Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

La mirada esquiva: Reflexiones históricas sobre la interacción del estado y la cuidadanía en los Andes (Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú), siglo XIX

2008; Duke University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2007-150

1527-1900

José Deustua,

Latin American history and culture

Authoritarianism and democracy play out differently in the United States of North America and Andean America. This essay collection deals with the interaction of authoritarianism and popular democracy in the Andean countries. Marta Irurozqui’s highly theoretical introduction orients the reader to the various and uneven chapters that follow, which do not give a coherent view of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia two centuries ago. For example, whereas Cecilia Méndez (working on Iquichanos in Huanta, Ayacucho, Peru) praises Tristan Platt’s introduction of the idea of the estado tributario to understand the relationships between government and the Andean ayllu in northern Potosí, Rossana Barragán (working on Bolivia) revises the idea of the tributary state in order to emphasize “el estado pactante,” or government that makes deals or “pacts” with the citizenry.Méndez’s chapter follows on her recent book (The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820 – 1850, Duke University Press, 2005) to criticize the lack of analysis in current historiography of rural participation in the wars of independence and caudillo wars, particularly by rural, popular guerrillas. Víctor Peralta Ruiz, in a highly technical discussion of legal electoral procedures, is determined to prove that political participation was slightly larger in elections for capitulares (chapter representatives) than in elections for vocales (councilmen) or diputados provinciales (provincial deputies), following the approval of the 1812 Cadiz Constitution. Other con tributions to the political history of nineteenth-century Peru include chapters by José Ragas, who analyzes electoral corruption particularly during 1849 and 1851, and Ulrich Mücke on congress, elections, and Peruvian political culture before the war with Chile (1879 – 84).On the other countries, Jaime E. Rodríguez O. deals with the elections “in the kingdom of Quito” to select representatives to the convention that wrote the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, examining among other issues the fact that even Ecuadorian Indians were considered “citizens of the Spanish nation.” Guadalupe Soasti Toscano analyzes the educational system between 1826 and 1845 to discuss “the formation of the first Ecuadorian citizens,” and Juan Maiguashca focuses on the project of President Gabriel García Moreno to create a republican Catholic modernity in Ecuador.Bolivia is dealt with by Rossana Barragán, who focuses on a political history that could also be highly quantitative, in opposition to current postmodernist trends in Latin American historiography in the United States that not only avoid quantitative data but reject it as a way to understand past social realities. Françoise Martínez writes about the uses and “disuses” of civic celebrations in the national construction of the Bolivian past, looking particularly at the changes undergone by these celebrations from the “Cesarean fiesta” to the revolutionary “fiesta única,” the one and only national celebration, and didactic festivals throughout the nineteenth century. Marta Irurozqui analyzes the “hombres chacales en armas,” referring to the Aymaras who formed an auxiliary branch of the Liberal army in the 1899 civil war. Irurozqui’s essay invites comparisons with other cases such as the indigenous guerrillas of the central Sierras during the war with Chile, particularly from 1881 to the late 1890s, when Quechua Wanka guerrilla leaders were used as commanders by General Andrés Avelino Cáceres, only to be criminalized later when they and their followers kept the landholdings, haciendas, and livestock taken during the campaign to defeat the Chilean army. Irurozqui clearly shows that Pedro Zárate Villca, the “commander in chief of the indigenous armies” representing the old señorío of Pacajes, along with Manuel Mita, from the old señorío of Carangas, and Feliciano Condori, leading indigenous peoples from Tapacari and Chayanta, were not just leaders of an auxiliary army of the Liberal forces, as she argues, but rather expressed an Indian initiative and structure capable of making Bolivia a completely different country. This, as in the Peruvian case, resulted in the need for the Liberals later to repress “las hordas indígenas” in this “guerra de razas.”Finally, Marten Brienen focuses on the origins of “educational chaos” over a rather long time span, 1825 – 1920, looking at the development of the educational system and the role of Indian communities in the construction of the Bolivian nation-state. Brienen’s piece reads in parallel to that of Guadalupe Soasti Toscano on Ecuadorian education between 1835 and 1845.There are very few native Andean words or concepts used in the book. Tristan Platt, however, suggested almost 30 years ago that scholars should look at yanantin (symmetries that work as a mirror to understand Andean duality), a concept key to comprehending Aymara populations and their worldviews, particularly the Macha in northern Potosí. La mirada esquiva fails to problematize Indian languages, concepts, and worlds to get to the true meaning of the Andean idea and criollo legal notion of citizenship. It rather follows the trend in political science and political history to discuss democracy, transitions to democracy, and citizenry in this current era of globalizing democracies.