Andean peasants

The Spanish Empire in South America had two purposes. One was to provide Spaniards with land and give them an opportunity to become landowners – or at least a decently paid job. The second was to empty the mines, not least of silver, to pay for the Spanish state’s huge armies. The silver mine in Potosí was for a long time the world’s largest and the mining town was one of the world’s largest cities.

The people who paid for the party were the Andean peasants. They were allowed to stay in their villages and work for the Spanish lords, and send their young people to the silver mines. In order for it to work painlessly, a large part of the traditional domestic upper class was also co-opted on the same terms as the immigrant Spanish.

Against this the peasants defended themselves as best they could, in much the same way as peasants in Europe – with strikes, refusal to supply, tax refusal and sometimes by burning some official building. The state used to react relatively mildly because it was more important to it that the farmers paid than that they died. So the uprisings generally remained local.

It was not until the 18th century that broader movements arose. Only then did an Indian urban working class with supra-regional identities begin to emerge. Often such broader movements were religious in nature and fought against the state in the name of the god of agriculture.

In the 1740s, such a movement in Peru was joined by parts of the Native American upper class, who nostalgically looked back on the time when they alone ruled the country. That movement was defeated, but forty years later it inspired a new movement in Peru, which then also included present-day Bolivia.

In ”Lower Peru”, the uprising was ruled by Don José Condorcanqui, appointed new Inca by the rebel leadership. That movement was defeated fairly quickly. In ”Upper Peru”, ie Bolivia, the movement lasted longer. There it was socially revolutionary and aimed at land reform and at ending all upper class. The national movement in Lower Peru helped put them down.

The peasant movement in Upper Peru is still inspiring. Its blockades of La Paz are still repeated today by the Native American movement<LÄNK> in its struggle against Europeanized bourgeoisie. The national movement in Peru did worse. Nowhere in Latin America are Native Americans as despised as in Peru.

Reading
John E Kicza: The Indian in Latin American history, Jaguar Books 1993.