Indian Problems, Indian Solutions: Incantations of Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Bolivia

Abstract

Indigenista writings marked an important shift in discourse regarding the majority indigenous population in early twentieth-century Latin America. Indigenismo was an ideological current that developed throughout Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century that focused on the Indian population and questions of nation and of citizenship. In Bolivia, penned in the wake of the 1899 Civil War in which the Aymara indigenous group played a central role, indigenista authors such as Manuel Rigoberto Paredes and the members of the Aymara Academy responded to this Indian initiative participating in national politics. The indigenista authors crafted a legitimizing discourse for the rising Liberal Party, headquartered in La Paz, that came to power as a result of the 1899 Civil War. The Inca became the axis within a liberal indigenista discourse that strove to address questions of progress and race. However, in this context the lauded ‘Bolivian Inca’ had an important ancestor: the Aymara. This indigenista effort to connect the Aymara past to the Inca past within the national historical narrative represents an alternative liberal discourse on the ‘Indian problem.’ In the wake of the war, the promotion of a specific Indian past was not the sole domain of the indigenista authors. As indigenista intellectuals crafted a glorified Inca past for Bolivia, residents of Aymara communities began to appropriate and enact theatrical performances of the indigenistas’ idealized Inca past in town celebrations, as demonstrated by the case of Caracollo, Bolivia.

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