Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1974, almost 200 years had passed since the great Andean insurgency of 1780–1. The Agrarian Reform Law of 1953 had been in force more than two decades, and the peasantry seemed to have been tamed and satisfied with the distribution of land in the Andean high plateau (Altiplano) and valleys, while a new oligarchy was formed through the concentration of land in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia. In January that year, during the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer Suárez (1971–8), Qhichwa peasants in the Tolata and Epizana communities blockaded roads in protest at a series of measures that benefited the industrial products of the landed oligarchy of the lowlands (sugar, rice, oil, and others) and froze the prices of the traditional peasant crops. More than 80 peasants were brutally killed and disappeared in the ensuing confrontations, and a wave of rage and dissatisfaction erupted in the whole western Andean region of the country. The massacred peasants belonged to a region where there had been active markets and a multi-ethnic society since the end of colonial times. Private property, a market economy, and a mestizo and citizen identity were the solid bases upon which a new form of peasant organization took shape: the peasant union or sindicato. Unions had been promoted by the state since 1936, during the “socialist military” regimes in the aftermath of the Chaco War (1932–5), fought ... log in or subscribe to read full text