Bolivia Table of Contents
The conquest of the Inca Empire brought the Spanish into contact with
a stratified and ethnically diverse population in the region of
present-day Peru and the Bolivian Altiplano, Yungas, and valleys. The
scant eighty years of Inca rule over the Aymara tribes brought
large-scale population movements within the empire. Inca policies
included the forced migration of potentially hostile (usually recently
conquered) groups and their replacement by Quechua-speaking colonists
(mitimas) of unquestioned loyalty. Mitimas resettled in the valleys
around Cochabamba and Sucre; many Aymara were expelled to the extreme
boundaries of the empire.
Spanish rule created a racially stratified society in which whites
(blancos) and mestizos controlled Indians living in a form of indentured
servitude (pongaje) on haciendas. The Spanish justified colonial
policies as a means of converting the Indians to Christianity, a goal
that was often subordinated to other needs.
However humane Spanish colonial policy was in theory, in practice the
system was filled with abuses. The policies were frequently used to
exact tribute from the Indians to underwrite the colonization effort. In
the encomienda system, for example, the Spanish overlords collected
tribute from the Indian communities and, in return, were to see to their
religious instruction.
Encomenderos, however, often exacted excessive tribute and
appropriated Indian lands. The Spanish also employed the preColumbian mita to require all able-bodied adult males to report for
labor in the mines at prescribed intervals. This conscripted labor,
coming at a time when European diseases caused unprecedented epidemics
among the Indian population, ruptured many communities and Indian
kin-groups. The resulting elevated mortality rates, coupled with
arbitrary increases in the length of service, left some villages
virtually devoid of adult males.
Indians fled to escape the intolerable conditions, many to the
periphery of the mining communities themselves where they survived by a
variety of illegal, if widely tolerated, means. Others sought refuge on
haciendas, where they were exempt from the mita. Urban domestic servants
and artisans, called yanaconas, were exempt as well. The general
upheaval of the colonial period spawned a floating, rootless population
unattached to any specific Indian community. Such individuals often
abandoned their native language and way of life; they formed the basis
of a class that was neither socially nor culturally Indian.
This group, added to the offspring of Spanish-Indian unions, rapidly
gave rise to a population of mestizos of uncertain social position.
Mestizo offspring of marriages recognized by the dominant Hispanic
rulers were frequently assimilated by the ruling group. Illegitimate
offspring of Spanish men and Indian women were usually taken in by their
mother's kin. Alternately, if they had received some education or
training, they joined the ranks of urban artisans and petty merchants.
They swelled the ranks of a distinct social group that was Spanish
speaking and closer in culture to the rulers than to the mass of rural
Indians, yet clearly separate from the Hispanic elite.
With the gradual decline of the mining enterprises and the end of the
colonial period, most Indians found themselves tenants on large estates
that depended on entailed labor to turn a profit. Free Indian
communities remained on the less desirable lands. Pressures on these
communities from further expansion of the haciendas depended on the
level of agricultural profits in a given region. Independence brought
little change; the small white elite remained firmly in control. Their
wealth throughout most of the postindependence era rested on their
agricultural estates, and they firmly resisted any effort to change the
status or outlook of their resident labor force, the Indian peons. As a
result, the economic and social culture of the hacienda, and with it
that of the Indians, continued into the twentieth century.
Ethnicity remained the focus of much of national life in the 1980s.
It was a continuing force in the social relations of individuals and
communities. Ethnic identity--always somewhat fluid--became considerably
more so following the changes of the 1952 Revolution. The ethnic
hierarchy with whites at the pinnacle and the mass of Indians at the
bottom continued, although the possibilities for those at the lower
level to rise improved.
Bolivia's principal groups were a small number of whites, a larger,
more fluid and diverse group of mestizos, and a majority of Quechua or
Aymara Indians. Whites were sometimes lumped with mestizos and called
mistis (the Aymara version of mestizo). One commonly used term, cholo,
referred to an upwardly mobile Indian- -one anxious to assume the norms
and identity of a mestizo. Terminology varied by the region, class, and
ethnic affiliation of the speaker.
A number of minority groups also existed. The Callahuaya, a
linguistically distinct subgroup of the Aymara, lived in Mu?ecas and
Franz Tamayo provinces in La Paz Department. The group was widely known
for its folk medicine, and many, if not most, of the men earned their
livelihoods traveling among the weekly markets held throughout the
Andes. Those who marketed might speak Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish in
addition to their native Callahuaya. There were also a small number of
blacks, the descendants of the few slaves imported during the colonial
era. The Spanish rejected African slaves as a source of labor for the
mines, regarding them as being unable to stand the rigors of the cold or
the altitude. Most blacks lived in the provinces of Nor Yungas and Sur
Yungas in La Paz Department. Significant numbers of Europeans migrated
before and during World War II. In the mid1980s , large German-speaking
communities existed in La Paz and Santa Cruz. Colonization in the
Oriente in the 1960s and 1970s also brought small numbers of Asians to
the region around Santa Cruz.
Lowland Indians
Altiplano, Yungas, and
Valley Indians
Mestizos and Cholos
Whites
More about the
Population
of Bolivia
.
Source:
U.S. Library of Congress
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