Bolivian unohdettu intiaani

Authors

• Rolf Büchi

Abstract

This article deals with the Indian peasants of the Bolivian Andes. The first part analyzes the ruling classes’ concept of the Indian during the time of the Inca empire, the colony, the rise of capitalism in Bolivia and the present social formation beginning in 1952. Thereby, we look at the Indian from outside; from the viewpoint of Western culture and the needs of the ruling classes he is defined as an object. Even if the Indian does not identify himself with it, this definition by the »others» leaves deep traces in his subjectivity, stigmatizes him, and creates and enforces feelings of inferiority. The second part of the article describes the new peasant movement and its rise in the 1970s, its ideology and efforts to define its own identity. Here we look at the Indian from inside; from the viewpoint of Andean culture. The question concerns the self-concept of the Indian, how he tries to act as a subject and to negate the others’ image of the Indian which turns him into an object. The new peasant movement was born within the social formation of the »revolutionary nationalism» of 1952. A new social movement Katarism (moviento Tupaq Katari), rose among the Aimaras of the Altiplano. In the 1970s, mediated primarily by radio programs and also by missionary work of the churches, the conciousness of being a people grew among the Aimaras. Hand in hand with national identity, the strenght of the Katarist movement has also grown. Since 1977, the crisis of the social formation of the 1952 revolution has grown ever deeper. Military overthrow as an institutionalized form of political chance (golpismo) is no longer accepted by the Bolivian society which is trying to institutionalize a democratic form of political change. In this struggle for democracy, the new peasant movement participates as an ally of the worker’s movement.