Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:55:53.556Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberty Time in Question: Historical Duration and Indigenous Refusal in Post-Revolutionary Bolivia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2020

Mareike Winchell
Mareike Winchell*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, University of Chicago
*
mareike@uchicago.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines revolutionary discourses of national historical transformation in Bolivia and tracks the ways those discourses are appropriated, contested, and recast by farmers in the rural agricultural province of Ayopaya. During fieldwork carried out with Quechua-speaking farmers in Ayopaya between 2011 and 2012, I learned about people's enduring concerns with a recent hacienda past. Against governmental declarations that Bolivia's colonial past was dead or had passed, farmers meditated on the duration of earlier histories of colonial land dispossession and violations of indigenous sovereignty. Talk about the region's oppressive history here allowed people to assess deficient state aid and resources but also to oppose unwelcome state interventions pushing a legal model of bounded collectivity. I trace the ways that farmers and villagers mobilized the hacienda past to address inequitable land tenure, violated sovereignty, and women's marginalization from political life, and thereby raise new questions about the critical possibilities opened up by the re-politicization of this colonial history. Rural support for Bolivia's Movement Toward Socialism party government eroded nearly a decade ago, and this complicates both triumphalist and defeatist accounts of President Evo Morales’ 2019 resignation, which tend to paint Morales’ rural indigenous supporters as innocent and naïve.

Keywords

PachakutislaveryrevolutionEvo Moralesindigenous nationalismQuechua
Type
Contamination and the Half-Life of History
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 551 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abercrombie, Thomas. 1998. Pathways of Memory and Power. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Albó, Xavier. 1987. From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari. In Stern, Steve J., ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 379–419.Google Scholar
Albó, Xavier. 2007. Movimientos indígenas desde 1900 hasta la actualidad. In López, Jesús Espasandín and Turrión, Pablo Iglesias, eds., Bolivia en Movimiento: acción colectiva y poder politico. La Paz: Editorial El Viejo Topo, 67–100.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 2006[1961]. Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Arnold, Denise Y. 1993. Adam and Eve and the Red-Trousered Ant: History in the Southern Andes. Travesia 2, 1: 49–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denise Y. 2009. Cartografías de la Memoria: Hacia un Paradigma más Dinámico y Viviente del Espacio. Cuadernos FHyCS-UNJu 36: 203–44.Google Scholar
Bear, Laura. 2016. Time as Technique. Annual Review of Anthropology 45: 487–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bessire, Lucas. 2014. Behold the Black Caiman. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2001. Politics out of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coca-Morante, Mario and Tolín-Tordoya, Ismael. 2013. The Potato Late Blight Caused by Phytophthora infestans Mont de Bary as Selection Factor of Phurejas Potatoes (Solanum phureja Juz et Buk) in Endemic Areas of the Bolivian Andes.” American Journal of Plant Sciences 4, 1: 53–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockburn, Jenny. 2014. Bolivia's Food Sovereignty & Agrobiodiversity: Undermining the Local to Strengthen the State? Theory in Action 7, 4: 67–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collyns, Dan. 2019. Bolivia President's Initial Indigenous-Free Cabinet Heightens Polarization. La Paz, 14 Nov., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/bolivia-president-jeanine-anez-cabinet-indigenous (on Guardian website, last accessed 23 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Dandler, Jorge and Juan Torrico, A. 1987. From the National Indigenous Congress to the Ayopaya Rebellion: Bolivia, 1945–1947. In Stern, Steve J., ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Dangl, Benjamin. 2019. History at the Barricades: Evo Morales and the Power of the Past in Bolivian Politics. North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Report on the Americas. 8 Oct. At: https://nacla.org/news/2019/10/08/evo-morales-bolivian-elections-dangl (last accessed 12 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
de la Cadena, Marisol. 2014. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
de Munter, Koen and Note, Nicole. 2009. Cosmopraxis and Contextualizing among the Contemporary Aymara. In Note, Nicole et al. , eds., Worldview and Cultures: Philosophical Reflections from an Intercultural Perspective. New York: Springer, 87–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunkerley, James. 2007. Evo Morales, the ‘Two Bolivias,’ and the Third Bolivian Revolution. Journal of Latin American Studies 39, 1: 133–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El Día. 2014. No hay quién frene el daño ambiental de la Minería. 2 Aug. At: https://www.eldia.com.bo/index.php?cat=357&pla=3&id_articulo=151198 (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Fabricant, Nicole. 2019. The Roots of the Right-Wing Coup in Bolivia. Dissent, 23 Dec. At: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/roots-coup-bolivia-morales-anez-camacho (accessed 5 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Farthing, Donna and Kohl, Benjamin. 2012. Material Constraints to Indigenous Imaginaries: The Extractive Economy and Resource Nationalism in Bolivia. Political Geography 31, 4: 225–35.Google Scholar
Ferreira de Silva, Denise. 2009. An Outline of a Global Political Subject: Reading Evo Morales's Election as a (Post) Colonial Event. Seattle Journal for Social Science 8, 10: 25–49.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. The End of History? National Interest 16: 3–18.Google Scholar
García Linera, Álvaro. 2009. Forma Valor y Forma Comunidad. La Paz: La Muela del Diablo/CLASCO.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Ruth. 2019. Ethnobotanies of Refusal: Methodologies in Respecting Plant(ed)-Human Resistance. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 35, 2: 18–22.Google Scholar
Goodale, Mark. 2009. Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodale, Mark. 2019. A Revolution in Fragments: Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology, and Practice in Bolivia. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordillo, Gaston. 2014. Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gose, Peter. 1994. Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Gotkowitz, Laura. 2007. A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880–1852. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Graeter, Stephanie. 2017. To Revive an Abundant Life: Catholic Science and Neoextractivist Politics in Peru's Mantaro Valley. Cultural Anthropology 32, 1: 117–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutiérrez Aguilar, Raquel. 2014. Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Charles. 2004. Rethinking Indigenous Politics in the Era of the ‘Indio Permitido.’ NACLA Report on the Americas 38, 2: 16–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Knowledge. Feminist Studies 14, 3: 575–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 2015. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities 6, 1: 159–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna and Tsing, Anna. 2019. Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing. Interviewed by Greg Mitman. Edgeeffects. At: https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/ (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Harman, Chris. 2005. The Bolivian Uprising. Socialist Review (July–Aug.). At: http://socialistreview.org.uk/298/bolivian-uprising (last accessed 23 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Harris, Cheryl I. 1993. Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review 106, 8: 1707–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Olivia. 1995. Knowing the Past: Plural Identities and the Antinomies of Loss in Highland Bolivia. In Fardon, Richard, ed., Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge. London: Routledge, 105–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, Tom. 2004. Bolivia's Indian Revolt: The US Policies of Economic Globalization and Militarization are Failing. The Nation, 3 June. At: https://www.thenation.com/article/bolivias-indian-revolt/ (last accessed 23 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Hegel, G.W.F. 1979[1807]. Phenomenology of Spirit. Miller, A. V., trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hetland, Gabriel. 2019. Many Wanted Morales Out: But What Happened in Bolivia Was a Military Coup. Guardian 13 (Nov.). At: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/13/morales-bolivia-military-coup (last accessed 15 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Howard-Malverde, Rosaleen. 1990. The Speaking of History: “Willapaakushayki,” or Quechua Ways of Telling. London: University of London Institute of Latin American Studies Research Paper 21.Google Scholar
Hylton, Forrest and Thomson, Sinclair. 2007. Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Hylton, Forrest, Paco, Félix Patzi, Serulnikov, Serio, and Thomson, Sinclair. 2003. Ya es otro tiempo el presente. La Paz: Muela del Diablo Editores.Google Scholar
INRA. 2010. La tierra vuelve a manos indígenas y campesinas. La Paz: Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria. At: http://www.inra.gob.bo/InraPb/upload/LaTierraVuelveManosIndigenas.pdf (accessed 6 Feb. 2019).Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhardt. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kovarik, Jacqulyn. 2019. Bolivia's Anti-Indigenous Backlash Is Growing. The Nation. 13 Nov. At: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/bolivia-morales-whipala/ (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Kurmanaev, Anatoly. 2019. ‘Evo Morales Is Like a Father to Us.’ New York Times, 27 Nov. At: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia-coca.html (last accessed 20 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Kurmanaev, Anatoly and Krauss, Clifford. 2019. Ethnic Rifts in Bolivia Burst into View with Fall of Evo Morales. New York Times, 14 Nov. At: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/americas/morales-bolivia-Indigenous-racism.html (last accessed 20 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Patria, La. 2010. Plagas destruyen cultivos de papa en cien comunidades de Ayopaya. 7 Aug. At: http://lapatriaenlinea.com/index.php?t=plagas-destruyen-cultivos-de-papa-en-cien-comunidades-de-ayopaya&nota=36828 (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Larson, Brooke. 1998. Cochabamba, 1550–1900. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leinaweaver, Jessaca. 2008. The Circulation of Children: Kinship, Adoption, and Morality in Andean Peru. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lopez Pila, Esther. 2014. “We don't lie and cheat like the Collas do”: Highland-Lowland Regionalist Tensions and Indigenous Identity Politics in Amazonian Bolivia. Critique of Anthropology 34, 4: 429–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Barry J. 2006. Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, Kristina Marie. 2016. Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.-Columbia War on Drugs. Cultural Anthropology 31, 1: 56–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mamani Ramírez, Pablo. 2015. ¿Descolonización Real O Falsa Descolonización En Bolivia? Corrientes De Pensamiento. Bolivian Studies Journal 21. At: http://bsj.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/bsj/article/view/145 (last accessed 15 Jan. 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mar, Tracey Banivanua and Edmonds, Penelope. 2010. Introduction: Making Space in Settler Colonies. In Mar, Tracey Banivanua and Edmonds, Penelope, eds., Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1972[1867]. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume 1. In Tucker, Robert C., ed., The Marx–Engels Reader. 2d ed.Fowkes, Ben and Fernbach, David, trans. New York: Routledge, 294–436.Google Scholar
Morir Antes Que Esclavos Vivir. Public group on Facebook. At: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1638718813089589/about/ (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Morir Antes Que Esclavos Vivir. 2019. Youtube video of cueca song of the same name. Uploaded 24 Oct. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-XHG03fduo (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Orías, P. Revilla. 2014. ¡Morir antes que esclavos vivir! República libertarian y esclavidud en Bolivia decimonónica. In Robins, Nicolas et al. , eds., Mitos Expuestos: Falsas leyendas de Bolivia. Cochabamba, Bolivia: Grupo Editorial Kipus, 219–45.Google Scholar
Orta, Andrew. 2013. Forged Communities and Vulgar Citizens: Autonomy and Its Límites in Semineoliberal Bolivia. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 18, 1: 108–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmié, Stephan and Stewart, Charles. 2016. Introduction: For an Anthropology of History. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, 1: 207–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patzi Paco, Félix. 2004. Sistema Comunal una alternativa al sistema liberal. La Paz: Comunidad de Estudios Alternativas (CEEA).Google Scholar
Perrault, Tom. 2012. Extracting Justice: Natural Gas, Indigenous Mobilization and the Bolivian State. In Gomez, Terence and Sawyer, Suzana, eds., Transnational Governmentality and Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations, Multinational Institutions and the State. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 75–102.Google Scholar
Postero, Nancy Grey. 2017. The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Postero, Nancy Grey and Fabricant, Nicole. 2019. Indigenous Sovereignty and the New Developmentalism in Plurinational Bolivia. Anthropological Theory 19, 1: 95–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2011. The Governance of the Prior. Interventions 13, 1: 13–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinaga, Fausto. 2001[1970]. La Revolución India. 2d ed.El Alto: Ediciones Fundación Amaútica Fausto Reinaga/Imp. Movil Graf.Google Scholar
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 1987. Oppressed but Not Defeated: Peasant Struggles among the Aymara and Qhechwa in Bolivia, 1900–1980. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.Google Scholar
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 1989. El potencial epistemológico de la historia oral: Algunas contribuciones de Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. In Mato, Daniel, ed., Estudios e outras practices intelectuales Latinamericanas en cultura e poder. Caracas: CLASCO, n.p.Google Scholar
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2005. Invisible Realities: Internal Markets and Subaltern Identities in Contemporary Bolivia. Amsterdam: SEPHIS-SEASREP.Google Scholar
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2012. Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization. South Atlantic Quarterly 111, 1: 95–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2019. Bolivia's Lesson in Triumphalism. English transcription of Rivera Cusicanqui's address at the Women's Parliament on 12 Nov. Published online by Toward Freedom: https://towardfreedom.org/blog-blog/silvia-rivera-cusicanqui-bolivias-lesson-in-triumphalism/ (accessed 5 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Rizvi, Uzma Z. 2017. Decolonization Is Political Action, Not an Act of Historical Circumstance. Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology (now Anthro{dendum}) At: https://savageminds.org/author/uzma/ (last accessed 15 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Robbins, Paul. 2004. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Salomon, Frank L. 2004. The Cord Keepers: Khius and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanjinés, Javier C. 2004. Mestizaje Upside Down: Aesthetic Politics in Modern Bolivia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Scott, David. 2014. Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverblatt, Irene. 2004. Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soliz, Carmen. 2017. “Land to the Original Owners”: Rethinking the Indigenous Politics of the Bolivian Agrarian Reform. Hispanic American Historical Review 97, 2: 259–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soliz, Carmen. 2019. Chaos in Bolivia after President Resigns. The World. Public Radio International. 11 Nov. At: https://www.pri.org/file/2019-11-11/chaos-bolivia-after-president-resigns (last accessed 10 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Stephenson, Marcia. 2002. Forging an Indigenous Counterpublic Sphere: The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia. Latin American Research Review 37, 2: 99–116.Google Scholar
Stoler, Laura A. 2008. Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination. Cultural Anthropology 23, 2: 191–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Striffler, Steve. 2001. In the Shadows of State and Capital. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Swinehart, Karl. 2019. Decolonial Time in Bolivia's Pachakuti. Signs and Society 7, 1: 96–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1986. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tekelenburg, A. 2001. Cactus Pear and Cochineal in Cochabamba: The Development of a Cross-Epistemological Toolkit for Interactive Design of Farm Innovation. PhD thesis, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.Google Scholar
Thomas, Deborah A. 2016. Time and the Otherwise: Plantations, Garrisons, and Being Human in the Caribbean. Anthropological Theory 16, 2–3: 177–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ticktin, Miriam. 2017. A World without Innocence. American Ethnologist 44, 4: 577–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tockman, Jason and Cameron, John. 2014. Indigenous Autonomy and the Contradictions of Plurinationalism in Bolivia. Latin American Politics and Society 56, 3: 46–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tockman, Jason, Cameron, John, and Plata, Wilfredo. 2015. New Institutions of Indigenous Self-Governance in Bolivia: Between Autonomy and Self-Discipline. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 10, 1: 37–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soria, Toranzos, Carlos, F. 2019. Morir antes que esclavos vivir. Opinion piece. Pagina Siete, 23 Sept. At: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2019/9/23/morir-antes-que-esclavos-vivir-231797.html (last accessed 14 Mar. 2020).Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2015. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. 2d ed. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne. 2012. Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization 1, 1: 1–40.Google Scholar
Urton, Gary. 1981. Animals and Astronomy in the Quechua Universe. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125, 2: 110–27.Google Scholar
Van Cott, Donna Lee. 2000. The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Winchell, Mareike. 2015. After Servitude: Bonded Histories and the Politics of Indigeneity in Reformist Bolivia. PhD diss., University of California. Berkeley. At: http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Winchell_berkeley_0028E_15801.pdf (last accessed 15 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Winchell, Mareike. 2018. After Servitude: Bonded Histories and the Encumbrances of Exchange in Indigenizing Bolivia. Journal of Peasant Studies 45, 2: 453–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, Erik. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zibechi, Raúl. 2019. Bolivia: Evo's Fall, the Fascist Right, and the Power of Memory. New Politics, 18 Nov. At: https://newpol.org/bolivia-evos-fall-the-fascist-right-and-the-power-of-memory-by-Raul-Zibechi (last accessed 6 Feb. 2020).Google Scholar