The Five Hundred Year Rebellion by Dangl Benjamin;

Author:Dangl, Benjamin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2019-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Santos Marka T’ula (middle row, center, with hat) and T’ul’a’s scribe Leandro Condori Chura (right of T’ula, wearing dark suit) at a gathering of caciques in La Paz, circa 1925. Courtesy of the Andean Oral History Workshop.

A brief look at the historical circumstances and rise of the ca­­ciques apoderados helps to understand the world in which T’ula lived and fought. A renewed grab for indigenous land at the turn of the twentieth century, triggered in part by the growth of the national railroad network, besieged indigenous communities facing hacienda expansion. The caciques apoderados, chosen by their communities to fight the land grab through bureaucratic means, developed a network to legally resist incursions onto indigenous land and to champion communities’ rights and demands in government and in court. The caciques apoderados themselves drew from two laws passed in the late nineteenth century. The 1874 Disentailment Law enabled indigenous leaders to be legally recognized as mediators between the government and the communities they represented, hence the term caciques apoderados.6 The Law of November 23, 1883 stipulated that land titles acquired by indigenous people during the colonial period could be used as proof of legal ownership. The goal of the caciques apoderados was to locate and use such titles for proving ownership in their defense of indigenous land.7

At the time, a small class of Spanish-speaking elites maintained political and economic power at the expense of the indigenous majority. Fifty-one percent of the Bolivian population was indigenous in 1900, 73 percent lived in rural areas, and the Spanish language was spoken by a minority.8 The implications of such a social divide for indigenous land ownership were stark. Complicating matters, Liberal party leaders prioritized completing a rail system connecting Bolivia to Chile and its Pacific ports. From 1905 to 1915, rail construction raised the accessibility, and therefore prices, of land in rural areas in the departments of La Paz and Oruro where the hacienda had not yet reached, contributing to increased elite interest in acquiring indigenous-owned land.9 Overall, from 1900 to 1930, a boom in hacienda agriculture placed a disastrous stranglehold on indigenous land. In 1880, indigenous communities still held half the land in Bolivia, but by 1930, just a third of the land was in their hands. This contributed to a disintegration of many rural communities and led displaced indigenous people to migrate to urban areas.10

The caciques apoderados fought against this elite land grab and developed the highest level of national coordination among indigenous movements of their time, with leaders based throughout the departments of La Paz (where activity was widespread), Oruro, Cochabamba, Potosí, and Chuquisaca. The network petitioned the government for land ownership, education, and rights in what was a well-coordinated movement.11 The struggle against land expropriation was fierce; in many cases, particularly in northern Potosí, communities physically prevented government authorities from entering indigenous-controlled regions to survey land or hand out individual titles.12

While the 1874 Disentailment Law broke up communal indigenous landholdings and divided them into private parcels to be sold

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