuco Zavaleta, who had been appointed as the Indigenous "President,” had organized the battalion of Indians whom he trained in military practices and had also gathered Indigenous parliamentarians, with whom he drew up the plans for the uprising. He had also led several attacks on different properties in the jurisdiction of Caquiaviri and he was the one who set fire to and invaded the Airaparullo or Aypa-paruyu hacienda owned by Canon Casimiro Crespo. In addition, he had extensive relations with the members of the Local Workers' Federation (F.O.L). This trade union organization offered "all kinds of benefits for the peasant class." Finally, Tuco Zavaleta would have been the author of the latest bloody events, spearheading the attacks on the Tacanoca ranch and others.³² In addition, Manuel Tuco Zavaleta, as the Indigenous "President,” had wished to take the "Palacio Quemado" to sit in the "presidential armchair.”³³

After about thirty days of that event, according to the "21st of July" Regiment, the capture of 26 ringleaders in Caquiaviri was achieved at the moment when they were meeting in council and agreeing to continue the struggle for the Republic of Indians, according to the instructions of the Local Workers’ Federation of the anarchist tendency (Lora, 1970: 62-66). The flag of the new Indigenous republic was found in the possession of this group of leaders. That is, an extensive red flag of 3.50 meters by 1, considered as the body of the crime that was almost snatched by the carabineros forces. This insignia, which was later handed over to the authorities, bore the following inscription "Ajno Collo School,” "F.A.D" which means: "Departmental Agrarian Federation [Federación Agraria Departmental], Province Pacajes Caquiaviri". The statements of those same captured leaders revealed the degree of agitation and propaganda that they had been doing among the Indigenous people for the creation of the new Indian Republic, a task that they were instructed to carry out without reservations.³⁴ On that occasion, Eusebio Rondo, a famous Indigenous figure of outstanding conduct in the upheavals of the altiplano, was considered as "president" of the Indigenous conspirators. Rondo, a Pajsani community member, was captured in Caquiaviri along with 16 other Indigenous people of outstanding conduct. The "Indian President" countless times evaded and outwitted the police forces that were, since May, in pursuit of him.³⁵

The Indigenous Uprising in Cochabamba (1946-1947)

The Indigenous uprising of Cochabamba had a close chronological coincidence with that of La Paz. But in the clashes, the Cochabamba-Binos Indigenous people had greater strength and resistance in the face of the forces of order. Thus, in the face of the alarming Indigenous uprising, the headquarters and the command of the Departmental Carabineros Brigade had arranged for the immediate transfer of a fraction of twenty men as reinforcement to the group that was under the orders of the legal adviser Dr. Calvi who had traveled to that area a few days ago. On the other hand, it was arranged for the head of the No. 2 air base to cooperate with the police force, assigning an airplane to perform the reconnaissance service.³⁶

The rebellion spread to a large part of the department of Cochabamba with atrocious violence. Only the army, the police and the aviators were able to contain it. On January 11, 1947, in the province of Cliza, 1,500 Indigenous people had taken up arms, asking for the immediate distribution of land. The authorities had assigned numerous pickets of carabineros to the various sectors of the province Cliza, taking into account that skirmishes might occur in view of the fact that the Indians had made a firm intention of not returning to their work as long as the land distribution was not put into effect.³⁷

The Uprising in the Province of Independencia (Ayopaya)

In Ayopaya, the Independencia province of the department of Cochabamba, the Indigenous people of the entire region rose up in a movement that had a destructive character, because the Indigenous people had given themselves over to the task of attacking the hacienda houses and destroying them, and this is what was happening in Ayopaya, where the focus of Indigenous subversion was growing.³⁸ On the night of February 4, 1947, an Indigenous group belonging to the four members of Yayani attacked the hacienda house with dynamites. In it were the son of the major boss Carlos Zavalaga and Lieutenant Colonel José Mercado,³⁹ both of whom were members of the Radepa lodge that supported the government of Villarroel. Mercado was killed when he tried to escape; while Zavalaga managed to flee with other people from the administration of that hacienda. The Indians ransacked the hacienda house, taking some weapons, tools and food with them.

On February 7, 1947, more than ten thousand Indigenous people, armed and with large quantities of dynamite, threatened the villages of the department of Cochabamba. This situation was very suspicious because there were no mines or other establishments where dynamite was used in that region. Although the authorities were taking the necessary measures to establish order and the rule of law, there was an attack on the Yayani farm, where Colonel Mercado Cadina was killed with sticks and a club thrown at him by the Indigenous people. The rescue of his body, the wounded and the other dead could only be achieved with the sending of a picket of sixty carabinieri from Cochabamba.⁴⁰

Up to that time the rebels reached a figure of 40,000 who would be led by the miners. From the heights of the Huantacara [Wantakara] hill the rebels fired shots while displaying the red flag, planted on the very tip of the hill, which led to the assumption that they were imbued with communist propaganda. The rebels were given over to the task of destroying the properties, so in the farms of Yayani, Quiriquiri [Khirikhiri] and Huallacasa [Wallakasa], the hacienda houses were completely razed and the furniture was also destroyed. According to the Ministry of Government, the presence of "white" people who were flying the red flag had been verified among the rebelling Indigenous people.⁴¹ The rebel mass strategically concentrated in covered and bent places that made it impossible for aviation to control, but were surrounded by armed troops: army and police, because both the army troops and the carabineros maintained control over the Indigenous mobilization. Meanwhile, a commission organized by the representatives of the Third National Congress of Workers was preparing to travel to the centers of agitation to parley, if possible with the Indigenous leaders for a satisfactory settlement on the requests that would be just and avoid further conflicts that could cause chaos and anarchy, thus avoiding the useless bloodshed and the loss of innocent lives, because their subversive attitude would have been instigated by provocative political elements.⁴² In those circumstances the rebels were in a very critical situation because they were surrounded by armed forces of the army, the police and the aviation.

In conclusion, the route of the paths of the Indigenous uprisings, both spatial and chronological, allowed us to establish the relationship of the events that led to the route of the liberation of the Indian. The experience gained in the Indigenous struggles against submission and oppression under the exploiters served to break the dependence; they could no longer be used in wars as cannon fodder by the employers' force or the political power of the oppressive oligarchy. The creation of the republic of Indians with its red flag was a form of demonstration against the republic of the white oligarchy, promoted by the anarchists (Lora, 1970: 101-105). In this way, the interference of the workers' trade union organization in the Indigenous rebellion is perceived through the Local Workers' Federation, in order to promote libertarian peasant trade unionism.

Conclusions

The routes of the uprisings both spatially and chronologically allow us to establish the relationship of the events that were oriented towards the process of the liberation struggle of the Indian. During the course of the Indigenous struggle (1900-1947) in Bolivia, several Indigenous figures emerged to lead the struggle against the gamonales or landowners and the local and provincial authorities. The struggle focused on the defense of the community lands of origin against the advance of the haciendas and against the exploitation of the hacienda settlers and the authorities who defended the social and economic interests of the exploiters of the Indian.

During the civil war of 1899, the rebellious Indigenous masses in the town of Mohoza realized that they could no longer collaborate as an auxiliary force to the interests of the politicians who were striving for power. Then they revolted, stating that they did not support José Pando or Severo Fernández Alonso, but the indigenous leader Pablo Zárate Willka to be the future president.

Subsequently, the Indigenous groups that participated in the civil war of 1899 were actors in the Jesús de Machaca uprising of 1921 and in the Chayanta uprising of 1927 against the landowners and the local authorities. To suppress these uprisings the government employed the armed forces in both towns.

After the Chaco War, between 1938 and 1945, the struggle for the liberation of the exploited and oppressed continued. During that period, the leadership of Luis Ramos Quevedo emerged, who undertook the organization of the Committee of the First Bolivian Indigenous Congress with a view to total change in favor of the Indigenous.

After the First Indigenous Congress of 1945, the rebellion expanded with more force in different parts of the country against the system of exploitation and oppression of the Indigenous. The Indigenous uprising was centralized in two regions of the country (La Paz and Cochabamba), becoming a struggle between the republic of whites and the republic of Indians. The government resorted to the three armed forces to repress the rebelling Indigenous masses. However, this did not prevent the rebellions from continuing.

Bibliography

Antezana E., Luís 1982 La revolución campesina en Bolivia. La Paz: Cuadernos de hoy. Año 1, N° 4. Empresa Editora Siglo Ltda.

Antezana E., Luís 1994 Masacres y levantamientos campesinos en Bolivia. La Paz: Librería Editorial "Juventud".

Arze Aguirre, René Danilo 1987 Guerra y conflictos sociales: el caso rural boliviano durante la campaña del Chaco. La Paz: CERES.

Choque Canqui, Roberto 2005 De la defensa del Ayllu a la creación de la República del Qullasuyu. En: Historia de una lucha desigual. La Paz: UNIH-PAKAXA, 147-171.

Choque Canqui, Roberto 2012 Historia de una lucha desigual. La Paz: Unidad de Investigaciones Históricas UNIH-PAKAXA.

Choque Canqui, Roberto 2014 El indigenismo y los movimientos indígenas en Bolivia. La Paz: Unidad de Investigaciones Históricas UNIH-PAKAXA.

Choque Canqui, Roberto y Ticona, Esteban 1996 Jesús de Machaqa: La marka rebelde 2. Sublevación y masacre de 1921. La Paz: Cedoin/Cipca.

Choque Canqui, Roberto y Cristina Quisbert Quispe 2010 Líderes Indígenas Aymaras. Lucha por la defensa de tierras comunitarias de origen. La Paz: UNIH-PAKAXA.

Lora, Guillermo 1970 Historia del movimiento obrero boliviano 1923-1933). La Paz: Editorial "Los Amigos del Libro".

Lorini, Irma 2006 El nacionalismo en Bolivia de la pre y posguerra del Chaco (1910-1945). La Paz: Plural editores.

Ranaboldo, Claudia 1987 El Camino Perdido: Chinkasqa Ñan Armat Thaki. Biografía del líder campesino kallawaya Antonio Álvarez Mamani. La Paz: SEMTA.

Tristán Marof 1934 La tragedia del Altiplano. Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad.

Archives and Primary Sources

Newspaper Sources

El Diario, Sublevaciones: enero de 1947 y febrero de 1947.

El Estado, Proceso de Mohoza: abril de 1901.

La Razón, Sublevación: agosto de 1946.

La Noche, Sublevaciones: junio de 1947 y julio de 1947.

Última Hora, Sublevaciones: mayo de 1947, junio de 1947 y julio de 1947.

Documentary Sources

Archivo de La Paz (ALP). Prefectura-Expedientes (P-E), 1945, 1946 y 1947.

Archivo de La Paz (ALP). Corte Superior del Distrito (CSD), 1929. Archivo de La Paz (ALP). Prefectura-Correspondencia (P-C), 1946 y 1947.

"The Amautic Imperative" from Socrates and I [1983]
By Fausto Reinaga

An explanation of the difference between the “Socratic Imperative,” the central convictions of Western civilization, and the “Amautic Imperative,” the central convictions of Andean thought. Reinaga was the father of the indianista politico-cultural revivalist movement in the Andes.⁴³

Science

What is to be believed?

What is to be hoped for?

Who is to be followed?

What is to be thought?

What is to be done?

Believe in science!

Hope in science!

Follow science!

Think about science!

Do science!

What is Science?

Science is the truth.

What is the truth?

The truth is life.

What is life?

Life is man.

What is man?

Man is earth.

Earth that thinks.

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy is wisdom.

Philosophy is to know.

Know what?

To know:

What am I? Who made me? For what?

What am I?

I am earth; earth that thinks.

Who made me?

The cosmos made me.

For what?

To be thought; thought makes consciousness.

Consciousness of what?

Consciousness of the Cosmos.

The Socratic Imperative

Socrates, the Socratic Imperative states:

God has created man.

God is life.

Philosophy is the consciousness of science.

Philosophy comes from God.

The truth is divine.

The Amautic Imperative

The reply to Socrates, the reply of the Amautic Imperative:

God has not made man.

Man has made God.

God is not life.

Man is life.

Philosophy is not the consciousness of science.

Science is the consciousness of philosophy.

Philosophy does not come from God.

Philosophy comes from man.

The truth is not divine.

The truth is human.

God is not the truth.

Man is the truth.

The Miracle of Science

The distance between the protozoan and my brain is an astronomical distance. To travel this distance at light speed, millions of centuries are required. Just that. Millions of centuries!

To know, to know that an amoeba arrives to having a brain with 100 billion neurons, is a miracle. A miracle of science!

Science Arrives to the Moon

"Thanks to science,

“...the ear perceives, through the telephone membrane, the sounds of the most distant continents. The eye contemplates, thanks to the telescope, the universe with myriads of stars, and sees, with the help of the microscope, the Cosmos in a drop of water. Our voice transcends space and time in a second, it does not disdain eternity when recorded on a cassette. The plane transports us safely through the element forbidden to man for thousands of years. We have left the planet Earth.”

"The imprisoned lightning, the dominated air, the conquered distance... Tamed are all the elements: wind, water, fire... Science climbs the celestial scale; mistress of the cusps and the abysses, triumphant over space..."

On July 21, 1969, science landed on the moon.

Man, thanks to science, discovers man and the Earth!

Science Discovers the Earth

"The Milky Way is only one of the galaxies of which there are several hundred million!...

"The solar system is a collection of celestial bodies that revolve around one of the stars in their galaxy. The star around which they revolve is the Sun!

"The sun, an immense ball of fire: it gives light, warmth and life to the beings that inhabit the Earth... the source of energy, without which there would be no possibility of organic life on Earth.

“The Earth is a part of the Solar System.”

"Man is a protozoan, an infinitesimal parasite that lives on Earth.”⁴⁴

There is Life Only on Earth

There is no life on any other planet in the Solar system. Neither Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, nor Pluto have life.

Of all the living beings of nature, man is the apex-being of evolution. Man is the supreme fruit of the beings that populate the planet Earth.

Why? Why such a thing?

Because man thinks. Because man is thought.

And what does this mean? What does it mean to say this?

It means that man, that thinking is the most elevated form of life. That man, that thinking is life. That life is thinking. That to think is to be. That to be is life. The one who does not think, the one who does not think does not live. They are matter, an organ without life.
Thanks to science, man reaches the Moon; and discovers the planet Earth and discovers himself.
The superstition, stupidity and crime that Socrates fitted into the brain of mankind, thanks to science, has vanished. Science is the light that illuminates the cerebral darkness of man on planet Earth.

Lies and murder, imposed as an absolute imperative on humanity, will disappear thanks to science. They must disappear from the Earth and from the Cosmos; and in their sinister place, Truth and Life must reign.

If science is Truth and Life; science is faith; it is hope!

One has to believe in science! One has to hope in science! One has to follow science!

What is it to Think?

The thought of humanity, ever since there was thought, is a mendacious and murderous thought.

From Socrates to the present day, our thinking is not the truth. Our thinking is a lie and murder.

Our thinking done the deed, has arrived at the Atomic Bomb. The atomic bomb that is going to destroy the life of planet Earth.

To think the Greco-Christian thought, not only is that foolishness and stupidity. It's a crime. A crime without forgiveness.

In the brain of the philosopher of Greece, in the brain of the philosopher of Rome, in the brain of the philosopher of Europe, there is God. God made reason. Reason made God. The philosophy of Athens to this day is reason. Reason is the "vital breath” of all the philosophical, religious, ethical and political doctrines and schools in the world. Reason is the first spark of thought that makes the flint axe, and makes the Atomic Bomb, which burns Hiroshima.

To think the thought of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, [René] Descartes, [Immanuel] Kant, [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, [Friedrich] Nietzsche, [Jean-Paul] Sartre?

No.

Because Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, are lies and murder.

The philosophers “are not only arguments and quarrels, but the condemned and the martyrs...“

"The Pythagoreans were persecuted with blood and fire. They drowned Hippasus of Metapontus, the Eleatics, one has Zeno who was barbarously riddled and crushed. Empedocles was banished from his people and Anaxagoras was accused of impiety and expelled from Athens, There are the sophists: Protagoras, he was exiled from Athens, just like Cherophon... The Cyrenaics can present their exile: Theodore, the teacher of Theaetetes. Prodicus of Keos drank the hemlock. Aristotle had to leave Athens to escape an indictment for crimes against religion and commit suicide in Calcide; his nephew and substitute before Alexander—Callisthenes—was put inside a cage and devoured by a lion. The Dominicans led by St. Thomas, and the Franciscans led by St. Bonaventure, fought each other viciously. And not only one group against another, but among those of the same crown. Included in the garland of St. Bonaventure is Joachim of Fiore, who was repeatedly disavowed and condemned by the Franciscans themselves. On the side of the preachers is none other than Siger of Brabant, tenaciously fought by the supporters of [Thomas] Aquinas, sentenced to life imprisonment and killed with a clean stab wound by the cleric who served as his secretary…

"Philosophers are condemned, accused, outlawed and executed. They did not escape accusation: St. Thomas [Aquinas], [Meister] Eckhart, Descartes, [Blaise] Pascal, [Nicolas] Malebranche, [Baruch] Spinoza, Kant, [Johann Gottlieb] Fichte, [Auguste] Comte. They suffered banishment: Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Aristotle, [Thomas] Hobbes, [John] Locke, [Julien Offray de] La Mettrie, [Christian] Wolff, [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau. They suffered imprisonment: Averroes, Roger Bacon, [Tommaso] Campanella, Saint Juan de la Cruz, Voltaire, [Denis] Diderot, Bertrand Russell, Zeno of Elea and Anaxarchus were barbarously tortured. Socrates and Prodicus of Keos were condemned to drink the hemlock; Seneca to open his veins. Perishing after cruel torments: Boethius. Stoned to death: Ramoon Llull. Succumbed to stab wounds: Siger of Brabant. Burned at the stake: Giordano Bruno. Thrown out of the window: Petrus Ramus. Beheaded: Thomas More. Burned: Jan Hus. Burned: [Giraloma] Savonarola. Committed suicide, to escape the guillotine: [Marquis de] Condorcet...”⁴⁵

From Athens to the present day, from Socrates to Hegel, Sartre, Nietzsche, philosophers are lies and murder.

There is not one, one that is the truth.

Concrete truth, which is science.

Pure truth, which is consciousness.

And thinking which is science made with consciousness.

Science and consciousness are the Cosmos, the Universe.

What is it to think?

To think is the truth.

What is the truth?

The truth is man.

What is man?

Man is earth that thinks.

Thought is science and consciousness; science and consciousness of the Universe.

The First Manifesto of Tiwanaku [30 July 1973]

The central manifesto of the katarista movement on its emergence in Bolivia. The movement soon spread to the rest of the Andes with the formation of pan-Indigenist organizations inspired by the model of the Bolivian organizers.⁴⁶

Introduction

”A people that oppresses another people cannot be free, " the Inka Yupanqui told the Spaniards. We, the Quechua and Aymara peasants, as well as those of other Indigenous cultures of the country, say the same thing. We feel economically exploited and culturally and politically oppressed. In Bolivia there has not been an integration of cultures but a superposition and domination that has kept us in the lowest and most exploited stratum of that pyramid. Bolivia has lived and is living terrible frustrations. One of them, perhaps the greatest of all, is the lack of real participation of Quechua and Aymara peasants in the economic, political and social life of the country.

We believe that without a radical change in this regard, it will be totally impossible to create national unity and dynamic, harmonious, proper and adequate economic development in line with our reality and needs. Bolivia is entering a new stage of its political life, one of the characteristics of which is the awakening of peasant consciousness. As we approach a pre-electoral period, professional politicians will once again approach the peasantry to collect their vote and once again they will do so with deception and false promises. The political participation of the peasantry must be real and not fictitious. No party can build the country on the deception and exploitation of the peasants. We, the peasants themselves, far from any partisan zeal and thinking only of the liberation of our people, want to present in this document those ideas that we consider fundamental in the economic, political and social order of the country.

Our Culture is of the Highest Value

The true process is done through a culture. It is the deepest value of a people. The national frustration has its origin in the fact that the Quechua and Aymara cultures have always suffered a systematic attempt of destruction. The politicians of the dominant minorities have wanted to create a development based solely on the slavish imitation of the development of other countries, when our cultural heritage is totally different. Getting along with a practical materialism, they have come to believe that progress is based solely on the economic aspects of life. We peasants want economic development, but based on our own values. We do not want to lose our noble ancestral virtues for the sake of pseudo-development. We fear that false "developmentalism" that is imported from outside, because it is fictitious and does not respect our deep values. We want outdated paternalism to be overcome and we no longer see ourselves as second-class citizens. We are foreigners in our own country.

Our virtues and our own vision of the world and of life have not been respected. School education, party politics, and technical promotion have failed to bring about any significant change in the field. Peasant participation has not been achieved because their culture has not been respected and their mentality has not been understood. We peasants are convinced that there will only be development in the countryside and in the whole country, when we are the authors of our progress and masters of our destiny. The rural school by its methods, by its programs and by its language is alien to our cultural reality and not only seeks to turn the Indian into a kind of mestizo without definition or personality, but also achieves their assimilation to Western and capitalist culture. The programs for the countryside are conceived within individualistic schemes, even though our history is essentially communal. The cooperative system is inherent to a people who created modes of production on the basis of mutual aid such as the ayni, the mink'a, yanapacos, camayos…

Private property, political sectarianism, individualism, class differentiation, internal struggles came to us with Colonialism and were accentuated by Republican Regimes. The Agrarian Reform is also conceived within this framework. Economic and political power is the basis of cultural liberation. We must technicize and modernize our past but in no way must we break with it. Any attempt at Europeanization or “yankeeization,” as we have tried to do through education and politics, will be nothing more than a new failure. Any political movement that really wants to be liberating for the peasantry must be organized and programmed by always taking into account our cultural values. The Indian is noble and just, they are sober and respectful, they are industrious and deeply religious. But all this wealth that the Indian soul treasures has never been understood or respected.

The political action of Colonialism and the Republican Governments has obviously been destructive, some of us coming to assimilate the serious defects of compromised and corrupt politicians. We have been willing to make rungs and ladders of the worst ambitions and the basest passions. We are not willing to continue on this path of subjugation and depravity. The catastrophic results are in plain sight. The Indians who through bad education and false politicking do not want to be Indians have assimilated the worst defects of other peoples and have become new exploiters of their own brothers. We make a fraternal appeal to them so that by joining us in the movement to reclaim our rights and our culture, we can all work for the economic and political liberation of our people. Governments, politicians, economists and our educators must be convinced that the “promotion” of the Aymara and Quechua peasantry has totally failed because the wrong methods have been applied. In this document we intend to outline the general lines of a peasant liberating policy.

Our History Speaks to Us

Before the Spanish Conquest we were already a millenary people with virtues that developed within a highly socialized environment. Colonialism did not know how to respect or recognize our culture, which was crushed and subjugated. Independence did not bring freedom for the Indian. Rather, realized within the principles of liberalism, the Indian is judged and treated as a passive element fit only to be used in continuous wars as cannon fodder. The republic is for the Indian nothing more than a new pressure from the politics of the dominators. The Indian liberation embodied in the libertarian struggle of Tupaj Katari remains fettered.

[Manuel Isodoro] Belzu's indigenista policy gives rise to a brief hope in the peasant masses, but the life of the Indian must continue to crawl between opprobrium, exploitation and contempt. [Germán] Busch and [Gualberto] Villarroel want to overcome this state of affairs but they are prevented by the reaction of the national oligarchy. With the Revolution of April 9, two great liberating laws arrived: The Agrarian Reform and the Universal Franchise. With the Agrarian Reform, the Indians freed themselves from the ominous yoke of the patrón. It is a pity that this one has not brought all the goods that were expected of it, mainly because it is conceived in a too individualistic scheme since, due to some right-wing elements embedded within the MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario; Revolutionary Nationalist Movement] it was not implemented alongside other laws that favor investment, technification and the commercialization of products.

The Universal Franchise should not ignore the organic participation of Indigenous communities in political life. It is also regrettable that it has often served to arouse the excessive appetite for power of our politicians. For this reason, deception and exploitation as well. The old-fashioned politicians approach the peasants not to serve them but to make use of them. Some bad peasants, betraying our history and our people, have managed to bring these practices of corrupt politicking into our peasant trade unionism. They, with their duplicitous behavior and with their degraded servility, have stained our name and our ancestral customs. We must humbly acknowledge it, generously forgive it and carefully assimilate the experiences. The important thing is to return to the path of greatness that our ancestors pointed out to us. Nor do we believe in the preaching of those parties that, calling themselves left-wing, fail to admit the peasantry as the manager of their own destiny.

A political organization to be an instrument for the liberation of the peasants will have to be created, directed and supported by ourselves. Our political organizations must respond to our values and our own interests.

Economy

Despite the fact that we peasants produce 78% of the Gross National Product, we only have 34% of the national income while the 1.7% who are the entrepreneurs and large landowners of the country receive 21% of the national income. Despite the fact that Bolivia is one of the countries with the lowest per capita income in the world since it barely reaches 120 dollars per inhabitant per year, however, most peasants barely manage to mobilize 50 dollars per year. Our diet is one of the poorest in vitamins in the world. The death rates among us remain as high as they were 50 years ago.

Our economy is a subsistence economy. We work only to live and even this, many times we do not achieve. However, no one will be able to say that the peasant does not work. The agricultural policy of our governments has been disastrous. We are left to our own fate. The country spends more than 20 million dollars importing agricultural products from abroad that we could produce. It is preferable to pay abroad rather than to pay the peasant. Bank loans, when they have been oriented towards the countryside, have served only for the new landowners and for the oligarchs of cotton, sugar cane and livestock farming.

With the monetary devaluation decreed by the government last October, our miserable economy has seriously worsened. No one has remembered the peasant. City workers, teachers, public employees, etc. have received the family bonus and the salary 14. The peasant, a true pariah of our society, has not received the slightest compensation, nor the slightest incentive. For those of us who sell at retail, agricultural products have remained almost stationary in their prices. This increase does not compensate for the 40% higher price of transport. While what we buy (sugar, noodles, rice, farming tools, chemical fertilizers) has risen from thirty percent to eighty percent, what we sell has barely been able to improve in prices. On the other hand, the lack of price control in the countryside is total. Faced with this lack of control, the one who loses out is always the peasant, since they are the weakest.

This unjust situation cannot be prolonged any longer. What we are proposing to overcome this situation through is no longer the paternalistic intervention of the government or people of good will. We believe that the only solution lies in authentic peasant organization. The balance between the products of the countryside that we sell and what we have to buy from the city will be found in the correlation of forces. The peasant is weak because they are not unified, organized and mobilized. The current departmental and national organizations do not properly respond to the interests of the peasantry in general.

Political Parties and the Peasantry

In practice, the peasantry of Bolivia has not really belonged to any political party because none has represented their true interests or been inspired by their cultural values. However, we must recognize that it was the MNR who represented the peasant interests the most and the best when dictating the Laws of Agrarian Reform and Universal Suffrage. The MNR had the historical possibility of becoming a party that would be an instrument of peasant liberation, but all that was frustrated due, above all, to elements of the right-wing reaction and those without any social sensitivity which embedded themselves in the ranks of this party and managed to stop the process of our liberation.

Neither the current MNR, nor Barrientism, nor the traditional left parties are peasant parties. If the peasant has voted for them it is because there was no other option to vote. It was because we didn't have our own party. These parties have capitalized on the peasant vote as a means to reach and stay in power. In order for there to be a balance of interests and representation, peasants must have their own party that represents their social, cultural and economic interests. This will be the only means by which real and positive political participation can exist, and the only way to make an authentic and integral development in the field possible.

To believe in the possibility of economic and political progress in Bolivia without the direct participation of the peasantry is a seriously erroneous opinion. The peasantry has been a passive force because it was always intended to be something totally passive. The peasantry is politically what the politicians have wanted it to be: a mere sustentaculum for their ambitions. It will only be dynamic when it is allowed to act as an autonomous and indigenous force. In the current economic, political and cultural scheme of our country, the real political participation of the peasantry is impossible because it is not allowed to be so. The Armed Forces of the Nation, which are fundamentally peasant in composition, must also be so because of their culture and conceptions.

Peasant Syndicalism

Peasant syndicalism, although at its base and in many of its provincial organizations it is an organization of authentic peasant representation, has been instrumentalized not infrequently in favor of interests totally alien to our class in the departmental and national spheres. All the defects of the political partisanship of the city have entered the countryside through the work of pseudo-leaders who have appointed themselves as peasant representatives. They have been and continue to be the corrupters of our Aymara and Quechua people before the benevolent and indifferent gaze of our government authorities.

They are the ones who have brought sectarianism, politicking, nepotism, economic and moral corruption, personal ambition, hatred between brothers, false caudillismo and the lack of representativeness to the countryside. But perhaps in the long run it has done as much harm as paternalism, naively waiting for solutions from outside and from above. The development of the country and especially of the countryside will have to be done by the peasants themselves. They have wanted to treat us politically like children and governments and bad leaders have always tried to give us as “gifts” or “charity” what in fact should be given to us in justice.

It is a shame for our limpid Inka history that our alienated peasant leaders have been proclaiming "leaders of the peasants” to all the Presidents of the Republic who have governed the country recently. The greatest good that governments and political parties can do to peasants is to allow us to freely and democratically elect our own leaders and that we can elaborate our own socio-economic policy based on our cultural roots. Past and current experience tell us that when the highland peasantry is free to choose its hilacatas, hilancos and other communal authorities, it does so in the most democratic spirit and with the utmost correctness and respect for the opinion of others. The current peasant internal struggles have always been a reflection of the ambitions of foreign people.

Education in the Countryside

We see two extremely serious problems in rural education; the first is in terms of the content of the programmes and the second is in terms of the serious lack of resources. It is no secret to anyone that the rural school system has not started out from our cultural values. The programs have been developed in the ministries and respond to ideas and methods imported from abroad. Rural education has been a new form (the most subtle) of domination and stagnation. The Rural Normal [Schools] are nothing more than a brainwashing system for the future teachers of the countryside. The teaching that is given is uprooted both in what is taught and in those who teach. It is alien to our reality not only in language, but also in history, in the heroes, in the ideals and in the values that it transmits.

In the aspect of practical organization the rural school is a kind of national catastrophe. The education budget is deficient and poorly distributed, corresponding much more to the city than to the countryside. Even today, 51% of rural children cannot go to school simply because it does not exist in their communities. The countryside not only lacks classrooms, it lacks books, blackboards, desks, teaching materials and above all teachers who really love our oppressed people. We could continue to point out all the aspects of peasant life to see how it develops within the most appalling misery and the total abandonment of our authorities.

The revolution in the countryside is not a fact; it must be done. But it has to be done by once again flying the banners and the great ideals of Tupaj Katari, Bartolina Sisa, Willca Zarate. We have to do it starting from ourselves. In our legendary altiplano there are no infrastructure works, there are no roads, there is no electricity, there are no hospitals, there is no progress. The transport is very poor, the marketing systems outdated. There is almost no technical guidance. An excessive number of Normal Schools are being set up in the countryside, but there are no Technical Schools. Practically everything is to be done.

We do not ask that it be done to us; we ask only that it be allowed to be done by us. We would not like to finish this document, which must undoubtedly be the origin of a powerful autonomous peasant movement, without asking the press, the radio and all the institutions that sincerely desire the promotion of the peasantry to encourage this our noble desire to fight for the authentic promotion of our people and of all Bolivia. The miners, the factory workers, the construction workers, the transport workers, the impoverished middle classes... are our brothers and sisters, victims under other forms of the same exploitation, descendants of the same race and in solidarity with the same ideals of struggle and liberation.

Only together will we achieve the greatness of our homeland. We also ask the Catholic Church (the Church of the great peasant majority) and other Evangelical Churches to collaborate with us in this great ideal of liberation of our Aymara and Quechua people. We want to fully live our values without in the least despising the cultural wealth of other peoples.

La Paz, 30 July 1973

Center of Mink’a Peasant Coordination and Promotion

Tupaj Katari Peasant Center

Association of the Peasant Students of Bolivia

National Association of Peasant Teachers

1. Gamaliel Churata, El pez de oro: Retablos del laykhakuy (La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial Canata, 1957), pp. 149-151.

2. Roberto Choque Canqui, “República de indios y república blancos,” Diálogo Andino, no. 49 (March 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0719-26812016000100024.

3. ALP/P-E. 1947. Manifiesto. La Federación Agraria Departamental de La Paz, adherida a la Federación Obrera Local, se dirige al campesinado y a los trabajadores en general. En: Choque Canqui, 2005, pp. 143-146.

4. According to the testimony of Domingo Huairaña, "había mandado Pando, pidiendo auxilio, porque la situación estaba muy mal y porque había necesidad de cambiar otro gobierno, con este objeto Arellano sublevó muchas estancias, pero una parte de los indios, especialmente los de las alturas habían pensado de otra manera, deseando exterminar a la raza blanca; pues habían dicho: ni Alonso ni Pando serán Presidente sino Villca.” Proceso de Mohoza (1901, 27 de abril). El Estado, p. 2.

5. ALP/CSD. 1929. Anexo: La Voz del Campesino.

6. ALP/P-C, 1933. Oficio de Eduardo L. Nina Quispe y Esteban Machaca de La Paz, La Paz, 10 de abril de 1933.

7. Periódico: Congreso Indigenal Boliviano en la ciudad de La Paz, 2 de febrero de 1945.

8. Luís Ramos Quevedo fue desterrado del país por su posición radical indianista.

9. ALP/P-E. 1945. Vicente Mendoza López dirigiéndose al prefecto del departamento de La Paz, denuncia el sabotaje colectivo de las faenas agrícolas del campo por parte de colonos de la hacienda. La Paz, 12 de junio de 1945.

10. ALP/P-E. 1945. Vicente Mendoza López solicita al Ministro de Gobierno se les imponga a los autores de la subversión las sanciones establecidas. La Paz, 30 de junio de 1945.

11. ALP/P-E. 1945. Antonio Narváez, representante de los colonos de la hacienda Tocopa, reclama al Presidente de la República, Teniente Coronel Gualberto Villarroel, el patrón de la hacienda Vicente Mendoza López tiene encerrado en la División de Investigaciones a tres de sus compañeros: Manuel Huanca, Pablo Huanca y Venancio Chini. La Paz, 13 de septiembre de 1945.

12. ALP/PC. 1946. Oficio del Ministro de Gobierno al Prefecto del Departamento de La Paz. La Paz, 26 de febrero de 1946.

13. ALP/P-E. 1946. Oficio de los representantes de la comunidad de Guarina dirigido al Excelentísimo señor Presidente Constitucional de la República, solicitando una nueva Ley revisitaria. La Paz, 15 de abril de 1946.

14. ALP/PC. 1946. Oficio del prefecto del departamento de La Paz al Secretario de Estado en el despacho del Gobierno, Justicia e Inmigración. La Paz, 30 de agosto de 1946.

15. ALP/PC. 1946. Telegramas de subprefecto de la provincia de Ingavi al prefecto de La Paz. La Paz, 11 y 13 de febrero de 1946.

16. ALP/PC. 1946. Circular del prefecto del departamento de La Paz al subprefecto de la provincia Camacho. La Paz, 18 de noviembre de 1946.

17. La calma en la campaña es aparente. Se viene preparando una sublevación indigenal para el curso del presente. Hasta esta fecha, la Federación Agraria Departamental ya estaba consolidada (1947, 6 de febrero). El Diario, p. 4.

18. Sublevación indigenal en Puerto Pérez, Pukarani y Laja. Movilización de efectivos militares para neutralizarlos. (1947, 10 de enero). El Diario, p. 4.

19. La sublevación indigenal en Pukarani (1947, 11 de enero). El Diario, p. 4.

20. "Se vienen los indios" era el grito angustiado de las poblaciones de Pukarani, Puerto Pérez y Laja (1947, 12 de enero). El Diario, p. 4.

21. Ocho cabecillas indígenas de Pukarani han sido detenidos y trasladados a La Paz. Entre los acusados, un exdirector en Batallas, Rigoberto Ayala. Los cabecillas Evaristo Arias, Quintín Vargas, Justino Vargas, Rosendo Sangallo, Martín Sangallo, Juan Sangallo, Dionisio Hualla y Silvestre Siñani dicen pertenecer a las haciendas de Kutusuma y Q'arapata (1947, 8 de febrero). El Diario, p. 4.

22. ALP/P-E. 1945. Hernán, Zenón, Luís Aliaga García piden al prefecto del departamento de La Paz, amparo y garantías por estar enfrentados con la huelga de brazos de sus colonos. La Paz, 5 de septiembre de 1945.

23. ALP/P-E. 1945. Hugo Valdez, Jefe de la Sección Hacienda, encargado de los conflictos indigenales, ante el prefecto del departamento de La Paz, eleva su informe sobre los sucesos en la hacienda Q'arapata y escuela de Batallas. La Paz, 5 de septiembre de 1945.

24. Kutusuma is adjacent to the Q’arapata ranch.

25. ALP/P-E. 1947. Gerardo Campos, abogado, hábil por derecho, solicita amparo y garantías al señor prefecto del departamento de La Paz. La Paz, 19 de mayo de 1947.

26. ALP/P-C. 1947. Telegrama del alcalde municipal de Pukarani solicitando al prefecto del departamento de La Paz el envío de una guarnición como consecuencia del ataque de colonos de la hacienda de Q'arapata a la hacienda de Tacanoca. Pukarani 2 de junio de 1947.

27. Medidas radicales tomó el gobierno contra los indios sublevados. Fueron trasladados a esta ciudad dos víctimas en Tacanoche (1947, 4 de junio). Última Hora, p. 5.

28. Sentida demostración del duelo constituyó el sepelio de las víctimas de Carapata [Q'arapata] (1947, 6 de junio). Última Hora, p.5. Cfr. Más de dos mil personas concurrieron ayer al sepelio de las víctimas de Carapata [Q'arapata]. (1947, 6 de junio). La Razón, p. 5.

29. Se pretendió linchar a los indígenas que consumaron el crimen de Tacanoca (1947, 7 de junio). Última Hora, p. 5.

30. Los sucesos de Caquiaviri (1947, 19 de mayo). Última Hora, p. 5.

31. Se agrava la situación en el altiplano (1947, 7 de junio). Última Hora, p. 5.

32. El Presidente de la agitación indigenal ha sido capturado. Llegó el indio que aspiraba a la presidencia (1947, 25 de junio). La Noche, p. 8.

33. El Presidente lee, escribe y recuerda su vida juvenil. "En los ojos de una lechuza vi las desgracias que nos ocurrirían". (1947, 26 de junio). La Noche, p. 8.

34. Fue planeada en Caquiaviri una "República de Indios". (1947, 8 de julio). Última Hora, p. 4.

35. El "Presidente" de los indios fue capturado en Caquiaviri. (1947, 15 de julio). Última Hora, p. 4.

36. Cochabamba. Continúa con carácter alarmante la sublevación indígena en Tarata (1946, 25 de agosto). La Razón, p. 9.

37. La sublevación indigenal en Pukarani (1947, 11 de enero). El Diario, p. 4.

38. Los indígenas de Ayopaya se han levantado en movimiento subversivo de proporciones. (1947, 6 de febrero). El Diario, p. 5.

39. El señor Miguel Mercado Encinas le manifestó al redactor del periódico El Diario que ayer [6 de febrero de 1947] sostuvo que mediante una conferencia telefónica con sus familiares de la ciudad de Cochabamba, quienes le informaron que el Teniente Coronel Mercado Cadina se encontraba en la ciudad y que al tener conocimiento de la sublevación se trasladó precipitadamente a la finca Yayani situada en las proximidades de Morochata en la provincia Independencia (1947, 7 de febrero). El Diario, p.4.

40. En Estado de permanente embriaguez, más de diez mil indígenas amenazan a los pueblos de Cochabamba (1947, 7 de febrero). El Diario, p. 4.

41. Informantes acerca de los sucesos del ataque a las fincas. (1947, 8 de febrero). El Diario, p. 4.

42. Los indígenas sublevados en Cochabamba fueron cercados por las tropas armadas (1947, 12 de febrero). El Diario, p. 4.

43. Fausto Reinaga, “El imperativo amáutico,” in Socrates y yo (La Paz, Bolivia: Comunidad Amáutica Mundial, 1983), pp. 69–78.

44. REINAGA, Fausto: El Hombre. Ed. CAM, La Paz-Bolivia, 1981; p. 10, 11.

45. LLORENS Y JORDANA, Rodolfo: Servidumbre y grande­ za de la Filosofía. Publicaciones Hispano-americanas, Buenos Aires-Argentina, 1949; p. 134, 135, 174.

46. “Primer Manifiesto de Tiahuanaco (1973),” July 30, 1973, Instituto de Estudos Latino-Americanos, https://iela.ufsc.br/primer-manifiesto-de-tiahuanaco-1973/.