Subverting Colonial Authority

Serulnikov Sergio Serulnikov

Description

This innovative political history provides a new perspective on the enduring question of the origins and nature of the Indian revolts against the Spanish that exploded in the southern Andean highlands in the 1780s. Subverting Colonial Authority focuses on one of the main-but least studied-centers of rebel activity during the age of the Tupac Amaru revolution: the overwhelmingly indigenous Northern Potosi region of present-day Bolivia. Tracing how routine political conflict developed into large-scale violent upheaval, Sergio Serulnikov explores the changing forms of colonial domination and peasant politics in the area from the 1740s (the starting point of large political and economic transformations) through the early 1780s, when a massive insurrection of the highland communities shook the foundations of Spanish rule.Drawing on court records, government papers, personal letters, census documents, and other testimonies from Bolivian and Argentine archives, Subverting Colonial Authority addresses issues that illuminate key aspects of indigenous rebellion, European colonialism, and Andean cultural history. Serulnikov analyzes long-term patterns of social conflict rooted in local political cultures and regionally based power relations. He examines the day-to-day operations of the colonial system of justice within the rural villages as well as the sharp ideological and political strife among colonial ruling groups. Highlighting the emergence of radical modes of anticolonial thought and ethnic cooperation, he argues that Andean peasants were able to overcome entrenched tendencies toward internal dissension and fragmentation in the very process of marshaling both law and force to assert their rights and hold colonial authorities accountable. Along the way, Serulnikov shows, they not only widened the scope of their collective identities but also contradicted colonial ideas of indigenous societies as either secluded cultures or pliant objects of European rule.

Sujets

• Histoire
• América del Sur
• Cultural studies
• South America
• History of the Americas
• Andes

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 23 septembre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385264
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

S E R G I O S E R U L N I K O V u b v e r t i n g S c o l o n i a l a u t h o r i t y

C H A L L E N G E S T O S P A N I S H R U L E I N

E I G H T E E N T H  C E N T U R Y S O U T H E R N A N D E S

s u b v e r t i n g c o l o n i a l a u t h o r i t y

S U B V E R T I N G C O L O N I A L A U T H O R I T Y

sergioserulnikov

DukeUniversityPress

Durham and London 2003

Challenges

to

Spanish

Rule

in

Eighteenth-

Century

Southern

Andes

∫2003 Duke

UniversityPress

All rights reserved

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UnitedStates

of America on

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Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Political Legitimacy in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Andean Villages 19 From a Multiethnic Community to a Multiethnic Chieftainship: Florencio Lupa, Cacique of Moscari 54 Customs and Rules: Bourbon Rationalizing Projects and Social Conflicts in the 1770s 85 Disputed Images of Colonialism: Spanish Rule and Indian Subversion, 1777–1780 122 The Dilemmas of Self-Rule 157 In the Land of Heretics 186 Conclusion: Andean Political Imagination in Times of Insurgency 215 Notes 229 References 267 Index 277

Acknowledgments

W h i l e w o r k i n g o n t h i s b o o k , I benefited from the help of many institutions and individuals. The Social Science Research Council (ssrc), the Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de la Argentina (conicet), the John Carter Brown Library, the Fundación Antorchas, Boston College, and the National Endowment for the Humanities o√ered financial support for the research and writing. I want to thank the sta√s of the Archivo Nacional de Bolivia in Sucre, especially its former Director Lic. Rene Arce Aguirre, and the Archivo General de la Nación de Buenos Aires for their cooperation. I would like to express my appreciation to the History Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where I wrote the dissertation on which this book is based. I am particularly indebted to Paul Gootenberg, Ian Roxborough, and Barbara Weinstein for their advice and support. A special note of gratitude is due to Brooke Larson, who contributed in various ways to design this research and improve its final product. In Buenos Aires, colleagues and friends at the Programa de Historia de America Latina (prohal) belong- ing to the Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana ‘‘Dr. Emilio Ravignani,’’ Universidad de Buenos Aires, provided a stimulating intellectual environment. I am grateful to its director, Enrique Tandeter, who was involved in this project from its very beginnings. The confidence of my colleagues at Boston College greatly helped me to bring this work to completion. Many colleagues and friends o√ered fruitful comments and criticism on dif- ferent sections of this study over the years. Among those, I want to mention

Fernando Boro, John Coatsworth, Francie Chasen-López, Roberto Fernández, Ariel de la Fuente, Pepe Gordillo, Leonardo Hernández, Christine Hunefeldt, Juan Carlos Korol, Jorge Hidalgo Lehuede, Nils Jacobsen, Kevin Kenny, De- borah Levenson-Estrada, Gene Lebovics, Nacho Lewkovitz, Jane Mangan, Cecilia Méndez, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Juan Manuel Palacios, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Gustavo Paz, Tristan Platt, Mariano Plotkin, Ana Maria Presta, Andrés Regiani, Juan Jose Santos, Roberto Schmit, Karen Spalding, Sinclair Thomson, John Tutino, Charles Walker, and Kathleen Wilson. The three anony- mous readers for Duke University Press provided much valuable insights and suggestions on the manuscript. I owe my deepest gratitude, intellectual and otherwise, to my wife Silvana Palermo.

viii

Acknowledgments

Introduction

T h i s b o o k e x p l o r e s t h e c h a n g i n gforms of colonial domi- nation and peasant politics in the province of Chayanta, an important Aymara cultural zone in an area of present-day Bolivia known as northern Potosí. The study begins in the 1740s with the opening of a new cycle of demographic, agrarian, and commercial growth, and it concludes in the early 1780s when a mass Indian uprising shook the foundation of Spanish rule in the Andes. The socioeconomic and political characteristics of this region make it a particularly rich case study for the analysis of subaltern politics and culture. An overwhelm- ingly indigenous area, the social fabric of the Andean community exhibited in northern Potosí an unmatched resilience to colonial and postcolonial regimes. As such, these rural groups have become the focus of a wealth of anthropologi- ∞ cal and ethnohistorical studies. Politically, the region was one of the main scenarios of rebel activity during the pan-Andean insurrection of the early 1780s. As the most massive and radical indigenous uprising since the beginning of colonial times, this insurgency swept an extensive area stretching from south Ecuador to the north of Chile and Argentina. Native peoples organized large armies and laid siege to some of the most populated cities in the region. The ide- ology of the movement is no less striking: 250 years after the Spanish conquest,