Parias de la Patria. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia (1825-1890) (Parias de la Patria. The myth of the liberation of the indigenous people in the Bolivian Republic), La Paz, Bolivia: Plural Editores 2015, 345 pages.

608

REVIEWS

BOLIVIA ´ Parias de la Patria: el mito de la liberaci´on de los ind´ıgenas en la Republica de Bolivia (1825–1890). By Wolf Gruner. La Paz: Editorial Plural, 2015. Pp. 345. $52.70 paper. doi:10.1017/tam.2017.80 When Upper Peru achieved independence in 1825, it was a far cry from the liberal nation envisioned by Simon ´ Bol´ıvar. Even with the removal of the Spanish peninsulares, the population was deeply divided among criollos, mestizos and ind´ıgenas. The project set forth by the new Bolivian government had two aims: effective management of the population and the negotiation of bilateral agreements of mutual recognition with the new states north and south. Unfortunately, the cause of universal individual rights, specifically those of indigenous peoples, was sacrificed in the process. Wolf Gruner details the process by which indigenous groups were systematically disenfranchised by the new Bolivian state. Having removed the yoke of feudal control, the new elite enacted laws and policies that both redefined and reinforced the exclusion of the majority population from political engagement. Education, military, and labor tribute changed significantly after the revolution. In the process, feudal domination of indigenous communities was transformed into bureaucratic disenfranchisement based on ethnic identity. Gruner’s work systematically explores the range of policies and practices that the elite Bolivians of Spanish decent used to exclude and exploit the rural Aymara and Quechua. From the first constitution of 1826 there were powerful forces to limit indigenous communities’ equality under the law. Policies that limited the vote to persons who could read and write effectively restricted their voice in politics. Promises to educate the masses failed, brought down as much by conservative fears of indigenous power as by bureaucratic ineptitude. When schools failed, military service became the standard escuela de la naci´on, but it too was limited to men who could claim at least some Spanish blood. Rather than serve in the military, Aymara and Quechua were drafted into labor tribute to the government and Church. The work differed from pre-independence tribute in that it restricted personal servitude to individuals. Nevertheless, functionaries continually abused the system, they both benefitted and reinforced the hierarchy of ethnic power that dominated the rural zones. Perhaps the greatest threat to indigenous communities, and the greatest struggles on the nineteenth century, revolved around attempts to usurp Aymara and Quechua lands. Liberal efforts to liquidate the communal holdings failed in the first Bolivian constitution, but the debate continued throughout the century. Not the least of these, the government of the infamous Mariano Melgarejo (1864–1871) rose and fell over the attempts to displace the rural majority from their fields and farms. Gruner fills a gap in Bolivian ethnic history, detailing the institutionalization of indigenous disenfranchisement during the process of early state formation. The work

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REVIEWS 609 focuses on state policy and the debates surrounding indigenous rights and the structures designed to limit them. Sources are primarily archival state records, and a worthy aspect of this work is the comprehensive list of laws and policies promulgated by the state concerning indigenous groups between 1825 and 1890.) In approaching the issue from the perspective of institutional politics, the book complements the existing literature (for example, Langer in 1989) that tends to detail economic and regional aspects of the process. One notable lacuna in the work is the absence of lowland Guaran´ı groups from the analysis. As a fifth ethnic group, these isolated foraging groups contrasted markedly with Aymara and Quechua, and as such were often considered by the elite as savages beyond the pale. It would be useful to know the extent to which the developing state attempted to pull these nomads into the realm. Perhaps the absence speaks to Guarani invisibility to the formal structures and the policies those structures promulgated. Gruner, a historian of genocide and Holocaust studies, brings a clear eye and considerable documentation to argue that liberal equality before the law did not stop ethnic elites from establishing policies that restricted the majority indigenous population from the vote, education and military service. By the opening of the twentieth century the Aymara and Quechua had been defined as a disadvantaged casta within the multiethnic state of Bolivia.

Trinity University San Antonio, Texas

RICHARD K. REED

CHILE Armies, Politics and Revolution: Chile, 1808–1826. By Juan Luis Ossa Santa Cruz. Oxford: Liverpool University Press, 2015. Pp. 288. $120.00 cloth. doi:10.1017/tam.2017.81 Spanish America’s bicentennial decade has produced a profusion of new historical studies of the region’s wars of independence and the political changes that accompanied them. Many of these studies focus on the extent to which the lives of oppressed populations were affected by the changes brought about by the end of colonial rule and the messy transition to republican government. In Chile, for example, Julio Pinto and Veronica Valdivia’s 2009 book ¿Chilenos todos? La construcci´on social de la naci´on ´ (1810–1840), became and remains a classic of the genre, but it is far from the only major study of Chilean independence to be published in recent years. Juan Luis Ossa Santa Cruz’s new book fits squarely within this wave of new scholarship on the historical meanings of independence. But rather than investigate the experiences of a subaltern group, Ossa’s work takes a new look at the participation of military men in the political struggles of independence. In so doing, he offers a detailed, well-informed,

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