Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930

Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930 PDF Author: Erick Detlef Langer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804714914
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, the disintegration of the silver-mining economy that had survived since the colonial period effected fundamental economic and social changes in southern Bolivia. The changes took three forms: increased conflict between peasants and elites, expanded concentration of land into large estates, and worsened labor conditions among the peasants. This study concentrates on the four provinces in the department of Chuquisaca, using them as case studies of how and why rural peoples adapted to and resisted the changes in their lives. Resistance took many forms: strikes, rebellions, insurrections, court challenges, banditry, and flight. In the reactions to change in these provinces, the author sees certain common characteristics that transcend the region and can be discerned in other parts of Latin America. On the basis of the Chuquisaca experience, he also questions the validity of current theories of peasant resistance and rebellion. The author describes the reactions of the oligarchy based in Sucre, the capital, to the decline of silver as Bolivia's major export, showing how they attempted to regain their preeminent financial and political position by a number of strategies, notably the expansion of the hacienda system. This expansion gave rise to different problems in each of the four provinces: in Yamparaez, fierce resistance by the Indian communities to any changes; in Cinti, violent labor disputes brought on by the creation of enormous agro-industrial estates; in Azero, Indian attempts to escape debt peonage by migrating or by joining Franciscan missions; and in Tomina, widespread banditry. The final chapter compares and contrasts the various forms of rural resistance in the context of their social, economic, and cultural foundations.

Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930

Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930 PDF Author: Erick Detlef Langer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804714914
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, the disintegration of the silver-mining economy that had survived since the colonial period effected fundamental economic and social changes in southern Bolivia. The changes took three forms: increased conflict between peasants and elites, expanded concentration of land into large estates, and worsened labor conditions among the peasants. This study concentrates on the four provinces in the department of Chuquisaca, using them as case studies of how and why rural peoples adapted to and resisted the changes in their lives. Resistance took many forms: strikes, rebellions, insurrections, court challenges, banditry, and flight. In the reactions to change in these provinces, the author sees certain common characteristics that transcend the region and can be discerned in other parts of Latin America. On the basis of the Chuquisaca experience, he also questions the validity of current theories of peasant resistance and rebellion. The author describes the reactions of the oligarchy based in Sucre, the capital, to the decline of silver as Bolivia's major export, showing how they attempted to regain their preeminent financial and political position by a number of strategies, notably the expansion of the hacienda system. This expansion gave rise to different problems in each of the four provinces: in Yamparaez, fierce resistance by the Indian communities to any changes; in Cinti, violent labor disputes brought on by the creation of enormous agro-industrial estates; in Azero, Indian attempts to escape debt peonage by migrating or by joining Franciscan missions; and in Tomina, widespread banditry. The final chapter compares and contrasts the various forms of rural resistance in the context of their social, economic, and cultural foundations.

The Chaco War

The Chaco War PDF Author: Bridget Maria Chesterton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474248896
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In 1932 Bolivia and Paraguay went to war over the Chaco region in South America. The war lasted three years and approximately 52,000 Bolivians and Paraguayans died. Moving beyond the battlefields of the Chaco War, this volume highlights the forgotten narratives of the war. Studying the environmental, ethnic, and social realities of the war in both Bolivia and Paraguay, the contributors examine the conflict that took place between 1932 and 1936 and explore its relationship with and impact on nationalism, activism and modernity. Beginning with an overview of the war, the book goes on to explore many new approaches to the conflict, and the contributors address topics such as the environmental challenges faced by the forces involved, the role of indigenous peoples, the impact of oil nationalism and the conflict's aftermath. This is a volume that will be of interest to anyone working on modern Latin America and the relationship between war and society.

Indigenous Struggle and the Bolivian National Revolution

Indigenous Struggle and the Bolivian National Revolution PDF Author: James Kohl
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000210057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Indigenous Struggle and the Bolivian National Revolution: Land and Liberty! reinterprets the genesis and contours of the Bolivian National Revolution from an indigenous perspective. In a critical revision of conventional works, the author reappraises and reconfigures the tortuous history of insurrection and revolution, counterrevolution and resurrection, and overthrow and aftermath in Bolivia. Underlying the history of creole conflict between dictatorship and democracy lies another conflict – the unrelenting 500-year struggle of the conquered indigenous peoples to reclaim usurped lands, resist white supremacist dominion, and seize autonomous political agency. The book utilizes a wide array of sources, including interviews and documents to illuminate the thoughts, beliefs, and objectives of an extraordinary cast of indigenous revolutionaries, giving readers a firsthand look at the struggles of the subaltern majority against creole elites and Anglo-American hegemons in South America’s most impoverished nation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of modern Latin American history, peasant movements, the history of U.S. foreign relations, revolutions, counterrevolutions, and revolutionary warfare.

Bandits and Liberals, Rebels and Saints

Bandits and Liberals, Rebels and Saints PDF Author: Alan Knight
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496230906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
In Bandits and Liberals, Rebels and Saints Alan Knight offers a distinct perspective on several overarching themes in Latin American history, spanning approximately two centuries, from 1800 to 2000. Knight’s approach is ambitious and comparative—sometimes ranging beyond Latin America and combining relevant social theory with robust empirical detail. He tries to offer answers to big questions while challenging alternative answers and approaches, including several recently fashionable ones. While the individual essays and the book as a whole are roughly chronological, the approach is essentially thematic, with chapters devoted to major contentious themes in Latin American history across two centuries: the sociopolitical roots and impact of banditry; the character and evolution of liberalism; religious conflict; the divergent historical trajectories of Peru and Mexico; the nature of informal empire and internal colonialism; and the region’s revolutionary history—viewed through the twin prisms of British perceptions and comparative global history.

Earth Politics

Earth Politics PDF Author: Waskar Ari
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376954
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Earth Politics focuses on the lives of four indigenous activist-intellectuals in Bolivia, key leaders in the Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), a movement established to claim rights for indigenous education and reclaim indigenous lands from hacienda owners. The AMP leaders invented a discourse of decolonization, rooted in part in native religion, and used it to counter structures of internal colonialism, including the existing racial systems. Waskar Ari calls their social movement, practices, and discourse earth politics, both because the AMP emphasized the idea of the earth and the place of Indians on it, and because of the political meaning that the AMP gave to the worship of the Aymara gods. Depicting the social worlds and life work of the activists, Ari traverses Bolivia's political and social landscape from the 1920s into the early 1970s. He reveals the AMP 's extensive geographic reach, genuine grassroots quality, and vibrant regional diversity. Ari had access to the private archives of indigenous families, and he collected oral histories, speaking with men and women who knew the AMP leaders. The resulting examination of Bolivian indigenous activism is one of unparalleled nuance and depth.

Chimneys in the Desert

Chimneys in the Desert PDF Author: Fernando Rocchi
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804767453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
This book offers new topics and new perspectives on the economic history of Argentina before the 1930 Depression. It focuses on the evolution of early industrialization in a country primarily associated with cattle-ranching and agriculture, and single-mindedly characterized as a case of a successful export economy. Taking an original approach, the book cross-examines traditional economic issues such as production and finances, and new cultural patterns, such as consumption, the role of women, paternalism, and ideology. The first years of Argentina’s industrialization, from the 1870s to the 1920s, coincided with a time of great innovation, a brisk turn from tradition, and quick modernization. This book shows that industry not only helped Argentina’s economy along, but spearheaded its modernization. It challenges the long-lasting “canonical version” that industry was a victim of a capital market and a state extremely hostile to manufacturing. Access to financing for industrial endeavors was much easier than previously thought, while the state supported industry through tariffs.

La Paz's Colonial Specters

La Paz's Colonial Specters PDF Author: Luis Sierra
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350099171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This original study examines a vital but neglected aspect of the 1952 National Revolution in Bolivia; the activism of urban inhabitants. Many of these activists were Aymara-speaking people of indigenous origin who transformed the urban environment, politics and place of “indígenas” and “neighbors” within the city of La Paz. Luis Sierra traces how these urban residents faced racial discrimination and marginalization despite their political support for the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). La Paz's Colonial Specters reassesses the contingent, relational nature of Bolivia's racial categories and the artificial division between urban and rural activists. Building on rich established historiography on the indigenous people of Bolivia, Luis Sierra breaks new ground in showing the role of the neighborhoods in the process of urbanization, and builds upon analysis of the ways in which race, gender and class discourse shaped migrants interactions with other urban residents. Questioning how and why this multiclass and multi-ethnic group continued to be labelled by elites and the state as “un-modern” indigena, the author uses La Paz to demonstrate the ways in which race, class, and gender intertwine in urbanization and in conceptions of the city and nation. Of interest to scholars, researchers and advanced students of Latin American history, urban history, the history of activism and the history of ethnic conflict, this unique study covers the previously neglected first half of the 20th century to shed light on the urban development of La Paz and its racial and political divides.

Red October

Red October PDF Author: Jeffery R. Webber
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004205586
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Bolivia witnessed a left-indigenous insurrectionary cycle between 2000 and 2005 that overthrew two neoliberal presidents and laid the foundation for Evo Morales’ successful bid to become the country’s first indigenous head of state in 2006. Building on the theoretical traditions of revolutionary Marxism and indigenous liberation, this book provides an analytical framework for understanding the fine-grained sociological and political nuances of twenty-first century Bolivian class-struggle, state-repression, and indigenous resistance, as well the deeply historical roots of today’s oppositional traditions. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 80 in-depth interviews with social-movement and trade-union activists, Red October is a ground-breaking intervention in the study of contemporary Bolivia and the wider Latin American turn to the left over the last decade.

Fields of Revolution

Fields of Revolution PDF Author: Carmen Soliz
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822988100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Fields of Revolution examines the second largest case of peasant land redistribution in Latin America and agrarian reform—arguably the most important policy to arise out of Bolivia’s 1952 revolution. Competing understandings of agrarian reform shaped ideas of property, productivity, welfare, and justice. Peasants embraced the nationalist slogan of “land for those who work it” and rehabilitated national union structures. Indigenous communities proclaimed instead “land to its original owners” and sought to link the ruling party discourse on nationalism with their own long-standing demands for restitution. Landowners, for their part, embraced the principle of “land for those who improve it” to protect at least portions of their former properties from expropriation. Carmen Soliz combines analysis of governmental policies and national discourse with everyday local actors’ struggles and interactions with the state to draw out the deep connections between land and people as a material reality and as the object of political contention in the period surrounding the revolution.

Inventing Indigenous Knowledge

Inventing Indigenous Knowledge PDF Author: Lynn Swartley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317794206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This volume provides a multi-sited and multivocalic investigation of the dynamic social, political and economic processes in the creation and implementation of an agricultural development project. The raised field rehabilitation project attempted to introduce a pre-Columbian agricultural method into the contemporary Lake Titicaca Basin.