Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ciudadanos armados de ley: A propósito de la violencia en Bolivia, 1839–1875

2020; Duke University Press; Volume: 100; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-8350093

1527-1900

Rossana Barragán,

Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

In Ciudadanos armados de ley, Marta Irurozqui addresses a topic that she has been researching since her 2000 book “A bala, piedra y palo”: La construcción de la ciudadanía política en Bolívia, 1826–1952: the building of citizenship in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bolivia. Her work is part of the important renewal of political history linked to analysis of the Spanish crisis of 1808 and Spanish American independence (since the works of François-Xavier Guerra) and, later on, to citizenship, caudillismo, political parties, and the building of new states in the nineteenth century.This book examines the political violence between 1839 and 1875 in Bolivia, a topic Irurozqui analyzed in several of her previous works. This new book puts three main points at the forefront: the importance of violence and war in making the public sphere, the army's nonexclusive use of violence or monopoly on coercion, and the importance of “armed citizens” or “people in arms.” This combination of themes makes more complex the study of the nineteenth century, which has been reanalyzed since the late twentieth century in Latin America, particularly in Argentina, Mexico, and Peru.Four chapters each analyze a revolutionary event between 1839 and 1875. The first is known as the Restoration, the political project to reinstate Bolivian independence after the failure of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation of Andrés de Santa Cruz. The second event is the 1861 Matanzas de Yañez, the death of more than 50 pro–Manuel Isidoro Belzu political prisoners, and the political reaction. The third chapter examines the armed indigenous population's role against Mariano Melgarejo; the last chapter explores how armed citizens were repressed in Cochabamba in 1872–75. Irurozqui brought together in this book events that she has studied in previous articles, deepening the analysis here.When discussing the events that led to the Peru-Bolivian Confederation's end in 1839, Irurozqui reminds the reader that the rebel's right to topple a tyrant corresponds to the constitutional possibility to depose a president but also to a broader vision of society's right to overthrow a “tyrant” (p. 47). This process culminated in the 1842 Battle of Ingavi, in which Peruvian president Agustín Gamarra died and Bolivian president José Ballivián reasserted his country's independence on the grounds of “praetorian citizenship” and popular citizenship.Later on, the killing of Belzu's jailed partisans ordered by the army's general-in-chief, Plácido Yañez, gave place to the violent murder of Yañez by the popular masses, the “plebe,” or the “cholada.” They were exercising, again, their long-standing right to resist. According to Irurozqui, this was not a spontaneous act of some random citizens but rather included the active participation of several institutions, including the municipality and the artisans' guilds. These artisans played a significant role in the political arena; after this incident, they created the Junta Central de Artesanos de La Paz, recognized by the government. For Irurozqui, the violence here helped the state's institutional consolidation and its incorporation of the pueblo.Another important moment that Irurozqui analyzes is the 1870 coalition against the government of Mariano Melgarejo led by Agustín Morales, who received the support of Indian contingents. In January 1871, Morales was backed by more than four groups of 10,000 Indians, each led by an Indian commander (pp. 167, 169). Irurozqui has studied this period and these events since 2003, deepening our understanding after previous studies by Guillermo Lora in 1967 and by Ramiro Condarco Morales in 1982.Irurozqui uses the concept of citizens in arms to explore violent actions as part of the republican experiences of the army, the armed population, and state institutions, all of which frequently intertwined and entangled with different social strata, strengthening the reciprocity between the governors and the governed. Her work encourages scholars to rethink nineteenth-century Bolivian political history beyond the formal vote and to not just see the caudillos as authoritarian and dictatorial figures. This would mean that literacy restrictions on citizenship sanctioned by the constitutions of the nineteenth century, which excluded the majority of the population, were compensated for somehow by the reality of a citizenship in arms. However, let's not forget that the masculine character of a great part of the political arena and also the ever-shifting dynamics of inclusion and negotiation of support among different social groups imply at the same time drastic exclusions and confrontations. The wide and inclusive concept of citizen in arms appears then to be very elastic, and it could even disappear. In this sense, to be called people in arms in favor of or against some political idea or person, whether because of material rewards, concessions, or self-interest, demonstrates not only the interactions that build the political sphere but also, more importantly, the socioeconomic inequalities behind such interactions. The concept of people in arms can also hide coalitions and collisions of those interests. The challenge for future research is to connect the political discourses and armed confrontations narrated by the press and some of the lead actors involved with the diverse local actors, linking particularly the perspectives of political history with those of social history.