A MESTIZO'S
IDENTITY:
CONCERNING
A 1929 ANARCHIST
MANIFESTO

.(
SILVIA RIVERA CUSICANQUI
‘This essay was originally published in the Bolivian magazine Contaco
(Afio 2 No. 31/32) in 1988, under the title “La identidad de un mestizo:
en torno a un man esto anarquista de 1929.” An additional note identifes
Cusicanqui as a member of the Talle de Historia Oral Andina and adds: “This
work was originally presented in the Fifth Conference on Bolivian Studics,
Altiplano Region, June 1988 This translation was originally published in
Perspetives on Anarchist Theory 9:1 (2005)

More recenly, she has republished the picce as “La identidad dhii de un
mestizo: En torno a La Voz dl Campesin, manifiesto anarquista de 1020"
in Ectador Debate 84 (December 2011). There she notes the 1988 text was
“preliminary” and that she has added some thoughts on “the insurgent
potential of mestizae (o drsi) which was not entirely clear o [her] when she
frst wrote”

Introduction

ilvia Rivera Cusicanqui is a contemporary
Sflulluan subaltern theorist, who, unike many

of her colleagues, is influenced by anarchism
and indigenous Quechua and Aymara cosmolo-
gies more than by Marxism. She was a long-
time member of the Tallr de Historia Oral Andina
[Workshop on Andean Oral History], which
published pamphlets by indigenous intellecruals
as well as longer oral histories! Cusicanqui has
also written historical studies of Bolivia® in which
she emphasizes conceptions of time deriving from
indigenous cosmologies and the radical political
perspective known as katarisno.*

Together, these historical studies and oral his-
tories document the struggles of urban and rural
peoples: mastizo* and indigenous peasants serug-
gling to return to and regain communal lands and
the collectivist cconomic form of the aylh’; mstizos,
dholos, and ariclo citizens working as handicrafts
people and struggling in anarchist unions. In the
artcle translated here, Cusicanqui documents an
attempt by one anarchist to propose the unity of
the two struggles. She shows that the urban cholo’s
indigenous background produces an identification
with peasant struggles that was lacking in many
of his companions, and which makes it possible
for him to propose this otherwise unlikely alliance.

In another important text, “Violencias
Encubiertas” [Hidden Violences] Cusicanqui pro-
poses an anlysis based on a sriking combination
of anarchise politcs and indigenous conceptions
of time to critique the acculturating mission of the
Bolivian state and the mainstream Lefe's complicity
with it. In the ULS, certain forms of mestizac have
been held up as subversive new forms of subjectiv-
ity. Bu Cusicanqui demonstrates that in Bolivia,
and by extension many other “post-colonial” states,
the process of mestizsje, or more generally the
hybridization of subjectiviies, is controlled by the
state, progeammed by its institutions as part of the
long-term destruction of indigenous knowledges
and cosmologies. Nevertheless, there is a role for
mestizos and others of mixed cultural backrounds
o play in politcal struggles: this article and the
manifesto included with it are a significant gesture
in that direction,

I hope thar this translation contributes to
ethinking some common anarchist ideas concern-
ing cultural differences and political commitmen,
and presents new working concepts of historical
time and revolution, s well as offering a richly his-
torical and conerete case of the idea of a “multiple
self” whose muliplicity is not a block to action bue
its very motivation,

- Algjandro de Acosta
AMestizo’s Identity:
Concerning a 1929 Anarchist Manifesto

To the memory of Cataling Mendoza
& Nicves Munguia

e document I will analyze is a significant example of anarchist activ-
in our country before the Chaco war® I author, the mechanic L
Cusicanqui, was among the most creative and persistent anarchist deologucs
He animated the Grupo de Propaganda Likeraria “La Antorcha” from the begin-
ning of the 19205, and later the Federaddn Obrera Local de La Paz. He was the
sceretary general of the later union in 1940, when libertarians had already
suffered the violence of state repression and the politis of cooptation and
neutralization of Toro and Busch.?

We should not regard Cusicanqui's trajectory as exceptional: Many
working class men and women also interwove manual labor with a wide
humanistic self-education as well a the everyday tasks of agitation and pro-
paganda. They composed texts of philosophical and doctrinal reflection, and
ventured into essays and theater, neither deserting their jobs nor becoming
‘rofessional” politicians or ideologues. That is why his political philosophy
s closely woven ino his everyday experience. In this experience, comradery
[eonvivencia] and solidarity at work alternate with confrontation and suffering
before the oppressor's tyranny.

“The document reveals Cusicanqur's character as an agitator. In it we can
observe the combination of experience and reflection so characteristic of
anarchist writings, and, precisely because of that combination, so distant
from contemporary politcal thetoric. It s a document addressed to the coun-
tryside, written in the first person. However, it was not written from the
countryside, but from the city. Could it be a romantic gesture,a paternalistic
approximation of the reality of Aymara peasants? Could it be a matter of

3

demagogic impersonation? O was the document truly written by an Indian,
simply translating Indian thought? A rearguard indigenist might affirm,
sceing Cusicanqur's photograph that, yes, one has but to see his face to know
that he was Indian

Bu things are not so simple. Cusicanqui, as a result of his education,
because of two entwined tongues that permanently did battle in his brain,*
because of his familial trajectory, was a mestizo, or at least an aceulturated
Indian. In these bricf notes, 1 will atcempt to elucidate, however patially,
this aspect of anarchist thought and history in Bolivia, as it appears in light
of this singular text and its author's personal stamp.

Throughout the entire documen, we must atend to the T” and the “we’: usu-
ally, the colletive “we” refes to the Indian, though sometimes Cusicangui also
usesthe word campsing, peasant [‘amsing” efers to “ampo;” country sde].

Let us begin with the titles The Peasant’s Voce does not so much indicate
the content of the text as it cludes it. The identification is clearer in the lines
that follow, though it i stated through opposition: “our challenge to the great
mistes [white men, or mestizos identified culturally as white] of the State.”
Miste, wisti, State = wist: that is, we, the Indians, against our enemics, the
st and their state.

It is important to clarify that the term campesino, in the decade of the
19205, did not convey the ideological hodgepodge [Kumunta] that ineffa-
ble Revolutionary Nationalism put into it Among the misti classes it was
simply a term adopted as a cuphemistic synonym for Indian (that is, by
and large, how it continues to be used today) because, perhaps, of the misti
classes’ shame before others or before themselves due to such a clearly colo-
nial relation. In any case, this shame was likely a hidden motivation for ts
official use after 1952. That is why it continues to evidence a K'umunta, or
linguistic servitude [pongucaie].

But Cusicanqui neither speaks nor constructs his sentences as a misti For
him, the use of the term “campesino” scems to have both a rationalizing and
an organizing meaning, It s an attempt at precision that becomes transparent

through its context. For example, when he writes, “peasants of the com-
mune or of the hadends;

ndian” would be the broader generic identification
wherein shades and differentiations of locality and activity e no longer nec-
essary. “Peasant,”on the other hand, would designate Indians of the country-
side, as opposed to those of th city In this case, it would refer specificaly to
those that work and live in communes or haciendas. The same is true when
he speaks of shepherds [pastrcs], using an exemplary construction: “The poor
peasant sets out to be a shepherd, and in a year's time has all his livestock

snatched away” (See the appended manifesto, pp. 8-9).
[
Here, the term “poor” s appended to peasant, in a sense that is compas-
sionate, perhaps even paternalstic. But it i also evident that, while resigna-
tion and everydayness accompany these uses of peasant, “Indian” i the term
chosen when it is time to present epic truths-historical truths, | would call
them-in his text or narration. For example

We have suffred the mast wicke slavery posibe i the republian moment
that offred s independence-it cost s ife and Indian bood to fce ovrscues
Jrom the Spanish yoke.

Watch ont, Indian brothers of the American race: sl Hood will be he
harbinger of the revoution over throwing ths vile socety, aused a thousand
imes aven

Epic moments par excellence: independence and the future revolution (a
revolution explicitly announced as Indian) are diametrically opposed. The
oppression of “four hundred years” at the hands of Spanish colonizers has
superimposed on it another oppression, even more humiliating for being
deceptive: that of iving in a republic of formal ciizenship in which, however,
one suffers the most wicked slavery possible in the republican momen

In fact, here we ought to add an historic detail: the time of this manifesto
was one of the most critical moments in long phase of expropriation and
communal resistance, which would come to a head in the holocaust of the
Chaco war. The means that the landholding oligarchy employed in order to
perpetrate these expropriations appear to have been familiar to Cusicanqui,
‘perhaps lived in the flesh by him or his close relatves.

The pants-wearing criclos, lash in hand abuse ws, woman, man, child and
e, st as they enslave s,

What will we say of the sage Lawyers and other ptty offals? Oh! They
arethe greatet hicues and bandits! They rob s, Law in hand and if we say
anything e are beaten and o tap of that we are sent to prisom or en years,
and meamuehil, theycast awt o wie and cildvn, and inish by burving our
it houses and we ae targets for the bulles these hoarably leared wen.

‘The chronology of resistance also offers a proof of the identfication
Cusicanqui makes between the lived experience of the peasans of the high
plateau and that of the manual workers of the cities. He mentions, among
others, the rebellion of Zirate Willka in 1899 and the massacre of Jesds de
Machaca in 1021,side by side with “che laest events of Cochabambs, Potosi,
Sucre.” Another text signed by Cusicanqui clarifies this ast reference.

5
This year the stuation has become mare distressing, Besase of the threat o
war with Paraguay, many Indian workers demanstrated in resstance o a
cnflct hat they knew 1o b intntionally provoked by capitalists and polii-
cians. The comsequence is the repression in Orovo, Cochabamba, Potost with
same indigenons communiss assasinated by the hangmen of Sils, and others
imprisancd: Cusicanqui, imprisoncd a the fot of the majestic liman, in the
canton Cohani, and M. O. Quispe, imprisoncd in Yungas. ™

Clearly, for Cusicanqui, these events of repression against the workers'
movement of the cities must be situated in the same line as the confrontations
of Indian society against the sate and the landholders. According to his own
words, the demonstrators are “Indian workers,” and their leaders, “indig-
enous communises” That is to say, the collective identity atributed in this
text to the urban craftsmen, the exclusive “we” of Cusicanqui!! as opposed to
the inclusive “we” (who would be the Indian) coincides fully with the pro-
tagonists of Willca Zirate's rebellion, or that of Jesds de Machads, a least in
the context of confrontation with a common enemy.

“That s to say, it is as a matter of a shared identity, defined by opposition,
that a collective subject is generated. This subject includes Indian peasants
and farmers, s well as mestizo craftsmen and manual workers. The frst line
of solidarity between them would be the struggle against the misti-State; 3
caste state, which stands for colonial oppression as well as the exclusion of
the working majority—and urban craftsmen are no free from this exclusion.
We find here a complex claboration and interlinking of anarchist doctrine
and lived identity, experienced in an everyday manner by men such as him,
inhabitants of the junction between two sworlds. Ideologically, it was pos-
sible to build a bridge between the anti-statism of anarchist doctrine and the
historical anti-statism of Indian communities in the colonial context’? This
bridge is clear, for example, in the argument he wields agains the identity
card. Bur, existentially, the indignation emerged from the same shared expe-
rience: that of discrimination and exclusion.

“That is why Cusicanqui's wide, inclusive identity (his Indian identity)
gives rise to the most resounding and heartflt words of his manifesto. All of
the moral indignation, the creative rage of the text s concentrated preciscly in
those phrases where the enemy is identifed as the Indian’s enemy, or where
he denounces the paradoxes, even more contemprible, of a criollo hypocisy
and double moraliy lived by a false world of citizens (republican, educated).
An example: “Why did the governors not make the servant [pongo®| happy
with the Remuneration Law? Today he is nothing-—the barbarous idiotic
Mulattos of the Rotary Clubis Zetas have the say here.”

6

is indignation is repeatedly directed against the ‘bastard, crimi-
nal laws” that (as s the case of the Exvinculation Law of 1874) were promul-
gated under guise of apparent equality and citizenship, with the hidden goal
of legalizing the violent plunder of communal lands. Although we cannot go
into detail here, it should be mentioned that a similar perception of criollo
lgisltion can be found in the internal ideology of the movement of Cacigues-
apoderados® led by Santos Marka Tula®

Here we find a new space of encounters between the experience of Indian
communities and anarchist doctrine. The notion of law as tentacle of the
state conjoins doctrinal anarchist interpretation (which posited the existence
of a moral law incarnate in free individuals) with the communal action tha
unmasked the colonial nature of the state and recognized law as a “decep-
tion,” as we find explictly indicated in many documents produced by the
Cacigue movement.

Let us return once more to the chronological ordering of resistance, where,
as we said, we find in the same sequence episodes of peasant resistance and
mobilizations of utban craftsmen. The other evenr, the “most recen,” was the
murder of Prudencio Callisaya, which occurred nine years carlier, in 1920,
by order of the powerful landowner of Guaqui, Benedicta Goytia:

and the latest cvents of Coshabmba, Ptos, Sucre and the martyr Guagqui,
i theheart o the disrict you haveton he limbs, ik Hlood tirsty bast, ur
brather Prudenco Calisaya; you bullying sodicrs have o right to call your-
scles cvlized. Youare arbarian criminals of the twenticthcotury, mutilators
and destroyrs of humaniy

A series of events, an apparently chronological series, s reversed here by a
backward movement. Is this movement a lapse or imprecision? 1 do not think
so. For Cusicanqui, the vital proximity of the Guaqui murder was likely a
combination of two phenomena. In 1920, this deed, publicized by the press
and denounced in Parliament, must have hurt his sensibility, and outraged
his conscience, which was already on the alert for situations of oppression
and injustice. This carly impression would lead him to wrie, in 1924:

g, Wi contmplate the two colosi 1 pay thems a ribue of adi-
saton and I spak to them s thovgh to o giants, ing witnesses of the great
traglicsof my race () OB I you could seak t e of what you have scen!
g, Wi el me the sory of the conqueros’ persution, cxpltaton,
and annililation of my rae, the noe o which I beong, Speak, you mte wit-
wssable monsters! Lt s know the history of the great rebellions

1

nesses, you i

The Vice of the Peasant™
Ourhallng foth Great Mifs o e tae
Who i he oy uehies andcrininal of h prsert day

For more than one hundred and thirty years we have suffered the most
wicked slavery possible since the republican moment that offered us inde-
pendence. It cost us life and Indian blood to free ourselves from the Spanish
yoke. It made us howl for more than four hundred years, four centuries. The
club danced wildly, blows fell on our backs in those years of barbarism, and
now, in the very century of freedom, the brutality is redoubled.

If in those times we worked without pay for the Spanish lord, it is the
same today with the criollos, who make us work from sun-up to sun-down
without a cent for the hard work, When Spanish justice was blind, deaf,
vengeful, we helped the “Mistes” to bring about freedom, only so they could
take away our ltle plots and oppress us: see these injustices of today, peas-
ants of the communes and of the hacendas.

‘The pants-wearing criollos, lash in hand, abuse us, woman, man, child and
elder, just as they enslave us. What will we say of the sage Lawyers and
other petty offcials? Ohl These are the greatest thieves and bandits, who rob
us, Law in hand, and if we say anything we arc beaten and on top of that we
are sent to prison for ten years, and meanvhile, they cast out our wife and
children, and finish by burning our litle houses and we are targets for the
bulles of these honorably learned men.

Noww, we ask: where are the peaples’rights? Who do the Governors call
& people? . We, the Indians enclosed in the Andean steppe of America entiely
& because of the work of our oppressors: the Bolivian Indian has his hypocriti-
S cal sympathizers in monks and the clergy, but behind all of it, our complete:
£ disappearance i forged in the heart of civilization, which hands out gallows
2 laws.
™ The Identity Card: what good is it for us Indians, secing as we are beasts

of burden, nothing more? How is it that can we contribute by complying
with the sarcastic law called rent tax? Our elders left us common lands and
today we find ourselves reduced to common slaves. Is that the work of our
civilization? Why do we pay twenty cents for a box of matches? Secing
as today we find ourselves without warm clothing, without food, without
even a match and we are reduced to returning to the primitive era called, by
our governors, legislators, a savage era? Why do you, the civilized, mal
regress to the savage era?

Why do you not allow us to acquire the necessary animals for our hard
work, with no tax, so that in that way we could tend the carth, for the good
of all humanity?

As we are, we cannot have a team of oxen, nor a necessary mule, without
previously paying dutis, tolls, registration fees on each head of cattle, and
morcaver the whims of the authorities of our leaders.. Why do the father
priest and the mista impose forced holidays in our county, threatening hor-
sible penaltes? . Knowing that ultimately we are in utter misery as a result
of the daily obstacles of their bastard and criminal laws.

Military service: going to die in the Chaco, with no remuneration.
Migrant labor: working ten days for frce with our own tools and food.
Second-rate servitude [posillnaje]: providing all of our cruel masters’ needs
at our expense; that i, those very few of those known to the state. We go
0 the managerial services and as the last straw come from Alger at the end
of the year, to pay four to cight hundred bolivianos-look at this shameful
amount! The poor peasant sets out to be a shepherd, and in a year’s time has
all his livestock snatched away. Servitude [pongucaje: handling his bunch of
dried dung, wood broom and, on top of that, food and then to sleep in @
doorway, being ready all night for it to open and when it does not, a good
beating, and then to be hired out to whoever, our services exchanged for big
sums and we do not see the wages even in our dreams.

Why did the governors not make the servant [pongo] happy with the
Remuneration Law? Today he is nothing-the barbarous idiotic Mulatros of
the Rotary Club’s Zetas have the say here.

W the eternal martyrs feel the rawness of the scars that you opened on
our ancestors. Here is your work: Mosa, Ayoayo, Jesis de Machaca, Yayi,
Lakapamps, Ataguallani, and the latest events of Cochabamba, Porosi, Sucre
and the martyr of Guaqui,in the heart of the district you have torn the limbs,
ke a bloodthirsty beast, of our brother Prudencio Callisaya; you bullying
soldiers have no right to call yourselves civilized. You are barbarian criminals
of the twentieth century, mutlators and destroyers of humanity. Watch o,
Indian brothers of the American race, that spilt blood will be the harbinger
of the revolution overthrowing this vile society, cursed a thousand times
over. Our caciques bought and assassinated by the “mistes”.. Blood must be
spilled as before because we aretired of the present domination, we know all
00 well the Vampires of the dominant state and its dirty tricks; f the poor
mestizo does not guide us to liberation, we the Indians will make torrents of
copper blood run in America Bolivia.

Weseagal o a0 &yl

(Signed) Luis Cusicanqui
of the Idians againt thar el masis, he rge of the ple agant s
appresors

The impression left by the assassination of Callisaya must have been
intensificd by the encounter that Cusicanqui had in 1928 with Santos
Marka Tula. The cacique leader went to the Feleracidn Obrera Local de La Puz
in search of solidarity and support for the peasant cause, according to the
testimony of the comrades Teodoro Pefialoza, Max Mendoza, and Lisandro
Rogas*

Certainly, the composition of The Peasant's Voice was heavily influenced by
this direct contact between anarchist leaders and Indian authorities, inked
together in a perception that, for Cusicanqui, was firmly tied to previous
experiences and convictions. Not only the style of the composiion, whercin
the influence of the mother tongue i clealy noiceable, but also the chrono-
logical reversal of the manifesto, allow us to conceive of an “invasion” of
Indian logic into the thought of the anarchist ideologuc.

Morcover, rage is timeless. As in any ethics, the judgment that emanates
from this event is projected across time as a moral teaching and evaluation.
Even today, reading the verdict on the murder of Prudencio Callisaya!® it
makes one indignant to realize that, afier he was assassinated in the Guagi
auartcl, at the hands of Col. Julio Sanjinés (son-in-law of Benedicta Goytia)
his relatives discovered the crime and began a long trial, which concluded in
enormous frustration. At many times throughout the trial, they attempted to
show the delinquent character of the deed); three times they were subjected to
the painful legal procedure of autopsy and appealed to the Superior District
Court with reliable proofs. All in vain: the compliit and bastard justice that
their caste had created when it assumed its republican face never touched
Sanjinés and Goytia

Solidarity with Callisaya is, then, fraternal, almost a kinship ti. It is anger
in the name of an assassinated brother. Blood ties are also revealed in other
phrases that clarify the inclusive identity assumed by Cusicanqui: “We the
eternal martyrs feel the rawness of the scars that you opened on our ances-
tors. How is it that we can contribute by complying with the sarcastc law
called rent tax? Our elders lefe us common landls and today we find ourselves
reduced to common slaves? Was that the work of our civilization?”

‘And the final condemnation, now from the doctrinal vein of anarchist evo-
lutionism: “Today we find ourselves without warm clothing, without food,
without even a match and we are reduced to returning to the primitive era
called, by our governors and legislators, a savage era. Why do you, the civi-
lized, make us regress to the savage era?”

[}
“The past is thercfore dignity and communal life, but also regression, stag-
nation caused by oppression, by the rupture of the autonomous development
of the colonized society. Here the amalgam of anarchist doctrine and the
experience of oppression become more evident. The Indian (the victim who
is identifid frequently, in the text, with the peasant, with the particularist
and exclusive identity) is he who, chained to the yoke of oppression, comes
o embody a forced, imposed involution that would lead to stultification,
mean behavior, and humiliation. Against this moral regression, the furure
revolution, the emandpation (a term dear to the anarchists) would permit
access to universality, without the renunciation of one's own history, cul-
ture, and colletive crearivity. But later, we find an allusion to an allisnce
with “poor mestizos"the ones who, as opposed to the mistis and their state,
could be possible interlocutors of the emancipatory proposition.®* To whom
is this phrase directed? Other comrades, craftsmen, anarchists ike him, more
Westernized, who considered the Indian as a hindrance to social progress?
What is clear is that, because of the thretening tone of the text, the Indian
demand prevails over any other consideration of doctrine:

Watch o, Indian brothers of the Anerican race: sl bood will be the har-
binger ofthe revolution oerthrowing this vlesoicty, cursed a thousand times
ave, Our caciques boght and asassinated by the “wistes” (.. ood st be
spilldas bfore bcase we are tird of thepresent domination, we know all too
el the Vampires of the dominant State and is dirty tics; the poor mestizo
ide s o lberation, we the Indians will make torrents of opper blood
s in América Bolia

docs ot

I i not possible for us to elucidate this point in greater depth, because the
manifesto, and the political proposal it embodies, is ideologically constructed
from the point of view of opposition as the source of identity. They tell us lile
or nothing expliitly about the characteristis of the future socity hoped for
by Cusicanqui. However, we can catch a glimpse of the basically humanistic
character of his postulates:the paradox of oppression in a liberal sate consists
in that it deceitfully callsfor a recognition of the righs of ll as workers and as
citizens, but in fact denies even the human condition of the oppressed.?

w, e ask: where i thevight of eaples? Wh dothe Governors call pople?

W, the Indians endosed i the Andean stepe of America enirly becaus of
the work ofour oppresors: the Bolivian Indian has his hyposritical sympathiz-
s i manks and the dergy, bt behind all of i, our complte disappearance is
forged i the heart.of cvlzation, which hands us gallos laws

1
It could then be that the furure socity, in its widest and most inclusive
sense, translaces o this idea: no longer Indians (colonized), but human
beings, equal in their rights inasmuch as they are workers, and free to build
their own destiny. Was there also recognition of the cultural and linguis-
tic diversity of the society? If we take into account the constant effort of
anarchist ideologues to link lived experience with the doctrine gathered
from the classics we can perhaps find an affirmative answer in the proposal
of a *federated” society: “Politically, there should be a wide governmental
decentralization, under a federated system, respecting the independence and
autonomy of every last village and citizen; free expression of thought and of
the press; this diversity of thought, tendencies and affinites would make the
sciences and arts evolve.”

For Luis Cusicanqui, anarchist and Indian, emancipation was not thercfore
incarnated in a messianic hope,?> but rather in the collective historical action
of manual lsborers (craftsmen and Indian farmers) for whom anarchism
comes to be the expression of authentic universaliry.

Chukiawu, April 1998
Endnotes

1 Los atesanos likertarias y la dica del rakajo [Libertarian crafes men and the ethic of
Iabor'] i of particular interest to anarchists. [Tz

2. One such study s “Oprimidos pero no vencidos” ichas de campesinado aynara y gh
de Bolva [*Opressed but not defeated”:struggles of the Aymara and Quechua peas-
anry in Bolivia®]. [Te)

3. Katariswo was a Bolivian ideological cureent that began in the late sixtes. In
La Paz, indigenous Aymara intellectuals who had entered the universites sought
to understand the effects of colonialism in history as well as in everyday lfe. As
Aymaras from the countryside, they sought to reaffirm the subversive cureent of
indigenous thought and practce that resisted not only the Western project of domi-
nation and aceulturation but also the misguided liberal project of the assimilating
nation-state. See Javier Sanjinés, Mesizaj Upside-Doun. [T

4. A note on the “racil"/cultural nomenclatures used in the text: conventionally, a
mestizo is the child of an indigenous parent and a parent of European descent. More.
generally, mestizaje is the process of cultural mixture or hybridization concurrent
with the cohabitation and mixtures of peoples. In the present context, it typically
denotes acculturation to Hispanic noms. Crills are those of European descent.
Choos were originally designated as the child of an Indian and a nesizo; the term is
used more generally for anyone of mixed or primarily indigenous heritage who lives
in the city and is assumed to be more acculturated (though this is precisely what
Cusicanqui contests in this essay). Due to the inherent instabiliey of racial classifica-
tions, and power rlations generally,each of these terms has other uses in other parts
of Latin America. Finally, as in the United State, the question of the nomenclature
of indigenous peoples very much continues to be a controversial one in much of
Latin America. Cusicanqui ops for “Indian,” but this term should perhaps be inter-
preted on analogy with "Black” in the context of the US. Black Power movement,
o, with less need for translaion, “Indian” a it continues to be used by some radical
native Americans in the United States. [Tr]

5. The aylu were the bsic politcal, culural, and economic unit of indigenous lf in the
Andes, dating from pre-Inca times. They were, in essence, extended kin groups, but
‘were not always limited toties of consanguinity. Importantly, they were self-governing
unts based on collective land ownership and agriculture-precisely the sort of “primi-
tive communism” that has always captured the imagination of anarchists. [Te]

6. The Chaco war was fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over control of the
Chaco Boreal region from 1932 to 1935 Indigenous men in Bolivia were forcibly.
drafied en masse and more died from diseases such as malaria than fighting. [Te]

7 David Toro Ruilova, president of Bolivia from 1936 to 1937; Germin Busch

B

Becerra, president from 1937 to 1939, [Tt}
8. An even more eloquent proof is the appended document. As is known, Cusicanqui
‘was the son of an indigenous peasant and a mestizo descended from caciques of the
aplla Qalagte of Pacajes. Aymara was his first language and he spoke it fluendly:

9. According 1o well-known text by Luis H. Antezana, Revolutionary Nationalism
‘was the iealgane or central ideological paradigm of the state in 1952. s ireadiation
capacity was based in the flexble ideological field opened up between its two poles:
Nationalism vs. Revolution. See *Sistemas y procesos ideoldgicos en Bolivia” in
Zavaleta (ed.) Bolia hey. Siglo XXI, Mexico, 1983.

10. Emphasis ours. The reference to “indigenous communists” is clarly to an anar-
chist communism. This text s a report sent by Cusicanqui to the editorial board of
the Uragayan anarchist newspaper EI Hombre (Montevideo, October 1, 1929) under
the pseudonym “Aymara Indian * He relates the repressive actions of the govern-
ment,including his own deportation. It was in fact the diffusion of The Paasant’s Voice
that brought about his imprisonment.

11T the grammatical structure of Aymara,there are two types of first person plural
the inclusive we (juusa), and the exclusive we (nanaka). The first refers to situations
in which the subject includes the interlocutor, while the second refes to a “we” that
excludes the interlocutor.

12. Though this does not imply a conception of Andean communities as *societies
against the State,” as with the Amazonian societies studied by Clastres, but rather,
specically, socieies without states, societies that the colonial invasion rid of their
own political sate structure. See Pierre Clastres, La scité ntre Etat, Paris: Minie,
1974,

13. A pogo is an indigenous person subject to ponguc, a system of forced labor
prominent in Bolivia as well as Chile, Ecuador, and Pera. [Tt

14, The racial qualification “Mulatto” n reference to the oligarchy of the Rotary
Club is puzzling. Linguistic revenge? An allusion to someone in partcular?

15. The term caique is 2 general term used throughout Latin America for an indige-
nous leader. The movement of ciqus-apoderados dates from 1914, when the Bolivian
authorities refused to recognize the authority of hereditary indigenous leaders.
‘Working from La Paz, they demanded the recurn of stolen communal lands and the
abolition of the drafi, as well as uralschools (as competence in Spanish was a crucial
ool in dealing with the government). [Te)

16. See Taller de Historial Oral Andina, El india Santos Marka Tla,caciue pricipal
de los ayls de Quallapa y apoderado general de las comunidades orginats de la Repiblic
THOA, 1984; Silvia Rivera, “Pecimos la revision general de limites: Un episodio
de incomunicacicn e castas en el movimiento de caciques apoderados de los Andes
bolivianos” presentation for the Singosio sobre Repraducion y Transformacion de las
sovidades andinas, Sigls XVI-XOX. Social Science Research Council, Quito, 28-30 July.

"
1986; Zulema Lehm, “La lucha comunaria en torno a la contribucién teritorial y
ala prestacion de servicios gratuitos durante el periodo republicano (1920-1925)"
unpublished manuseript

17l Honbre, Montevideo, Ape. 10, 1924

18. “Breve didlogo sobre la relacion entre el movimiento anarquista y el movimiento
indio," in Historia Oral 1, La Paz, November 1986.

19. Archivo de La Paz - UMSA. Fondo Corte Superior de Distrto. 1920

20. Certainly, there wee also anarchists of this type, in Bolivia and elsewhere. But
there was also an Ezequiel Urviola in Puno, and an iinerant Paulino Aguilar, leader
of the Federacidn Indigena Obrera Regional Peruana until his deportation by the
Leguia government in 1928. They were also key points of eference for Cusicanqui
In his private archive there are interesting samples of the correspondence between
Cusicanqui and Aguilar.

21 To consider the other as “not people” had been, according to Jan Szeminski, a
constitutive tait of the confrontation between Spaniards and Indians during the
ebellion of Tupac Amaru in 1780-1781. This confirms the continuity of the colonial
eventin the republican stage. See La uipia tupamarista, Lima: PUC, 1984, p. 194.
22, *1886 - May 1st - 1938. Manifesto of the Federacion Obrera Local. To the
‘working class in general” Archives of the THOA.

23 A messianism embodied by many mestizos of the south of Peru, as Flores
Galindo has shown, by founding their struggle on the return of the Inea. See, for
example, “Los suefos de Gabriel Aguilar” in Alberto Flores Galindo, Buscando s
Inca: densidad y iapia o las Andes, La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1986,

24. This document was found among the private papers of Luis Cusicanqui, pub-
lished in the form of a manifesto, with his handwritten signature at the end. Through
eferences obtained in other documents, we know that it was distrbuted in May
1929, and brought about his imprisonment and the persecution of other anarchist
organizers such as Modesto Escobar, who was also closely involved with propa-
ganda activiies in the countryside.
k [lPl[lPANAX PllIllISHING

OPLOPANAXPUBLISHING.WORDPRESS.COM