A Liberalism of Fear: Imagining Indigenous Citizenship and Race in Postcolonial Ecuador, 1895-1950

A LIBERALISM OF FEAR: IMAGINING INDIGENOUS SUBJECTS IN POSTCOLONIAL ECUADOR, 1895-1950

MERCEDES PRIETO

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2003

Mercedes Prieto

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to several persons that encouraged me to undertake my doctoral studies as a mature student and helped me to overcome the isolation that I risked by undertaking an interdisciplinary track. In addition to my committee members—Mark

Thurner, Anthony Oliver-Smith, Kesha Fikes, and Luise White—I discussed my research and writing projects with Andrés Guerrero, Blanca Muratorio, Francisco Carrión, Kim

Clark, Thomas Carroll, and several faculty members of the Quito campus of FLACSO

(Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales), the institution that provided me with local academic affiliation during my research. I am very grateful for their persuasive comments and suggestions. I also wish to acknowledge the fruitful insights that I received from the members of my committee during my defense. I am particularly indebted to

Mark Thurner whose questions and commentaries challenged my writings and pushed me to revise them several times.

I am also thankful for the help I received in my search for archival sources: José

Barrera and Patricio Carrillo at the Congressional Archive; Honorio Granja at the Central

Bank’s Historical Archive; Leonardo Loyza, and specially José Vera, at the Central

Bank’s Library; Emith Costa at the Pío Jaramillo Alvarado Library in Loja; and Alicia

Andrade at the Aurelio Espinosa Pólit Library in Quito. Many thanks to the Rodríguez-

Alvarado and the Yépez-Murgueytio families, Erika Hanekamp, Maruja Martínez de

Suárez, Plutarco Naranjo, and Alfredo Costales who provided me with important clues regarding the intellectual community of Quito during the first half of the twentieth

iii century. Francisca Romeo, Coco Laso, and Angela Prieto helped me with the images and photographs that I collected during my research.

My doctoral studies were made possible by a fellowship granted by the Inter-

American Foundation, by the John Goggin Award, and by a teaching assistantship provided by the University of Florida. My writing group colleagues—Antoinette Jackson,

Fatma Soud, Elli Sugita, and Roos Willems—lightened the difficult task of writing in a foreign language. Francisco Carrión and Mark Thurner had the patience to review numerous drafts and to transform my at times unintelligible writing into a communicative language. Finally, several friends helped me with everyday problems during my studies, research, and writing. My gratitude goes to Anita Lloré for her friendship and generous help; to my son, Nicolás, who had the courage to accept a student mother while he himself undertook his undergraduate studies; and to my father, Joaquín, who in several occasions came to my financial rescue.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii

ABSTRACT...... ix

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Framing the Research Question...... 8 Historiographical Review ...... 12 Outline of the Chapters...... 16 Sources...... 18 Notes...... 20

2 THE POLITICAL DEBATE ON INDIAN INDENTURED LABOR (CONCERTAJE), ca. 1895-1924 ...... 22

The Liberal Revolution and Indian Protection ...... 23 Historical Interpretations...... 24 Memories of the Revolution of 1895...... 27 Protecting the Indian Race...... 28 Concertaje and the Indian Race ...... 34 Petitions to Congress ...... 36 The Liberal Reform Strategy...... 39 Critiques of Concertaje...... 40 Contract Guarantees and the Inferiority of Indians ...... 44 The Academia de Abogados...... 44 The Landowners’ Resistance...... 51 Disseminating the Debate...... 52 The Debate on Debtors Prison...... 55 The Concertaje Metaphor...... 58 Notes...... 62

3 THE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC INVENTION OF A VANQUISHED RACE, ca. 1900-1930 ...... 70

Sociology and the Peculiar Psychology of Indians...... 71

v The Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria ...... 72 The Universidad Central...... 75 Dividing the Indigenous Race ...... 79 Indian Peculiarities ...... 82 The Critique of Race ...... 84 Archeology and Queries about the Indian Past...... 86 The Academia Nacional de Historia...... 87 Scientific Expeditions...... 89 The Polemic over the Kingdom of Quito ...... 92 Doubts about Velasco’s history...... 93 Indian nobility and feasts ...... 95 An open-ended polemic ...... 99 The Vanquished Race and Contemporary Indians ...... 102 Evolution and Conquest ...... 102 The Fear of Rebelliousness ...... 106 Vanquishing the ‘Evolved Indians’...... 110 Notes...... 112

4 POLITICAL DEBATES ON THE REPRESENTATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF INDIAN COMMUNITIES, ca. 1925-1945 ...... 118

Corporate Representation of the Indian Race...... 120 Indians Responses ...... 124 Consulting the Indians: The 1944-45 Aperture...... 128 The Indian Community...... 130 The Collective Lands...... 132 Land contract and status...... 133 Land division...... 137 Representation ...... 139 Subjection to the State...... 141 State Management of Communal Indians...... 142 The Ejidos of Loja...... 144 The Community Constituency...... 147 The Welfare Proposal...... 150 The Regulations of Communities...... 152 Media Reactions ...... 156 Notes...... 158

5 INVESTIGATING AND UPLIFTING THE SPIRIT AND BODY OF THE INDIAN RACE, ca. 1930-1950...... 165

The Search for the Indian Spirit...... 166 Preserving the Native Soul ...... 166 Attaching Indians to the Land ...... 169 Hygiene, Anthropology, and the Indian Body...... 175 Hygiene and Scientific Expeditions ...... 176 The Degeneration of the Pueblo...... 178

vi Race Fortitude ...... 181 The Polemic on Mestizaje ...... 183 Anthropology and Body Measurements...... 184 Indigenismo and Official Rhetoric ...... 187 Tactics of Integration...... 188 Echoing the Polemics ...... 191 Indian Concealment, Nomadism, and Social Fear...... 195 Notes...... 198

6 NATIONAL CRISIS AND RECONSTITUTION, 1941-1950...... 203

Reframing the Political Community...... 204 The Inability to Vote ...... 204 The Literacy Campaign ...... 208 The Debate on the “Civic Strike”...... 213 The 1950 Population Census ...... 217 Classifying the Indians ...... 218 Avoiding race ...... 222 Flexible rural-urban frontier...... 225 Indian Unruliness...... 229 Notes...... 232

7 LIBERALISM OF FEAR AND THE INDIANS ...... 237

Liberalism: Trajectory and Comparison...... 237 Protection and Equality ...... 238 The Vanquished Race and Indian Rebelliousness...... 240 Communal Indians and the Social Question ...... 243 Social Fear and Indian Spirit and Body...... 246 Indigenous Citizenship ...... 248 Liberalism of Fear and Governmentality...... 251 Notes...... 257

LIST OF REFERENCES...... 259

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 292

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

1 Graffiti in a street in Quito ...... 7

2 Map of Ecuador...... 11

3 Excavation in Narrío, Cañar...... 91

4 Francisco Javier Lobato, Cacique of Cacha...... 96

5 The commemoration of Huayna Capac’s wedding...... 99

6 Duchicela and the constitutional soup...... 127

7 Dr. Suárez’s team on a scientific expedition...... 178

8 Biology of the Indian race...... 186

9 Dolores Cacuango and literacy campaign leaders...... 210

10 Donald Duck in Indian garb ...... 212

11 The census taken among the Indians...... 228

12 Indian regidores and President Plaza ...... 230

viii

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

A LIBERALISM OF FEAR: IMAGINING INDIGENOUS SUBJECTS IN POSTCOLONIAL ECUADOR, 1895-1950

Mercedes Prieto

August 2003

Chair: Dr. Mark Thurner Major Department: Anthropology

My dissertation examines political, scientific, and media discourses on indigenous subjects in Ecuador between 1895 and 1950. My research revisits the liberal political debates regarding the constitutional protection of the natives, indentured labor, legislative corporate representatives, collective property, the administration of indigenous communities, and the enlargement of the political constituency. These debates echoed the intellectuals’ shifting notions of an Indian “race.” Scholarly disputes over the native past, the evolution of native society, and the particular qualities of the Indian spirit and body supplemented the discursive construction of the natives as inferior subjects in the political sphere.

By piecing together the political and scientific rhetoric, I argue that the elites’ imagery of native subjects was shaped by desires for equality and the public good mixed with a deep social fear. Elite suspicions of the indigenes and the imagined traits of a peculiar and inferior race converge in what I call a “liberalism of fear.” I argue further

ix that Ecuador’s early 20th-century liberalism constructed a complex governmentality that

postponed full citizenship rights for indigenes. Elites assigned three traits to natives that

in effect justified this postponement: rebelliousness and a desire for revenge; a “nomadic”

condition; and the concealment of individuality behind a collective or community

identity.

Two discursive tactics legitimized strategies to govern the natives. First, indigenes

were defined as a unique race. Second, elites divided this “race” into three categories:

indentured laborers, communal Indians, and “evolved” Indians. The first two categories

were explicitly located in the countryside, where they were subjected to particular

administrative mechanisms. However, the indigeneity of the “evolved” Indians—socially

mobile natives—posed a challenge. In time, this tension was solved by equating

“indigenes” with “rural people” and by accepting the integration of Spanish speaking

Indians.

The dissertation attempts to contribute to an interdisciplinary field of inquiry—in history and anthropology—that focuses on the intersection between social sciences and political discourses, with a research question—the construction of indigenous subjects— that still resonates in the political and intellectual communities of contemporary Ecuador.

x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Mis compatriotas miran como las bestias perseguidas por los perros rabiosos. Mis compatriotas tienen la piel estremecida por el miedo. Mis compatriotas nadan en el miedo [...] desde el Jefe de Estado hasta la cocinera....(Aguirre 1935: 96).

I started my fieldwork in Quito, Ecuador, in January 2001, while an indigenous uprising (levantamiento indígena) paralyzed the city.1 The media commented on the event and offered interpretations informed by notions of ethnic plurality, multiculturalism, and mestizaje. The 2001 episode was not new however. Indeed, over the last decade indigenous groups and intellectuals have appeared as prominent actors on

Ecuador’s political scene. Several authors have attempted to explain this sudden political rise of the “marked” peoples (León 1994; Zamosc 1994; Carroll 1998; Yashar 1997;

Lucas 2000; Selverston-Scher 2001; Lyons 2001; Martin 2003), but far less attention has been paid to the liberal “pre-history” of the indigenous question (Becker 1977; Guerrero

1997, 2003). This dissertation argues that the contemporary moment cannot be understood without a detailed and critical assessment of this liberal pre-history, the subject of an historical anthropology (Axel 2002: 3).

With “ethnic rebirth” as an ongoing process, I set out to track elite liberal discourses on indigenous subjects from 1895 until 1950. While I was in the archives reading records about what, in 1950, was called the “first modern census,” a new national census was underway. The new enumeration introduced for the first time a question regarding the “ethnic” identity of the population. This request caused social agitation reminiscent in many ways of the discussions that had been sustained during the period of

1 2 my research. But there was a substantial difference in today’s scenario. This difference is not related to native uprisings or unrest, given that indigenous protests have been a backdrop to the political stage of the nation since early republican times. The novelty today is that indigenes speak by and for themselves in the national political arena, represent themselves as intellectuals and politicians, and deploy versions of the nation and citizenship that attempt to differ from those of most Creole elites.2 In Foucault’s

(1984) terms, they are now participants in processes of subjectification.

In contemporary Ecuadorian political discourse, indigenes are considered genuine citizens and culturally diverse members of the nation. There are, however, numerous efforts to define new “cultural” identities that would correspond to a multicultural and plurinacional (pluri-national) configuration of the nation. Indigenous intellectuals asked the 2001 census administrators to introduce new questions in an effort to register “ethnic” identities. Administrators, politicians, and native intellectuals agreed not only about the need to count the population but also about the importance of establishing the ethnic structure of the nation as instruments for public policy making. As in its previous editions, the latest census was conceived as a civic practice, that is, as an agreement on rights and duties between the state and its population, as well as an operation of governmentality. The census, therefore, exhibited the discourses and tensions that have informed the ethnic classification of the population.

The day of the census, the capital’s main newspaper, El Comercio, described the initiative as an “x-ray” of the nation that would inform and dispel myths: “we will know exactly the number of Ecuadorians and indigenes and we will improve public plans for the betterment of the people.”3 The questionnaire included two measures of ethnicity:

languages (used in the past),4 and another truly novel, self-classification. For the latter,

census takers asked: “Do you consider yourself Indigene (indígena), Black (afro-

Ecuadorian), Mestizo, Mulatto or White?” For those who answered “indigene,” it also

asked the name of the nationality or pueblo to which the person belonged. The ethnic

inquiry—spoken languages and self-classification—was adopted partly in response to the

lobbying efforts of indigenous leaders. However, once the census was underway, native

intellectuals and politicians disavowed the official effort arguing that its design did not

respect their entire proposal and needs.5 Thus, as in 1950 (as we shall see below), the

preparations for the census became a political issue and a subject of public debates with

the active participation of indigenous figures. Days before the day of the enumeration,

Leonidas Iza, President of the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador

(CONAIE), complained that the census office staff had not coordinated the effort with local indigenous associations and that, although the Confederación did not agree with the way in which the ethnic inquiry was designed, it supported the census because it was interested in its results. The President of CONAIE also insisted that, as soon as possible, the indigenous organizations would prepare their own census with “interviewers who really know native languages.”6 In spite of this public acceptance, representatives of local

indigenous associations reported that that they did in fact boycott the “ethnicity”

questions (Wray, Interview, February 2002).

The new census, notwithstanding the instrumental considerations of both the

government and the indigenous leadership, became a stage for a reinterpretation of the

identity politics of the nation. Although the purpose of the classification was to recover

cultural and national identities, it immediately acquired racial implications. The media,

for example, in informing citizens about the census, referred to the language and self-

classification questions as an exploration of racial identity or racial perception.7 Indeed, the census taker that came to my home, located in a well-to-do quarter of the city, skipped the ethnic identification section. When I inquired about the omission, the young

interviewer, a student from an elite high school, explained to me that she had assumed

that I was “White” based on the neighborhood in which I lived, an assumption that she

confirmed when she met me. Both were compelling reasons for not formulating the

questions. Her surprise increased when I told her that I would consider myself a

“mestiza,” a culturally hybrid person. Her response showed another angle of identity

tactics: she explained that, during the training she received at her school, her group had discussed that the ethnic classification questions were likely to be unpleasant to elite members and was advised to avoid them altogether. The questions—particularly the self- classification query—were considered offensive because they posed doubts about the ancestry of the elites, a theme that has been on stage since the beginning of the

Ecuadorian Republic.

The census experience was soon the subject of extensive comments in diverse public settings. The day after the census, the staff of the Congressional archives, where I had been working for several weeks reviewing files and debates on indigenous subjects, were curious to know how I had answered the census inquiry. Their main interest was to identify whom the “Whites” were; I was told that based on their appearances and educational background some of them saw themselves as White, but that most had defined themselves as Mestizo since “all people have aboriginal ancestors.” A few days later, the media observed that in González Suárez street, a wealthy sector of the city, not

all residents had classified themselves as White or Mestizo; in fact, one of the residents,

the Minister of Welfare, a member of CONAIE from Otavalo, had defined himself as

indio (Indian), contesting the category used in the census questionnaire (“indígena”).8

The comments following the census exhibited the variety of meanings attributed to its “ethnic” categories as well as the diversity of reasons that led people to choose a label.

Some clearly defined “Whites” and “Mestizos” based on skin color and hairstyle; others criticized the categories because they were fuzzy or because they did not include the labels that are in vogue in the local culture since the ethnic revival (“Indian” instead of

“Indigene” or the newly recovered aboriginal ethnic names). A well-known contemporary historian stated for example that: “I am White because this is the tradition in which I grew up; why would I deny it?” Members of indigenous organizations followed the Minister in rejecting the census categories: “I am indio not indígena”; and a local Amazonian leader insisted: “I am Shuar, a member of a nationality, not an indio.”9

Most Ecuadorians, however, identified themselves as Mestizos, stressing their national belonging and racial mixture, and insisting that this status did not deny their native origins.10 Although the census office has not yet officially released the results of the

identity questions, unofficial tabulations reveal that 78 percent of Ecuadorians aged 15

and over described themselves as mestizo and only 6 percent as indigenes (León G.

2003). An unexpected outcome was the growth of the urban indigenous population.

As a witness, I acquired the impression that the census was a mirror of the racial

classifications normalized through time and experienced in everyday life, currently in a

process of revision. The enumeration “racialized” the population; the contemporary

ethnic revival has not yet succeeded in implanting a cultural perspective on native

identities, which are imagined both as physically and historically ascribed. At the same

time, the census enhanced mestizaje; most indigenes have internalized—though

reframed—the authorized discourse of racial mixing that traverses all Ecuadorian culture.

Though the census questions did not reflect the emergent identity labels or the tensions

behind the classificatory practice, it did unlock a public debate on the politics of

classification. But where do the images about ethnic differences come from? Are they the

sole result of the “ethnic rebirth”? Or are they rooted in earlier discourses?

The mainstream city media talked about both multiculturalism and mestizaje. It

accepted the idea of pluri-nationality while several White pensadores (intellectuals)

published articles that put emphasis on mestizaje as the core of contemporary society and

argued that, as a racial and cultural mixture since colonial times, it had allowed indigenes

to survive. Although some articles recognized an “identity crisis” derived from the

indigenous revival, the common assumption was that ethnic classifications are

“culturally” relevant but politically irrelevant. According to media speech, all

Ecuadorians are citizens regardless of their racial and ethnic adscription. Moreover, while

the media accepted the notion of a plural nation, it also displayed the old idea of a

universal citizenship that unites all Ecuadorians11—a statement that has been

insufficiently explored.

Although today no one hesitates to acknowledge the identity of indigenes as

citizens, institutional racism, racial prejudice, and the denial of indigenous civic rights in

everyday social practices remain pervasive (de la Torre 2002). In modern Ecuador, lo

indio (Indian-ness) is literally embodied in the citizenry; as a city graffiti read: “every time that I get drunk Indian-ness appears in me” (See Figure 1). Ironically, this street

writing recalls the old elite image of the irrational condition of natives that has, since

colonial times, sparked fears among them. Traces of these social fears can be read in the identification process opened by the census, such as in the enumerator’s need to avoid the question about self-classification altogether. Moreover, several authors point that the

1990 and subsequent indigenous uprisings that paralyzed the country motivated fear among White elites (León 1994; Selverston-Scher 2001). Indigenous groups have recovered old strategies of protest—the use of churos (shells used as long-distance communication instruments) and flags, but mostly the invasion of highland towns and cities, including Quito—that generated vivid social apprehension during the period of my analysis.

Figure 1: Graffiti in a street in Quito

Indeed, elite social fears of the Indians are anything but new. It has been a subtle but ever present condition that has shaped the construction of society. As the epigraph of the chapter shows, during the 1930s, the socialist pensador Manuel Agustín Aguirre critically addressed the issue of social fear as the most salient Ecuadorian way of being

(Aguirre 1935). His hypothesis was that not only elites feared the pueblo and the Indians,

but that all members of society feared each other in a way similar to what Taussig (1986)

has called the “culture of terror.” Aguirre argued that his compatriots—from the president

to the humble female cook—trembled with fear; society was riddled by social dread. In

Aguirre’s view, this ubiquitous condition had several cultural effects. It created masks of

ferocity; the fear of losing property and recognition; social monologues and, thus, the

inability for Ecuadorians to understand one another. Aguirre’s reflections open several

intriguing questions that I attempt to answer in this dissertation (and that still resonate in

contemporary Ecuador). What are the foundations of elite fears? How was a widespread

social fear articulated in the political sphere? How have social suspicions shaped elite construction of indigenous identities?

My research on the period opened by the Liberal Revolution of 1895 examines liberal discourses that continue to modulate debates on national integration and pluralism.

The contemporary politics of identities and social fears have not been created in a discursive void; rather, they recover several layers of meaning that have long circulated in the public arena. In Ecuador, as in other Latin American nations, liberal debates on indigenous subjects have always been inflected by racial considerations and social suspicions. A historical critique—my purpose in this dissertation—can underscore the shifting social meanings of indigenous identity.

Framing the Research Question

Early in their postcolonial experience, Latin American elites assumed the republican principle that all native-born adult males were equals (Warren 1996), without explicit distinctions of race or caste (Lynch 1986 [1973]). However, this initial affirmation of equality was several times negotiated through turbulent historical processes, which fashioned categories of social subjects and racial identities. By 1850,

liberalism pervaded among most elites in the Latin American nations (Mallon 1988),

reinforcing the initial dilemma of the Creoles regarding race, equality, and citizenship. A

fertile imagination tempered by social fear had guided the Creoles in the construction of

the new republics (Lynch 1986 [1973]; Anderson 1991 [1983]), wherein notions of

citizenship were to provide the basis for social order. Contradictory sensibilities and images were deployed by elites regarding the indigenous population while configuring their nations. Creoles imagined their new communities through historical narratives that reached back to the native pre-historical past (Anderson 1991 [1983]; Muratorio 1994;

König 1994; Tenorio-Trillo 1996; Thurner 1997 and 2003), but hesitated to accept the indigenous present. Elites imagined a native glorious past, while stressing a miserable and ignorant indigenous present. They engaged in intricate tactics of government that opened and closed different entitlements to indigenes and mixed-race groups, always under the urgency of “civilizing” them.

After Independence, Perú and Gran Colombia—which included what today is

Ecuador—abolished the official use of the terms indios (Indians) or naturales (naturals) as well as the royal tributo de indios (Indian tribute). However, very soon Bolívar promulgated the Bourbon category of indígena (indigene) and reintroduced special taxation, the contribución indígena (indigenous contribution), which remained in effect until the 1850s. In other words, Andean peasants during the early postcolonial period inhabited an ambiguous position: on the one hand, as miserable tributary subjects and, on the other, as tax-paying free citizens—in Thurner’s words “hybrid tributary citizens”

(Thurner 1997).

By the mid-nineteenth century, in Ecuador and other Andean nations, several

policies, inspired by liberalism, were considered in the effort to individualize state-Indian

relations and transform the natives into citizens. First, the elite proposed basic regulations

to protect indentured indigenous workers; second, they abolished Indian legal tutelage;

third, they recognized Indian communal property; fourth they did away with the tributary

mechanisms which targeted Indians; and fifth, they advanced public indigenous

education (Williams, 2001). Once the tributary mechanisms re-framed by Bolívar were

abolished, public-state administration of the Ecuadorian highland Indians12 was delegated

to the landowners under a regime of “customary citizenship” (Guerrero 2003). Under this

regime, Indians were administered by landlords who acted as “ventriloquists” (Guerrero

1997). This regime of representation allowed political brokers to speak for indigenes in

different social arenas, appropriating their voices.13 This regime that combined private

administration of indigenes by local brokers, ventriloquist representation, and limited

political rights was revisited when liberals came to power in 1895. The belated Liberal

Revolution in Ecuador opened a rich discursive field through which the elite administered

the tensions between equality and hierarchy, redefining old and new forms of indigenous

governmentality as the social question of the nation. Liberal elites, in designing their

governing tactics, assumed the need for the civilization and discipline of the natives, all the while fearing their peculiar inferior condition and political proximity.

Figure 2: Map of Ecuador

Source: Adapted from http://www.latinfocus.com/factsheets/ecuador/ecumap_hires.htm, accessed February 25, 2003.

Ecuador, a small Andean country crossed by the imaginary equatorial line, had at the time of the Liberal Revolution over one million and two thousand inhabitants, concentrated mostly in the highlands. A highly debatable issue was—and still is—the size of the Indian population. Scholars cite estimates that oscillate between 39 percent and 60 percent (Rodríguez 1985: 26). The territory was divided into different regions— the temperate north-central and southern highlands, the Amazonian rainforest, and the tropical Pacific coast. Nearly 90 percent of the Indian population lived in the highlands.

Events were produced and resonated differently in each region, although a national elite

was in the making (Maiguashca 1994). Cocoa production and the expansion of primary

exports in the coastal region reinforced the agrarian foundation of the economy, but also gave the elite optimism about progress—the avowed objective of the liberal revolution.

Historiographical Review

Latin American ethnography and historiography exhibit a substantial number of works on the dominant groups and their economic, political, and cultural foundations.

Recent studies of the elite can be traced to the expansion of dependency theory during the

1960s and 1970s and the subsequent debates on dependent versus autonomous development and the emergence of local, national, or cosmopolitan elites (Gootenberg

1989; Stein and Stein 1980; Platt 1980; Burns 1980). Dominant perspectives have tended to explain the failure of modern democratic institutions in the region by pointing to the existence of a parasitic landowner class, the weakness of the incipient middle classes

(Huber and Safford 1995), the pervasive patron-client relationships, and the lack of democratic values.

More recently, a discussion of the economic foundations of the elite has reappeared in the attempt to explain the spread of liberal economic ideas (Mallon 1988; Love 1988;

Halperín Donghi 1988; Safford 1988), analyze the transactional costs of development

(Haber 1997), and track ideas about development (Gootenberg 1993). Similarly, several authors have dealt with the roots of liberal ideas, their local accommodation, and the ensuing agenda regarding citizenship and democracy. Although some authors confront the notion of an early local liberalism and stress instead a broad republicanism (Barrón

2001), it is clear that liberal political theories framed Latin American nation building.

The liberal agenda included free trade, suppression of corporate rights, separation of

church and state (Hale 1968; Safford 1991; Ducey 1997; Langer and Jackson 1997;

Jacobson 1997), and the introduction of modern political technologies (Gootenberg 1996;

Peloso 1996; Warren 1996; Sábato 2000). Less clear in this agenda were the foundations

of individual rights and the public good (Barrón 2001).14 Studies on the political constitution of the Latin American nations underscore the complexity of the region’s politics while opening the door to the current explorations of civil society and the private sphere; they refer, for example, to the co-existence—and mutual reinforcement—of both caudillo15 politics and the suffrage system (Warren 1996; Peloso 1996) and the evolution of citizenship entitlements (Sábato 2000; Lomnitz 2001).

This body of scholarship suggests that liberalism framed public issues of the Latin

American region between ca. 1850 and 1920 (Mallon 1988), under the motto of “order and progress” (Hale 1968, 1989). Authors argue that the Great Depression opened the door to a protective economy that contradicted the notion of free trade—usually labeled

“nationalist policies”—and led to the reinstatement of corporate policies, such as the

promotion of indigenous collective property (Jacobsen 1997; Langer and Jackson 1997;

Lomnitz 2002). Both policies are considered a departure from the liberal frame and most

scholars assume the disappearance of liberal utopias from the regional scenario. This

dissertation, however, argues for the continuity of the liberal rhetoric in Ecuador between

1895 and 1950. In contrast to the nineteenth century, however, liberalism in the 1920s-

50s was confronted and persuaded by socialist ideas that focused on the social question.

At the same time, regional scholarship has argued that liberalism has been an

ambiguous frame that has informed both inclusive and exclusive social and political

tactics regarding the indigenous population and the pueblo. However, these works give

14 scant attention to the centrality of social fear in shaping liberal discourses and governing tactics. Significant insights into this question of fear are provided by the literature on race

(Helg 1990; Poole 1997; Weismantel and Eisenman 1998; de la Cadena 2000), which highlights the pervasive racist practices of elites and the emergence of new ethnic categories. De la Cadena (2000) describes indigeneity as a discursive field that informed

Peruvian elites’ political practice but was later displaced by mestizaje. Similarly, research on mestizaje in Central America (Hale 1996; Gould 1998) emphasizes the erasure of indigeneity from liberal discourses of the nation.

The literature on nation and nation-ness has explored the mechanisms that create a sense of a community’s identity, but it have been less concerned with how the powerful constructed social and racial hierarchies, or how social fear shaped the constitution of the

“imagined community” (Anderson 1991 [1983]; Sommer 1991; Muratorio 1994; König

1994). However, in this genre, there is inspiring research that explores a shift in the early postcolonial discourse on the natives from the “gentle savage” to the “ignorant” and

“barbaric” Indian (Platt 1993: 170), a displacement that speaks of native rebelliousness and social anxiety and of the fractured narrative of the nation that situates indigenous betterment in a future renascence of the patria (homeland) (Thurner 2003). Similarly, pioneering scholarship situates both citizenship and natives in administrative practices during the nineteenth century (Barragán, 2000; Guerrero 2003; Platt N. d.). This literature proposes a double-faced citizenship regime that, on the one hand, subjected indigenes as a dominated population and, on the other, incorporated non-indigenes as equals.

My approach and contribution to this literature focuses on the discourses of liberal elites and, specifically, on the imagined indigenous subjects—i.e., the discourses on

indigeneity that entailed multiple processes of indigenous subject formation or

subjectification. In the interface between political and scientific rhetoric and, in particular

conjunctures, public opinion, I seek the nuances that reveal elite social fears about the

proximity of natives. This is the basis of what I call “liberalism of fear.” Echoing

Aguirre, several of today’s scholars have accented elite fears of the native population, the poor, and of social change (Lynch 1986 [1973]; Anderson 1991 [1983]; Coronil and

Skuski 1991; Platt 1993). Taussig (1986) has described a “culture of terror” in Colombia

that involved indigenes and White elites during the rubber boom where violence and

consent worked together. Nevertheless, fear has not been fully analyzed in relation to

liberalism. In this dissertation, I argue that in Ecuador the nineteenth century notion of an

“indigenous race” gave way to a twentieth century liberalism of fear.

My research focus on postcolonial elites and indigenous subjects connects two major disciplinary traditions in Latin American studies: political history and the

anthropology of the natives. Both fall under Foucault’s notion of governmentality, i.e.,

the art of governing populations with modern political technologies (1991a). Inspired by

Ong’s (1999) study of “graduated sovereignty” I explore the production of different

forms of indigenous governmentality and subjects based on elite political and scientific

rhetoric. Thus, I have read the Ecuadorian elite liberal political and scientific discourses

as agencies that constructed indigenous subjects (Foucault 1984). My perspective

assumes that elite discourses are powerful instruments that generate and shape social

identities, a tactic that, in the case of the native population, I have called indigeneity. This

latter concept refers to elite rhetoric on the integration and subjection of indigenes.

A recurrent backdrop of liberal discourses was the apprehension regarding the collective behavior of indigenes, an issue that has been observed by several authors.

However, existing scholarship has given scant attention to the sources of elite fearfulness and how this uneasiness was related to liberal ideas and policy proposals. The expression

“liberalism of fear” was used by Shklar to stress the need of contemporary nations to establish conditions that inhibited cruelty and acts against personal freedom (Shklar

1989: 29). Instead of arguing for restrictions, I use this compelling notion to critically

address elite tactics for governing natives that were based on sublimated notions of race

or race war. I also take advantage of Gray’s distinction between the universal principles

or ideals of liberal theorists—equality, liberty, public good—and the political project or strategy of coexistence among diverse ways of life, the construction of a modus vivendi

(Gray 2000: 2). This latter or second “face of liberalism” can be read, using Foucault’s

(1999a) notion of governing tactics, as a constant negotiation of the liberal utopian principles. This debating character of strategic liberalism (Ivison 2002) allows me to focus on the construction of equality and the public good as the two main liberal arguments during the period of my inquiry. The discussions of these principles were strategically translated into tactics for governing the indigenous population. My goal is to contribute to an emerging field of inquiry about postcolonial indigenous subjects in Latin

America that sheds light both on the history of governmentalities and on contemporary debates sustained by new indigenous movements.

Outline of the Chapters

In Chapter 2 I outline the political debate on the special protection of Indians and the polemic over Indian concertaje or indentured labor. These debates involved several domains—Congress, scientific journals, and the media—and resulted in the definition of

indigenes as rural laborers. The debates exhibit the tension between equality and

protection that was resolved by postponing equality to a vague future. At the same time,

the debates dealt with questions of how to discipline the Indians, the role of the central

state in rural settlements, and Indian servitude, as well as the prospect of Indian

nomadism as an undesirable result of the creation of a free labor market. In Chapter 3 I

revisit the notion of race that developed in connection with the establishment of the disciplines of sociology and archeology in the university and intellectual communities. In the view of elite intellectuals, historical events and servitude were imprinted in the

Indian’s soul and resulted in the peculiar psychology of the Indian race. The notion of a vanquished race, however, reveals deep elite fears about the potentially bloody rebelliousness of Indians. Chapter 4 focuses on the political debates regarding the Indian community and its corporate representative to Congress. These debates about Indian community transpired under a liberal frame that stressed the public good, protection, and equality. This chapter suggests two tendencies in the liberal rhetoric: one that emphasized individual rights and the other that stressed collective rights. Liberal rhetoric diverged, however, on the role of the central state in the administration of Indians, but it shared the conviction that the state must play a role in the civilizing process. I suggest that the institution of the Indian community provided the elites with a model for the administration of the rural population of the nation as a whole.

Liberal focus on the communal nature of Indians converged with a notion of an aboriginal race that exhibited physical fortitude and promised a future spiritual renascence, the subject of Chapter 5. Professionals associated with the Universidad

Central inspected both the Indian spirit and body. These explorations stressed several

collective emblems of the Indian race, including their attachment to land, lack of private

interests, and concealment strategies. I suggest that this anthropological construction of

the Indian race, combined with anxiety about Indian nomadism, instilled fear among the

elites. In Chapter 6 I analyze two political experiments—expansion of voting rights and

the first national census—that followed from the national crisis provoked by military

defeat at the hands of Peruvians. The experiments reveal a slow displacement of the idea

of an “Indian race” and its replacement by new social category of the indigenous citizens

(i.e., a rural and Quichua speaking population). The final Chapter 7 summarizes my discussion regarding Ecuador’s liberalism of fear.

Sources

I carried out research in the archives of the Congreso Nacional, Universidad

Central and Banco Central as well as in newspapers collections at the Biblioteca

Nacional. In addition I researched published records at the Aurelio Espinosa Pólit and

Banco Central libraries, in Quito, and the Pío Jaramillo Alvarado Library, in Loja.

The Congressional Archive (AFL) houses rich collections of documents dating back to the beginning of the republic: petitions from the public, proposals under discussion, minutes of the regular and special sessions (Actas), and passed resolutions. I used the petitions submitted by Indians and the Actas to reconstruct elite discourses on indigenous subjects. The tradition in Congress was that well-known literate authors were appointed secretaries of the sessions and took notes and transcribed them onto the Libro de Actas. It is not clear how the secretaries recorded the original speeches—there is evidence that each secretary used his own style—but, all in all, the Actas are a faithful record of the discussions since they required the approval of the congressmen. The petitions received by Congress were kept and classified in the institution’s archives and,

19 many times, the archivist added comments in the margins regarding the actions taken on each petition. These comments were important for reconstructing the classificatory strategies and for counterpointing elite discourses with Indian voices. Most of the time, however, lawyers, politicians, and local brokers fabricated the petitions themselves.

The Central Bank maintains a social science library (BBCE) and a Historical

Archive (AHBCE) that also houses the private collections of Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño and Neptalí Bonifaz, which include letters, manuscripts, and photographs. I made use mostly of the Jijón y Caamaño collection to track the development of archeology in

Ecuador. The Bank’s social science collection is based on the private libraries of Jacinto

Jijón y Caaamaño, Isaac Barrera, and Carlos Manuel Larrea. There I reviewed the journals of the Academia Nacional de Historia, the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria, the

Universidad Central, and the Ministerio de Previsión Social, including some ethnographies which provided me with the information about the social scientific discussions regarding indigenous subjects. This review was supplemented with materials from the Aurelio Espinosa Pólit collection (BAEP). Both libraries have compiled most of the published documents from the period under analysis. In Loja, the Pío Jaramillo

Alvarado Library (BPJA) holds what was the personal library of this pensador, his manuscripts, a photograph collection, and some of his correspondence.

Unfortunately, the archives of the Universidad Central (AUC) are in poor condition and have lost a great many records in several disasters and in the hands of negligent functionaries. They contain, however, the theses submitted by the students and the minutes of the meetings of the University board since 1920. I used the theses, the course syllabi, and the board meetings to track the development of sociology, archeology,

20 and anthropology. The documents of the Ministerio de Previsión Social, on the other hand, have almost disappeared completely; a limited number of documents are scattered in the Congressional Library, the National Archive of History, and the archives of the

Ministerio de Gobierno (AMG).

Newspaper collections are dispersed in several sites. The Biblioteca Nacional houses the most complete collection of El Comercio and El Día. The Aurelio Espinosa

Pólit has incomplete collections of El Observador (Riobamba), El Pichincha (Quito), and

other short-lived newspapers from the period. These collections allowed me to follow

some of the elite debates that transcended Congress and the scientific journals into the

wider public. The print media produced and disseminated elite images of the indigenous

population. In special conjunctures, such as during the 1940s, the media opened their own

debates regarding the political community of the nation.

Finally, I did some interviews with contemporary pensadores who witnessed the

working of the Quito intellectual community of the early twentieth century.

Notes

1 The labeling of natives, as we will see in the course of the dissertation, was and still is a contested discursive field. In my discussion, I have kept the specific labels used by the actors in their works or at the time of their writings. However, I use the generic terms of indigene and “indigenous subjects”—this latter inspired in Foucault terminology (see below)—to stresses the integrative content of the multiple labels and the diverse social categories that describe the indigenous race.

2 Native leaders and intellectuals play a central role in the current political game. The current President is supported by indigenous social movements and has named two well-known indigenous leaders as ministers, a move that has stimulated racist and sexist jokes and comments, targeted specially to Nina Pacari, a woman and the current Foreign Minister. I have excluded from my dissertation a gender perspective of indigenous subjects. I believe the question of gender merits a particular analysis.

3 Una radiografía del país en ocho horas, El Comercio, 24 November 2001.

4 The 1950 census also asked about native languages, but only of the population 6 years of age or older (see Chapter 6). In 2001, the language question referred to all persons one year old and over. Native intellectuals, however, observed that, in addition to commonly spoken languages, the census should have asked about the languages learned during childhood.

5 However, the indigenous proposal discussed on a workshop during 2001 was quite similar to the census (Wray, Interview, February 2002).

6 Idioma será un problema: Iza, El Comercio, 23 November 2001.

7 Identidad racial, El Comercio, 24 November 2001 and Usted opina, ¿cómo juzga la pregunta del censo sobre percepción racial de cada persona?, El Hoy, 29 November 2001.

8 En la González Suárez no todos se consideran mestizos, El Comercio, 26 November 2002.

9 Black groups were also interested in establishing their identity, although some of them considered themselves “white”.

10 Stutzman (1981) undertook a persuasive analysis of the ethnic system in Ecuador during the 1970s. His pioneering research asked, “To which race do you belong?” and observed that most of the time respondents had problems in self-classifying themselves (1981: 51). This author proposes mestizaje as an all-inclusive category that, while integrating indigenes, redraws the boundaries between Indian and non-Indian people.

11 Editorial, El Comercio, 21 January 2002.

12 Lowland indigenes have been involved in different governmentality tactics that are out the scope of this dissertation.

13 Even though several elite members argued against universal suffrage during 1861 based on the dangers of incorporating Indians into political life, the majority approved the right of literate males to vote in public elections (Maiguashca 1996: 104). However, less than 10% of the indigenous population was literate and therefore most of them were excluded from the political community. Illiterate indigenous voices were mediated and excluded—at least until the literary restriction was finally suppressed in the Constitution of 1979.

14 Barrón (2001: 6) proposes that liberalism in Latin America was shaped by republicanism and that this tradition maintained both the idea of individual rights that could be subordinated to other rights as well as the notion of good will as more important than that of individual rights.

15 A political model based on strong leadership that traditionally has been associated with the weakness of the democratic institutions of the region.

CHAPTER 2 THE POLITICAL DEBATE ON INDIAN INDENTURED LABOR (CONCERTAJE), ca. 1895-1924

Mayordomo: Antonio Caballooos? Mayoral: Isica Depotado en Queto amo señoór! /…/ Mayordomo: Quién te ha dicho? Mayoral: Asé istaba pis risando en gaceta dil amo comesario. Mayordomo: No puede ser: iría de guasicama de algún Diputado; aunque en estos tiempos. Hum!… Rafael Rodríguez… Mayoral: Isi también en Queto mesmo istapis amo siñoór. Mayordomo: También de Diputado? Mayoral: No sé, amo señoooor: il mesmo si jué numás diciendo qui amo Aljuareto ha llamado para qui haga Iscribinti de juerrocarril… (Padrón de Alfaro 1897).

War and jeopardy marked the year1895 in Ecuador. The liberal elite from the coastal region and the montonera, an irregular militia, took over the central government located in the Andes. By the end of that year, this armed group, which had incorporated a number of Indians1 from the central highlands, marched on to the capital, Quito, where a

small group of the city’s liberals greeted them and negotiated a new order (Spindler

1987:167). But members of the city’s conservative elite, including the Catholic Church,

feared the new authorities and their liberal intentions. This episode of political change

reopened the question of the integration of Indians into the Republic.

The Liberal Revolution incorporated an unknown number of Indians into the

insurgent militia as soldiers, colonels and generals; later, some of them became members

of the regular army.2 The Revolution responded to the social conditions of Indians by

exonerating them from taxes and fees and freeing them from concertaje (debt peonage).3

Indeed, the new political movement led elites as well as Indian leaders to reflect on the situation of the native population under the rhetoric of indigeneity. The revolution

22 23

revealed several debates regarding indios (Indians), at times also called indígenas

(indigenes), and opened the way for strategies of central state protection of the

indigenous population and overseeing the transition of indentured conciertos to wage

workers.

This chapter explores two discursive fields of Indian integration: the liberal

protective agenda and the debate among elites—in the scientific, media, and

congressional domains—regarding concierto laborers. This debate addressed the process

of imagining new disciplinary tactics for rural Indian laborers, which combined

immersion in the free market with state protection. During the discussions, Indians were

reduced to hacienda laborers, who required state tutelage to acquire self-discipline and

become citizens; in other words, they became the object of the tensions between racial

protection and political equality, a dilemma that I elucidate in this chapter.

The Liberal Revolution and Indian Protection

The liberal openings to the Indians were accompanied by a larger and conflicting

agenda of cultural transformation that included issues such as universal liberal education,

national rail-road integration, the separation of the Catholic Church and state, state expropriation of church properties, and the onset of public opinion. These changes were displayed in the debates among liberals, conservatives, and the church, and, on occasions, between liberals and the large landowners (terratenientes) from the highlands.

The revolution, as well as the modernization efforts by the state and the Catholic

Church (Herrera 1999), stimulated several discussions about the relationship between religion and politics and the secularization of the state. There were heated disputes about freedom of religion, the relationship of church and state, church property,4 and popular

and religious celebrations. At the same time, the revolution promoted debates with

conservative politicians and landowners regarding universal education, marriage,

individual rights, and the labor market. By 1910, these different issues were translated

into regulations that subordinated the Catholic Church to the national state and cut off the

source of its economic power. These new regulations also expanded the state’s

prerogatives to administer citizens, educate young people, supervise work contracts,

promote hygiene, and the like. But, more importantly, this was a time when the issues at

stake were publicly discussed through different media: the press, political essays,

drawings, photographs, poetry, and music.

Historical Interpretations

Ecuador had at the time over one million and two thousand inhabitants,

concentrated mostly in the highlands and an estimates that oscillate between 39 percent

and 60 percent of this population was considered native (Rodríguez 1985: 26). Nearly 90

percent of the Indian population lived in the highlands. Ecuador was divided in several

regions, shows difficulties to keep united and events echoed differently in each region,

although a national elite was in the making (Maiguashca 1994). Cocoa production and the

expansion of primary exports in the coastal region reinforced the rural foundation of the

economy, but also gave the elite optimism about for progress—the avowed objective of

the liberal revolution.

Ecuadorian historiography considers the Liberal Revolution a result of the economic and political pressures exerted by the coastal bourgeoisie interested in promoting modern institutions and expanding capitalism (Cueva 1973; Ayala 1988). In this political economy perspective, the revolution is represented as a confrontation between the coastal elite—linked to cacao exports and sugar plantations—which required an expanding work force as well as a modern culture—and the highland and church

25 elites—interested in preventing the freeing of the productive factors, mainly the work force. The coastal elite wanted the country’s integration to the global market while the highland elite focused on maintaining the colonial hacienda system.

Roig’s (1979) analysis of Ecuadorian liberalism proposes the existence of two trends: first, a popular liberalism grounded in indigenismo5 and policies directed at the betterment of indigenes; and second, a liberalism of order embodied in the powerful elites, who feared the pueblo (people). The latter was the dominant form and, following this image, leftist authors have depicted the revolution as an inconclusive transformation that progressed little by little over the twentieth century. Although the Liberal Revolution reorganized much of society it was not able to remove all traditional economic elements

(Cueva 1973: 13). The result has been called a “liberal oligarchic regime” (Cueva 1988:

630; Ayala 1988).

Most of the interpretations of the Liberal Revolution that link it to the bourgeoisie narrow our understanding of Ecuadorian late liberalism (Burbano 1996) and do not establish links between the mid-and the late-nineteenth century forms of liberalism.

Maiguashca (1994, 1996) and recent research (Williams 2001) offer a novel and more complex perspective. They suggest that fragments of liberal thought were discussed in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, and to Maiguashca the Liberal

Revolution was the end-point of a long process of constituting a national dominant class and a central state—what other authors refer to as the “national interest” (Radcliffe and

Westwood 1996: 19). In a similar vein, Clark (1998a), focusing on the construction of the first national railroad, has emphasized the discourse of national integration, the central state, and the creation of a labor market as results of the liberal era. These results had,

however, particular local expressions: Ecuador’s regionalism has remained a fundamental

characteristic of the nation, enhancing local stories and events.

Most scholars coincide in pointing out that, for Ecuadorian liberals, freeing

concierto workers was central to a project to modernize the nation. Clark (1998a), for

example, recounts how both the railroad and several legal regulations increased the

displacement of the natives to the lowlands, and Ibarra (1987) describes migratory flows from the central highlands to the coastal region. The dissolution of the institution of concertaje was a part of the coastal elite’s strategy to gain access to laborers for agricultural activities and, later, for the construction of the railroad. Cacao and sugar plantations, city services, public works, and the railroad pressed for the displacement of highland laborers, including Indians. A supplementary perspective stresses consumer interests: the debate about concertaje revealed the tensions between large and middle landowners from the highlands regarding food production for local markets. The abolition of concertaje would promote competition among producers and provide lower prices to consumers, an important policy goal for the coastal urban elites (Marchán 1986:

41).

However, it was the highland pensadores, and, most of all, the emergent educated provincial middle-class, who were the actors most interested in banning concertaje.6 In

contrast to these reductive economic explanations of the elimination of concertaje, I will

discuss it as a discursive field deployed by Ecuadorian liberalism. I focus on liberalism as

a protean and flexible discursive field that generated diverse debates and subjects. I wish

to explore how the liberal project subjected and disciplined Indians while suggesting its

connections to elite social fears of the Indians. Indeed, a key element of liberalism was

the construction of a central state as a form of a unitary public administration, as a

symbol of Ecuadorian nationhood, and as the organizer and guarantor of the equality

principle (Sinardet 1999: 27). The expansion of education, the subordination of church to

state, the development of public opinion, and labor reforms, among other changes, were

aimed at the construction of a new form of social cohesion based on secular equality. To

conservatives it was this secular equality and market forces what generated social fear of

the Indians, while to the liberals it was the maintenance of servitude the foundation of

their social apprehensions. It is in this frame that I explore the abolition of the institution

of concertaje and the debate about the protection of Indians.

Memories of the Revolution of 1895

Eloy Alfaro, the leader who commanded the revolution, was—and still is—

inscribed in Ecuador’s national mythology. In his 1896 message to the nation, Alfaro

recalled that, in the battle of Gatazo, an indigenous indentured servant recruited as a

soldier told him: “My general, I will fight for my liberty, and after I triumph you will

give me a form so that I will cease to be a concierto” (Convención Nacional de 1896-97

N.d.: 59). Contemporary indigenous memories also recall images of Alfaro and of the

salient battles in the region. Thurner (pers.com. 2002) has observed the simulacra of the

Battle of Gatazo that takes place in the community of Gatazo Chico, a ceremony that brings guest dignitaries from Guayaquil. Several authors have mentioned the carnival songs and other traditions that recall the opportunities provided by Alfaro and his revolution. One such carnival song celebrates Alfaro’s opening opportunities for Indians to move-up socially and go to new places.7 Similarly, an indigenous leader from

Pichincha remembers Alfaro as a runa8 who intended that all the people should work as

equals (Yañez 1986: 63).9

At the same time, conservative intellectuals constructed the figure of Alfaro as

“indio” himself: allegedly, through his veins circulated blood from a very bellicose

aboriginal group from the coastal region (Borja 1983 [1923]: 254).10 But, as the

conversation that appears in the epigraph of this chapter shows, the liberal opening of

opportunities for Indians sparked fear among elites.11 An anonymous article published in

1897 satirized the official appointment of indigenous persons who fought together with

Alfaro by mimicking a dialogue between a White mayordomo (steward) and an indigenous foreman (mayoral). The foreman reports that a concierto or indentured worker would no longer be able to work at the hacienda because of his new responsibilities in the

Chamber of Deputies (or House of Representatives) in Quito and that another had been appointed as a scribe in the national railroad company. Through irony the steward, who represents the voices of the landlords, expresses that Indians would be displaced from the haciendas, access information that was not mediated by the hacienda, and, moreover, hold positions previously reserved for White. The loss of landowner centrality and the reformulation of Indian social subjection sparked fears among landowners. While conservatives feared losing control over the Indians and their eventual political and administrative participation, liberal pensadores criticized the political caudillo system in which Indians participated in subservient positions (Moncayo 1986 [1912]: 298-99) but were always ready to rebel.12

Protecting the Indian Race

After the Battle of Gatazo, the liberal commitment13 to the Indians was translated

into the notion of state protection that recognized them as a peculiar segment of the

population of the Republic, following Bolívar’s earlier tactic regarding the natives

(Thurner 1997). But this time, concertaje and protection were the cornerstone. The liberal

Abelardo Moncayo (1895-96) argued for protection on the basis of the alleged inferior

intellectual development of Indians, and proposed the suppression of concertaje along

with the establishment of local attorneys to defend them.14 However, although liberals

used the language of indigeneity—which explicitly recognized the peculiar condition of

the Indians—they never established an all-inclusive protective legal and political corpus.

Instead of establishing a unifying code regarding the rights of Indians, the protective

agenda promoted a fragmented or dispersed strategy to govern them. From 1896 to 1924,

this strategy focused on concierto labor, indigenous fiestas, small-scale property taxes,

and the creation of the Junta Protectora de la Raza Indígena (Tribunal for the Protection

of the Indigenous Race).

As soon as he came to power, Alfaro issued several executive decrees15 regarding the raza indígena (indigenous race)—also referred to as raza india (Indian race)—based on two main considerations, both evidence of the liberal interest in the practices of modern civilization. First, the decrees called for the protection of the descendants of the

“first inhabitants” of the Ecuadorian territory; and, secondly, they recognized Indian participation in the army during the Liberal campaign. Alfaro’s decrees abolished the practices of trabajo subsidiario16 (compulsory labor) and contribución territorial

(property tax),17 and required that Indians be treated as citizens by public authorities and be given access to public education. Alfaro also signed a decree that mandated that all indigenes of “pure race” that could not read nor write could claim protection due to poverty, a principle called amparo de pobreza. Finally, he issued several regulations regarding the work of conciertos with the intention to protect the raza india.

These diverse legal instruments very much defined the content of the liberal agenda regarding the indigenous question for years to come. The new regulations reiterated the dilemma confronted by the elites since the beginning of the republican era, re-elaborated several times throughout the nineteenth century: indigenes were recognized as citizens, yet this identity and its corresponding rights were limited (Demelas 1992, Guerrero

1996). In this conjuncture, however, liberals reintroduced the notion of central state protection, erased during the second half of the nineteenth century (Guerrero 1996,

2003), as a strategy to recognize the inferiority of Indians and as the starting point to construct social equality. In so doing, they accepted (and reinforced) the inferior condition of the Indian race, while transferring to the central state the duty of overseeing equality, mostly by establishing legal regulations—regarding labor contracts, education, and taxes—without procedures to reinforce them.18

Alfaro’s decrees drew the boundaries of the liberal discursive field regarding the

raza indígena or raza india. In this discursive field the aboriginal inhabitants exhibited an

interest in civilization, which justified, in turn, the state’s interest in them. The state owed

them moral compensation because Whites had appropriated their lands; moreover,

Indians were to be rewarded for their participation in the liberal revolution. At the same

time, this field included a fragmented vision of the raza india, contained in diverse legal

pieces, which saw a people of laborers and landowners who were mistreated by local

authorities, and who lacked access to public education. Alfaro’s discourse differentiated

between literate and illiterate indigenes and provided them several entrances to the

political system. These included the right to vote and a chain of representation through

the recurso de queja (right to appeal),19 as well as the right to petition. Imagining a legal

31 structure of representation for the native population was, however, a complex process because they were not seen as a homogenous group: some were rich and civilized, others backward and poor; some lived in cities and towns, others in the countryside.

When the Constitutional Assembly of 1896 was called to approve the new constitution, the principle of “public protection” was discussed. The new legal framework incorporated an article that called for the protection of the “raza indígena” (1896, art.

138) that later became known in official discourse as “raza india” (1906).20 With certain qualifications, this system of protection survived until 1945.21 Over time, the protective principles were rephrased and expanded. Over time, the protective principles were rephrased and expanded. At first, the objective of protection not only referred to education but also to the economic and the biological conditions of Indians; and later, the notion of protection was expanded to include the coastal Montuvios, and “race” was removed from the nomenclature.22

Although different ideological camps promoted protection,23 the rhetoric did not generate a strong consensus among the elite, as both the 1896 and 1906 Constitutional

Assemblies made it clear. The issue of protection was interlaced with the dispute over concertaje, the most rancorous debate of the period. It also raised questions regarding equality, the privileges of special groups, and the living conditions of Indians. In the 1896

Assembly, public protection for the social betterment of indigenes was conceived as a form of reparation for the loss of their lands, liberty, and knowledge. José Peralta, one of the more lucid liberal intellectuals of the time, called for “inviting Indians to the banquet of civilization” as a reparation strategy (Convención Nacional de 1896-97 N.d.: 424).24

Peralta also refuted the racial inferiority of the Indians by insisting that ignorance and

degeneration were not inherent to the indigenous race or any other race; to affirm it, he

said, was to negate the idea of human perfectibility and progress.

The discussion about protection also considered the efficacy of a general

constitutional precept. Several representatives to the 1896 convention argued that such a topic should be a matter of secondary legislation given the fact that it was a reiteration of existing privileges (taxes and exemptions). Indeed, a liberal representative from Imbabura argued that such a declaration would also have to include African descendants and, in general, the pueblo. However, the Vice-President of the Assembly argued that the condition of the Indians was very particular; he compared the conditions of Indian laborers to that of Black laborers and stressed that the latter did not serve as guasicama— the Indian who served at the patron’s home—and their wives and children did not have to serve the local authorities (Convención Nacional de 1896-97, N.d: 423).

The 1906 Assembly better specified the fields or objectives of “protection” as education and work, and tried, through such definitions, to eliminate concertaje.25 Some

delegates considered that the article about protection was in conflict with other constitutional statements—including the principle of equality under the law—and that it created special privileges. A conservative representative from Chimborazo argued that the principle of protection had resulted in exonerating indigenes from taxes and other levies. In his view, protection would result in a “privileged race,” contravening the

principle of equality of all citizens and contractual liberty in commerce and industry.

Moreover, Indians themselves would be hurt given the fact that their labor was one of the few economic resources they had. Several renowned liberals replied by constructing an image of indigenes as members of a degenerating, unfortunate, and abject race, on the

border of slavery. In their view, it was precisely this condition that prevented equality of

opportunities for Indians; for them, inequality was a manifest reality that required state

protection of indigenes. But state protection did not only mean granting equality, but also

achieving equality. It is interesting to note that politicians who considered themselves

conservatives argued against Indian state protection by referring to universal equality

while the governing liberals, in order to made their case about protection, portrayed

Indians as a decaying race, a condition that inhibited progress.

The constitutional debate raised the question of where and in whom the problem of inequality laid. For a liberal representative from the coastal region, the responsibility rested with the Ecuadorian race that had always sought to see the weakest fare worst. For

others, especially the highland conservatives, the problem lay with the raza india itself.

Finally, for some liberals from the Sierra, the causes of the degeneration of Indians rested

on particular institutions and on society as a whole. In this last group, Moncayo, for

instance, was convinced that indebtedness and work (concertaje) were vastly different for

Indians than for the rest of the population. Indeed, such institutions were the cause of

their abject condition, the source of unequal treatment under the law, and of their

exclusion from the benefits of education—in spite of several centuries of exposure to

Catholic doctrine. In his view, the native population revealed the vices that Ecuadorian society, as a whole, had been unable to combat. Thus, Ecuador was a society that enslaved people and this slavery had blocked advancements in political life and social customs. At the same time, the responsibility for the redemption of Indians fell on the political elite.

A liberal congressman from Guayaquil argued even more forcefully this obligation.

To guarantee equality under the law it was necessary first to grant the downtrodden what

were privileges for the rest of society; giving to the excluded what the rest had would

erase differences. A representative from the southern province of Loja opposed such

views, insisting that the problem lay with the “raza” itself, a “miserable” group incapable

of benefiting from the rights legally accorded to them. However, the representative from

Loja did emphasize the abuses committed against Indians by civil and military

authorities.

In the following Assembly, prestigious liberals—including Peralta himself—

contended that the declaration of protection was a utopian statement because the only

feasible strategies were concrete actions in the fields of education and property rights.

Others, however, insisted that it was important to explicitly include protection as a

constitutional principle in order to give needed signals or set forth intentions that would

demand future legislation.

Concertaje and the Indian Race

Once the protective postulate was introduced into the Constitution, it was necessary

to promote specific measures to protect the indigenes and it was within this frame that the

debate on the institution of concertaje developed. As several pensadores stated, the word

concertaje did not exist in the dictionary, but both elites and Indians knew its

significance. It was however in the ensuing discussion that concertaje was defined as an

indigenous type of labor used by the highland haciendas. The debate and the official

rhetoric made a two-step equation: first between concierto laborers and jornaleros and then between jornaleros and hacienda Indians. “Concertaje” was an informal but widely used term that referred to a contract for personal services in which the contracting party

paid for the work in advance, thus creating a debt on the part of the jornalero. The

contracting party could use the threat of imprisonment for debts to press its claim; the

jornalero, in turn, could use his family to complete the tasks.26 Concertaje labor relations

had several features that acted against the jornalero and his family’s liberty: the

uncertainty of the duration of the contract, the involvement of the laborer’s family in the

fulfillment of the contracts, the nonexistence of a work schedule, the laborer’s inability to

break the agreement, the threat of prison in case of non-completion of the contract, and

the inheritance of the debt. Ibarra (1987: 106-107) describes several features of

concertaje in the Province of Tungurahua: urban and rural laborers—from haciendas and

communities—with long and short-term contracts, who could live in the same place

where they worked.

During the unveiling of the 1896 Convention, Alfaro delivered a speech in which

he considered the institution of concertaje as a general form of labor found both in the

coast and the highlands. Moreover, conciertos, in Alfaro’s view, were furtive slaves who

threatened public peace and were waiting for a leader to demand their liberty. During the

liberal battles, he recalled, several soldiers asked him to be redeemed from this kind of

“slavery.” These petitions, as well as those received by the Convention, gave Alfaro

authority to place the issue in the political agenda. Alfaro’s strategy of freeing the

conciertos was intended to prevent further revolutions and to make Indians the core of the

Ecuadorian working class.27 In the same speech he recalled that by presidential decree the indigenous class had been exonerated from taxes and contributions; what remained to be done was to reconcile the right to liberty of this destitute class with the needs of agriculture and domestic activities (Mensajes 1907: 225-6). These images associated with

the notion of “indigenous class” and “indigenous race” transfigured Indians into laborers,

an image that was subsequently represented in public displays28 and repeated by several

pensadores. Thus, for example, Carlos Tobar suggested a place for indigenes in society

insisting that “indios, the pariahs of civilization,” were also the nation’s “pueblo obrero”

(working people). Ecuador had a working class composed of indigenes and, like in the

European modern nations and the United States, pensadores need to study their

peculiarities, their psychology and social conditions to adjust protection.29

Petitions to Congress

The 1896 Convention received several petitions from the pueblo, including indigenous laborers who alleged problems concerning land restitution and abuses of local authorities and bosses. Petitions, and how Congress classified them, provide insights into how liberals equated conciertos with jornalero laborers. Congress processed petitions from indigenes in different categories. One category grouped complaints dealing with individual contracts, abuses by owners and land claims, read from the perspective of the labor laws then under discussion, the Ley de Jornaleros (Jornalero Law).30 Some

petitioners did not identify themselves, or were represented by non-indigenous agents,

but Congress processed them as “indigenous” claims if they dealt with any issue related

to landowners, the church, or communal lands in the highland region.31 Concierto

petitions that came from towns and city people were classified as claims by vecinos

(citizens)

Two concierto men from the city of Cuenca, with natives last names but who do

not present themselves as “indios”—but rather as “vecinos”: Manuel Pilco and Manuel J.

Rumipulla—addressed a petition to the assembly explicitly asking for a law that would

allow them to end their concertaje contracts. They declared that they had entered into

their current contracts to avoid public works duty and enlistment in the militias, but now

they were facing with the impossibility of ending their commitments and asked for the

ending of a “slavery” based on “ignorancia e infelicidad” (ignorance and unhappiness).32

Congress classified this petition as pertaining to concierto individuals without race references, asking for a Jornalero Law.

José A. Polanco, from the small town of Cayambe, in a petition signed under his own name, asked for land for the poor of the town, arguing that it would bring progress and work to the people. His writing seems to indicate that he was a Spanish speaker who had difficulties spelling and was not politically fluent, although he seems to have been aware of the centrality liberals attributed to indigenous authenticity. He starts by noting that the local military and civil authorities had distributed fliers that stated that the new government was from and for the people and that these fliers encouraged citizens to discuss, write, speak, and petition for the betterment of the people. Based on these statements, Polanco, “a convinced liberal”, addressed his petition to Congress emphasizing his belief that the betterment of the people was in the hands of the new government that “wants republican freedom.”33

In his text, Polanco makes it known that since he had fought for the liberals he was

entitled to claim land for the pueblo. He explained that four large landowners were

oppressing the people of the town. He also revealed his views on the origin of this

oppression, tracing it to the Spanish Conquistadors who had been hostile to the

indigenous race and had appropriated their lands. But he also recalls that the Spanish

King had established the ejido—communal pastures for the poor—in all towns. At this

point, Polanco asks how long will the “raza indígena” continue to be subjected to the

whims of landowners.

The congressional records indicate that this petition was processed as one from a

Cayambe vecino asking protection for the “indigenous race” and was marked for consideration during the discussion of the Jornalero Law. Thus, the issue of “indigenous protection” was juxtaposed with that of workers—hence the filing under the Jornalero

Law case file.

An indigenous group from the Hacienda Chimbulo in Ibarra who introduced themselves as “we the indigenous” requested legislation that would remedy their opprobrious and sad situation—that would make them into persons, free and autonomous.

They stated, “we the indigenes are human beings [...]; we have the right to be free and

independent of all form of non-natural coercion.”34 They claimed reparation for the

offenses committed by the hacienda owner, including the illegal appropriation of cattle

and unjustified debts that restricted their liberty. The congressional clerks also classified

this petition under the heading of “need for protection” and observed that it would be

discussed together with the Jornalero Law. The strategy for the protection of the Indians

meant protecting the jornalero and abolishing concertaje, a measure that would also

provide freedom and autonomy to workers.

The petitions brought a variety of highland laborers—from cities, towns and

haciendas—under the categories of conciertos and jornaleros, and equated concierto labor

with indigenous subjection on the hacienda. The petitions and their congressional

classifications were linked with the need to regulate concierto work and “indigenous

protection,” a perspective that was put together in the notion of the Jornalero Law.

The Liberal Reform Strategy

The same year that liberals came to power, Moncayo (1895-96) published in a

Quito newspaper a critical essay about the “concertaje de indios,” but it was Alfaro who challenged the 1896 National Convention to draft legislation. A unique legal frame did not sanction concertaje as a whole; it was disseminated in several legal bodies.35 Instead of reforming these different regulations, Alfaro introduced the idea of a Ley de Jornaleros as a new legal corpus that would provide state protection to laborers, eroding what

Guerrero (2003) calls “the privatization of the administration of the indigenous

population” entrusted to landlord. The initial liberal strategy involved passing a unified

legal corpus to regulate the relationship between employers and laborers. The labor

relationship would now be regulated by the central state, required individual written

contracts and the inspection and approval of local government authorities.

Peralta presented a Jornalero Law project to the 1896 Assembly, but it was not

taken up for discussion. Instead, Alfaro issued a presidential decree that targeted indigenous workers. It mandated a procedure for the operation and conclusion of voluntary contracts. At the same time that this decree reinforced the equivalency of

“jornalero” and “indigene,” it also reinforced the notion of free wage labor at levels that covered the laborer’s needs, and it banned the use of unpaid family labor, among other measures (Peñaherrera and Costales 1964: 730-732).36 However, jornaleros lacked the

power and the means to break or change the terms of the existing contracts, and

imprisonment for peonage debts continued to be a coercive mechanism for the unilateral

enforcement of labor contracts. To legitimize the presidential order, liberals required a

law. They introduced several similar projects that were not openly discussed in Congress

and never ended in laws.37 Instead, liberal congressmen—lead by Peralta—introduced, in a concealed movement, the new worker rights into the existing Police Code.38

Even though this code still conceived of the protection of workers as a police duty, maintained imprisonment due to peonage debts, and described the master as a patrón

(boss and patron), it added the notion of a fixed contractual period, different salary rates

for rural coastal and highland workers, the eight-hour workday, and the laborer’s right to

end the contract (Código de Policía 1904: 30-32). This last point and the notion of patron,

however, were quickly erased from the new code and jornaleros remained without the

right to terminate concertaje contracts (Código de Policía 1906: 32-35). The reforms

combined modern notions of workers’ rights with old idioms such as amo and patrón

(master) and concierto (indigenous bonded laborer). Thus, at the beginning of the

twentieth century, even though the institution of concertaje had begun to change, its main

features were still in place, including imprisonment for peonage debts, the inability of

jornaleros to end the contracts, and the differentiated salary rate between the coastal

region and the highlands. These three elements—but mostly imprisonment for peonage

debts, commonly known as apremio personal—became the most important points of

contention among the pensadores.

Critiques of Concertaje

While the Jornalero Law and its transformation into specific provisions of the

Police Code were being discussed in Congress, liberal pensadores were critical of this

effort. They insisted on the pending agenda for the reform of the whole concertaje

institution, which they called a system of “slavery” for Indians. Indeed, the liberal

characterization of the practice as “slave work” can be traced back in the coastal

newspapers well into the nineteenth century (Martínez 1932 [1887]).39 This liberal

strategy of publicly questioning concertaje was maintained until Congress abolished

imprisonment for debts, one of the last laws that permitted indentured labor.

The liberal pensadores used a variety of public and scientific fora to push for the regulation of concertaje, including the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria, the Academia de

Abogados, and the Congreso Catequístico. The intensity of the opposition varied and had regional overtones. A conservative landowner and liberal coalition from the highlands,

interested in maintaining the arrangement, used several channels to represent their

opposition to the reforms including the same Academia de Abogados as well as the

Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura.

Luis A. Martínez delivered a lecture to the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria that

emphasized that liberal efforts had been in vain. He called attention to the paradox of a

Constitution that established equality and liberty while society condemned the indigenous

race to slavery. He also suggested that previous reforms had freed artisans and urban

workers but not the raza india, which remained enslaved by the hacienda system (1905:

2-3). Later, Carlos Tobar y Borgoño, while insisting that jornalero work was not a police

problem but one of “persuasion,” also declared that indios comprised the majority of the

work force, a view shared by the most conspicuous pensadores (1913: 150). Through the

critique of concertaje labor and the unfinished reforms, some liberal pensadores equated

the categories of “indio” or “raza india” and “worker,” linking the Indian population with

the transition to free worker status and locating them in a specific and discernable place

in the project for a modern society.

Each critical pensador shed new light on concertaje and highlighted a specific

fragment of the institution. For example, Martínez (1905: 5-6) introduced an economic

42 perspective to the discussion. He noted that concertaje was inefficient and did not promote consumption since it depressed salaries and pushed indigenes into debt. The notions of depressed salaries and indebtedness of conciertos, framed in the perspective of supply and demand, were also explored by Quevedo (1916a), who emphasized the need for a just salary for workers. Both Tobar (1916: 290-292) and Agustín Cueva (1984

[1915]: 39) also discussed the economic inefficiency that affected the workers, the landowners, and the country as a whole. Tobar presented a case where increasing salaries among conciertos on a hacienda near Quito had resulted in Indians developing a sense of planning and saving (Tobar 1916).

Moncayo, and later Nicolás Martínez Jr., each established a comparison between

“free Indians” and conciertos. To Moncayo, this comparison proved that liberty worked positively among them. Free Indians acquired control over their lives as well as dignity; in this sense, concierto workers, as a result of the servitude that nullified their spirit, betrayed a peculiar psychology characterized by the incapacity to achieve perfection because of vice, indolence, and laziness (1986 [1912]: 302-304). At the same time, however, freeing the Indians provoked anxiety among some liberals. Martínez Jr. called attention to how the liberated Indians in the cities were in the process of degeneration, and how rebelliousness and the lack of state control over communal Indians posed risks for civilized people, implying that the elimination of coercive procedures against them endangered society (1993 [1916]).

Tobar and Cueva focused on the role of the state regarding the protection of workers and the constitutional guarantee of equality. Tobar pointed out that a true worker’s law was required, and prudently assigned to the state the role of guaranteeing

equality for workers by means of just salaries, security, and hygiene (1913: 141). Cueva,

although critical of the notion of race, argued that the state had the responsibility to

guarantee the equality denied to conciertos by society (1984 [1915]: 39). From this

perspective, he insisted on the need for a Jornalero Law that would reform labor

contracts, place labor relations under the control of the state, and ban the coercive nature

of concertaje.40 Recognizing that the liberal strategy had failed, he focused instead on

civil law reforms including a ban on imprisonment for debts, a proposal first presented at

the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria.

This proposal for an alternative course of action coincided with the opening brought about by the Congreso Catequístico, an event in which the Catholic Church attempted to construct an agreement with liberal intellectuals on the indigenous question.41 Although the Congress officially avoided a debate on concertaje,42 Cueva

gave a lecture during the meeting on his proposal to ban coercive work contracts. Among

its final suggestions, the Catholic Congress called for legislation regarding free contracts

for personal services that would include provisions for duration, forms of payment, procedures to end contracts, and work accidents (Academia de Abogados 1918: 281-

282). However, the issue of coercive measures—prison for debt peonage or apremio personal—was conspicuously absent from the church’s proposals.

A new opportunity to discuss the issue was also opened during the year 1918, this time in the scientific community. The Government’s Office of Agriculture asked the well-known moderate liberal lawyer V. Manuel Peñaherrera to study the question of concertaje and to prepare a proposal for its reform (1918). Peñaherrera’s suggestions were subjected to consultations and debate among professionals and landowners from all

over the country. The workers themselves, however, were never consulted and it is

interesting to note that during this time no concierto petitions were submitted to

Congress. Although Tobar alerted pensadores about the importance of consulting the

pueblo in order to avoid revolution (1913: 147), intellectual practices did not include such

a strategy; instead, thinkers were convinced that they had the ability as well as the

authority to interpret the desires of conciertos.

Contract Guarantees and the Inferiority of Indians

By 1918 there were two proposals to reform concierto labor. Cueva’s initiative

centered on eliminating apremio personal or imprisonment for peonage debts from the

Code of Civil Procedure. Peñaherrera’s proposal, on the other hand, reintroduced the

Jornalero Law. It was the latter that once again heated the disputes among liberal and

conservative intellectuals and landowners of diverse ideologies at the Academia de

Abogados,43 the Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura, and the national newspapers.

The Academia de Abogados

Peñaherrera’s (1918) reform proposal, presented in the form of an essay, had four main points: 1) the abolition of apremio personal or prison sentences for unpaid debts; 2) the worker’s right to end labor contracts or “deshaucio libre;” 3) the non-inheritance of the debts; and 4), the establishment of provincial offices to supervise labor relations and protect indigenes. In other words, the proposal combined the notion of flexible contracts with a local mechanism to protect and moralize a specific group of day laborers: indigenes. His arguments in support of the reforms included the need for supply and demand mechanisms to equilibrate the labor market, the need to increase remuneration for the highland workers, and the improvement of production and competition among

landowners.44 Finally, he stressed that all coercive procedures had been banned in the

civilized world because they were unjust.

Since the very beginning of the controversy the notions of the non-inheritable

nature of debts and of the need for provincial labor boards were accepted, with some

reservations, by conservative and liberal pensadores as well as by landowners.

Peñaherrera’s two other points were the most contested; they gave rise to arguments

about the role of the state in promoting change in the realm of “natural laws” and about

the racial and moral conditions of the workers and their rebelliousness. Peñaherrera

insisted, and all pensadores agreed, that the question under debate was a “labor law” and

not an “Indian law.” They agreed that laws that targeted specific groups—such as

Indians—ran counter to the universal principle of equality upon which the nation’s

judicial system was founded.

However, the notion of a universal law was also central to arguments deployed by

opponents to justify inequalities. Luis Felipe Borja Jr. (1918) argued for the need to

legislate for all the Ecuadorian people and to avoid equating Indians with day laborers.

He stressed that all jornaleros were under the same rule of law and that Ecuador had a

unified legislation for all races; at the same time, he developed the idea that law does not

create inequalities since these were part of the natural law of societies (1918: 5). But,

after stating the universal principles that framed the rule of law, the text turns to the hacienda Indians, described as jornaleros and portrayed as “happy” workers, under the surveillance of landlords. Thus, instead of escaping from the racial language to describe the hacienda jornaleros, his discussion once again indigenized the day laborers and opened the question of the government of native workers.

Apremio personal and libre deshaucio were the cornerstones of the debate; both

referred to the question of how contracts could be guaranteed without coercive measures.

They were also key ingredients in a new liberal strategy of disciplining and subjugating

the indigenous population. Apremio personal referred to a mechanism that relied on

prison, while libre deshaucio focused on the worker’s inability to end contracts. In this

regard, Peñaherrera confessed his strong faith in the law of supply and demand as the

organizer and guarantor of contracts. He argued that the state could not intervene in the functioning of supply and demand; on the contrary, it had the obligation to remove those

factors that acted against this natural law. The state also had the responsibility to establish

the conditions for liberty and equality. Although he recognized the risks of his proposal—

due mainly to the lack of a rural police corps and the possible displacement of workers—

he was certain that the labor market, higher salaries in the highlands, and the increasing

need of the workers themselves would all act to retain jornaleros close to their present

work sites and press them to fulfill their contracts.45

He also believed that the best guarantee of labor for the highland haciendas was the attachment that indigenes felt for their homeland,46 combined with their docile nature

(1918: 66). He was convinced that natural evolution would prevail, as demonstrated by

urban Indians in Quito and the free peons or day laborers from the haciendas, who

fulfilled their contracts without coercive procedures. But these assertions did not mean

that attention should not be paid to the vices of the workers. Both workers and Indians

required moral reformation—both were amenable to education—and protection; the latter

responsibility fell on the proposed local labor boards. In this way, Peñaherrera did not

explicitly use the idiom of race, although he implicitly evoked the notion in the idea of

moralization and social control by the local boards. Supply and demand and liberty were

not enough to discipline indigenous workers; they required special moral instruction and

persuasive control.

Several lawyers from the provincial southern city of Cuenca, most with interests in

agriculture, accepted the proposal and made interesting observations. Adolfo Torres

(1918) reacted positively and saw it as targeted specifically to the indigenous race,

“nuestros obreros” (our workers). He argued that the apremio personal was not only

against the Constitution, but also against the liberal spirit of the Civil Code; it

contradicted the very notion of a civil contract between employers and workers (1918:

16). He emphasized the idea that local authorities, such as the tenientes políticos

(sheriffs)47, were incapable of supervising the contracts; instead he assigned this role to ordinary judges. Moreover, he was convinced that the state had the credentials to guarantee equality while introducing restrictions on the freedom of industry. State interventions should reduce unequal gaps and protect the weak (1918: 22). Remigio

Crespo Toral and several other members of the Academia Cuencana (Crepo, Torres and

Díaz 1918) emphasized that concertaje was not created by landowners; they resorted to it as a means to protect their workers from the local state authorities who pressed Indians into corveé labor. Their most important argument was that property was the only mechanism that would redeem indigenes, as was evident in the social situation of the

Azuay region.

In a discordant view, the conservative Remigio Romero y Cordero (1918) argued for a specific personal service contract that contemplated the moral issues involved in the relationship between Indians and their employers. For Romero y Cordero the discussion

48 about concertaje was about morality and social conflict—avoiding “chaos” and strikes— or, in broader terms, about how to govern Indians. In his view, coercive procedures— other than prison—needed to be maintained and, in a subtle way, he delegated to employers the responsibility of governing Indians by way of a new type of contract that included their “moral responsibility.” Such commentaries opened the question of who had the responsibility to moralize the indigenous peoples and how it should be undertaken.

Luis Felipe Borja Jr. read an essay that argued vehemently for maintaining coercive mechanisms. Although he recognized that Indians were capable of signing such contracts as those of sale and marriage, it was necessary to grant stability to agricultural activities that would otherwise run the risk of breaking down—specially with the prohibition of coercion and deshaucio libre. In his view, racial and social inequalities followed from natural laws that could not be transformed by human manipulation. Capitalists and merchants did not hire themselves because their aptitudes located them in a special economic sphere. Jornaleros, on the other hand, had no ability to earn a living based on intelligence; they had to sell the only asset they had: their physical capacity (1918: 6).

And because they did not have resources to guarantee the agreements they entered into, the only security they could provide was their own bodies and the risk of imprisonment.

Once Borja argued against the reforms and presented the principles that guided the jornalero contract, which he named “contrato de servicios personales” (personal services contract), he focused on Indians, commenting that they had improved their social conditions since the inception of the Republic. Indians now went to school, learned manual careers and enjoyed a happy life (1918: 9). Borja’s revisions assumed different

49 races with diverse intellectual capabilities—although there are never described—each of which utilizes universal principles of law in different ways; such principles could, under certain conditions, open prosperous alternatives for Indians. All in all, he suggested that agriculture was working adequately and therefore it did not need transformations that could result in conflicts between capital and labor and risk creating forms of “White concertaje” (1918: 16).48

In the same meeting, Virgilio Ontaneda and Roberto Aguirre, both lawyers, explicitly linked race with coercion. Ontaneda showed no compunction or fear in speaking about the “raza indígena” and pointed out that with Peñaherrera’s proposal on the apremio personal employers lost their capacity to press for the fulfillment of contracts, since Indians “did not comply voluntarily with their duties.” Indians suffered from an atrophy of the will to spontaneously perform their duties, they could not forecast their future, and they would only comply when motivated by fear. He states that “the apremio personal was based on the degeneration of the indigenous race; stimuli and exhortations did not produce the similar healthy effects that they had among the White race” (1918: 258). This conservative argument underscores a new angle of fear as a tactic to subject Indians based on their racial constitution. Thus, race became the cornerstone to justify the permanence of coercion. In this view, highland workers were a special type of jornalero subjected to compulsory coercion. They were unprepared to benefit from a law that protected them; instead, they required the protection of landowners. In his view,

Peñaherrera’s proposal made the “raza indígena” a “privileged race” by granting them the capacity to end the contracts and thus create “chaos.”

Aguirre, a member of the Academy and native of Loja, emphasized that most

jornaleros were illiterate, limited in their intellectual and moral capacities, and in need of

the protection and moral and intellectual support of the landowner. It was time, he

claimed, to educate the jornaleros; this was the only way that they could take advantage

of social reforms. Aguirre displaced somewhat the terms of the discussion by introducing

the notion that jornalero contracts were not based on salaries but on credit; in the

southern region of the country this credit had allowed many workers to acquire properties

(1918: 273-277). Thus, not paying back credit deserved punishment by imprisonment.

Ricardo Félix, reacting to the previous remarks during the Academia meeting, gave a persuasive speech that considered the problem from a Catholic perspective and positioned him close to the liberal proposal. He argued against the notion of “aborigines” or “indios” as a “conquered” people.49 While he agreed with Peñaherrera’s optimistic

vision of a free labor market operated by the law of supply and demand, he argued, in

terms similar to Cueva’s, that no race was absolutely superior to others. As evidence, he

cited the existence of indigenous heroes, and he emphasized that vices were not

congenital to the races. Indians had not preserved the virtues of their race nor had they

obtained the virtues of the conquerors. In this void, the indigenous population needed

education, and prison was not the best site to impart discipline. Prison was a way to

deprive transgressors of their liberty and to undertake their personal rehabilitation. In the case of indigenous workers, prison was used to induce fear and to dissuade them of crimes that they did not commit; conciertos were insolvent, not criminals (1918: 264).

Félix questioned the coercive mechanism because it lacked reforming and moralizing effects; as a fear-inducing measure it was not effective in disciplining people. Although

he considered Indians to be a peculiar race, stagnant and somewhat inferior, he demanded

freedom for his indigenous compatriots. Law, in his view, could act like a compass: it had

the power to change the subjection of Indians because it oriented and informed

hacendados’ and indigenes’ actions (1918: 262-273).

The Landowners’ Resistance

The Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura—represented by Borja Jr. who lobbied for them—organized a campaign against Peñaherrera’s project through the media, most importantly the daily El Comercio. They began by arguing against jornalero legislation, but very soon shifted their focus to the issue of the intellectual and moral betterment of the Indians. Their arguments deepened Borja’s idea about the timeliness of the proposal given the world war. They insisted that concertaje contracts were credit agreements such as those in all civilized nations. Finally, they introduced a new perspective by arguing that under the protection of the landowners the stability of the indigenous family would be maintained.

Spokesmen for the Sociedad took into account the Vatican social encyclical

(Rerum Novarum) and assigned a moralizing role to the employers. They argued that the patrones had the responsibility to morally educate Indians and that it was not wise to expose them to the evils of public schools and civil marriage. They believed that a nomadic existence was not in their best interest and consequently it was important to maintain Indians in a confined residence: a stable family and home had moral and demographic effects (Riofrío 1986 [1918]: 236).

According to the landowners, this was the reason why they had incorporated the huasipungo50 (a house and garden plot given to the worker) into the labor contracts, a

strategy similar to the worker gardens in France. Finally, they attributed to themselves a

52 central role in maintaining the stability of the countryside, a role that connected haciendas and indigenous communities. Conciertos, in their view, were “indios de comunas”

(community Indians) who had land plots inadequate for their family’s needs and thus required a security that the state authorities could not provide (Riofrío 1986 [1918]: 233).

While the Peñaherrera’s proposal was transformed in its contents—mainly by introducing situations where the apremio personal would not apply—and sent in a legal format to Congress, the Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura continued its opposition and put forth new points of view through the newspapers.51 They argued that the apremio personal could be abolished when the social conditions were apt for self-administrated work contracts. They also insisted that workers were free to choose between a free contract—like other peons—and a concierto contract. Until the very end, however, the landowners insisted that jornaleros, by nature, lacked the “honor” or moral capacity to abide by such contracts (Ponce 1986 [1918]: 250).

Disseminating the Debate

Quito’s leading daily, El Comercio, published notes and reviews of the arguments over concertaje held in the Academia de Abogados and the Sociedad Nacional de

Agricultura. It also printed articles, comments, and letters from people around the nation.

In this sense, the newspaper expanded the debate and established its own forum. This forum emulated in part the others that we have reviewed. The articles published by El

Comercio included case studies and focused on how to civilize indigenes beyond legal procedures.

The daily called the attention of its audience to how contracts were terminated through the so-called “liquidación de cuentas” (bill liquidation), a procedure under the supervision of local authorities, which opened the door to indigenous rebellion. El

Comercio claimed that this mechanism, regulated by the Police Code, was an opportunity

for tinterillos (small and unscrupulous lawyers) to exploit Indians as demonstrated by a

case near Quito. Dependent on the income from indios, a lawyer had promoted the

removal of Indians from haciendas and brought them to Quito to end their contracts.

Afterwards, Indians went back to the haciendas because there they had home and

properties, but they returned “intractable, full of prevention against the patron. The legal

dispositions were taken as revenge against the patron…[and not] as medium to reinforce

the contracts’ efficacy.”52 Thus the newspaper was able to cast doubts on a well-intended

law that could be manipulated both by tinterillos and indios and, in the process,

introduced a new perspective on Indian governability by highlighting their rebellious

instincts and educational needs.

Most of the newspaper’s articles focused on the educational experiences required to

civilize the indigenous people. In these articles the authors depicted Indians as backward people. R. Villavicencio, a physician and agronomist, argued for the reform of concertaje contracts because a complete ban would surely result in social revolution. 53 He also

proposed several measures to civilize the indigenous workers, including the control of

alcohol consumption, the prohibition of fiestas,54 the elimination of the Quichua language, and the promotion of change in clothing, among others.55 To confirm their

uncivilized status, Villavicencio cites as evidences Indians’ lack of knowledge about

rights and duties, their use of mats instead of mattresses, and their adobe houses. These

images of the indigenous—lacking the comforts of modernity, ignorant of their rights,

and holding on to a primitive language—were repeated in many articles.56

Editorials and letters accompanied each newspaper article. For example, a letter signed by a “practical agronomist” argued against Villavicencio and for the reform of coercive contracts by presenting a positive case where an hacienda had freed its Indians.57

A reader from Ambato wrote commenting on the educational proposals in which he recalled that Mestizos and Black people were conciertos too.58 Several notes from

Guayaquil evaluated positively Peñaherrera’s proposal as a starting point to “eliminate”

indigenous vices.59 In contrast, writers from highland cities as Ibarra and Ambato opposed the reforms by recycling the same arguments of the Sociedad Nacional de

Agricultura for alternative policies designed to civilize Indians. An anonymous member of the Sociedad (signing as un observador—an observer) commented on Peñaherrera’s proposal, at the moment under discussion in Congress, insisting on the need to civilize the indigenous jornaleros and thus avoid the “whims and evils” of the market.60

Most writers shared the idea that civilizing Indians was an unavoidable enterprise

although, as we have seen, there was no agreement on who was responsible for it. To the

landowners, it was their prerogative; to the liberals, it was a public responsibility. All in

all, the strength of the media enhanced the image of the backwardness of Indians and this,

in turn, had the effect of displacing the discussion from labor reforms to educational

strategies.

While the discussion in the media was going on, Congress approved Cueva’s motion to reform the Civil Procedure Code, including the elimination of apremio personal but not the possibility of libre deshaucio that had worried landowners and some lawyers. Ten years later, the Labor Code eliminated other coercive aspects of work contracts. In addition, other pieces of Peñaherrera’s proposal were introduced into the

Ley de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial, such as the protection of the “indigenous race” by

local juntas.61 In spite of the congressional decision, the Sociedad Nacional de

Agricultura, and the landowning class in general, continued to lobby to reintroduce

imprisonment for debts.

The Debate on Debtors Prison

The long-term controversy about concertaje involved the legislature, the civil and professional associations, and the media. At first, the media and Alfaro opened the discussion; it was then passed on to Congress; and, finally, since the approval of the

Police Code (1905), it was displaced to the scientific community. In 1915, the discussion returned to Congress.

Senator Cueva distributed among his fellow congressmen the essay about race and servitude that he had delivered to the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria in 1915. Although

Cueva closed the discussion of a Jornalero Law that he himself had introduced, 62 he now

actively lobbied for the reforms of the Civil Procedure Code regarding imprisonment for

peonage debts. His argument was that race did not determine the present state of

“vileness” among the indigenous; it was rather a consequence of servitude, of concertaje

itself. Concertaje nullified the soul of individuals and led them to degeneration. His

analysis, which I take up in the following chapter, rejected the notion of a fixed racial

psychology while acknowledging that features of this indigenous psychology could be

observed at the time.

The references to race and psychology, developed in the scientific arena, were not,

however, reproduced in the congressional discussions. In the latter setting, the idiom of

equality, liberty, and citizenship acquired preeminence, under a positivist frame. While

pleading for the abolition of concertaje labor, Cueva, like positivist pensadores in México

and several Latin American republics (Hale 1989), argued that since the formation of the

Republic the ruling class had focused solely on its political foundation, forgetting the

social issues brought about by the diversity of classes. Most of the contemporary

Ecuadorian population was subjected to servitude (mainly through concertaje

arrangements) and a large portion of the jornaleros, though free, were citizens who

consumed toasted corn and wore exotic rags in a nation that considered itself civilized.

He criticized the economic disadvantages of concierto labor63 but he emphasized its legal effects. From a juridical perspective, Cueva argued, concertaje was unthinkable given the acceptance of universal human rights and equality; the law that permitted apremio personal for a vast group of citizens was not only a law that legitimized inequalities that oppressed them economically but also an attack on human dignity. Because this kind of coercion was unjust and unequal, all civilized nations had eliminated it from their legal codes. This was the starting point to regulate working relationships. Fair working

regulations, contrary to servitude, encouraged desires, needs, and interests among the

workers. Cueva also discussed the effects of prison. Prison was a mechanism of

subjection and for vanquishing the jornaleros, sometimes also referred to as the

proletariat; prison, instead of disciplining workers, promoted hate and fear among them.

Finally, Cueva talked about the dilemmas of a heterogeneous nation, divided

between superior and inferior groups, privileged and underprivileged classes,

emphasizing the existence of an indigenous race subjected to misery because of legal

inequality. In this context, he juxtaposed the concepts of race and class to picture

indigenes as an underclass and to depict a weak society and nation. In Cueva’s

perspective, parliament was a site that could use social knowledge for the development of

legal norms and idioms. For some, Cueva’s speech, with its emphasis on indigenes as

citizens subjected to unjust laws, sounded subversive. The contradictions analyzed by

Cueva sparked fear among his peers. During the congressional session, for example,

liberals who years before had conspicuously combated concertaje, now vehemently

opposed Cueva’s proposal. They deployed weak legal and social arguments such as that

of indigenous “happiness,” in a world of concubines, feasts, money, and plots of land.64

After Cuevas’s presentation, the discussion of the Jornalero Law was once again

postponed65 until a formal proposition that eliminated the reform of apremio personal was

presented in the House of Deputies.66 The proposal was quickly approved at this level and sent to the Senate where it faced a longer and tedious debate.67 During this debate,

Senators insisted that liberty was an inalienable right that could not be ignored in order to

guarantee the fulfillment of a contract. Modern science supported the policy of removing

persons from society when they committed crimes, but this did not apply to concierto

workers. This statement, however, was contested by arguing that when trust was lost a

civil problem became a crime, as was the case in the non-fulfillment of a contract. The

counter argument was that the Constitution clearly did not allow imprisonment for debts

and this was a higher principle. With this constitutional argument the opponents of the

reforms hit a stumbling block and were forced to move to new arguments based on

“national security” (a perspective previously enunciated by the Sociedad Nacional de

Agricultura.) The reforms would ruin agricultural activities in the conjuncture of the

world war, and people would starve. A liberal landowner refuted this argument by

recounting his personal history of how he had freed his jornaleros and yet had been able

to retain the workers that he needed to run his business.68 But this was not a common

standpoint; most of the landowners were compelled to defend their interests outright.

Some hid their interests by arguing as liberals and others presented themselves as

faultless in their public roles. Cueva and most of the proponents of the reforms saw

themselves as being independent from landowner’s interests and as mediators between

indigenes and the common good.

In spite of the opposition, the proposal was approved. The stronger arguments were

that all civilized nations had banned legal coercion and that all forms of coercion violated

the principles of equality and liberty.

The Concertaje Metaphor

An attempt to bring closure to the dispute about concertaje was an essay by José

María Velasco Ibarra,69 published in a Catholic journal, accepting the abolition of apremio personal. He followed his professor Cueva, and imagined a new script for indigenous work, discipline, and protest. In his view, the elimination of coercion would open a new indigenous attitude toward their old masters. Indigenes would no longer express antipathy for their patrons, and would be free to work, motivated by their own interests. At the same time, they would resort to the strike as a legitimate weapon to face injustice (1919: 283-87). Thus, conciertos would acquire the worker’s weapons—the strike and self-help associations.70

But the concertaje controversy remained in the public stage. Attempts to reinstate apremio personal or oppose concertaje followed one after the other. On the one hand, landowners pressed to re-establish coercion and, on the other, liberal indigenistas71

deployed negative images of concertaje as the main weapons in their rhetoric. Two

landowner-groups—the Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura (large landowners from the

north and central provinces) and a group of medium size landowners mostly from the

province of Tungurahua—openly resisted the abolition of debts. In 1919, these groups

submitted several petitions to Congress against the suppression of coercion and asked for

protection of their property and the rights of the patrón. The reform, they argued, took

away the mechanism that compelled jornaleros and artisans to fulfill their contracts. Once

again, they stated that indigenes were by nature unable to work without coercion. But this

protest did not come solely from White traditional families, conservatives and liberals,

located in Ambato; landowners with native names like Tipán, Guachi, and Yanchaluiza,

from small towns such as Pelileo and Píllaro, signed similar petitions, although they did

not represent themselves as native persons.72 They fit nicely with Martínez’s description

(1993 [1916]) of the “free Indians,” an assertion that I visit in Chapter 3.

The dividing line between landowning common Indians and Whites in both rural and urban settings had begun to blur; in the countryside, the few Indians who had concentrated land and other resources were in a process of upward social mobility.73

During the congressional period of 1920, landowners introduced a reform to the Ley de

Fomento to transfer to the local Juntas the responsibilities of supervising work contracts

and establishing a certification process for the completion of contracts.74 However, it was

never sent to the President for final approval. There were also public actions by the

indigenous population. Indios from Chimborazo protested against the mistreatment they

received from landowners; they argued that they were being treated like “slaves” and

deprived of their personal freedom.75 Thus, indigenous servitude remained on the

political agenda after the abolition of the apremio personal.

Pensadores maintained the idiom of concertaje as a metaphor of Indian slavery.

Concertaje was an idiom to speak about the miseries and weaknesses of the nation, a

pervasive image since the inception of the liberal government. To liberal intellectuals, in

particular, concertaje evoked the tyranny of the politicians and the weakness of the state

and of democracy. Abelardo Moncayo’s essay, rewritten after Alfaro was killed by a mob

in Quito, interpreted Alfaro’s death as an expression of the old political tyranny based on

concertaje, suggesting its corruptive effect on the whole society (Moncayo 1986 [1912]:

288). In a short article, Belisario Quevedo, justified the use of concertaje as a metaphor with an organic perspective of society: all parts were connected to each other and, therefore, concertaje corrupted all of society; it was an expression of the moral misery of the country that denied the modern notion of citizenship (Quevedo 1916b: 287). Other authors insisted that the same chains that tied concierto workers, tied their patrones and the whole nation as well (Tobar 1913; Cueva 1984 [1915]; Félix 1918).

The debate about concertaje resonated in a variety of ways, reinforcing its metaphorical potency and the essential equivalence of “indigene” and “jornalero” (day laborer). With the publishing of Pío Jaramillo’s liberal indigenista manifesto a new discussion was opened that called for the liberation of Indians via land reform and higher wages. This manifesto was based upon a critique of local liberalism and it was written in the context of several indigenous uprisings.76 Jaramillo pointed to the contradiction of a

liberal constitution that recognized that indios were citizens with equal rights but at the

same time reinforced oppressive institutions like concertaje through particularistic

regulations (1922: 3-4). He argued that, in spite of the reforms, concertaje was still alive

because indigenous workers had a salario fijo (fixed salary), paid in cash and in access to

land,77 did not have access to property, and, above all, lacked liberty. He also accused the

landowners of trying to reinstate the old tyranny of debtor’s prison.

Borja Jr. (1983 [1923], Vol. I) responded to this manifesto by arguing that the abolition of apremio personal had not bettered the life of Indians. Moreover, in his view, in Ecuador hacienda laborers had better conditions than miners and similar workers in

Western Europe. Borja insisted that some indios, particularly artisans, and those involved in family industries and trade had improved their conditions. However, he also stressed that indios had bettered their conditions only to the degree permitted by their race.

Although he measured indigenous improvement in racial terms, he also accepted that some indios were miserable as a consequence of the nation’s poverty. Economic growth was, therefore, the key to bringing them relief. To accomplish this, private investment in agriculture, the reinforcement of property rights, and public investment in communications were needed, not land reform.

Jaramillo responded by pointing out that Borja Jr. had not made scientific observations; from his lawyer’s desk (1983 [1923], Vol. I: 196) he could not see how concertaje persisted and why land reform was a supplementary intervention to improve the situation of indigenous workers. Small landowners and indigenous communities were proof of the benefits of freedom among indios, a path that should be opened to concierto workers. The partition of large properties would result in an increase of peasant workers while concertaje—meaning servitude—would disappear.78

The concierto controversy reduced the reality of concierto labor to the highland’s hacienda labor. Although the indenture system and the closed nature of work contracts persisted in the rest of the country, for many pensadores and political figures concertaje had been abolished as a consequence of the natural evolution of society. On the coast,

according to some, the workers were free to “enjoy” their activities (Academia de

Abogados 1918: 269).

The controversy about concertaje left powerful images: Indians were the daily peons of haciendas and had a mentality that was not apt for republican equality and freedom. Ten years later, the notion of a peculiar type of contract for the hacienda Indians

was inscribed in the Labor Code in a special item that regulated huasipunguero

contracts.79 By this time, conciertos had become huasipungueros, a legitimate type of

worker who received a wage as well as land and access to other hacienda resources. In

this atmosphere, Abelardo Moncayo Jr.80 insisted that the hope of converting indios

abruptly into citizens equal to Whites was impossible, either as a race or a social class.

All societies had and will always have workers who fulfill collective social needs.81

Renewed arguments about the Indian race, citizens, and laborers were in the air: they

belonged to a peculiar race. Throughout the concertaje debate the notion of “race”

became the cornerstone of proposals for social integration. In different ways, all

pensadores assumed explicitly or implicitly a notion of race, but such a notion did not

have a unique meaning. Instead, it was a flexible idiom used to argue different degrees of

inferiority or superiority, and at the same time the very notion of an Indian race sparked

fears among the elites. Both perspective were developed in the domain of science to

where I turn in the next chapter.

Notes

1 The liberal official rhetoric (as expressed in decrees and congressional debates) as well as the rhetoric of pensadores (as expressed in their writings) employed different terms to refer to Indians: raza (race), clase indígena (indigenous class), raza vencida (vanquished race), indios (Indians), indígenas (indigenes), or clase india (Indian class), but the most common word used was Indian. In contrast to the early republican period (Thurner in press), and especially in the context of tax legislation and the population census, “indígena” was not the official term. There was no single or normalized expression to refer to the indigenous population; ambiguity was prevalent. Some conservatives suggested that “indígena” and “indio”

were not synonymous. For example, a contemporary dictionary established that “indio” referred to the old settlers of the Americas, with no racial mixtures, and that “indígena” referred to the original people from a nation, as opposed to exotic or foreign. Therefore Indians and Whites were indigenous and aborigines were Indians (Mateus, 1918: 18-19). During a congressional debate about a massive political pardon to the central highlands Indians who participated in an uprising, a Deputy suggested that they should talk about “indios” instead of “indígenas,”a suggestion clearly accepted (AFL, Actas Cámara de Diputados de 1921, Tomo II: 496, Sesión No. 43, 03 October 1921). The terminological distinction stressed the idea that Whites and Indians were legitimate members of the nation. But, liberals like Agustín Cueva (1984 [1915]: 34), who criticized the biological implications of the notion of race, still used the term “indigenous race,” while Pío Jaramillo, the liberal indigenista, favored the term “indio.” In the presentation of elite arguments I have endeavored to reflect the terminological mixture by politicians and pensadores.

2 The conservative Luis Felipe Borja recalled that the Liberal Revolution, in a “ridiculous” move, disguised as generals and colonels indigenous persons such as Alejo Sáez, Honorio Guamán, and Morocho; all of them were unhappy illiterate peasants, who did not speak Spanish nor know about the militia (Borja 1983 [1923]: 254). However, some evidence suggests that Sáez had been educated by the Christians Brothers (Costales and Costales 2001). Colonels Morocho, Naula, Luis Felipe Duchi, Cornelio Tenelema played an important intermediary role in the years to come and some of them were literate. Unfortunately there is no available history of the indigenous montoneras.

3 During the mid nineteenth century, the Ley de indígenas (1854) promoted a more mobile concierto laborer while maintaining prison due debts. This initiative was soon banished during the García Moreno Administration (Williams 2001: 73).

4 During this time, church properties were expropriated and transferred to the state; most of them remained state properties until the 1970s (Ayala 1980). At the same time, several religious feasts, including Indian feasts and sacred images, were banned and new devotions were established (Herrera 1999).

5 Indigenismo was an avant-garde cultural movement that produced literary works, paintings, and essays that spoke for indigenes and promoted their betterment. During the 1940s, like in other Latin American countries, indigenismo in Ecuador became part of the official rhetoric (see Chapter 5).

6 This emergent group is finely described in Luis A. Martínez’s (1904) novel A la Costa. The narrative provides a good sense of the conflicts unpacked by the revolution and contains strong images of the tensions between conservatives and liberal. Liberals, as the promoters of reform, are presented as an emerging middle class from the provinces. Pío Jaramillo, Agustín Cueva, and the Martínez family belonged to this group. They were a mix of politicians and scientists from different provincial settings.

7 Cunanmari deglarangui/Chaillamanmi pasacuni/Chaillamanmi yallicuni/Eloy Alfaropaj ordenhuanmi pasacuni. (In this moment you declare/ that I am walking far/ that I am going far and that with Eloy Alfaro’s permission I will get there). Carnival song from the Colta zone, Chimborazo. Recorded by Güntar Shultze, 1967. Cited by Harrison (1996: 134).

8 Quichua word used to refer to human beings and indios (the native or the Quichua people). However, White and Mestizo people used runa to name the indigenous race (Cordero 1967 [1894]: 83). In this vein, Weismantel (1997:18) points out that runa in contemporary Ecuador, in contrast to the southern Andes, had often a pejorative and racial meaning.

9 But not only did highland indigenes remember these events. For the indigenous people from the Amazon basin, the liberal fight marks a milestone in their narratives (Harrison 1996: 135).

10 Méndez (1996) describes a similar process regarding Santa Cruz, a proponent of a confederation political system between Bolivia and Peru in the early republican time. Conservatives depicted him as indio, while claiming the glories of the Inca past for themselves.

11 “Steward: Antonio Caballo?/Foreman: He is in Quito as a Deputy, my lord!…/S: Who told you?/F: This was written in the commissary gazette/S: It could not be: he might be in Quito as a servant of a Deputy; but in these times, hum!…Rafael Rodriguez…/ F: He is in Quito too, my lord/S: As a Deputy?/F: I do not know, my lord: he went there saying that master Alfaro has called him to be a scribe in the railroad company…” (Padrón de Alfaro, Voto Nacional, 25 March 1897, Cited in Harrison 1996: 136).

12 The caudillo system presumed the existence of an ignorant pueblo, strong leaders—the caudillo—and weak political parties (Espinosa 1979 [1914-17]: 285-295). Liberals observed that local caudillos— generally, in their view, conservative bosses—pressed the Indian to vote for candidates of their choice. Although some indigenes were literate—and therefore citizens—they were the most part “uncivilized” persons in need of “special considerations” (Moncayo 1986 [1912]: 299; Martínez 1993 [1912]: 216; Jaramillo 1922).

13 A note added and signed by Eloy Alfaro and Coronel Honorio Guamán to a copy of a 1898 decree insisted that the indigenous race was exempt from paying property taxes and recalled that this was the result of their participation in the liberal campaign. The copy was kept by the indigenous descendants of Guamán (BPJ, Loja, Correspondencia Pio Jaramillo A., # 809.6 537c).

14 Ideas of an Indian juridical system intended to persuade them to obey the law were translated into legal proposals presented to Congress, but never approved in 1917, 1934, and 1944 (AFL, Libros de Inventarios).

15 Abelardo Moncayo, the liberal pensador who wrote about “indios conciertos,” was behind these decrees. All the mentioned decrees are published in Peñaherrera and Costales (1964: 723-26).

16 Ackerman (1977) poses that this compulsory labor fee was in the process of disappearing when liberals came to power.

17 The indigenous exemption from paying property taxes was maintained until 1915 when several taxes were reinstated, a policy that opened several indigenous uprisings in the central and southern highlands. By 1921, the exemptions were re-established based on poverty considerations.

18 For example the short-lived Tribunal for the Protection of the Indigenous, an antecedent of the Welfare Ministry, created in the mid 1920s lacked of the administrative procedures to reinforce the law. Beyond the central state liberal rhetoric, local elites and institutions continuing to play a central role in organizing Indian land and labor. The administration of Indians during this time requires further research in order to establish the role of municipalities and the newly local Juntas de Fomento. Similarly, Indian education during the time has not been elucidated; it became a particular state tactic during the 1930s.

19 The liberal government included illiterate Indians of “pure race” in the benefits of the amparo de pobreza, a regulation that required that they be represented by a tutor or guardian–that in turn could be illiterate–and allowed them to exercise the right to appeal to Congress.

20 The 1896 Constitution referred the indigenes as the “raza indígena” and the 1906 Constitution, as the “raza india.” Such language was maintained until 1938.

21 Protection was replaced by the notion that the state had the obligation to promote culture–meaning education–among indigenes and peasants (Constitución de 1946, Ecuador, art. 174, literal c).

22 The Montuvios were a mixture of Indians and African descendants; they were viewed as the “Indios” of the coastal region (Constitución de 1938, Ecuador, art. 172).

23 Indian protection was a colonial tactic, shared during this time by several liberal and conservative pensadores. It was not, however, the sole patrimony of liberal pensadores and politicians. The Vatican, through the Lacrymabili Encyclical issued after the period of caucho (rubber) violence in the Amazon basin, advised the Latin American states and the Church to promote a strategy of protection of Indians.

24 This debate comes from Convención Nacional (1896-97, N.d: 423-424). The participants of the debate included: José Peralta (Azuay), Lautaro Aspiazu (Los Ríos and Vice-President of the Assembly), Ricardo Valdivieso, (Pichincha), Segundo Cueva (Loja), Cevallos (?), Abelardo Moncayo (Carchi), Manuel B. Cueva (El Oro and President of the Assembly), Albán Mestanza (Pichincha), Roberto Andrade (Manabí), Torres (?), José Benigno Vela (Tungurahua), Roberto Páez (Pichincha), and Modesto Peñaherrera (Imbabura).

25 The following debate is based on AFL, Actas de la Asamblea Nacional de 1906, Tomo III: 638-656, 13 December 1906. The participants included: Juan Borja (El Oro), Manuel Bueno (León), Juan Benigno Vela (Tungurahua), Abelardo Moncayo (Imbabura and Vice-President of the Assembly), José Peralta (Cañar), Emilio Uquillas (Chimborazo), Pablo Calero (Bolívar), Shoppel (?), Carlos Freile (Pichincha, President of the Assembly), Manuel Escudero (León), Federico Intriago (Guayas), Belisario Quevedo (León), Alejandro Cevallos (Loja), León Palacios (Bolívar),and Luciano Coral (Carchi).

26 Frequently, the transaction involved access to other resources such as land and pasture. Debt, mistreatment, servitude, slavery and the lack of political and social rights were emphasized as features of the institution of concertaje.

27 The discourse of class and its relationship with race merits further research. The “indigenous class” was seen as part of the “clases populares” (popular classes), but a “special race,” nevertheless. At the same time, class was also defined by social origin and skin color (Espinosa 1914-17: 210-11).

28 During the centennial celebration of 1909, the prominent indigenous displays were two allegorical statues of a male and a female Indian “with the attributes of their work” (En la Exposición Nacional, El Comercio, 29 July 1909).

29 “I remind you sirs, that our working pueblo is mostly Indian, those pariahs of civilization, those disinherited whom we uprooted from their homes and lands five century ago” (Tobar y Borgoño 1913: 139). In a similar vein, Peralta wrote an essay regarding the “working class question” that focused on the Indians (Peralta 1960: 681-694) and, later, Monsalve (1943: 263) recalled that during this time Ecuador had no industry and that “worker” was synonymous of “Indian”.

30 Literally, the Jornalero Law referred to peons or daily laborers. However, the official rhetoric used the label of Jornalero Law to refer to the concertaje reforms, which also applied to several types of daily and permanent laborers.

31 An interesting case was the Sigsig “indigenous” claim. The petition submitted by the vecinos of Sigsig never mentioned that they were indigenes; however, they presented themselves as members of the Cabildo Pequeño, treated as slaves and miserable. These three ingredients allowed the congressional Secretary to process the petition as coming from “Sigsig indigenes” (AFL, Asamblea Constituyente, 1896-97, Caja 79, Carpeta No. 63).

32 AFL, Asamblea Constituyente, 1896-97, Caja 81, Carpeta No. 63.

33 AFL, Asamblea Constituyente, 1896-97, Caja 81, Carpeta No. 64.

34 AFl, Asamblea Constituyente, 1896-97, Caja 81, Carpeta No. 31.

35 The Civil Code (1860 and 1889), which dealt with a worker’s wage; the Code of Civil Procedure that ruled debts; and the Reglamentos de Policía (1862)—issued at the provincial level— regulated work in haciendas.

36 The decree introduced other questions such as education and the public responsibilities towards Indians.

37 Three versions of a Jornalero Law are found in AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1899, Caja 88, Carpeta No. 14. All of them maintained the threat of imprisonment in order to reinforce the contracts.

38 The Police Code (1904) recognized and established particular regulations regarding artisans, domestic servants, and jornaleros.

39 Nicolás Martínez (father) was a liberal lawyer who advocated against concertaje before liberals came to power. He proposed state reforms and the establishment of a protective status for Indians as a way to prevent strikes and the spread of socialism.

40 AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado, Tomo III: 370-410, Sesión No. 43, 02 October 1915. Participants included: Agustín Cueva (Loja), Juan Benigno Vela (Tungurahua), Arteaga (?), Carlos García (Pichincha), Manuel Balarezo, (Pichincha) and Aurelio Bayas (Cañar).

41 During 1916, the Archdiocese of Quito organized the Congreso Catequístico in which issues relating to Indians and religion were discussed in the context of the new Vatican positions on the social question (Arquidiócesis de Quito 1916).

42 In fact, El Comercio published a letter by the organizer of the Congress, Alejandro Mateus, in which he points out that the landowners were restless about the upcoming event because they feared a ban of concertaje. Mateus informed them that the agenda of the meeting did not include an official position regarding concertaje (Concertaje, El Comercio, 05 May 1916).

43 The Academia de Abogados was a debating stage quite similar to Congress, the only difference being that only lawyers participated. In several meetings, it reviewed the commentaries prepared by its members about Peñaherrera’s proposal.

44 The economic conjuncture opened by the World War affected the prices of the local foodstuffs and pressed for an increase in agricultural production.

45 As late as 1922, the Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura argued for the establishment of a rural police force (Arcos 1984: 127).

46 Several petitions assumed that Indians were attached to their homeland because their ancestors were buried there (AFL, Asamblea Constituyente 1896-7, Caja 79, Carpeta No. 157).

47 The tenientes políticos were the representative of the central government at the parish level. The perfomed a variety of duties related to judicial and policing procedures.

48 To supplement his arguments, Borja later included the notion of a special conjuncture brought about by the World War: it was not the moment for changes; he also observed that European nations had limited liberty and were protecting their agricultural activities, an example that could be emulated by Ecuador (1918: 14).

49 Ricardo Félix advised his colleagues: “Stop considering our aborigines as conquered, see them instead as brothers, compatriots, fellow nationals; so that we can achieve, without missteps, a legal order, material prosperity, and the consolidation of our juridical personae in the community of nations” (Félix 1918: 272- 73).

50 A Quichua word that referred to the land that concierto labor received as part of their salary. As time passed, “conciertos” were transformed into “huasipungueros” and recognized as special type of worker in the Labor Code (1938).

51 The project accepted apremio personal when the jornalero did not complete the contract in the short-term (Cited in Ponce, 1986 [1918]: 250).

52 Las cuentas de indios, El Comercio, 17 January 1918.

53 R. Villavicencio, Consideraciones sobre el problema del concertaje y la producción agrícola. El Comercio, 7 July 1918.

54 The control of indigenous feasts had been under discussion since the Congreso Catequístico suggested changes to such festivities. Congress approved a law that prohibited some aspects of the feasts in 1918.

55 Several interesting proposals about how to “civilize the backward Indians” were published in other newspapers. For example, a proposal called for “defensores de indios” and translators (to guarantee justice) and nomadic schools and Catholic missions (to spread the use of Spanish and acceptable clothes), among others (A. P Chaves, El concertaje. El Ecuatoriano, 25 July 1918).

56 Carta abierta, El Comercio, 26 July 1918.

57 El problema del concertaje y el Sr. Dr. R. Villavicencio Ponce, El Comercio, 11 July 1918.

58 R. C. Miño, Carta a Villavicencio Ponce, El Comercio, 13 July 1918.

59 El estudio del Sr. Peñaherrera, El Comercio, 12 October 1918.

60 El apremio, el salario mínimo y la deuda. El Comercio, 14 October 1918.

61 AFL, Libro de Auténticos, Cámara de Diputados, 1918.

62 His proposal distinguished with precision who could contract and how should contracts be written; it also charged the municipalities with supervising contracts, established a minimum wage, abolished imprisonment for debts, and created protection societies. All of these aspects were incorporated in Peñaherrera’s proposal (AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado, Tomo III: 370-410, Sesión No. 43, 02 October 1915).

63 Concertaje was ruinous to all parts involved, including the nation. It replaced the free will of the workers –meaning desires, interests, and profit—with violence. Efficiency and quality were low, affecting the patron’s profits (Cueva 1984 [1915]: 38-39).

64 AFL, Actas Cámara del Senado, Tomo III: 370-410, Sesión No. 43, 02 October 1915.

65 It is important to note that, although Peñaherrera’s proposal was presented to Congress, it was not discussed; some parts were, however, taken into an account in the Ley de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial (AFL, Libro de Auténticos, Cámara de Diputados, 1918, Ley de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial).

66 AFL, Actas Cámara de Diputados, Tomo I: 211, Sesión No. 10, 25 August 1917; Tomo I: 342, Sesión No. 18, 04 September 1917 and Sesión No. 41, 25 September 1917.

67 One of the problems of the reform, contained in the previous law, was that it mixed the different types of contracts in which default carried prison sentences. Only one part of the reform referred to personal services. Thus, the reform affected a variety of persons, not only conciertos, an aspect that was never publicly discussed.

68 AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado, Tomo IV: 0523-0527, Sesión No. 59, 18 October 1918. The participants in the debate were: Enrique Iturralde (Cotopaxi), Manuel Cueva G. (Loja), Manuel Pachano (Tungurahua), Luis Jaramillo (?), Juan Manuel Lasso (?), Octavio Cordero (Azuay).

69 Velasco Ibarra was several times President of Ecuador, as well as a political and intellectual figure close to the Catholic hierarchy and popular and worker networks. He was inspired by the social principles accepted by the Vatican.

70 In 1918, a massive indigenous uprising in Cuenca inspired a poem that honored the “Indian strike”: La huelga del indio by Alfonso Andrade Ch. (Baud 1996: 227).

71 I use the notion of “liberal indigenistas” to highlight what Roig (1979) called “popular liberal discourses.”

72 AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1919, Caja 63, Carpeta s/n.

73 Brief references to this process can be found in Codero 1967 [1894]; Borja, 1918; Destruge, 1918; Coba 1929. However, no research has been done on indigenous social mobility.

74 The local junta gathered the jefe político (head sheriff), several concejales (municipalities councilmen), and representatives of the local merchants and farmers (AFL, Libro de Auténticos, Cámara de Diputados 1918, Ley de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial).

75 AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1919, Caja 63, Carpeta s/n.

76 The reintroduction of indigenous property taxes as well as the requirement of public unpaid labor in 1916 was strongly resisted by indigenes in the highlands. An early reaction came from indigenes from the central León Province (1916) and later from Azuay and Chimborazo (1920-21). Moscoso (1991) and Baud (1996) narrate the protests in the South that were depicted by conservatives as an “indigenous strike.” Of special interest was the protest in Chimborazo in which Colonel Morocho acted as mediator between the government and the revolting indigenes–who wanted to name Andrés Llamuca as the “presidente de la raza vencida” (president of the vanquished race”) (Sublevación de indígenas, El Comercio, 20 May 1921).

77 The question of why the supply and demand law did not apply to the indigenous workers was under debate. Jaramillo, as did other liberals, argued that it was a consequence of concertaje (1922: 151-152).

78 The conservative Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño also wrote an essay in response to Jaramillo. In this work, which was never published, this pensador who played a central role in the development of archeology, stressed that the Indians were not as “miserable” as Jaramillo claimed or as “happy” as Borja depicted them. But he agreed that the abolition of imprisonment for debts had not improved living conditions for the Indians and that this could only be accomplished by an educational strategy that would change their “rudimentary mentality” (Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, El indio ecuatoriano. Con motivo de un libro y una conferencia. ca. 1923. AHBCE, CJJC #02001).

79 Chapter VI of the Código del Trabajo. Decreto Supremo, 210. Registro Oficial, 78 to 81, Quito, 14 to 17 November 1938.

80 Abelardo Moncayo Jr. was consulted by the Supreme Chief that governed the country at the moment that the Labor Code was approved: Ideas acerca de la mano de obra indígena en la agricultura y su posible mejoramiento, El Comercio, 16 October 1935.

81 AHBCE, FNB #21/C/140, Correspondencia Neptalí Bonifaz, de Abelardo Moncayo, 1935.

CHAPTER 3 THE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC INVENTION OF A VANQUISHED RACE, ca. 1900-1930

Sí, esta será la suerte de la raza vencida, pero nuestros hijos les pagarán con su odio a los opresores! … Y algún día, algún día, la justicia de Pachacamac vengará nuestra dignidad de hombres ultrajada, nuestros derechos conculcados. Pachacamac nos enviará algún día un Libertador, que nos redima!!! (Proaño 1919: 98)

Although the pensadores divided the natives into three social subgroups—

conciertos (indentured laborers), community Indians, and free Indians—race was the

master category deployed to mark their peculiarity. Contrary to the image of innocuous

indigenous race classifications in Latin America (Field 2002, Knight1990), or the erasure

of natives by mestizaje (Gould 1998, Clark 1998b) and ethnocide (Platt 1985), I wish to

underscore the Ecuadorian elite’s use of race to frame Indians in their condition as

inferior citizens who feared the elites.

Salomon argues that the Andes during the 1900s witnessed a rediscovery of

Indians by both transnational academics and local pensadores (1985: 82).1 In the city of

Quito there were several fora used for the social and historical exploration of the Indian race, including the Universidad Central and several civic associations that conducted research and disseminated its results. Two groups occupied center stage: one gathered around the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria and the other the Academia de Estudios Históricos

Americanos, later the Academia Nacional de Historia. These civic associations, together

with the university, sponsored journals and editorial projects in the form of books,

lectures, and literary works prepared by their members; they also formed a network with

national and transnational constituencies. In these settings, the inquiry about the Indian or

70 71

indigenous race became one of the objects of attention of the emerging disciplines of

sociology and archeology, both framed by evolutionary perspectives, with positivist as

well as spiritualist tones (Roig 1977: 79; Salomon 1985: 82).2 The first explored the

ingredients and causes of what was seen as a peculiar native psychology; the second, the

history of the remote indigenous past. Together, these fields of inquiry informed the

notion of a “vanquished race,” a concept that became a central element of the political

debate about the condition of Indians.

This chapter explores, first, the installation of sociology and its notion of a

psychology of Indians rooted in servitude; second, the development of archeology and

the controversy about the Kingdom of Quito; and, third, the construction of the idea of a

“vanquished race,” one of the elements behind elite suspicions about the indigenous

population and its future, that underscores elite fears of the Indians. Like the construction

of indigenous identity in Cuzco (Poole 1997: 186), for the pensadores in Quito racial

differences were rooted in the deep historical past and, particularly for liberals thinkers,

these differences were reinforced by contemporary servitude. At the same time, as several

authors have suggested (Lomnitz 2001; Thurner 2003), the polemic about the native past

was in fact a discussion about contemporary Indians. In this chapter I suggest that the diagnostic narratives became an idiom that mirrored elite fears of Indian rebelliousness and elite anxiety over the ability of Indians to mimic, and mock, the Creole.

Sociology and the Peculiar Psychology of Indians

The Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria and the Universidad Central developed a sociological perspective to inquire about the “peculiar psychology of Indians” as well as

the causes of their “inferiority.” In this section, I trace two themes developed by this

intellectual community regarding the indigenous race: the social fragmentation of

indigenes within a shared psychological framework; and servitude and exploitation,

historically imprinted on the indigenous mentality, as the primary determinants of that

shared and peculiar psychology. These themes spread to different social domains; in

Congress, they were rephrased and became key discursive elements to connect science

and policymaking.

The Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria

Jurists, writers, and students from the Universidad Central established the Sociedad

Jurídico-Literaria in 1902 as a forum to discuss law and social sciences. The society brought together leading intellectuals from both liberal and conservative political tendencies;3 its intentions were to overcome the factionalism that characterized political parties and to establish a space to discuss and promote new ideas.

The Sociedad developed into an institution inspired by freedom of expression, individual rights, and social reconciliation. It sponsored diverse academic activities—a

journal and a series of lectures, debates, and contests—in its effort to establish an

intellectual community. Its audience and membership was built through the universities

and public high schools from all over the country.4 Well-known pensadores, most of

them lawyers from several Ecuadorian provinces, other Latin American countries, and

Spain, were incorporated as members. But more than membership, it was the notion of a

forum that kept the society and its journal alive. The society’s activities were support by

fees paid by its members and contributions from philanthropists, the universities, and the

state. The journal was distributed through salesmen, members, and exchanges with

corresponding national and Latin American institutions. The exchanges allowed the

society to initiate a library that was supplemented by the purchase of collections.

The organizers were critical of the practices of the pensadores and recognized that the country did not have an intellectual community. Julio Moreno, a well-known liberal lawyer, claimed that ideas in Ecuador had not been renewed, that the country did not have a cultural movement such as those found in other Latin American nations, and that the country did not have salient intellectual figures. New areas of knowledge, like psychology, sociology, and economics were unknown, and the production of ideas,

Moreno argued, was static (1913: 2). Similarly, a journal editorial claimed that the country was culturally backward and that the only knowledge that had been produced was related to politics and religion (Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 1916: 131). Yet the society was cautious with foreign ideas and cosmopolitanism: it sought to distinguish

Latin cultures from the Anglo-American culture and to gain international recognition, but it also hoped to avoid exoticism, or what some pensadores called tropicalismo.

By using, in an eclectic way, diverse philosophical fragments—positivism and spiritualism as well a critique of positivism (Roig 1977)—the Sociedad decided to plant the seeds for the future by focusing on the views of the nation’s youth regarding the nation and the world. The early involvement of students in the association was seen as a way to build a cultural movement that would hopefully lead the nation toward social integration and international recognition. This project required a ruling elite group and a well-educated and responsible citizenry to govern the pueblo (Albornoz 1916).

Officially, the Sociedad believed that the state was responsible for the education of the people and for the creation of a moral alternative to Catholicism. However, given that the state had proven incapable of carrying out its educational and civilizing functions, it considered that civil association, and particularly the university, should cooperate in the

74 effort. In this sense, the association assigned itself and the university a role in the orientation of the state’s duties. They introduced the practice of educating the pueblo— including Indians—although it was the Central University that fully developed the idea

(Viteri 1920a, 1920b). By organizing lectures, the association sought to develop an understanding of the moral and intellectual features of the general population and to provide a moral orientation for their customs (Ayora 1905: 24).

The Sociedad began publishing a journal the same year it was founded. The journal compiled essays and literary works presented previously to the membership, or written as university thesis, and had additional sections for bibliographical notes, judicial reviews, and news from the local intellectual community. The journal was a vehicle for the dissemination of new ideas relating to anarchism, worker syndicalism, Americanism, sociology, archeology, and psychology. These new ideas overlapped with previous conservative and liberal positions; the journal selected a range of views in an eclectic way. The periodical also included discussions of classic liberal issues such as property, wages, individual rights, hygiene, and suffrage. A central issue for the society and its journal was the critique of concertaje.

The Sociedad promoted three areas of knowledge, all related to concierto labor: the exploitation of Indians as seen through issues such as just wages, servitude, and Indian-

White relationships; the psychology of Indians, including their timidity, drunkenness, paganism, and unruly tendencies; and, finally, the indigenous past, a field that became the main interest of the Academia Nacional de Historia. But concertaje labor relations were the main concern of the Sociedad. The organization played a major role in the ensuing

debate by critically assessing the risks of servitude—economic inefficiency and social

unrest—and by promoting strategies to fight legal reforms in Congress (See Chapter 2).

While the members of the association opened their minds to new ideas that had permeated Latin America since the 1860s (Hale 1989), they insisted that anarchism and socialism had not taken root in Ecuador, although they recognized that “the social question,” including social unrest, was present. They considered that liberalism, framed by spiritual and positivists ideas, was an apt frame to discuss social questions including labor protection. In their view, the eradication of racial servitude—the foundation of violence and prejudice—would solve all local problems and their potential negative consequences (Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 1903). This abolition implied several processes: legal reform of labor relations (particularly of concertaje), introduction of property rights, and educational measures. To avoid the appearance of chaos and

“revolutions,” the organization attempted to put forth reforms that would lead to a new social order. Some pensadores, under the belief that evolution was a natural process, considered that socialism was the next stage of humanity. But in order to generate the condition for an orderly evolution, the establishment of a bourgeois order was needed

(Quevedo 1932: 70-71).5 In this context, freeing Indians was viewed as a mechanism that

would limit social unrest and tyranny—and, at the same time, establish a labor market.

The Universidad Central

As we have seen, the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria was established in close

association with the Universidad Central, but this educational institution introduced

relatively late in its curriculum topics about the indigenous race. A systematic interest in

the topic first appeared when the university established a sociology chair in the School of

Law in 1915.6 Since then, the university produced intellectuals and proposals that fed

76 public debates and governmental tactics regarding Indians and, by1922, the institution became the site for the production of an “indigenist manifesto”7 written by one of its professors.

The constitution of the social as a field of inquiry at the Central University had its origin in the legal tradition and followed the political rhythms of the Republic. This public university depended on the state for its funding and for the definition of its study programs. From the beginning of the liberal government, intellectuals attempted to reform the university and to open it to new disciplines and approaches, but it proved elusive to most changes. Political conflicts, budget cuts, and administrative instability conspired against reforms.

In many ways, the Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria came to embody the desired university reforms and, in a sense, challenged the university. The Sociedad integrated university students into its membership, encouraged them to educating the pueblo, published their thesis, and promoted debates and contests among them. Thus both institutions became closely linked and their activities echoed in each other. Slowly, however, the attempts at reform succeeded in introducing new areas of inquiry, student participation in decision-making, and extension programs. The university and the whole educational system converged in the construction of the new liberal order (Sinardet

1999).

The university, like the Sociedad, published its own periodical—the Anales—that disseminated works from different disciplines and informed the community. However, the journal of the association and similar publications in provincial cities were able to attract the most important works of the university’s faculty. Following the initiatives of

the Sociedad, in 1914, the university established the extensión universitaria (university

extension) as a mechanism for social and cultural volunteer work.8 This new program

organized lecture series to popularize science that later became known as the Popular

University. One lecture delivered to workers from Quito, for example, spoke about

Indians as “exiles of the national civilization,” living in communal arrangements that

restricted the development of their individuality, and resisting concertaje, the “greatest

sin of the economic and social organization of the republic” (Cabezas 1917: 20-21).

But the main importance of the university was the training it offered in areas related to sociology. Graduates from this program became central players in the development of the state by the late 1920s. It is possible to trace two initial traditions in the inquiries into social problems conducted at the university, both related to the Faculty of Law. One was derived from political economy and the other inspired in sociology. During this period liberalism made a transition from a conception of natural rights—which included political economy and popular sovereignty—to one based on more specific and positive rights expressed in particular legal codes and targeted to particular populations like the laborers and the Indians, although both tendencies coexisted during the first half of the twentieth century. In this process, the discussion of the social contents of rights was displaced to a particular discipline: sociology (Roig 1979: 64), while the issues of political economy continued to be covered by the philosophy of rights. Thus, the earliest student thesis and essays by professors relating to social issues—property, salaries, and sovereignty—were close to political economy and addressed questions about the fairness of salaries, the social function of property, and the electoral system—including a social critique of servitude and concertaje.9 Most of these theses were published by the journal of the

Sociedad. In Ecuador, the development of sociology followed closely the Latin American

reading of positivism, which did not discard a spiritual understanding of the social

question (Hale 1989).

In 1914, the School of Law became the School of Law and Social Sciences and, in the following years, the chairs of sociology and statistics were established under the leadership of Agustín Cueva, a recognized liberal pensador. The syllabus of the sociology course focused on two main issues: the definition of the field and the factors that constituted “the social.” Under the influence of Spanish, French, North American, and

Latin American intellectuals, it reviewed different categories that would figure in the language of the pensadores for a long time, including race and ethnic condition—as a biological and historical category—conscience, social class, nation, and state (Cueva

1918). The syllabus of the statistics course focused on data collection and evaluation, probability, central measures, comparisons, and cause-effect relationships; it also included an applied section oriented to demography, economics, and politics (Cueva

1916). Thus, modern research methods as ingredients of the tactics of governmentality

(Foucault 1991a) became available to the community of pensadores in Quito.

Neither the sociology nor the statistics syllabus referred explicitly to Indians or indigenes, but both dealt with race. As I explore later, Cueva, Ecuador’s leading sociologist of the time, while addressing the subjects of racism and concertaje, subscribed to the notion of an “indigenous race.” The Spanish Krausist movement, especially

Alfredo Posada, North American sociologists like Lester Ward and Franklin Giddings, and the French Alfred Fouillée had great influence in Agustín Cueva’s writings and guided two of his major concerns: the spiritual constitution of the nation and the role of

the state in such process.10 Regarding the latter, the subject matter of the courses also touched on issues of state practices and duties. Statistics were seen as a field related to the administration of the state, and sociology as a more speculative field that shed light on the state-led construction of the nation and of a unitary social conscience. Although

Cueva (1914: 185) stated the importance of scientific inquiry in the education of students, the early sociology courses did not include exercises in gathering systematic empirical knowledge.

Dividing the Indigenous Race

The main genre for the society’s and university’s intellectual production were essays which commented on the issues of the day and set agendas regarding the country’s social problems. The essay was a flexible format that allowed pensadores to introduce for discussion tentative and provisional statements about the construction of society. The essay form promoted a lack of thoroughness and an open-ended process of reshaping, fragmenting, and cutting and pasting ideas. The intellectual community did not practice the scientific exploration of empirical data, but, on occasion, essays based on observation and empirical findings aimed at informing the political agenda. For example, Moncayo’s article (1986 [1912]) on Indian concertaje was based on secondary sources and his own observation among hacienda laborers. But it was La condición actual de la raza indígena en la provincia del Tungurahua by Nicolás Martínez (1993 [1916]) that further developed the connection between the essay form and empirical observation.11

Martínez attempted to provide Congress with knowledge of the indigenous race

that would support the liberal agenda. Two methods are important to highlight in

Martínez’s ethnography: the way he constructed his arguments and how he classified the

conditions of the indigenous race of the province. He claims authority to write about “a

80 unique indigenous race” by virtue of his experience in the countryside; in his words: “I am authorized to write about this topic because I have lived in the countryside and have been in permanent contact with Indians” (Martínez, 1993 [1916]: 209). He insists— criticizing armchair authors—that to write about Indians it was necessary to leave the city offices and travel to the countryside to observe them first hand. Martínez appears proud of knowing Indians personally. For a long time, he writes, they were his only friends and, in his adult life, Indians had been contributors to his work as meteorologist, agronomist, and naturalist observer. His credentials for talking about natives included both his

“closeness” to them as well as his family tradition as defenders of the Indians. His father was a pioneer in speaking against concertaje (Martínez 1932 [1887]) and his brothers were important political figures, writers, and painters; they taught him to have affection for the “unfortunate Indians.”

The issues explored by Martínez were subjects of public debate: concertaje work relations, communal Indians, fiestas and drunkenness, and relations between the races.

He starts his description by dividing Indians into three categories: “indios conciertos,”

“indios comuneros,” and “indios libres.”12 This tripartite classification influenced subsequent appreciations of the indigenous question and became a key element in public debates. His essay calls the attention of politicians to community Indians, considered an unruly group, and to the peculiarities of the indigenous race, in a context saturated by the debate about concertaje. According to Martínez´s description, both bonded and free

Indians were subordinated to society through different mechanisms—patron dependency, urban residency and property; community Indians, on the other hand, were out of the state’s control. The situation of communities is described as one of “autonomous nations”

with their own authorities, a survival of the Inca past, and a menace to White people

(Martínez 1993 [1916]: 211). The free Indians are portrayed as autonomous individuals

who resided by their own in cities and towns as well as rural areas; they were land or

workshop owners and most of them tended to be chagras or cholos who hid their

indigenous ancestry.13 And conciertos or bonded Indian laborers who lived and worked

on the haciendas were characterized as a group that was disappearing in Tungurahua

because of the expansion of small properties. Finally, Martínez discussed the boundaries

between free Indians and White people and argued that the mixed groups–chagras and

cholos—were actually Indians.

Though he divided the natives in three categories, Martínez also united them under

the notion of an indigenous race. For him, all Indians—including mixed types such as

chagras and cholos—shared a “peculiar” psychology exhibited in their pagan religion,

vices, and hate towards White people. He highlighted drunkenness, robbery, and lying as

the principal vices of the indigenous race. All rural Indians—including the rich—lived in traditional chozas (huts), ate particular foods, and “looked like Indians.” For example, he

recalls the case of Tiruaña, a pure blooded and wealthy Indian who wore the same clothes

as his peons, and who lived in a humble hut (Martínez 1993 [1916]: 228).14 Martínez

explained that indigenous psychology was a result of the Spanish conquest, passed over

time and maintained by White abuse and the lack of state control over the indigenous

population, particularly the community Indians. But the indigenous race also shared the

same food, housing, and costume that did not change even when individual Indians

increased their wealth. Although he never defines “indigenous race,” his rhetoric depicts

it as a vanquished race, immersed in a hateful relation with Whites, and full of defects.

These defects—robbery, drunkenness, hate, among others—reinforced in Martínez the idea that the indigenous race had a peculiar and inferior psychology—a notion widely held at that time—even though he professed to help maintain the “virtues” of the indigenous race.15 Martínez’ classification, however, opened to question the limits of the indigenous race, since he was unable to define markers to characterize free Indians who had changed their last names and costumes, and their skin color was quite similar to that of mestizos (Martínez 1993 [1916]: 220).

Indian Peculiarities

In 1911, José María Rueda submitted the first thesis to the Universidad Central that explicitly referred to indigenes. Under the title of La raza cobriza en el Ecuador (The

Dark Race in Ecuador), it was a work that also argued for the need to reform indigenous psychology (Rueda 1911). The author described his work as a “sociological and humanitarian inquiry.” His manifest objective was “the triumph of civilization and democratic institutions” and, from this perspective, his thesis addressed the question of the impact of the indigenous race on the face of civilization. The paradox for the author was that the Spanish conquest had created two peoples and only one state and, as a consequence, Ecuador did not have a common nationality. This division motivated the

Indian’s hatred of Whites. In the past, Whites had abused Indians and, for this reason, contemporary Indians resisted becoming true citizens. For Rueda the issue was not legal reform, but changing Indian psychology through education. Education would allow them to see themselves as equals, but only if indigenous languages were repressed (Rueda

1911: 23).

Language was seen as a prominent sign of indigeneity and an expression of the peculiar psychology of Indians. Alfredo Espinosa (1979 [1914-1917]), a member of the

Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria from Guayaquil explicitly characterized the indigenous race

from the highlands as the group that spoke the Quichua language. Citing the Argentinean

intellectual Carlos Bunge, Espinosa argued that the indigenous race of Ecuador, as in

other Latin American countries, exhibited negative psychological tendencies as a result of the Spanish conquest and its later abandonment by the republican ruling elite. Indians had tendencies toward drunkenness, indolence, and melancholy—all ingredients for a condition of “misery.” At the same time, subservience, defensiveness, thievery, and patience were behaviors developed in response to abuse at the hands of ruling groups.

But, more importantly, Quichua Indians presented peculiarities such as a ductility and the ability to mimic, features that paved the road to civilization. He concluded by arguing that Indians lived “in contact with the surrounding civilization, but not in community with it” (Espinosa 1979 [1914-1917]: 152).

Like Rueda, Espinosa believed that indigenous vices together with the aboriginal language should be extirpated16 and that the Quichua capacity for mimicry and ductility

provided the bases for transforming the indigenous race. The extensive collection of

observed vices was a consequence of misery and ignorance but especially of concertaje

and servitude, conditions that also fueled indigenous hatred toward White people. In his

view, material conditions were impressed on ideas and words, and vices were inscribed in

the physiological system. Therefore psychological reform was a long-term evolutionary

process, albeit a feasible one: Indians could be molded and led to adopt civilization.

In 1918 Camilo Destruge distinguished between a native elite and indios comunes

(common Indians). His starting point was the belief that civilization was inscribed in the

brain in the form of inherited dispositions that made people apt to learn and store

complex ideas. Common Indians, in his view, did not have such inherited dispositions,

although the surviving noble Indians did (1918: 134). Therefore, educating common

Indians and changing their condition was a difficult and long-term task. This tension—

shared by most pensadores of the time—between an inherited and backward psychology

or brain predisposition and an inevitable social evolution provided little room for short-

term improvements and thus tended to locate native betterment in a vague and distant

future.

The Critique of Race

Along the same lines, but focusing on the phenotypic appearance rather than on the

psychological features and inspired in several European authors,17 professor Agustín

Cueva elaborated a critique of biological theories of race (Cueva 1984 [1915] and 1917).

His work had considerable influence and acted to restrict, for a brief period of time, the

development of racial theories based on phenotypical features of indigenous bodies. Like

Espinosa, Cueva stressed the notion of an “indigenous vanquished race” grounded in an historical account, but he departed from Espinosa by portraying indigenes as possessing the capacity and agency to alter their conditions. He argued forcefully against the biological concept of race. Cueva considered it a paradox that modern ideas could both advocate human equality and liberty and claim that irreducible racial barriers divided men and nations. Racist intellectuals feared the mixture of peoples, a fear that in Cueva’s view was nonsensical since there were no pure races in the contemporary world.

Mestizaje was, Cueva argued, part of human evolution in all places.

What amazed Cueva was not only that European intellectuals had developed racist ideas, but also that Latin American pensadores in Argentina and Peru had done likewise, propounding the degeneration of “the American race.” Based on a systematic review of

the most salient features observed by the racist thinkers—skin color, skull shape, and hair

type—he debunked the core of biological racism. In response, Cueva argued, “inferiority

is due to environmental and social prejudicial causes, therefore it is mutable and not

permanent” (Cueva 1917: 86).18 For Cueva the American population was not in a degenerative process, although it needed urgent social reforms.

Cueva also criticized the notions of the immutable mentality of each race and of geographical determinism by deploying historical arguments drawn from the contemporary United States and medieval England. Using the historical experience of

Black people in the United States, he contended that slavery—as all forms of servitude— was the reason for the momentary stagnation of the Black race; this was also the case of indigenes in the Americas (Cueva 1917: 87). Over time, all races experienced periods of stagnation, but evolution and human agency worked to transform servitude. The Spanish conquest of the Americas was possible because of the inferiority of “Indian culture”—not their racial qualities—although it was nonetheless a “decent civilization.” The Spanish conquest, and the barriers to the integration of indigenes during colonial and republican times, blocked the natural evolution of the indigenous race and culture, yet “the Indian race’s ability to mimic and assimilate was still alive” (Cueva 1917: 95). Though he shared the notions of a vanquished race and of a historical narrative that depicted indigenes as psychologically stagnant, Cueva was also open to the possibility of Indian

“integration,” a notion that he did not fully elaborate. He believed that stagnation was impermanent and could be changed and that the psychology of Indians was plastic, amenable to reshaping under conditions of social autonomy and freedom. Thus, although he criticized the racist biological theories that introduced an essentialist view of the

mentality of Indians, he still maintained the idea of their psychological stagnation and

peculiar psychology.19 By maintaining the notion of a peculiar psychology, liberal

pensadores like Cueva were able to champion the cause of reform.

Cueva’s critique had the effect of restricting the use of a biological notion of race, based on physical appearances, as a tool for elites to imagine tactics for the exclusion of indigenous citizens. Elites had to resort instead to a historical construction of the indigenous race and to the notion of a peculiar Indian psychology—constructed in stereotypic fashion with very little empirical examination—in order to define boundaries between Indians and Whites. The mixed and ubiquitous Indians remained, however, problematic and open to interpretation. Language, clothing, and other cultural practices were recognizable markers cited to reinforce the notion of indigenous inferiority.

Archeology and Queries about the Indian Past

Nineteenth century historiography argued for a pre-colonial past as the primordial origin of the nation. The official narrative incorporated the mythic history—crafted by the Jesuit father Juan de Velasco in the late XVIII—of the Kingdom of Quito, or Cara

Empire, and its glorious final chapter: the marriage of the noble daughter of the Cara’s crown prince, Paccha, to the Inca Huayna Capac of Cuzco (Peru) (Muratorio 1994).

However, by the late nineteenth century, archeology questioned the existence of the mythic kingdom; queries that posed doubts about its existence gave way to a public controversy, which coincided in time with in the debate about concertaje labor relations.

The polemic was staged mainly in the Boletín of the Academia Nacional de Historia and in local newspapers.

The Academia Nacional de Historia

The Catholic Church was behind the creation of the Academia Nacional de Historia in 1909. The romantic Archbishop Federico González Suárez selected a group of young intellectuals from recognized elite families fascinated by history and archeology to found the new organization.20 Initially, the association was known as the Sociedad Ecuatoriana de Estudios Históricos but soon it became the Sociedad de Estudios Históricos

Americanos and, by 1920, it became the Academia Nacional de Historia. The renaming exercise spoke of the tensions between an “American” and a national appreciation of the republic. Nevertheless, the regional perspective was most prominent, although it did not exclude a national viewpoint. Recovering Ecuadorian history, however, implied a look beyond national boundaries: the nation’s history was by definition regional or continental. People and ideas migrated from one point to another; as a result, similar ethnic and sociological problems were found in all Latin American countries. Being part of American history allowed the young Ecuadorian elite to locate themselves as members of a progressive region and to construct a notion of a homeland where diverse Latin

American traditions—the Mesoamerican and Andean—converged.

The central objective of the institution was to conduct scientific research and to publish historical works. It operated under the premise that the creation of a history was a patriotic endeavor since peoples without a past were peoples without traditions and ideals.21 Since its foundation, the Academia developed an interest in the remote— indigenous—past of the nation. Compilations and studies of traditions and languages of contemporary Indians were also promoted as part of what was called “Ecuadorian ethnology” and the use of scientific method in the historical discipline. The recovery of human practices through time, a vast field of encounters of diverse disciplines (Boletín

1918: i), included linguistics and oral traditions (as artifacts from the past), biographies, paleography, and the like. However, cultural objects and relics were also key to archeology.22 Thus, history became a field of inquiry that included the deep indigenous past, its stages of evolution, and the contemporary survival of its basic features.

The articles published in the Boletín that referred to indigenes focused on three areas of knowledge: prehistory and archeology, linguistics, and folklore and religion.23

These subject areas were expanded by commentaries and book reviews.24

The Academia was supported by donations from its members, mainly by Jacinto

Jijón y Caamaño, a self-educated archeologist who inherited González Suárez’s library and his mission to study the archeological record of Ecuador. Under Jijón y Caamaño’s leadership, the main strategy for the consolidation of the institution and its academic network was a journal called the Boletín.25 In it, the organization announced its commitment to history and its Americanist perspective. The editors made an open call for collaborations citing González Suárez’s slogan “honor science and love truth” (Boletín

1920: ii). Letters from the Academia to several North Atlantic and Latin American scholars reiterated the invitation. One objective of the periodical was to build a community of local and transnational intellectuals through active membership and the publication of articles and reviews of academic work related to the organization’s interests.

The journal allowed the community in the making, whose members were located at diverse sites, to participate in public discussions and obtain recognition for their work and authorship. In 1920, the newly renamed Academia counted eighty-four members. More than half of them lived in Ecuador while forty-five percent were foreigners. Among those

living in Ecuador, a third resided in Quito and a good number in the southern cities of

Guayaquil and Cuenca. However, soon Cuenca and Guayaquil founded their own

autonomous associations. Most of the provincial cities were represented by at least one

member. It is important to point out that close to twenty percent of the members residing

in Ecuador were Catholic clergy, most of whom were residents of provincial cities

(Boletín 1920: 165-170). In short, the Academia built its Ecuadorian network in part on

the Catholic Church and on conservative sectors of society.26

Scientific Expeditions

The Academia also promoted archeological digs. Federico González Suárez carried out the first local archeological dig among Cañari people, near Cuenca. The future archbishop did fieldwork as he traveled as a priest27 and he understood basic principles of

classification and association of material culture. He suggested that material culture and

languages could be used to map the different races that had inhabited the region and he

proposed dispersions and chronologies (Uhle 1930a: 8). Later, it was the conservative

Jijón y Caamaño who fully developed such ideas and methods. He began doing

excavations in 1908 and, in 1912, traveled—accompanied by a fellow member of the

Academia—to Europe where he pursued training in archeological techniques, attended

lectures, participated in several scientific congresses, and did research in Seville’s

colonial Archivo de Indias.28 In 1916, he returned to Quito and continued his excavations and began publishing the Academia’s journal.

Scientific expeditions that included archeological excavations, stratigraphy, cranial measurements, ceramic classification, photography, drawings, maps, local interviews, and the like were common practices among archeologists from the Academia. Jijón y

Caamaño carried out his first dig near Quito, mostly in hacienda sites. Others followed in

Cerro de Hoja, in the coastal province of Manabí, and in the central highland provinces of

Imbabura and Chimborazo. Between 1919 and 1925, Jijón sponsored the German archeologist Max Uhle’s work in the south of the country.29 The selected sites correspond to the places named in Juan de Velasco’s history of the early inhabitants of Ecuador. The archeological findings as well as his review of Spanish chroniclers allowed Jijón to criticize Velasco’s version of the foundation of the nation.

Archeological digs brought the urban pensadores in closer contact with rural indigenes.30 The expeditions’ paraphernalia attracted local Indians and many joined digging teams, or became informants for the analysis of artifacts. But the relationship between scientific expeditions and Indians ran deeper than their employment in the excavation process.31 Uhle, through the letters and photographs he sent to Jijón y

Caamaño, gives some clues about this connection. He recorded and commented on the cultural practices of contemporary Indians; and he observed the Indian uprisings that interrupted his work. A set of photographs of Indians taken by Uhle in Loja depicts peculiar religious and festive practices, productive activities, and costumes. Based on his ethnographic observations, Uhle was not optimistic about cultural continuity. He reported that contemporary Indians did not recall the cultural practices of their ancestors. He also noted that Indians were open to “the finery of civilization,” a perspective not shared by the Ecuadorian pensadores, who stressed the idea that Indians lived in a “cultural” void or in the past. Similarly, Jijón y Caamaño who argued that Indian folklore embodied the remote native past, also recorded present day customs that he observed during his archeological excavations (Jijón y Caamaño 1919).

Figure 3: Excavation in Narrío, Cañar

Uhle described contemporary Indians and peasants as “unruly.” He related an account of how his findings in Cerro Narrío, a site located on a hacienda, resulted in local unrest. When he arrived, the populacho (mob) had excavated the hill without method and care for the objects; they were exaltedly searching for gold. The feared teniente político called up army forces to control the local population that had taken possession of the hill.

Nearly one thousand people had dedicated themselves to digging, and it proved impossible to stop them since, Ulhe noted, the Cañari people were “stubborn and resistant.” Uhle thought the episode could escalate into an uprising, so he attempted to organize the work in progress, with the support of the local priest, and to inform the people about the importance of archeological remains for “the national honor.”

Ecuadorian archeology, at the interplay between the native present and prehistory, constructed its narratives inspired by evolutionism and cultural diffusion. Archeological explorations allowed Jijón y Caamaño to propose the first pre-Colombian cultural sequence for the northern (Ecuadorian) Andes, to dismiss the existence of the Quito

Kingdom, and to pose the primitiveness of the contemporary Indians groups. In Jijón y

Caamaño’s view, Indians had never developed a centralized kingdom since their only

previous political experience was their rule by the Incas—a ruling system inherited by the

Creole elite. There was no local empire to provide a baseline for the “decay” of

contemporary Indians.32 This view opened two related polemics, which I review below,

concerning the historical past of the nation and the evolutionary stages of development of

native society.

The Polemic over the Kingdom of Quito

Juan de Velasco, a Jesuit father from the highland town of Riobamba, exiled from the Americas with is order in 1768, wrote a history of the Kingdom of Quito entitled La historia del Reino de Quito en la América meridional (1977-79 [1841-44]). Velasco’s influential history was published in Ecuador and in several languages in Europe during the 1840s. His account told the vicissitudes of the formation of the prehistoric empire.

Velasco sustained that the Cara people expanded from the coastal region up into the highlands, accepted the hegemony of the people of Quito, who, in turn, had gathered diverse small ethnic groups under a central kingdom, and crafted a noble ruling class— the Shyri. In the final stage of this pre-colonial history, the Quito Kingdom and the Incas established an alliance trough the marriage of Paccha and Huayna Capac. Velasco’s history became the dominant narrative of the origins of Ecuadorian national history. By the end of the nineteenth century Pedro Fermín Cevallos, the official Ecuadorian historian, explicitly argued that the Quito Kingdom united the modern and ancient histories of Ecuador (Cevallos 1870: 3). This perspective was—and still is—disseminated in the schools and corresponds to the vision crafted by the Guayaquil elite to promote

Ecuador in the international expositions analyzed by Muratorio (1994) as expressions of

“archeological patriotism.”

Doubts about Velasco’s history

By the end of the nineteenth century, Federico González Suárez led an

archeological exploration in the south of the country. He inspected archeological remains

that did not support Velasco’s account of the Quito Kingdom.33 In his first published

reports, González Suárez had subscribed to Velasco’s history; it was only during later studies of the northern aboriginal record that he came to explicitly refute certain features of the history of the Kingdom provided by Veslaco (González Suárez 1902, 1904).

Meanwhile the Spanish Marcos Jiménez de la Espada published a volume that criticized

Velasco history because it was written from memory (Willingham 2001: 238). Together the conservative Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, the liberal Homero Viteri, and Max Uhle, among others, developed further arguments against Velasco’s history, and they contributed to an alternative historical account of the nation.

To foreign travelers and scientists, however, the Quito Kingdom remained a seductive tale for years to come, in part because it fit well with the black legend of the misrule of the Spanish Empire. René Verneau and Paul Rivet (1977 [1912]) as well as

Marshall Saville and Theodor Wolf, among others, clung to Velasco’s account. Saville’s expedition to Manabí, the alleged birthplace of the Cara people, allowed him to affirm that there was little doubt about the settlement of the Cara in the region (Saville 1910:

242). The authority of these American and French savants, combined with tales about a surviving indigenous elite, allowed some local intellectuals to cling to the myth of the

Quito Kingdom. The dispute became heated, however, when Viteri, Belisario Quevedo and Jijón y Caamaño denied the existence of the Kingdom and attempted to eliminate references to it from the educational curriculum.34

Jijón y Caamaño was the most systematic critic of Velasco. He set for himself the challenge of writing an alternative historical narrative as a means to integrate the Indians into the nation. His first doubts about the Quito Kingdom were expressed in a monographic text about the aboriginal people of Imbabura, in which he observed that there was no unique cultural style in the region (1914). Later, in the first volume of the

Boletín de la Academia de Estudios Históricos Americanos, he published an essay that sought to end the dispute by criticizing Velasco’s sources and presenting new evidence from the archeological record. While his objective was to examine Velasco’s history without animosity or patriotism, he called Velasco’s history “puerile,” “ridiculous,” and

“a fake” (1918: 37). His first step was to analyze the conditions under which Velasco produced his text. Jijón y Caamaño recognized that Velasco understood Quichua, that he had visited the monuments and archeological remains of the central highlands, but he also points out that the Jesuit wrote the text from memory at the end of his life. Patriotism, the passage of time, and his long exile, Jijón y Caamaño reasoned, contributed to the falsification of evidence (1918: 41 and 62). In addition, Jijón y Caamaño observes that

Velasco relied upon such untraceable sources as the Oidor Bravo de Saravia, the missionary Fray Marcos Niza, and the Indian Cacique Jacinto Collahuazo. The most recognized Spanish chroniclers and functionaries, he argued, never mentioned the Shyri ruling elite or the Cara people. He also questions how a true historian could base his explanations on indigenous sources. He asks, for example, if Collahuazo could have the moral and intellectual credentials to write a historical account, considering that contemporary Indians did not know their history and the past was a mystery for them; he

even suggests that the cacique could have twisted documents and invented the Kingdom,

a narrative that was subsequently polished by Velasco (1918: 49).

Jijón y Caamaño’s second step was to deploy archeological findings to make his

case. He maintained that the pre-Inca peoples did not have a unified art and style. Diverse

styles suggested the existence of a variety of indigenous cultural groups, without a

political connection among them, a hypothesis further supported by the lack of a uniform

language before the Inca conquest. Velasco’s contention about the Cara language as a

Quichua dialect was not sustained. Similarly, tolas, the prototypical mortuary

construction of the Caras, were not found along all of the alleged territory of the reign.

Finally, Jijón y Caamaño found scant evidence of a ruling Cara elite—the Shyri. The only

identifiable nobility was the Inca.

Indian nobility and feasts

Jijón y Caamaño’s evaluation of Velasco’s work was answered by pensadores who

defended the existence of the Quito Kingdom based on local historical inquiries.

Riobamba and Cuenca35 were two locales where Jijón elicited a response. Félix Proaño, an Academy member and the Dean of Riobamba’s Cathedral, considered that Juan de

Velasco’s history was not a fable in spite of his lack of rigor; he argued that Jijón y

Caamaño’s critique was an offense to the city and to the Jesuit order.36 His patriotic

defense of Velasco attempted to persuade an “educated audience about the cost of erasing

several centuries of Ecuadorian history” (Proaño 1918f). His starting point was the

sincerity and honesty of Velasco who never questioned the reliability of his sources, as

González Suárez had recognized. In various articles, Proaño attempted to restore

Velasco’s history, which he claimed was based on the authority of “remarkable

intellectuals,” the indigenous elite, archeological remains, and the legends of the

Chimborazo region.

Proaño focused on the Duchicela family, who in Velasco’s history appeared as ancestors of the last Inca, Atahualpa (Proaño 1918a). Proaño links the historical

Duchicela family to its living descendants. He begins by introducing Marcos Duchicela, who in Proaño’s mind was the true heir of Atahualpa, a fact recognized by King Carlos

V. Then he leaps to an alleged contemporary descendant, Francisco Javier Lobato

Duchicela, who claimed to have a document in his possession that accredited him as the titleholder of the cacicazgo (colonial chiefdom) of Yaruquíes. The cacicazgo—argued

Proaño—had once been held by the wealthy Francisco Javier Mayancela,37 an

enlightened and sophisticated Indian who befriended Simón Bolívar and the Marquesa de

Solanda, and who participated in the war of Independence.38 The Indians of Mayancela’s

time obeyed him as a sovereign and he protected them against the abuses of Whites.

Figure 4: Francisco Javier Lobato, Cacique of Cacha

Contemporary Indians, wrote Proaño, believed that they were descendants of the

Duchicelas and thus recognized Atahualpa as Inca. In other words, they distinguished two

royal lineages: that of the descendants of the Kingdom of Quito, and that of the

descendants of the Inca. At the same time, Proaño argued that the Indians of Chimborazo

had a strong tradition of autonomy that was severely repressed in 1871 when they chose

Fernando Daquilema as their “king” during an uprising (Proaño 1918b).39 Jijón y

Caamaño, however, challenged this genealogical argument by asserting that the

Chimborazo region had a colonial cacicazgo but no “royal” descendants (1918: 58-60).40

Supplementing the arguments about a local indigenous royalty and about

indigenous autonomy, Proaño suggested that local tolas (tombs) and pucarás (fortresses)

found in the region were the basis of Velasco’s history. He searched for archeological

sites to support Velasco’s history and he recalled a photograph of the royal descendants taken in 1918 before a pucará during an exploration of the Cacha valley (1918a). The fascinating photograph presents male native elites by portraying the national flag and wearing Western suit while female elites wore mixing Western clothes together with costumes attached to Indians and portrayed lilies, a Catholic symbol of purity. For

Proaño, it was probably at this monument where Paccha, Atahualpa’s mother, was born

(1918b). He described Inca remains and claimed that the monuments were proof enough of the existence of the Shyri ruling elite and their battles against the Inca. Monuments demonstrated both the existence of royalty and conquests during the period of Inca expansion to the north as well as the presence of strong peoples with building abilities

(1918e).

Finally, Proaño searched for traditions that could support Velasco’s history. He recalled that a ritual performed during the San Pedro festivity pays homage to Queen

Paccha (1918c). This ethnographic evidence was developed several years after the polemic had peaked as Proaño’s last public effort to defend Juan de Velasco. It was an

98 article about “folklore indiano,” in which he starts by saying that contemporary rituals had not been taken seriously as evidence of the veracity of Velasco’s history. He goes on to describe the Licán ritual and its representation of the marriage of Paccha and Huayna

Capac, Atahualpa’s parents. Each year, Indians from this community prepared a colored litter to transport two children, a male and a female, wearing royal dresses, crowns, and scepters. The procession went around a hill and down to the village and arrived at the square, where the children stood for hours receiving the honors from the audience and their families. Later the procession presented itself to the priest and to the local civil authority. They ate and drank chicha (liquor made by grinding corn) and by the late afternoon they returned home. The Indians did not have a clear interpretation of this performance, but Proaño imagined that it was meant to placate the people defeated by the

Incas. In the article he anticipates that next year’s San Pedro’s day ritual would be magnificent and that new ingredients will be introduced. As it happened, Proaño went to the celebration and took a photograph that he sent to Jijón y Caamaño as “proof” of the existence of the Kingdom of Quito. On the back the photograph he wrote a note about the ritual41 in which he commented on its “great pomposity” and acknowledged his own cooperation and support. Clearly the debate over the Kingdom of Quito was important enough to motivate this catholic indigenista intellectual to intervene in village traditions in order to sustain both a deep national narrative and the existence of a local Indian nobility.

Figure 5: The commemoration of Huayna Capac’s wedding

An open-ended polemic

The polemic over the Kingdom of Quito was an open-ended debate. The Chilean

archeologist Joaquín Santa Cruz (1921) wrote a linguistic note that supported the

existence of the Kingdom. His hypothesis was that the Cara language was similar to

Quechua,42 and that it had spread from the coastal region to the highlands and then south

to Cuzco; in time, this language became the Inca’s Quechua. He also introduced a

Spanish chronicler who referred to the Kingdom and its rulers during the Inca conquest,

which Santa Cruz equated with a Shyri nobility. José M. Le Gouhir (1919), a Jesuit

historian, though arguing in support of Velasco, affirmed that archeology in Ecuador was

not yet a consolidated science and that it was necessary to wait for further research to

reconstruct the primordial times of the nation, an argument reiterated by Pío Jaramillo.

This latter author, in articles published in the dailies El Comercio and El Día, supported

the defense of the Kingdom of Quito by Proaño,43 Santa Cruz, and Le Gouhir. His arguments were reiterated later in his indigenista manifesto, El indio ecuatoriano (1922).

Jaramillo had the ability to piece together fragments of the debate while introducing new sources. For example, he presented the legend of Quitumbe put forth by

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the Jesuit father Anello Oliva as an additional proof of the shared origins of the Inca

Empire and the Quito Kingdom. Much as Santa Cruz had, Jaramillo treated the Spanish

chronicler references to Quito kings as the equivalents of a Shyri noble class. He worried

about the possibility that Velasco’s history might be erased from the official narrative,

particularly from textbooks. In his view, legends and actual history from the primordial

time of humanity as a whole, as well as from particular nations, were usually very close.

Moreover, legends were a more powerful idiom to speak about origins because they were

rooted in the sensibility and imagery of the people. The recognition of Velasco’s history

as a powerful and persuasive vision led several pensadores to agree that it should be

maintained and disseminated as a “legend” of the primordial times of the nation. This

position, in turn, weakened the critical efforts to reform the history curriculum.

Thus, several pieces of Velasco’s history—tolas, language, the Cara migration, the hegemony of Quito, and the Shyri ruling elite—came under scrutiny. Since then,

Velasco’s history has been reshaped repeatedly. During the 1930s, Uhle (1930b) proposed a new approach to the polemic. On the one hand, he argued that it was plausible that a small kingdom did exist in the central highlands of contemporary Ecuador during its prehistory. On the other hand, he suggested that Quito became the center of another empire, a faction of the Inca realm. The Inca Atahualpa was proclaimed in Quito as king in opposition to Huáscar, the king of Cuzco, a situation recognized by the Spanish conquerors when they created the Audiencia de Quito (Uhle 1930b: 5-6). For Uhle, however, the northern Andean natives were quite primitive before the Inca expansion.

They lacked a stable political system and an urban center and spoke different Chibcha44

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languages, not Quechua or Quichua. Therefore the whole idea of a “kingdom” in Quito

depended on the Inca conquest.

In time, official historiography displaced the origins of the nation from the

prehistoric kingdom to the figure of Atahualpa. This last king of Quito was honored in

1933, the fourth centennial of his death, an opportunity that also brought to the public

forum the Duchicela family together with a group of free Indians from Quito and

Guayaquil who mourned Atahuapla’s death. By this time, Jijón y Caamaño (N.d.)

appeared more conciliatory and stated that Velasco’s history could be used with caution

as a historical source. The polemic subsided and Velasco’s account continues to be an important component of the official narrative of the nation taught in schools. As Jaramillo proposed, legend and history were intermingled; legends were powerful identity resources since they were based on people’s sentiments (Jaramillo 1922: LXXIX). In this sense, Velasco’s history became a political statement for Indians themselves.

As we have seen, the polemic over the Kingdom of Quito blurred the lines between conservatives and liberals. The liberal indigenista, Pío Jaramillo, and the conservatives,

Félix Proaño and José María Le Gouhir, were pensadores who publicly subscribed to the historical existence of the Quito Kingdom, the Cara peoples, and native nobility. On the other hand, the conservative Jijón y Caamaño and the liberals Homero Viteri and

Belisario Quevedo purged the kingdom from the national narrative.45 But it was not only

a dispute about the national narrative. Several related issues were at stake: the

legitimization of a native nobility and of what some pensadores called the “free” or the

“evolved” Indians, as well as the extent of the defeat suffered by the natives and, thus,

their position vis-à-vis Whites in contemporary times.

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The Vanquished Race and Contemporary Indians

The polemic over the indigenous past not only remarked upon the contemporary

decay of Indians in contrast to their sophisticated past (Lomnitz 2001: 246-251), as well

as the a race defeated first by the Spanish conquerors and then by contemporary elites.

The scholarly dispute over the Quito Kingdom spoke also indirectly about several other issues relating to contemporary Indians. These issues included the level of their

“inferiority”, their ability to rebel against conquerors, and the plausible existence of

indigenes who were not miserable but in a process of upward social mobility.

Evolution and Conquest

Ecuadorian pensadores with different ideologies, and inspired by diverse

ontological approaches, nevertheless shared an evolutionary perspective on civilization;

they agreed that the historical making of the vanquished indigenes had a biological

imprint.46 In short, they were convinced that the deep past was an important factor in the

contemporary evolution of society. In Ecuador, as in the rest of the Americas, fragments

from the past were still at play in society; they were imprinted in people’s psychologies

and social relationships. Jaramillo, for example, suggested that the native civilization was

preserved in race and language (Jaramillo 1922: LX). In his view, the colonial encounter

between Spaniards and natives took place between two “civilizations”(not “races”) at

different stages of development. The Spanish conquered and vanquished an “embryonic

native” civilization that had developed a capacity to govern itself and promote nation-

ness. Indeed, the natives showed the promise of developing into a fully civilized world,

but this process was interrupted by the conquest (1922: 18).

The liberal sociologist Agustín Cueva was even more emphatic in explaining the

significance of the colonial encounter of two “civilized” worlds, although the Spanish

103 were culturally superior and had defeated the aborigines. The level of the native civilization at the time of the conquest was evidence of the intellectual plasticity of indigenes, a quality that made possible their adjustment to European mentality. They had evolved from a primitive horde into a unified political organization—the Kingdom of

Quito—(1984 [1915]: 37) and, consequently, they were able to acquire Spanish civilization. However, the Spanish conquerors squandered the opportunity to bring the aborigines into their civilization. In contrast to pre-colonial aboriginal societies, Spanish exploitation warped the psychology of the indigenous race, which became, as result,

“stagnant.” But it was still possible to change this psychology. Contemporary Indians exhibited the ability to assimilate and mimic the Hispanic cultural tradition; although they were stagnant, they had the capacity to evolve. In Cueva’s thinking, evolution was inevitable, albeit subject to human agency. Indigenous stagnation, their mimicking abilities, and their potential for agency and rebelliousness justified, in his lens, state intervention targeted at reforming indigenous psychology.

Jijón y Caamaño’s historical narrative differed markedly. For him, the prehistoric

Indians of Ecuador never developed a centralized government. Ecuadorian natives were quite primitive and the Incas of Peru were able to develop, in a short period of time, a dependant psychology among them expressed in the relationships between chiefs and common Indians (Jijón y Caamaño y Larrea 1918: 249-50). Nation-ness in his view—and in much the same way as other nineteenth century conservatives such as Lucas Alamán in

Mexico (Hale 1968)—began with the Spanish conquest rather than with a pre-colonial kingdom. In his interpretation, the Spanish had defeated the indigenous race, adapted

Inca institutions, and established a caste system based on the inferiority of Indians as

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embodied in language, biology, and culture (Jijón y Caamaño 1960 [1929]: 127). The

colonial encounter was the natural infusion of a superior “culture,” the meeting of a

superior and an inferior “race.”

Jaramillo explicitly refuted the idea that the Inca were responsible for the civilization exhibited by the natives of the Ecuadorian territory. In his view, the Shyri

were a highly civilized ruling elite who predated the arrival of the Inca (1922: 7-34).47

But he agreed that most of the common Indians were subject to servitude since remote times. In Jaramillo’s view, the Incas had repressed personal ambitions, although they did solve the basic needs of the people. The Spanish conquerors only deepened servitude by introducing cruelty and violence—exploitation—as part of an American feudal system that lacked the protective features of its European counterpart (1922: 29). Thus, and as

Cueva had argued, exploitation was a profound change from Inca to Spanish rule (1917:

95). For both of these liberal pensadores, the republic had replaced servitude with concertaje, in blatant disregard of the rights of indigenes. This was the dilemma that liberalism was now striving to overcome. Although, as we saw in Chapter 2, both Cueva and Jaramillo considered that the abolition of concertaje would free indigenous workers, state protection was nevertheless required to construct and protect equality. Indians were a vanquished but plastic race, apt for eventual citizenship. And in their contemporary evolutionary stage, the state had to protect them—by supervisory work contracts, education, and protection from mistreatment at the hand of Whites.

Jijón y Caamaño, on the other hand argued that feudalism had never been established in the Americas. In its place, he argued for three main features that articulated colonial and post-colonial society: Catholicism, the hacienda, and the casta (caste)

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system. For Jijón y Caamaño, the characteristic skin color, hair type, norms, and customs

of Indians transformed them, with the colonial encounter, into a separate caste clearly

differentiated from White and Black groups. He did recognize that the Spanish American

independence movement was based on modern principles of equality. But in his view

equality was impossible to enforce in an environment that demonstrated great differences

of wealth and education. The caste system persisted because of “cultural and historical

differences” (1960 [1934]: 199). Contemporary Indians had not yet understood that they

were citizens of a nation. Rather than citizenship, the hacienda system and Catholicism

had functioned to integrate the Indians into the Ecuadorian nation.

For Jijón y Caamaño, Catholicism brought people together who were otherwise

naturally divided into castes. It provided the Indian with a measure of equality: Catholic

rituals congregated the dominated and the dominators without regard to their “skin color”

(1960 [1929]: 143). But Jijón y Caamaño’s most developed proposal for the integration

of Indians was the hacienda. He argued that the hacienda was the institution that

protected and gave meaning to Indians. As a colonial institution, the hacienda protected

the Indian from the atrocities committed by the state bureaucracy; similarly, in modern

times, it protected them from the excesses of local officials. But the hacienda was also

rooted in pre-colonial Indian psychology: natives depended on the dominant classes for food and resources during periods of scarcity. The hacendado was a new curaca or Inca, who provided Indians with the support they needed (1960 [1929]: 124). Instead of abolishing concertaje, Jijón y Caamaño proposed that the society’s main responsibility was to educate Indians. Thus, Jijón y Caamaño posed both political and scientific

106 questions. The political question challenged the liberals to define who was the contemporary heir to the Inca: the hacendado or the state.

The Fear of Rebelliousness

The dispute about the historical narrative of the indigenous past emphasized both the conquest and the evolutionary track of Indians and questioned the native capacity for both resistance and future development, while underscore elite fears of Indian rebelliousness, a central piece in Aguirre theory of Ecuadorian social fears (1935). As we saw in Chapter 2, Alfaro’s 1896 call for reforms to better the condition of Indians referred to concierto workers as “furtive slaves that threatened the public peace;” they were, in short, a group waiting for a leader so that they might recover their liberty

(Convención Nacional de 1896-97 N.d.: 59). It was, in part, the notion of a vanquished race with an evolutionary capacity for change that sustained the Creole fear of potential rebellion among the natives.

The images generated by liberal intellectuals depicted agency in the indigenous race only as a response to the exploitation exercised against them. Conquest, exploitation, violence, and the evolutionary stagnation of Indians—all elements stored in their

“soul”—combined in their passive resistance to progress (Jaramillo 1922: 10) and were the deep causes of uprisings (Cueva 1917: 95). Cueva held that “social injustice has accumulated to the level of an explosive state of rebelliousness” (1984 [1915] 37-38), while Jaramillo argued that oppression was restrained by the fear of potential social revolution. He suggested that Fernando Daquilema’s 1871 uprising had been an attempt to restore the Quito Kingdom (Jaramillo 1922: V). Martínez, for his part, argued that hate and revenge were peculiar and inherited features of the indigenous race, and gave as examples several levantamientos (uprisings) and sublevaciones (revolts) that took place

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in Tungurahua. In his words, “A latent hate against the White exists among all Indians,

which unquestionably has been transmitted by atavism since colonial times” (Martínez

1993 [1916]: 214).

In contrast, Jijón y Caamaño’s vision of a dependent native and a weak pre-colonial society allowed him to deprive the Ecuadorian Indian of any historical agency, in contrast to Peruvian Indians who, as demonstrated by the movement of Tupac-Amaru in 1780, had seriously challenged the colonial regime. This rebellion, in his view, marked a difference between the southern and northern Andes. In the north the racial problem—the revenge of Indians against Whites—was absent (1924: 41). In making this differentiation, he dismissed racial revenge, although he had personally been affected by several small revolts among his own laborers as well as town people in a long conflict regarding the water use of the Acequia Grande Los Caciques, near Ibarra.

The print media reinforced the image of Indian uprisings and provided additional elements to sustain elite fears. Elites expressed fear of Indians in two distinct situations, both lacking in permanent policing staff: on the one hand, events where Indians invaded towns and threatened provincial highland cities while attacking state officials; and, on the other hand, events where Indians assaulted landlords and hacienda employees. Many times the media transmitted the news to the affected hacendados. Baud (1996: 220) reports that during this time landlords avoided sleeping in the hacienda’s house. But the most talked about and worrisome uprisings were those that threatened towns and provincial cities, a colonial and postcolonial White nightmare. Indeed, in 1916, the army

“preventively” killed twenty Indians that had laid siege to the town of San Felipe in the central province of León. The army’s Superintendent justified his repressive action by

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describing Indians as “anthropophagus,” and dispensable, a highly controversial

statement that was considered by highland pensadores as an affront against civilization

and humanity.48 Baud (1993, 1996), based in part in media information, describes how, in

1920, in the southern region near Cuenca, Indians attacked several state offices in small

towns and the regional elite feared that the rebels, who were surrounding the city, would

attack them. Indians played churos (shells used as sound long-distance communication

instruments), displayed red flags, and used weapons such as machetes, stones and,

occasionally, guns. A poem published by a weekly newspaper described the atmosphere

of Cuenca: “Reina el silencio del horror/ tanto es cierto que el pavor contagia como

llama” (Andrade 1920: 71).49

The next year, 1921, during an indigenous uprising in Chimborazo, the daily El

Comercio expressed concerns about the native hatred against Whites and a possible racial

war. Indians attacked and killed official staffs while invading the town of Guano, and,

then, marched on to Riobamba. The case was complicated by the fact that Indians who

lived in Guano were involved in the uprising. The media suggested that Indians from

Guano were showing a henceforth hidden sense of hatred and a desire of revenge because

of the loss of their condition as the original owners and masters of the continent. It also

stressed that contemporary society was vulnerable to Indian cruelty.50 Thus, the idea of

Indian revenge and rebelliousness was in the minds of all interpreters of Indian psychology.

Additional clues about the anxiety that the vanquished race conjured for contemporary society appears in a theatrical piece written by Academia member Proaño with the title of Quizquiz o el desastre de una raza (1919).51 The piece deals with the

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racial hatred that the local native nobility acquired during the Spanish conquest of the

Cara-Inca Kingdom. The play points to several factors that contributed to the defeat of

the natives, including superstition, political tensions, and the positive disposition of

women toward the conquerors. While women showed that they could establish contacts

with conquerors—they saw them as “nice and strong”—Cara men feared them because

they knew that their sons would become their slaves. As the conquest is enacted, a native

hero claims that natives have lost legal guarantees and rights, and that they have become

victims of the arbitrariness and cupidity of the powerful “foreign Whites.” But, at the

same time, he predicts that while oppression will be the fate of the vanquished race, “our

children will pay them with hate! … And some day, some day, Pachacamac’s justice will

avenge the outrages to our human dignity and rights. Pachacamac will send us a liberator

who will redeem us”(Proaño 1919: 98). In a similar vein, Paul Rivet (1977 [1906]: 110)

recalled that, among Indians, Atahualpa’s name evoked images of past injuries that had

not yet been avenged and argued that Indian uprisings expressed hate against the White invaders.

Thus the widespread notion of a “vanquished race” was associated with a negative, threatening image: potential Indian rebellion. The narrative of the vanquished race— reminiscent of Alfaro’s call—sounded a recurrent messianic theme: Indians were waiting for a redemptive leader. Proaño’s script thus decodes the janus face of the vanquished race: defeated but potentially rebellious. It was this double movement that framed the imagination of Whites regarding indigenous citizenship and governmentality, sparking fear, and drawing on sentiments of racial hate, an indigenous sense of dignity, and the latent unruliness of contemporary Indians.

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The Creole elite’s historical image of Indians mirrored, in part, their own social

fears. Imagining Indian history, the elite represented their own fear; in developing

policies and tactics to control and prevent their imaginary hate of Indians, a liberalism of fear came into being. A limited and tutored indigenous citizenship was crafted as part of this liberalism of fear. Indian rebelliousness, however, was seen as being different from accepted, modern forms of protest. Capitalist labor went on strike as a conscious act to defend their livelihood; in contrast, labor under servitude gathered around a caudillo and staged revolts and uprisings (Cueva 1984 [1915]: 38). As Velasco Ibarra (1919) concluded in his analysis of the debate on concertaje, the abolition of apremio personal opened the door to legitimate labor strikes.52 Following his argument, it is possible to see

that the debates about concertaje and native past were, in part, disputes about how to

govern the Indian race and, in the specific case of liberalism, about how to introduce

controls and discipline that would prevent revolts and the outbreak of racial hatred.

Vanquishing the ‘Evolved Indians’

Less clear in these visited disputes were the images about the plausible effects of

future Indian evolution. The implications of Indian “plasticity” or mimicking ability were

not fully spelled-out, even though most pensadores accepted Indian evolution. Pío

Jaramillo (1922) suggested that Indian evolution revealed two patterns: on the one hand,

blood mixture and, on the other, economic and educational mobility. Such a view led him

to recognize the participation of Indians in a process of upward social mobility. This

mobile segment could be seen in the military forces, the Catholic Church, among

landowners, and in the “pure Indians” of Saraguro and Otavalo.53 Increasingly, these

“evolved Indians”—as he called them—were mixed people. For example, the montuvio, in the coast, and the chazo,54 in the southern highlands, were Indians who had evolved

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and adjusted effectively to progress (Jaramillo 1922: 14 and 169-172). But, in spite of

this evolution they were still Indians; indigeniety had not been erased.

For several pensadores, the surviving Duchicela family in Guayaquil was proof of

the intellectual advance of the Indian nobility. This mobility was inclined to intellectual

tasks and, therefore, better adjusted to—national—culture (Destruge 1918: 134-35). But

it was not only the alleged native nobility that showed the ability for intellectual tasks;

community Indians also performed as schoolteachers, like, for example, Hilario Chango

among the Salasacas in Tungurahua. Thus, in the thought of many liberal pensadores, a

noble ancestry, racial interbreeding, education, military careers, and property opened the

door to the improvement and evolution of indigenes. The conservative Jijón y Caamaño,

predictability, disagreed; he saw indios as a more homogeneous group than did the

liberals. In his historical account, the Spanish soon absorbed the native nobility; all

Indians were subordinated as an inferior caste, becoming the “proletariat” of the

Americas (1960 [1929]: 128-135). The transfiguration of Indians into a proletariat echoes the debate about concertaje and recalls the idea of race as a metaphor of class domination

(Stoler 1995:127, Balibar, 1991). Jijón y Caamaño’s rhetoric made clear that the workers

were born as a vanquished race.

Some liberal and conservative intellectuals shared the notion that indigeneity

should be maintained, but ennobled. Martínez Jr. wrote: “I wish to Indians a civilization

that does not erase their virtues, only their vices and defects; a civilization that does not

shame them because of their race, but ennobles it” (1993 [1916]: 221-2). Similarly, Jijón

y Caamaño stressed the impossibility of Indians ever becoming White, or of adjusting

their mentality to that of the Whites; the challenge was to adapt Western civilization to

112 the aboriginal mentality and, thus, “ennoble” their basic culture.55 Therefore, in contrast to other unitary liberal assimilative perspectives, in liberal Ecuador, the question of

indigenous assimilation remained an open question that would acquire centrality during

the following decades.56

Notes

1 For Ecuadorian pensadores, Indian servitude and the remote Indian past were the initial inspiration of such a rediscovery. Foreign academics that resided in the country, such as Paul Rivet and Max Uhle, were instrumental in the development of “Ecuadorian ethnology.” Max Uhle produced a bibliographic compilation of the field that included records published between the end of the XIX century and 1925 (Uhle 1926, 1927). Most of the local production, however, came after 1900, once the liberal government was established. Although Uhle excluded conspicuous works that dealt with contemporary concertaje, the compilation provides an image of the academic work of the time. More than half of the essays dealt with archeological and prehistoric explorations, while forty percent of the citations were ethnographic descriptions focusing on language, religion, and folklore. The most studied region was the highlands; the coast and the Amazon basin received far less attention. Half of the production was published in Ecuador, close to forty percent in Europe, and the remainder in the United States. The authors were both local and foreign, and the latter were mostly European. Although most of the European works were not written in Spanish, local intellectuals knew several languages and the texts that they considered important were translated and published locally (i.e., Paul Rivet’s).

2 Roig (1977) reveals that positivism appeared late in Ecuador and overlapped with what he called “spiritual positivism,” a Spanish reaction against positivism. However, following Hale’s (1989) history of Mexican ideas, it is possible to state that these diverse intellectual tendencies resembled the divergent positivisms of August Comte and Herbert Spencer, the first based on solidarity and the second on individuals, but both inspired by independence from the state. Paradoxically, positivism in Latin America exhibited a vocation linked to state power and scientific construction of politics (Hale 1989). In Ecuador, the exploration of the social features of collective psychology exhibited two starting points. While positivists were centered on biology (Belisario Quevedo, Julio Endara and Angel Modesto Paredes), spiritualists were more interested on popular soul and sentiments (Pío Jaramillo Alvarado and Agustín Cueva). However, pensadores stressed one or another perspective depending the issue under debate.

3 Prominent elite members were, at different times, part of this initiative, including Carlos Tobar y Borgoño, Abelardo Moncayo, Luis Felipe Borja, Archbishop Federico González Suárez, Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, Agustín Cueva, Pío Jaramillo, Belisario Quevedo, Luis A. Martínez, Nicolás Martínez, and Homero Viteri. These figures had different economic foundations: while some of them had large rural and urban properties and industries, others made their living as professors and public workers.

4 Carlos Tobar y Borgoño, Agustín Cueva, Pío Jaramillo, among others, were professors at the Central University; Belisario Quevedo was a professor and director of the most important high school of Quito, the Instituto Mejía.

5 José Peralta tried a similar connection to socialist ideas based on a spiritual epistemological foundation. This socialism searched for happiness, universal brotherhood, and the extirpation of poverty and inequalities (Roig 1977: 64-65)

6 Later, the Universidad Central engaged Uhle and Jijón to teach and research prehistory while the School of Medicine developed an interest in Indians through its classes in hygiene, psychiatry, and anatomy (see Chapter 5).

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7 The manifesto contained a critique of local liberalism, which had been unable to end Indian servitude, and put forth a proposal for the suppression of all forms of slavery that produced or threatened social unrest (Jaramillo 1922: 11). As we will se later, the label “indigenista” was introduced in the local community by the 1930s. The manifesto was closer to romanticism than positivism. Jaramillo criticized social Darwinism, while maintaining the notions of progress and evolution (Jaramillo 1922: 18).

8 The Sociedad and the University followed practices developed by the Spanish cultural movement known as the “Krausismo Español,” including extension programs and cultural missions for the molding of the people’s soul.

9 Political economy ideas inspired student’s thesis like “La propiedad desde el punto de vista sociológico” by Leonidas García (1906); “La tasa del salario” by A. Moscoso (1905); “El salario” by José C. Valencia (1906); and “Estudio sobre el salario” by Raúl González (1912).

10 From North American sociologists, Cueva developed the notion of consciousness as the generator of social solidarity, as well as of people governed not only by force and repression, but by collective national sentiments—what Cueva considered the field of people’s psychology. To him, national sentiments did not suppose the unity of races and languages, but a shared spirit. But contrary to his inspirational sources, he believed that political authority—expressed in the state—together with sociability had the ability to shape this spirit, which would eventually become the spirit of the nation. In his discourse, he reframed Fouillée’s notion of “key force” to stress the national spirit (Cueva 1919). At the same time, Cueva was connected to Adolfo Posada, a member of the Spanish Krausist cultural movement that criticized material positivism. Posada himself defined this cultural movement in Spain as an attempt to reinstate liberty, avoid revolutions, and improve the people’s soul. In this context, coercion and violence were considered contrary to the efficacy of rights (Posada 1981: 103).

11 Martínez was involved in several scientific expeditions to Andean peaks and was trained in the natural sciences at the astronomic observatory of Quito by the French scientist Francoise.Gonnessiat. He traveled to the coastal region, the Amazonian basin, and highlands, ascended several mountains, and wrote and published travel accounts and histories of volcano eruptions. He was a passionate painter of landscapes, an acute observer of diverse natural phenomena, and an amateur photographer, who believed in the notion that scientific description should reflect original facts, much as photographs did (Rodríguez 1994).

12 Previously, Abelardo Moncayo (1986 [1912]) had established a distinction between “free Indians” (comuneros) and concierto Indians. Williams (2001: 31-36) traces back this bifurcation to the mid nineteenth century.

13 He stated that most of the chagras and cholos were “Indians dressed like White people” (Martínez 1993 [(1916]: 220). However, the meanings of both categories were complex and open to debate. Generally speaking, cholos—a label developed during the XIX century—were mixed people of Indian and White blood; but the label was sometimes used to refer to uneducated Indians (Carvalho-Neto 1964: 176). Chagras, on the other hand, were rural or provincial people that migrated to Quito (Carvalho-Neto 1964: 157).

14 Tiruaña’s name sounds similar to that of a petitioner to Congress that asked for reinstating prison as a punishment for unfulfilled concierto contracts.

15 The notion of a peculiar indigenous psychology was in the forum since early republican times (Roig 1979), but became better known with the local development of sociology.

16 The extirpation of the native language was a tactic also suggested by conservatives (González Suárez 1988 [1911]).

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17 Cueva traces the notion of race as a mutable category to Georges Buffon, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde, among others. He argued that Arthur de Gobineoau was the one who promoted the notion of inferior and superior races, a statement that was accepted in Germany (Cueva 1984 [1915]: 35), and repeated by Gustave Le Bon in Europe, and by Francisco García Calderón, José Ingenieros, and Carlos Bunge in Latin America.

18 The issue of how environment shaped races and how the psychological features were acquired was not clearly developed among pensadores of this period. Espinosa (1916) had developed the notion that people’s psychological features were the result of environmental influences and social imitation. In turn, these features were printed in people´s brains; but, at the same time, they were mutable during the course of a generation. Like in other Latin American republics (Stepan 1991), it is possible to argue that Ecuadorian elites assumed this neo-Lamarckian conception of human heredity.

19 While he criticized racism, he also proposed an immigration policy in order to increase and improve the local population (Cueva 1917: 97). It is not clear how he conceived this policy, a measure that could be read as a whitening policy given his idea that all races had positive values (Cueva 1984 [1915]).

20 Including the conservatives and wealthy elite members, Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, Carlos Manuel Larrea, and Luis F. Borja (Jr.). In time, liberal members were incorporated into to act as bridges between the conservatives and liberals sides.

21 Una feliz idea, El Comercio, 25 July 1909.

22 Archeology in the Academia’s perspective was not only a science of prehistory. Art works and cultural artifacts from different periods were subjected to archeological inquiry (Boletín,1921: 287-288).

23 The Academia’s members maintained an ambiguous position about traditions, because to them it was difficult to discover “truth” in traditions that have been stored in memory, instead of in written records. Traditions kept by Indians became less useful to trace truth because of their “rudimentary” mentality.

24 The Boletín included reviews about physical anthropology –an area that had no local practitioner at the time, although Jijón did collect and analyze osseous remains. Jijón was very interested on this field and later sponsored Antonio Santiana, a physician, to study physical anthropology.

25 The line between his personal agenda and the institution’s was thin, and at several moments there was manifest confusion about property rights and decision-making; this tension finally resulted in the end of the management model by 1925.

26 Most of the Academia’s members were fascinated with the idea of science and, at the same time, they were also deeply motivated by their religious beliefs as Catholic militants. A paradigmatic case was Jijón y Caamaño; his scientific practice was embedded on his traditional and conservative worldview and on his belonging to a prominent landowner and industrial family.

27 In 1917, González Suárez wrote a letter to Manuel María Pólit narrating his fieldwork experiences and the risks he took collecting pottery and skeletons and doing drawings. Local people, he recalled, did not understand why he was interested in the remains of “indios gentiles.” Joaquín Pinto, the well-known constumbrista painter, accompanied him in some explorations and sketched and painted both remains and living people (Carta del Arzobispo Federico González Suárez, El Comercio, 19 March 1918).

28 He remained in Europe for several years and participated in the Americanist Congress in London. In Paris he took a course on comparative religion, met Paul Rivet, who had lived and conducted research in Ecuador as a member of the expedition that measured the Equator between 1901-1906. Rivet trained Jijón y

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Caamaño in the techniques of physical anthropology and presumably in stratigraphy and ceramic and language classification. He also visited Germany, where he learned about cultural diffusion, and Spain, where he worked in the Archivo de Indias. He copied tons of documents and shipped them home. During this trip, Jijón y Caamaño published his first scholarly articles about the Incas.

29 They planned a scientific expedition to Peru that was not authorized by the local government. They refocused the project to trace the relationships between “Peruvian” and “Ecuadorian” cultures, including the Incas. Max Uhle undertook a series of excavations and studies in the south that had a tremendous impact among Cuenca’s elite. In 1924, at the suggestion of professor Cueva, the Universidad Central engaged Uhle to lecture about American archeology. This appointment unlocked the door to a more stable agreement that lasted until 1933, when he returned to Germany.

30 As an archeologist, Jijón y Caamaño strove to distance himself from contemporary Indians as an object of reflection, in spite of his close relationship to them as landowner and industrialist; in the latter role he had personally experienced social unrest and labor problems. In his archeological papers he introduced comments about the survival of primitive cultural fragments and, more importantly, he wrote papers—that he never published—about how to collect anthropological materials, an unfinished ethnography of the Chillo Valley near Quito, and commentaries about the institution of concertaje.

31 Although there are few records of what happened behind the scenes, the most systematic trace we have of his excavation practices are the letters that he exchanged with Max Uhle that are housed by the AHBCE. Of special interest are ANBCE CJJC #02262, #01893 and #01902

32 Jijón y Caamaño’s proposal was based on a conservative view of the social as a holy construction, subjected to evolution and observation but excluded from human experimentation, except those mental features that bettered and civilized people and were in (Western and White) god’s designs (Roig 1979: 56).

33 Carta del Arzobispo Federico González Suárez, El Comercio, 19 March 1918.

34 Homero Viteri (1917), after examining primary school students, stated that education in history lacked method and appropriate contents and called for reforms to do away with Velasco’s myth. Belisario Quevedo proposed a reform of educational approaches in the teaching of history and prepared a school text that did not refer to Velasco’s tale (1919-1921). Similarly, during an annual teacher training course, Jijón y Caamaño and Viteri instructed teachers in educational methods and exposed them to their critique of Velasco’s story (Conferencias. Quito, El Comercio, 26 September 1918). But later, Jaramillo reported that Viteri, during a lecture in Guayaquil, had recommended that teachers refer to Velasco’s account as a “legend” and not as historical truth (1922: LXXVIII).

35 Pensadores of Cuenca, who considered themselves part of an aristocrat elite, believed that they were the successors of the native nobility and proposed the revitalization of the Quichua language, in a move that recalls Valcárcel’s indigenista group in Cuzco (Poole 1977; de la Cadena, 2000). Paul Rivet and Max Uhle had strong influences on Cuenca’s elite, an issue that needs further research.

36 Proaño’s arguments were articulated in several articles, published in the front page of Riobamba’s newspaper El Obervador and later re-printed by El Comercio in Quito.

37 When he died, argued Proaño, the cacicazgo came to his wife and then to a Redemptorist priest who declined to be called Francisco Javier Lobato Duchicela (Proaño 1918a).

38 For example, Proaño narrated that Mayancela had a distinguished taste and style. He had several haciendas and both Indian and Black servants. Mayancela asked a well-known artist to paint Duchicela kings as well as Atahualpa, that Proaño had personally seen; however, the paintings had been recently sold. At the same time, however, his home in Yaruquíes was falling to pieces (Proaño 1918c).

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39 Years before Proaño had pointed that Daquilema refused this designation and described him as a Christian who advised the Indians not to rebel in the future (Ibarra 1993: 12). Sattar (2002) argues that Daquilema’s uprising was a response to mid-century policies that abolished Indian tribute and reinforced the privatization of communal lands. Moreover, she advances that it was a protest against Indian authorities—including the Duchicela family—who were unable to protect common Indians. Thus, it is plausible that Proaño imagery attempted to erase the ambiguous role played by Indian elites during colonial and early post-colonial times, while stressing the Christian tradition among Indians. But more important, the Daquilema uprising recalled the image of town people been attacked by Indians.

40 Years later, Gabriel Navarro (1930) and Oberem (1981 [1968]) elaborated a genealogy of Atahualpa’s descendents in Quito that did not support the connection of contemporary Duchicela family and Atahualpa.

41 He describes the ritual: “Inca Palla symbolic feats. Fiesta that is celebrated each year in Licán, commemorating Huayana Capac’s wedding—the conqueror of the Quito Kingdom—to Paccha Duchicela, daughter of the Shiri Cacha, represented by two children, accompanied by a court of Ambassadors from Cuzco, Cañar, Huancavilca, Quito, Caranqui and the Jibaría from Pastaza. They have gathered to congratulate the monarchs. A Guaninga guard is present. The Shiri-Pacha Duchicela, Huayna Capac’s wife, was born in Cacha and was Atahualpa’s mother” (AHBCE, CJJC #02258).

42 The Quechua language was the official language of the Inca Empire; the common language of the Ecuadorian region is called Quichua.

43 Pío Jaramillo and Félix Proaño maintained an active correspondence about the Quito Kingdom. Proaño informed Jaramillo that he was a partisan and friend of indigenous people. He supported actions in favor of indigenes framed in Catholic principles of charity and brotherhood (BPJA, Loja, Correspondencia Pío Jaramillo A., # 809.6 J37c, Letter from Félix Proaño to Pío Jaramillo, 16.07.24).

44 The Chibchan language family stretches from northern South America to Central America.

45 Polemics around the Quito Kingdom acquired new meanings in the aftermath of the Ecuador-Peru- territorial conflict. Velasco’s narrative was used as proof of Ecuador’s rights over Amazonian territories (Willingham 2001: 257-299). Contemporary archeology has discarded the notion of the Kingdom of Quito and replaced it by what Frank Salomon (1986) called “ethnic lords,” the co-existence of several ethnic groups during the pre-Inca times in the current Ecuadorian territory. This author emphatically pointed that Velasco history is a myth and none of its assertions have been verified by historical and archeological research (Salomon 1986: 12). However, school textbooks and professors still disseminate Velasco’s history as a mixture of historical truth and legend. Moreover, contemporary Indian intellectuals have suggested the need to bring back for public discussion the topic of the pre-historical reign.

46 Diverse authors inspired evolutionary approaches. As in Mexico, Hebert Spencer and ideas of social Darwinism influenced the intellectual practices of local liberals. Adolf Bastian, the historical diffussionist who visited Ecuador during the times of García Moreno, was the inspirational source of conservative archeologists. But as suggested by Hale (1989: 251-252), Spencer’s individualist ideas were in tension with Comtean social ideas that reunited the individual and society and in Latin American there were these Comtean perspectives that supported state reforms directed at Indians (1989: 251-252).

47 Jaramillo and several pensadores distinguished the Spanish and the Inca conquests. The Shyri people were vanquished at the same time that they conquered the Inca through “love”. Therefore the Inca conquest was a romantic event, while the Spanish action was characterized by exploitation.

48 La hecatombe de indios en San Felipe, El Comercio, 06 April 1916.

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49 The silence of horror governs [the city]/ and this is so true that fear has been expanded like a flame/ (Andrade 1920: 71).

50 La lucha de razas, El Comercio, 22 May 1921.

51 This theater piece belongs to a gender called the “Inca theater” that was quite common during this period. It received positive comments by local pensadores and a prize in Colombia. It was exhibited in Riobamba, Loja, Cañar, Gualaceo, Cotacachi, San José de Chimbo, and Santiago de Bolívar.

52 It is important to remember that the acceptance of strikes as a legitimate weapon changed during the 1930s when communists and socialists appropriated this expression of social discontent.

53 Two highlands Quichua groups that have been considered examples of mitmaes or mobile groups from Inca times, displaced to pacify local people.

54 Chazo was a regional name for the mixed White and Indian peasants; also represented in several contexts as Indians.

55 El indio ecuatoriano. Con motivo de un libro y una conferencia, ca. 1923 (AHBCE, CJJC # 02001).

56 Today, authors recovering indigenous history in Latin America have stressed assimilation, ethnocide, and the promotion of mestizaje as central tenants of liberal discourses (Platt 1985, Gould 1998, Clark 1998, and de la Cadena 2000). Ecuadorian pensadores of the turn of the century, however, did not discuss mestizaje; they shared a notion of biological mestizaje as the natural process of evolution of all races. Mestizaje became a topic of discussion during the 1930s.

CHAPTER 4 POLITICAL DEBATES ON THE REPRESENTATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF INDIAN COMMUNITIES, ca. 1925-1945

In 1925, a coup d’état promoted by middle rank military officers and known as the

“Revolución Juliana” rekindled the discussion of equality and protection. The political

change opened an unstable period (1925-1948) in which short democratic regimes

interchanged jefes supremos (supreme chiefs) and encargados del poder (temporary

rulers). Twenty-two different governments took office during this turbulent period

(Rodríguez 1985: 213-214), and four national assemblies prepared, in different

opportunities, the legal basis to reinstate democracy. In the midst of such political

volatility, the Congress functioned between 1928 and 1935 and restarted again in 1937. It

was a site to debate diverse perspectives regarding the social question. Throughout this period, equality remained the foundation of the social question and state offices were assigned the task of promoting both equality and protection for the underprivileged, of advancing an image of the public good.

Ecuadorian historiography sees the Revolución Juliana as a major crisis of the

“liberal oligarchic regime” sparked by popular discontents and economic crises.1 Political

and economic crises, intermingled with the Great Depression, led to a more protected

economy and to more conservative governments (Quintero 1980).2 At the same time, the

period opened the Revolución Juliana has been described as a failed attempt by the

emergent highland middle class and the intellectuals to reorganize the state as a more

effective administrator of the nation’s population; the state lacked the necessary resources

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to effectively carry out this function as a response to increasing social unrest (Cueva

1973: 22-29). Indeed, new state institutions were created such as the Ministerio de

Previsión Social (Ministry of Social Welfare), and the number of public workers and the

state budget were increased, albeit insufficiently.3 However, Rodríguez (1985) suggests

that there were strong continuities with the earlier liberal revolutionary time with respect

to the state financial strategies and the search of public policies. Ecuadorian

historiography has also called attention to the increasing political participation of the

popular classes, together with the establishment of leftist parties (Cueva 1988).4 These

developments introduced new themes into the liberal rhetoric.

During this period, the liberal elite’s agenda regarding the Indians was

characterized by the discussion of protection by way of such issues as the corporate

representation of the Indian race, communal administration, community lands, native languages, rural education, and labor regulations. Doubts were raised about how to name the natives–“Indian race,” “indigenes,” or “peasants”—and what the protection of the

Indian race implied. For example, a liberal representative to Congress, while discussing tax relief to the Indian communities, stressed that protection of the Indian meant protection of “the rural poor.”5 By 1938, the notion of race was removed from the

Constitution, native languages were officially recognized, and protection was targeted to

“Indians” (instead of the “Indian race”). However, the official rhetoric continued to be

pervaded by the notion of an “Indian race.” Most discussions stressed the collective side

of Indians or indigenes, a belief that was at the core of legislative and public debates on

the senadores funcionales (functional or corporate senators) and the comunidad de indios

(Indian community).

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This chapter explores these debates. First, I visit the congressional controversy regarding the Senador Funcional por la Raza India (the Corporate Senator of the Indian

Race) and how indigenous leaders appropriated this ventriloquist model of liberal representation. Second, I review the complex legal and congressional discussions regarding the Indian community. The first controversy was sustained mainly in Congress while the debate regarding the community was mostly promoted by the state and held in

Congress, as well as in several state agencies. Following the work of Andrés Guerrero, my main interest is to explore these discussions in terms of Foucault’s (1984, 1991a) notion of “population management”, the modern strategies of subject formation and governmentality based on the production of knowledges. In contrast to the scholarly notion that liberal ideas in Latin America during this period were replaced by neo- corporate rhetoric (Jacobsen 1977; Lomnitz 2001), I argue that, in the case of Ecuador liberalism, continued to guide the social question. Liberal perspectives sought social equality and the common good, and to achieve these goals the state developed strategies of social control of the natives and the pueblo.

Corporate Representation of the Indian Race

The notion of liberal political citizenship entailed direct representation and delegation. Several authors (Anderson 1991[1983]; Thurner 1997; Guerrero 1997), however, have emphasized that indigenes were the subject of ventriloquist paths of representation: other agents were selected to represent and speak for them. In contrast to citizens who elected their representatives, Indians did not share this prerogative. Inspired by Spain, the Ecuadorian Constitution of 19296 established that collective interest groups and corporations–including the raza india—would elect their own parliamentary representatives. But the native’s corporate representative was filled without any

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consultation of or participation by those represented. The liberal indigenista Pío Jaramillo

had imagined a representative designated in consultation with Indian syndicates

(Jaramillo 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 153). In 1937, however, indigenous groups and leaders

demanded this representation, an indication that they were attentive to the openings

offered by elite discourses.

The Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria introduced, at the beginning of the century, the idea of corporate representation, inspired on the Spanish model of guild representatives

(Mosquera 1903: 89-90). The Sociedad proposed that groups with particular interests should enjoy parliamentary representation since, under the liberal electoral system of one man one vote, they risked being left without a voice. Since in their everyday affairs individuals sought representation through guilds or associations, it was thought that

Congress should reflect this reality by becoming an assembly of different professions and social classes. At the same time, the model was viewed as a way to hinder the government’s unilateral intervention in the election of representatives, to control corruption, and to dismantle the basis of caudillismo.

The 1928-29 Assembly approved this corporate mechanism. This session had, for the first time, elected socialist members, most of them originally from liberal ranks. As a result, liberal ideas about social problems became intermingled with socialist propositions. The proposal for corporate congressional representation, prepared by radical liberal pensadores, included delegates from education, agriculture, trade, industry, the military, workers, peasants, and the raza india. Each category was to have two representatives, one from each region, the highlands and the coast (Asamblea Nacional de

1928-29, 1930: 438). This initial proposal was amended several times before it was

122 approved. With regard to the raza india as a represented corporate group, the Assembly debated the issue of how to determine membership, who would be a suitable representative, and what method would be used to select the representative.

From the beginning, conservatives—as well as certain liberal congressmen—were against including Indians and peasants in the corporate representation system; most liberals and the new socialists, on the other hand, supported the idea. To them the representation of subaltern groups was justified by the need to give people of inferior condition a means to voice their aspirations. One socialist persuaded his colleagues about the need for a peasant representative by arguing that taking away their voices in Congress would open the path to violence. If Congress would allow peasants to express their ideas and aspirations in an orderly and open manner, this sector would have no need to resort to public protests. But in the case of the representative of the Indian race, proponents did not emphasize their need to have a voice. Rather, they spoke of the Indian’s lamentable condition and irrational behavior. Representatives argued that landlords and the public bureaucracy exploited them and that they existed outside of civilized life. It was necessary to put an end to their barbaric condition, which was exhibited not only in their

“exotic clothes” but also in “the stupidity of their faces.”7

Some liberals and conservative landowners fought against the proposition. One parliamentarian–who later became an Indian race representative himself—attacked it by saying that although the notion of corporate representatives was a plausible innovation, the idea that Indians would acquire their own representative was “an inadequate fantasy.”

He asked who the Indians were, and what function would they have in Congress. Were they the people who wore ponchos and “rustic underwear,” or those who worked as

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“peasants?” This future Indian representative argued that since the proposal entrusted the

selection of the representative to the Central University, they were likely to select a

professor interested in native issues, a type of representation that was redundant given the

fact that all congressmen had, at one time or another, engaged in “civic actions for the

betterment of Indians.” In his view, to provide Indians with a representative who did not

live and feel as they did was a “joke.” In response, a defender of the proposal argued that

it would be a “beautiful” representation, especially in the event that a true Indian might

come to Congress wearing poncho and rustic underwear, exhibiting to other congressmen

the miseries of his people. Such a spectacle, in his view, would certainly awaken their

enthusiasm to tackle the “cultural problem” of the masses. However, the widespread

opinion was that Indians did not exhibit the civic credentials necessary to be in Congress,

and that they also lacked the required civic associations to choose their own

representative.

But, at the same time, the image of their role as politicians suggested to them the convenience of granting this representation. One congressman, for instance, stressed that through this representative the assembly would come nearer to the solution of the indigenous problem, since they would now be fully incorporated into the nation and participate in the solutions to their needs. In other words, an Indian representative was a

step toward the integration of indigenes into the political community. In contrast to

peasants, Indians had needs but no voice and their needs could be translated by

intellectuals and debated by Congress.

But the questions of who was an Indian, and who would be their best representative

needed more reflection. Liberal pensadores, stressing that the representative could not be

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a philanthropist who felt sorry for Indians, argued that Indians were a “peculiar

Ecuadorian nationality” with its own behaviors and mentality, spoke strange languages,

dwelled in “a particular type of houses,” and wore picturesque clothing. Eventually, the

Assembly agreed that, in the case of Indians, direct representation was not possible because Indian could not participate in the process of selecting their own representative.

Moreover, it would be a contradiction to grant them corporate representation while excluding illiterate adults, most of whom were Indians, from the right to vote.

The majority of the Assembly’s members could not accept the possibility of an

Indian coming to Congress, so they approved the motion to create an Indian race representative under the title of a “representative for the tutelage and protection of the

Indian race.” The question of how this representative would be chosen remained open.

The initial proposal named the Central University of Quito as the institution with the credentials to select the representative; it had professors that studied Indians and young people open to “generous” ideas such as the “redemption” of Indians. However, during the discussion, the Assembly moved the election from the University to the Council of

State (Consejo de Estado).8 Therefore, the executive function would select the representative of the Indian race. As result, White liberal landlords and politicians became “Indian race representatives” during the 1930s, while the representatives of worker and peasant organizations opened the door of Congress to leftist politicians.

Indians Responses

Before the 1930s, there were cases of “Indian” representatives, but named by the military and the state offices. For example, the mediator role that the liberal government granted to Colonel Morocho in the midst of an Indian uprising in the area of Chimborazo was one such case. He was asked to help in the pacification of the area.9 Similar interests

125 in securing a broker can be seen in the case of a petition that indigenous communities from Chimborazo made to the President asking him to name Colonel Cornelio

Tenelema10 as their representative. The recently created Ministry of Social Welfare responded by naming him as the representative from these provincial communities in all matters regarding the central government. Responding to this designation, Tenelema signed a number of petitions presented to several governmental offices, including

Congress in the name of Chimborazo communities.11

But it was during the 1937-38 Assembly that indigenous groups asked for a seat in

Congress.12 First, an indigenous group petitioned Federico Páez, a temporary ruler, for a seat in the Assembly, but their request was never answered. Later, when the Assembly was installed, they insisted in a letter that Luis Felipe Huaraca Duchicela XVI—the alleged descendant of the royal Shyri and Inca of the Tahuantinsuyo—be recognized as the representative of the indigenous race to Congress. The petition was signed by Antonio

Carrillo Morocho from the “Puruhá” community of Chimborazo; José Yachay from the

Llachacunga communities; Antonio Lasso, as colonel of the Inca military forces; Leoncio

Parrales as Secretary of the Inca Party; and Gabriel Rodríguez as representative of the

Cañaris people.

This group argued that with a genuine representative the Assembly would acquire political and social legitimacy; Duchicela, as someone of their own blood, would speak properly for the indigenous population and defend their interests.13 Duchicela, a schoolteacher from Guayaquil, had been in the public arena since the celebration of the

Atahualpa centennial and was singled out as a case study during the disputes about concertaje labor and the Kingdom of Quito (see Chapters 2 and 3 above). He claimed to

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be a descendant of Inca Atahualpa. He sought several times to acquire official recognition

of his lineage with the support of some of Alfaro’s indigenous military. Antonio Lasso,

one of the petitioners, was a peasant from Galte, Chimborazo, who was known as a

cabecilla (leader)14 of an uprising in 1934-5 and had been associated with leftist writers

and politicians.15

Several attempts to construct an indigenous leadership to represent the race were

under way. The notion of a redemptive leader that would redeem Indians from their

abject condition acquired some force. An interesting case was that of Luis Atthy,

supposedly a member of the Indian elite, who lived in San Francisco in the United States

and presented himself as the future leader of his race. He claimed that he had practical

and theoretical preparation to guide his race in order to overcome subjugation. Thus,

educated Indians remade the ventriloquist representation of the Indian; leadership, rather

than indigenous consultation and feelings, was the key element in this tactic. Education

provided the tools to interpret the Indians.16

The Assembly was shocked by Duchicela’s petition and dismissed it because had come without the “established seal.”17 But the congressmen were not the only ones who

were shocked. El Comercio, Quito’s leading newspaper published a satirical cartoon with

the caption “Duchicela and the constitutional soup” (see Figure 6).18 The cartoon

depicted the royal but diminutive Duchicela shoeless and wearing a poncho before a tall

White parliamentarian dressed in an impeccable tuxedo. By depicting Duchicela as a

miserable Indian, the cartoon clearly minimized his nature. Yet, in an ambiguous way,

the cartoon also assigned Duchicela the role of mirror of the parliamentarian. Duchicela

looks up at the elegant congressman who is serving up a dubious constitutional soup of

127 reforms, including the elimination of the position of Indian representative. But the cartoon also suggested the inability of Duchicela to understand Congress.

But the indigenous petitions for a genuine representative to Congress were not over. The next year, José Amaguaña, Manuel Ulcuango, José Anchaluza, Mariano Pilla, among others, students from the Normal Uyumbicho, asked for an Indian representative to Congress and also for the official recognition of the Quichua language. They presented themselves as “indigenous citizens” concerned with the progress of their “brothers in blood.” They argued that,

the representation of Indians… must be genuine and not fictitious, because until the voice of Indians is heard in Congress and we are given positions in the government and in schools, it will not be possible to speak of a unitary and egalitarian nation. We are sure… that when a translation into Quichua of the Election Law is ordered, we the Indians will know how to demand our own representatives who will know how to convey our needs in any language…19

Figure 6: Duchicela and the constitutional soup

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Luis Felipe Borja Jr., the conservative pensador that wrote the constitutional

proposal debated during the 1937-38 Assembly, avoided the issue of corporate

representation. To justify his position, Borja recalled previous arguments that claimed

that Indian representation was unnecessary since all congressmen were capable of dealing

with the needs of Indians and introducing social reforms.20 But contrary to Borja’s draft,

the Assembly maintained corporate representatives for rural workers and several other

interest groups, but not one for Indians or indigenes (Constitución 1938, art. 31). The short-lived episode of corporate Indian representation, and its subsequent cancellation after Indians asked for direct representation, can be read as an elite response framed by fear. Elites did not want Indians in the Congress and the episode clearly showed that literate Indians could appropriate the liberal discourse of citizenship and representation.

Consulting the Indians: The 1944-45 Aperture

Years later, a proposal to name a representative of the Indians was reintroduced in

Congress as part of a strategy to enlarge the political community and promote national reconstruction in the aftermath of the war with Peru. This time, however, the proposal included a process of consultation with Indian groups and spoke of a representative of organizaciones de indios (Indian organizations), similar to what the liberal Jaramillo

(1983 [1936], Vol. II: 153) had proposed years before. In this political aperture, communist militants created the Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (Ecuadorian

Federation of Indians) and it was this organization that chose a White communist physician to represent what was called the “indigenous race” in the 1944-45 Assembly.21

Once again, the issues of how to identify members of the indigenous race and how their representative was to be selected were raised, though this time liberals, and mostly socialists, did not agree on the issue of representation.22 They argued that

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“sociologically” it was not right to locate Indians as a “peculiar population” and insisted

instead that they were part of the peasantry. In their view, the peasantry of the highlands

represented “indigenes.” In his rebuttal to this argument, one communist representative

revised the old notion of an “Indian nationality” and insisted that the “indigenous

question” was both “a class as well as a national problem.”23 While Indians belonged to

diverse social categories in rural and urban settings, they were racially oppressed and subjected to servitude. At the same time, one congressman argued that it would be difficult to codify a process for choosing an indigenous representative since Indians lacked civic associations, an argument that disturbed the communists.24 For Ecuadorian

communists, the starting point of the discussion was the existence of civic associations

and syndicates apt to select a representative.25 No one seemed to recall the previous

appeals by indigenes for their own seat in Congress.

In the end, it was the existence of diverse native languages that was taken as proof

that Indians were a peculiar group that warranted special treatment, and it was the intervention of a conservative congressman who supported the idea of an Indian representative that prompted the approval of the motion. During the last round of debate, the communist advocate for the Indian cause made clear that he was not speaking about a

“racial war” but about “deep social and political peculiar problems.” The final remarks by a conservative enhanced the idea that Indians did constitute a peculiar group that required special treatment because they were in an inferior condition. The refusal to grant them a representative would simply maintain the Indian problem as an “unburied cadaver.”

More than a decade since the first corporate representation was approved, Congress

agreed that Indian syndicates could choose their own representative. In this process,

130 indigenous leaders and institutions appropriated the language of Indian corporate representation in ways that suggest the “double gesture” of liberal citizenship described by Wilder (1999)—at once subjecting them and promising them a voice. The discussion of Indian corporate citizenship, however, soon vanished as Congress veered more and more to the right. In the next year, a new Assembly revised again the constitutional foundation of the nation and decided to eliminate Indian representation even though it retained the institution of corporate representatives for years to come. Indians and peasants—but not workers—lost their corporate congressional representation.

The Indian Community

In Ecuador, as in other Andean nations (Larger and Jackson 1997; Jacobsen 1997;

Safford 1991), the privatization of Indian communal lands together with the abolition of

Indian taxes had been major targets of nineteenth century state tactics—since Bolívar—to transform Indians into citizens. In Ecuador, different legal initiatives started a long-term process that eroded Indian communities. Decrees issued in 1854 and 1865 recognized

Indian communal property while opening the “remnant” communal lands to public auctions to support public works and education. Later, an 1867 decree recognized communal property rights to all people, regardless of their race. An open question was whether or not these legal measures dissolved Indian communities. Sattar (2002: 262), analyzing the case of Chimborazo, suggests that during this time Indian communities were almost dissolved, as haciendas continued to expand and that the state moved from collective relations with communities to individual relations with Indians. In contrast,

Ibarra (1987: 60-70) describes the effects of these policies in the Indian communities of

Tungurahua: though they promoted small Indian and Mestizo property, most of the

Indian collective lands remained undivided. Williams (2001) is also persuaded about the

131 continuity of Indian communities in Imbabura and points to the conflicting effects of the period’s laws. Indian communities, the central government, local municipalities, and

White landowners disputed communal land. Indeed, the long-standing disputes regarding land between haciendas and communities as well as municipalities support the idea that

Indian communities were still alive at the beginning of the twentieth century. Several communal disputes occupied the attention of congressmen; they did not share a unique frame to handle community issues. They had questions regarding the status and contracts of communal lands as well how to represent them.

Community Indians were a special social category. Martínez described these

Indians as living in an independent kind of nation, controlling a vast territory in which the national state had no authority, and under the control of their own traditional cabecillas or headmen (1993 [1916]: 211). But in contrast to the pensadores who stressed their freedom (Moncayo, 1986[1916]: 315; Jaramillo, 1983 [1923], Vol. I: 233), Martínez introduced the notion that these Indians were a “dangerous” people. Whites were unable to cross their territories without the permission of the cabecillas; in his view, the headmen were specially fanatic and vicious in their hate of White people. The source of their dangerousness was precisely their communal social organization and life; individually– outside of their “tribal web”—these Indians were “humble and sweet,” “good workers” with a great potential to become “useful citizens.” This potential, however, disappeared when they lived together in communities (Martínez, 1993 [1916]: 216).

This view of communal Indians as free but dangerous shifted by the end of the

1920s. It was a time devoted to strengthening state institutions, especially those concerned with “social problems.” Within this context, there was some interest in the

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positive elements of communal life, albeit mostly to keep the Indians in the countryside.

While some pensadores urged the abolition of the community, others proposed the

integration of Indian “independent nations” by means of two major state policies. These

policies were first, to recognize their lands, and second, to introduce stronger state

authorities into their territories and officially recognize communal indigenous leaders.

These approaches enhanced the importance of Indian communities as a form of collective

property and as autonomous peoples with their own authorities. Thus, communal Indians

were not only individuals that shared lands but also individuals who constituted a kind of

nation, a collective entity that needed a stronger central state subjection.

The Collective Lands

During the early liberal revolutionary times, elites consciously avoided the

discussion of the legal frame that regulated Indian communities. This attitude was clear

when, in 1913, a new legislative initiative was introduced in the congressional agenda

that sought to establish basic criteria regarding communities, including the recognition of

joint property rights sustained by what was called the cuasi contrato de comunidad

(quasi-communal contract), and the registration of lands and inhabitants (Ley de

comunidades de indios, 1913: 200-201). The quasi- communal contract was recognized by the Civil Code and established precepts regarding undivided or joint properties.

Although the proposal was not formally discussed in Congress, Darío Palacios, a lawyer from Loja, reacted strongly against it in a note published in the journal of the Academia de Abogados (Revista Forense). He argued that Indian communities did not exist; they had disappeared. In his view, the legal proposal presented to the Congress was, in fact, re-creating them. According to Palacios, since the end of the nineteenth century several laws promoted the privatization of Indian communal land. But moreover, he recalled that

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the rural community had not been an exclusive Indian institution, but also White and

Mestizo, a fact that was recognized by law. Thus, the new proposal, in his view,

contradicted previous resolutions and promoted new problems, such as the limitation of

property rights, by assuming that this communal right was not inherited (Palacios, 1913:

279-280). Palacios essay opened the question whether the communities were alive as a

consequence of nineteenth century policies.

In 1919, Víctor Manuel Peñaherrera introduced to Congress a proposal to name

Indian community representatives and to divide communal lands that was also never discussed.26 This proposal however, named the procurador síndico (Municipal Solicitor)

as the legal representative of Indian communities and assigned to the courts the ruling

over land division. Thus, two different approaches to Indian communities were at stage:

one that reinforced collective property and one that pushed for land division.

Though discussion over Indian communities was avoided, controversies regarding

communal lands as well as Indian petitions to Congress were constant since the inception

of the liberal government. In 1895, claims and disputes generated jurisprudence based on

diverse legal interpretations, which, in turn, opened the door to abuses and personal

considerations by judges and congressmen.27 The contested issues dealt with the

community contract, the foundation of property rights, and the community representative.

Land contract and status

Although the mentioned nineteenth century laws recognized the communal lands, it did not establish the procedure for the administration of the remaining shared lands. What were the legal foundations to maintain shared property? Were they—as the 1913 law project suggested—a quasi-communal contract or were they a special type of contract?

The answer to this question was controversial; but most judges seemed to assume that the

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communities were covered by the notion of a quasi-communal contract; i.e., each

member had individual rights over a portion of the undivided or joint property and this

right could be transferred. However this assumption was criticized in1920 in a public

debate among lawyers.

The conservative Luis Felipe Borja—a member of the Academia de Abogados—

wrote a manifest to the Supreme Court in which he criticized the way judges and

Congress dealt with Indian communities. He argued that the communities should be

administered according to the colonial Leyes de Indias (Law of the Indies), and not

Republic civil code. The colonial law provided the basis for collective access to natural

resources that was not based on private property.28 In his view, the owner of the lands was the “community”—a public juridical persona—and not the individual members. Its patrimony was similar to that of other juridical personae such as the parish or municipality; as a consequence, collective lands could not be divided since no member could claim any part of the land nor transfer it to a third person (Borja, 1921: 165).

Communities were public juridical entities that made use of a territory established in colonial times to protect the Indians and thus they could not be ruled by the contemporary civil code, i.e., a form of communal-quasi contract (Borja, 1921: 167). The acquisition of propiedad proindivisa (joint property) did not provide rights over a specific section of the property, only a share on the use of the property.

The criterion that the communities should be judged by the Leyes de Indias was contested by liberal as well as conservative lawyers who insisted that, although communities were created during the colonial period and rooted in the pre-colonial social fabric, Independence brought about new regulations for their administration, including

135 property rights over the lands The Republic had recognized the communal quasi-contract and communal property rights. However, the influential lawyer Víctor Manuel

Peñaherrera insisted that communities were not a form of shared property because at the moment of their acquisition there did not exist a co-property contract but only a joint grant. Thus, individual members of a community had no exclusive rights to the property or to a share of it (Peñaherrera, 1927: 268).

For Peñaherrera, however, this recognition did not automatically reinstate the

Leyes de Indias. He agreed on the colonial origin of the institution and its intention to protect Indians as a collectivity, not as individuals. Communities were juridical personae that fell under the jurisdiction of public law. He confirmed the semi-autonomous character of communities by insisting that they were a portion of the territory of the nation (Peñaherrera, 1927: 270). However, unlike Borja, he argued that the community lost this nation-like character with Independence and republican recognition. In addition, at present their members included Indians and Whites. But he insisted that a legal void remained. Though legally recognized, Congress had not provided a frame for the administration of communities. The quasi-contract was inadequate, because communities were not based on a joint agreement, and so he urged the establishment of new legal regulations. He insisted that new regulations address the dissolution of communities and their transformation into individual properties, the only form that had truly civilizing and progressive effects (Peñaherrera, 1927: 274).

At the same time, some pensadores considered that the 1865 decree introduced confusion about the foundations of Indian communal rights. The law had set communal lands apart from tierras baldías and tierras de reversión and had opened to privatization

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the “remnants” of communal land, those lands that communities were unable to turn into

production.29 By using this legal frame, municipalities and some liberal and conservative

elites had equated communal lands with tierras de reversión and remnants with tierras

badías. For example, under the consideration that communal lands were tierras de

reversión, municipalities were assigned communal lands and allowed to sell them to the

possessors. These practices however, opened to question of who was the owner of the

communal lands and on what basis could this land be returned to the state.

In 1925, the newly established Ministerio de Previsión Social consulted with local

lawyers about the status of the communal lands in each province. Most of the lawyers as

well as the Attorney General30 opposed the assumption that these lands could be reverted to the state. One lawyer from Cuenca, Alfonso Mora, forcefully addressed the interpretation that nineteenth century laws allowed Indians full rights over their lands

(Mora, 1928: 274). He insisted that Republican laws conferred property rights to community members and that, at the same time, these laws also contained the principle of

“prescription” by which property rights could be acquired after thirty years of effective possession (Mora, 1928: 274). Thus, from both perspectives, Indians were the owners of their lands. His contribution was to argue that communal lands were not public property.

His position generated doubts, especially in the municipalities of Loja and Bolívar, but

Congress confirmed it numerous times.31

For Mora, the reinstatement of communal lands as state lands required two steps: the suppression of the communities and the declaration of their lands as “revertible lands.” In his opinion, such a strategy would produce social and political unrest and also

“wound the collective soul.” He also argued that the notion of revertible lands went

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against the principle of equality. He insisted that Indians were “brothers” who needed

greater guarantees and protection (Mora, 1928: 286-287). These arguments closed the

dispute opened by the central state, and, in 1927, the Ley de Patrimonio Territorial (Law

of Territorial Patrimony) recognized the communities’ s rights over their lands.

Land division

A related topic regarding communal lands was the controversy about their division.

This issue was present since the Independence. Some community members had requested

the division of their community’s land, and the courts had ruled in their favor.32 For most

liberals and conservatives the small property was the starting point on the road to

civilization and citizenship.33 Nevertheless the early revolutionary liberal governments

did not promote an explicit policy of distribution of the remaining community lands. As I

show before, a number of attempts to establish a general legislation on communal lands

were silenced in the Congress, which practiced instead a case-by-case tactic to deal with

communal disputes.

The liberal indigenista Pío Jaramillo considered the Indian community to be a nucleus of property interests among Indians, an interest that allowed them to oppose the pretensions of White landlord (see Chapter 5 below). Jaramillo also accented the positive qualities of communal Indians in contrast to concierto Indians. He depicted them as free fighting individuals, persecuted by large landowners. In his view, communal Indians were, little by little, becoming small-scale producers; and property had positive civilizing effects. The partitioning of communal land was, in this sense, desirable if it was conducted in a peaceful way and in response to the desires and petitions of Indians. He was confident that, once communal Indians received the stimuli of education, the

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community would dissolve itself imperceptibly as small property became the norm

(Jaramillo, 1983 [1923], Vol. I: 232).

However several other pensadores—liberal and conservatives—pointed to the need for establishing a procedure to divide collective lands. Peñaherrera (1927: 270) argued for ending the institution and promoting private property among Indians. Mora, a conspicuous conservative, considered that modernity required the dissolution of communities since the institution no longer responded to its original purpose and had become a “skeleton” (Mora, 1928: 288). He argued that communities restricted economic progress of the agricultural sector and had to be transformed into a form of individual and

“free” property. To accomplish this transformation, he suggested a strategy of incentives to divide lands based on regressive taxes. With this proposal he became engaged in a polemic with Pío Jaramillo regarding the mechanisms to parcel communal lands. Mora insisted that Indians had all the legal guarantees to acquire, conserve, and sell property; moreover, collective property was opposed to freedom because the members of a community were heterogeneous and required diverse benefits. He disagreed with

Jaramillo’s assumption that the lands would dissolve unnoticeably because affluent and civilized Indians were ambitious (Mora, 1928: 304-305). He observed that local communal disputes were on the rise and called for the state to intervene and provide guidelines for the promotion of small property. The strategy he proposed was to give tax incentives. In his response, Jaramillo reiterated that communities evolved naturally. He then developed a scheme for transforming them into cooperatives based on a shared system of family work.34

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Later, legal regulations recognized that Indians themselves had the right to decide

to divide or not to divide their lands. The Ministerio de Previsión Social, following

Jaramillo’s arguments, promoted collective property as the starting point of the indigenous civilizing process.35

Representation

Another aspect discussed about Indian communities was their system of

administration. Administratively, this collective public entity was subject to the parish

and county political and police authorities. The community required a legal

representative—not a collection of individuals—to manage their lands and populations in

the context of republican institutions—courts, tax collectors, and the like (Peñaherrera,

1927: 269). Pensadores did not recognize the existence of Indian authorities, which had

eroded since the abolition of the Indian tax during the mid nineteenth century.36

Luis Felipe Borja Jr., after noting that communal lands were subject to the colonial

Law of the Indies, proposed that the republican civil code should guide how Indian

communities were to be represented. He suggested that the community was a form of

civic association in which procedures for legal representation had not been established.

Based on this consideration, he argued that any commoner or member (and not

necessarily a representative of the majority nor the cabecillas) could be a legal

representative and speak for the entire collectivity (Borja 1921: 176). Later, Peñaherrera concurred with this view and suggested that community members were a kind of indeterminate subject, with some individual members being capaces (competent) and others incapaces (incompetent) (Peñaherrera 1927: 273).

Peñaherrera considered that the communal representative was not required to have

a formal delegation from the entire communal population. All that was needed was a

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statement of support on behalf of the community (Peñaherrera 1927: 369). In this vein, he

recalled that the penal code recognized a passive form of representation that supported

communal representation. Indeed, most of the petitions received by Congress and the courts followed this pattern. In such petitions one or two individuals usually represented the whole community—most of the time, the cabecillas and other indigenous authorities.

Liberals and conservatives alike feared these cabecillas as troublemakers who had strong influence over the comuneros (Coba 1933: 15). In part, the legal discussion was aimed at erasing the traces of the old Indian authority system and preventing the cabecillas from becoming the public representatives of Indian communities.37

Translators and mediators represented communal Indians and fabricated petitions to

Congress in a variety of styles. At times, the communal petitioners presented themselves

or were identified by translators not as Indians but as vecinos (neighbors) or moradores

(residents)—both citizen categories—and used such rhetoric to argue as Indians. For example, in 1922, the vecinos of the community of Caisache asked for protection of their lands. However, while making their case they presented themselves as communal Indians that had received property rights from King Carlos III. The congressional secretary classified the petition as coming from “comuneros,” not vecinos.38 But sometimes the

opposite happened: the mayorales indígenas vecinos of Saraguro, Loja, in a 1928 petition

accompanied by their signatures and fingerprints, asked for the removal of a local

authority; the congressional office classified the petitioners as “vecinos of Saraguro”.39

And there were cases when the petitioners presented themselves plainly as “comuneros” or “comunidades.” But the most common pattern follow by community petitions was, first, an introduction by a representative who spoke in the name of all “comuneros,” and,

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second, a presentation in which they spoke both as “indios” or non-specific “vecinos.” In

both cases congressional staff classified the petitioners as a “community.”

This process of classification changed with the passing of the communal laws of

1937. These laws erased the connection between community and Indians and reinvented the cabildos (village counsels) as collective governing bodies. In spite of these procedures, however, the newly mandated administrative body of communities, if mentioned, spoke in the name of community members who were most often called

“moradores,” “vecinos,” comuneros,” “indios,” or “indígenas.” Petitions reveled a strategy of expanding the constituency of the communities and they reflected the overlapping nature and complexity of communal statuses.

Subjection to the State

Most pensadores considered that Indian communities were not strongly subjected to state authorities and so were like autonomous territories. At the same time, they considered that the communal Indians incarnated the social problem of the nation.

Therefore, more reforms were introduced regarding communities by the end of 1920s.

Communities were subject not only to a more dense chain of local political authorities, but also to the central Ministerio de Previsión Social, the agency responsible for social policies and the designated special judge in communal controversies.

Background elements of this new type of state subjection are found in an essay by

Octavio Gallegos, a physician from Chimborazo who, inspired by the British colonial model of “indirect rule,” published an innovative proposal for Indian citizenship

(Gallegos 1929). Gallegos argued for a three-prong strategy that included recognition of

Indian authorities, relegation of the Indians to rural parishes, and subjection to national social policies. He proposed to recognize the traditional Indian organization and

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authorities—chiefs and caciques—by appointing them as tenientes políticos and

policemen, while introducing the notion that Indians needed to take responsibility for

their “civilizing process” and for their incorporation into “the republican political

organism” (Gallegos 1929: 25). In his view, communal Indians maintained their

traditions—including language, “rebelliousness,” and “secretiveness”—and unity of

communal lands. This reality, he argued, must be taken into account to better their lives and create a “middle-class.”40 In turn, Indian betterment required a territorial re-

organization—separation of rural and urban administrative units or parishes—and the

division of rural parishes into cooperative political and economic units—comunas and

haciendas—that could become the targets of social policies. Each rural unit was to be

governed by a council made up of representatives of the communities—el concejo de

ancianos (council of elders), the haciendas, the teniente político, and the police. At the

same time, each unit was to be subjected to particular development and social policies

and legislation intended to eradicate native language, clothing, and collective property.

Thus, though it confined Indians to the countryside, the proposal also included a

“civilizing process,” i.e., eradication of the elements that defined their collective identity.

As we will see, other elite intellectuals and politicians contested most of the elements of

this proposal.

State Management of Communal Indians

The effort by the Revolución Juliana of 1925 to strengthen the institutions of the

national state, particularly those related to the solution of “social problems,” is evident in

the policies that focused on the political integration of the native population and their

social welfare. The legalization of communities as public juridical personae41 opened the

door to the intervention of the central state in diverse aspects of communal life. A major

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shift in the state management of communities came with the Ley de Patrimonio

Territorial (Law of Territorial Patrimony) of 1927. This provision gave way to a form of

state management of the social question that recalls Foucault’s concept of “population

management.” The law emphasized population needs—rather than individual voices or

rights—and an ambiguous process of collective state subjection that both concealed and

revealed the native origins of comuneros. Indeed, the Indian community provided a

model for governing the rural population of the nation as a whole.

The territorial law, while recognizing the legal existence of communities and

erasing their direct connection to Indians, added four important considerations. First, it

recognized property rights in those communities that could exhibit justos títulos de

dominio (fair property entitlements), a strategy that kept indigeneity alive.42 Second, it

delegated to the recently founded Ministerio de Previsión Social the power to intervene in

the resolution of conflicts involving communities and proposed the constitution of local

commissions to study controversies.43 Third, it delegated to the same ministry the

registration of communal lands by way of the gobernaciones (provincial political

authorities). And fourth, the Ministry and the municipalities had to establish internal

regulations for each community to manage their communal lands, which opened the way

for the re-establishment of the cabildos or local governing bodies. This law appeared as a

transaction between local governing bodies and the central state.

Though the law gave a central role to the Ministerio de Previsión Social regarding the regulation of communities, liberal and leftists politicians and state functionaries considered it an inadequate tool to administer the communal population. This belief kept alive the controversies about the government of communities. Based on native petitions

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and the multiplicity of disputes involving communities, Congress staged a protracted

debate regarding the institution and the communal Indians. Most of the debated points

were introduced in 1937, during a dictatorial period, as two communal laws. One focused

on the population and lands of communities and another established judicial procedures

for those who possessed lands.

The Ejidos of Loja

Indians communities presented numerous petitions to Congress. During the early

liberal revolution times (1896-1924) most petitions asked for guarantees of their land

rights, support in local disputes with municipalities, and access to local public resources.

The petitions increased after the 1927 Ley de Patrimonio Territorial recognized the communities and the Ministerio de Previsión Social appeared as the central arbiter of disputes and petitions.44 Claims during this period referred to such topics as communal tax relief,45 control of local authorities,46 obligatory work in public constructions,47 and state intervention in the administration of communities.48 Congress, in a case-by-case

approach, passed legislation on the property of communal resources. One notable case

was that of the Ejidos (Commons) in the outskirts of the small southern city of Loja.

The Ejidos of Loja became a controversial case that lasted thirty years and exhibited all the uncertainties regarding the institution of the community discussed so far, including the status of the lands, the management of the collective resources, the transference of property rights, and indigenous representation and subjection. The first petition from the comuneros of Loja was presented to Congress in 1900. After that date, however, three different congressional decrees were issued that assumed that these were public lands, allowing the Municipality of Loja to rent the land to the comuneros as well as to sell portions of the land to Whites. The Municipality argued that by the end of the

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nineteenth century the courts had recognized their rights over this land and that it needed

financial resources to improve the infrastructure of the city. Finally, in 1931, Congress

recognized the error and re-affirmed the rights of the comuneros, and compensated the

Municipality by approving special resources.49

In the debates surrounding this latter decision, a primary consideration was that any law on communities needed to address both social and legal elements. As one congressman said, the Loja case was a social problem, not a legal one; Indians and

Whites both had the right to survive, and the people had rights over the Municipality.50

Several leftists and liberals, including the liberal representative of the raza india, argued on several occasions that the principles of “laissez-faire” and “laissez-passer” had lost their prestige and relevance. The Indian Representative, argued that science, industrial development, and class struggle now posed a challenge to individualist liberal ideas and were opening the way for what were called “social policies.” This approach argued for state intervention in the economy and private industry to ensure the people social justice and protection; the construction of social solidarity was primordial.51 Consequently, the

notion of property changed and included the idea of its función social (social function of

the property) recognized by the Constitution; this notion also alluded to the ambiguous

origin of private property in the Americas, based on aboriginal property of the

continent.52

During the Ejido controversy, several liberal and leftist congressmen insisted on the

old idea that Indians were the primordial owners of all lands and that it was an obligation

of the present generation to return the usurped lands to them.53 In contrast, the

conservative Jijón y Caamaño observed that the installation of private property was not a

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process of usurpation but a legal process mandated by the Spanish Crown that benefited

Indians as well as Whites, and that both communities and haciendas had their origin in

this policy. The notion of social justice and state intervention allowed some congressmen

to imagine property restrictions such as the inalienability of lands, i.e., the prohibition to

transfer property rights to a third person. Conservatives opposed this perspective by

saying that no one had the right to restrict the uses of a property.54 Moreover, it was “a

joke” to grant Indians property rights while restricting their rights to transfer their

property.

But the liberal Agustín Cueva counter-argued that the communal regulations should

be based on the modern ideas of property that came about in the aftermath of World War

I. He proposed that property among small-scale peasants required special protection as a

non-transferable and joint patrimony—the tendency at the time in Europe. He pointed out that indigenes were easily deceived by their White and rich neighbors and were at risk of losing their property and becoming servants. As a result, the state was obligated to regulate the use and destiny of communal land. The principle of inalienability was the best mechanism to protect and maintain the patrimony of community indigenes. To

Cueva, historically, the idea of community had been the best indigenous weapon to protect their lands from White landowners. The conservative Remigio Crespo Toral answered that maintaining communal lands, and reinstating restrictions over the transference of property rights, went against the core of the notion of private property. In real life, he contended, the communal system provided no individual incentives. People did not work for themselves and the stronger took advantage of the weak. Furthermore, a comunero was not “credit worthy.” Once again, liberals reminded their colleagues that

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the civil code recognized communal property through the form of a communal quasi- contract, a principle accepted by Congress.

At the Chamber of Deputies55 conservatives counter-argued that the indigenous

race was attached to their lands and that they preferred to “sell their children” before their

lands. Thus, there were no risks in granting them full property rights; on the contrary, this

recognition would make them “useful citizens.” Furthermore, individual property would

decrease boundary disputes between community members.

The Community Constituency

While Congress discussed several communal legal frames, the Ministerio de

Previsión Social, based on the 1927 territorial law, intervened in communal disputes.

These were opportunities to carry out first hand inspections and to write reports regarding

the disputes. In the course of mapping and visiting the sites of the controversies,

ministerial commissions scrutinized the community members and defined who was or

was not a comunero. This information was forwarded to Congress and used during its

debates. At the beginning of 1930, ministerial commissions visited communities in the

provinces of Bolívar, Chimborazo, and Tungurahua in response to complaints. The

cabecilla of the Community of Pilahuín asked Congress and the Ministerio for the return

of land that “had been usurped by the Whites,” promoting an inspection by the office.56

The Ministerio de Previsión Social became a major actor in this conflict, performing a

variety of tasks such as studying property rights, re-framing the problem, and regulating

the community’s life and resources. In preparing their report and recommendations, the

ministerial functionaries also defined the constituency of the community.

The commission recognized three social groups: the indígenas de páramo (high mountain indigenes) who were the most homogenous and uneducated group; the “town

148 indigenes” who were entrepreneurs and traded their products in the coastal region; and the “locally so-called White,” who the commission considered to be the “evolved indigenes.” What distinguished the latter were their educational level and the use of non- traditional clothing. According to the report, they were of indigenous ethnic origin, but they had improved their social standing. They shared with all indigenes several mental habits and customs, however; for example, males and females personally took care of the land and cattle. The functionaries also stated that among the three groups also had a share some “Mestizos,” although they did not expand on the observation. The view of the public servants from the Ministry was not, however, shared by the local population. The

“páramo” and “town” indigenes, based on their land titles, did not recognize “White indigenes” as members of their community.

The Ministry’s report attempted to define what a “community” was in contemporary Ecuador. It pointed out that since colonial times, when communities were solely an indigenous “racial” institution, villages had become multiracial settings; what continued to define the institution was communal land tenure and collective use of resources based on custom. The report cited several examples from other provinces to illustrate the variegated “racial” composition of communities: Whites and Mestizos in the community of Chillanes, Bolívar; Indians and Whites in Salinas, also in Bolívar; or only

Indians, as in Chusmaute, Chimborazo. But all were peasants; i.e., they lived off the land.57

In 1931, when the Ministerio de Previsión Social submitted to Congress a legislation proposal, it was accompanied by an exposición de motivos (discussion of motives) that emphasized the multiracial and socially heterogeneous constituency of

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communities.58 Communities did not solely consist of the elemento étnico indígena

(indigenous ethnic element) and the indigenous race did not constitute a sustancialidad sociológica (a sociological reality). The justification of the proposal insisted that the notion of “indigenes” was vague and imprecise. Anthropological or phenotypic features—i.e., racial traits—were not commonly used to classify people, clothing was.

Therefore, racial typing did not provide the relevant information to sustain legal regulations that required fixed and clear categories to refer to a heterogeneous people.

This argument would lead, in turn, to the development of the notion of “peasant community” as the institution that could be regulated and generalized across the national territory.

The idea that communities consisted of different social and racial groups was reinforced by several pensadores (Coba 1933: 15; Jaramillo 1983 [1923], Vol. I: 233).

Official rhetoric distinguished between “pure racial and cultural” Indians and those

“racial Indians” who were becoming “cultural Mestizos” (Cisneros, 1949: 155).

Comuneros came to be depicted as “indomestizos,” “indigenes,” or “mestizos,” inclusive racial categories that implied a native spirit and a rural lifestyle. Thus the tendency was to replace the name of “Indian” with racially and culturally defined categories.

In spite of the state’s efforts to introduce the notion of multiracial communities, indigenous petitions against the usurpation of lands by local Whites continued. Indeed, some petitioners insisted on the maintenance of racial distinctions between Indians and

Whites.59 For example, a petition from the community of Simiátug, Bolívar, stated that

the cabecillas had sold lands to Whites and that this illegal sale had generated unrest

among the comuneros. They asked that the Whites be prevented from entering the

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community’s lands. Consequently, the strategy of the Ministerio de Previsión could be

read as an effort to legitimize the invasion of communities by local Whites (a process that

was significant in Loja as well as Bolívar) and recognize “evolved indigenes” as

“peasants” or “indomestizos” as a means for the “peasantrification” of the countryside.

The Welfare Proposal

As mentioned above, based on its experience with communities in1931, the

Ministerio de Previsión Social submitted to Congress the draft of a bill regarding

“peasant communities.” The liberal Leonidas García sponsored the initiative but it was never debated on the floor. As the liberal Leopoldo Núñez, the representative of the

Indian Race, explained, the issue of communal lands was highly controversial among those who argued for privatization and those who proposed to maintain them (Núñez

1931: 183).

In its justification, the proposal assumed that a substantial amount of land and population fell under the regime of communities, and that it was possible to create incentives to increase food production and to integrate communal groups—mostly indigenes—into the national civilization. Land and other communal resources—like solidarity and the interest in schooling—were seen as the basis to improve welfare. As the exposición de motivos explained, the proposal was intended to allow the Ministerio de Prevision to transform communities—land and population—into a laboratory setting, in which closer inspections and continual learning would foster the civilizing process.

The proposal protected both indigenous and non-indigenous communities, granted legal recognition to communities, assumed collective land as a contract of co-property, defined the status of “comunero” on the basis of costumbres (customs), and established elected procuradores to represent the community—who were not required to be literate

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(Peñaherrera 1925: 146). It also assigned to the Ministerio de Previsión Social a judicial function in solving communal controversies by means of negotiation among the litigants.

All in all, the proposal was conceived as a protective policy measure that would remove the factors that had prevented progress and marginalized indigenes and peasants. In much the same way as the debate regarding the Ejidos of Loja, this proposal assumed that current legislation applied only to the educated and enlightened people, not indigenes and peasants. Existing legislation was individualistic and had retarded progress in communities; indeed, it had impoverished them. Present laws were useless to protect collective personae such as communities. According to the justificatory argument, there was no single law that established the duties and rights of communities, and it was time to define several complex issues. For example, it was possible to regulate and promote the division of communal resources as other Latin American countries had done. But the bill’s sponsor suggested that division would clash with the very soul of the community; it would introduce a violent transformation that went against true communal feelings and lead to comuneros losing access to resources. The proposal, however, did not prohibit parceling: the division of the land was a prerogative of each community.

The ideas of social justice and social policy, together with the notion that current laws were individualist and inefficient, justified a particular law for the protection of communities. The proposal included procedures to settle conflicts under the surveillance of the Ministerio de Previsión. This Ministry would promote arbitration and, if this was not possible, pass judgment. In the view of the bill’s sponsors, modern state administration required such procedures.

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After a positive brief from the Congressional Worker and Peasant Commission in

1931, the discussion of the proposed law was delayed several times. Fidel López Arteta,

the corporate representative of the raza india by that time, and the socialist Luis Utreras

Gómez saw it as an opportunity to introduce a “real indigenous law” that contemplated

special tribunals. In their view, the “nature” or essential idiosyncrasy of communities was

so peculiar that it merited a special law, targeted to a special type of citizen. Moreover, a

special law for rural people was needed because rural life was very different from that of

citizens in urban settings.60 For other congressmen—conservatives and some liberals—it

was time to divide and dissolve communal lands.

The Regulations of Communities

State regulation of communities came in the form of two executive decrees:61 the

Ley de Organización y Régimen de Comunas and the Estatuto Jurídico de las

Comunidades Campesinas. The first recognized the two dimensions of comunas— collective resources and population—as well as the regulatory jurisdiction of the

Ministerio de Previsión Social. The purpose of the regulation was to bring

“parcialidades,” “barrios,” “comunidades,” and other similar settlements under the control of the national state and provide them with legal representation in order to pursue their moral, intellectual, and material betterment. The various types of small settlements became “comunas” that answered to an urban or rural parish (the country’s lowest administrative unit) and to the Ministerio de Previsión Social. Therefore the population of small settlements all over the nation came to be known as comuneros (community members) in regardless of the type of land tenure and social or racial classifications. The new comunero subject became a potential citizen who required public administration.

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Land was not required to acquire the status of “comuna,” but in cases, in which

there was a collective patrimony, it belonged to all members and its use was subject to

specific rules, based on tradition as well as the criteria set out by the Ministerio.

Contracts with outsiders and the division of the land needed the approval of the

Ministerio. An important element of the law was the re-introduction of a communal

government body, the cabildo, composed of a president, vice-president, secretary,

treasurer, and lesser authorities. This form of elected body mimicked the Spanish cabildo,

ignored the existing indigenous civic authorities and traces of the early republican Indian authorities, and denied the notion that each comunero could represent the whole group.

The cabildo was to be elected by a “general assembly” constituted by all adult men and women and presided by the teniente político, a cabildo member, and a local White citizen. The president of the cabildo became the legal and political representative of the community. This new political process was seen as an exercise in citizenship that would prepare the comuneros for democracy and self-management.62

A complementary regulation followed, known as the Estatuto Jurídico of the

Comunidades Campesinas. This law focused on “comunidades,” the “comunas” that

possessed collective land. Thus a distinction between comuna and comunidad was

introduced, separating settlements from collective lands. It established a particular

protective procedure for the communities that possessed land.63 This new statute introduced a second major shift in dealing with communal controversies: the management of their resources was now subject to the Ministerio de Previsión Social, which became a judicial agent. The Ministerio acquired the function to acknowledge, study, and judge controversies that involved communities, and took charge of all the

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controversies that were currently in the ordinary courts. The law stated that the Ministry’s

priority was not legal considerations, but “social justice.” It was this innovation that gave

way to a prolonged debate in Congress. Conservatives, together with some liberals, cited

comunero petitions to contend that this procedure assumed that peasants and indigenes

were special citizens, contradicting the universal principle of equality established in the

Constitution.

The statute opened a long debate around the juridical subjection of communities to the Ministerio de Previsión Social. The regulations located the comuneros—Indigenes,

Whites and Mestizos—as special citizens protected by a particular law and procedures.

Politicians, landlords, and comuneros alike called for the restoration of legal competence regarding communities to the courts. For example, one landlord stated that he understood the urgency to improve the moral, intellectual, and material conditions of community indigenes, but that such attempts could not be grounds for creating special kinds of citizens who were outside the rule of the judicial system. Moreover, the argument went,

communities were not public judicial entities; both private citizens and community

people deserved equal treatment under the law. In the opinion of the complainant, by

assigning a judicial role to state functionaries, the law opened the door to abuses.64

In 1939, Aurelio Mosquera, a liberal President, personally asked Congress to annul

the Estatuto arguing that the whole procedure was unconstitutional and that all civil

disputes must be resolved in ordinary judicial tribunals. The Estatuto, in the view of this

President, infringed on the constitutional guarantee of citizens to defend their private

rights and their equality under the law.65 Though Congress proceeded to reverse the

decree, the polemic was not over. The protective procedure was soon reinstated with

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minor changes—also through an executive decree. The decree displaced the judicial

function of the Welfare Ministry to a tribunal constituted by the Welfare Minister, the

Attorney General, and a sociologist from the Universidad Central (Estatuto Jurídico de

Comunidades Campesinas 1944). The arguments for its restoration were the same given

by liberals and leftists during the 1930s: that modern social law allowed state intervention

to promote the welfare of the population.

In the early 1940s, however, judicial oversight of communities was once again

delegated to the Ministerio de Previsión Social. Indigenes from Azuay, Imbabura, and

Chimborazo provinces, however, asked for reforms to the law and to return indigenous

disputes to the ordinary courts. They claimed that the Constitution prohibited that any

citizen should be judged by special commissions and be deprived of the right to a

defense.66 Congress attempted to change the decree several times, but failed. 67 As late as

1950, there was an attempt to ban the regulations, an initiative that was not accepted by the liberal President Galo Plaza. In this conjuncture, the main argument referred to abuses committed by the state staff. Liberal and conservative congressmen supported the suppression by arguing that justice had been subjected to political considerations and to the arbitrary criteria of the Ministry. To them, communal justice had acquired the “flavor of a dictatorship.” 68 Although two liberal tendencies were in the forum regarding

collective lands and the social function of property, communal regulations slowly

consolidated as part of the national state system and continue, unmodified, in force today,

reinforced by the recognition in 1998 of the notion of collective property by the country’s

latest Constitution (2002).

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Media Reactions

Although newspapers devoted little attention to the congressional discussions about

the community and, later, to the approved regulations, the few comments published

suggest that at least some elites feared that the promotion of communities would foster

racial divisions and hate and put the foundations of the nation at risk. During 1931, the

liberal Quito newspaper, El Día, commented the community dispute of Pilahuín,

Tungurahua, and recognized the positive intervention of the Welfare Ministry. The

dispute, in the daily’s lens, was the consequence of Indians not accepting Whites as

community members. The main argument of the media was that the dispute revealed

Indian hatred—a racial feature—against non-indigenous people. Claims of land

usurpation were not conducive to equality; instead, they had become the argument of a

racial war that disturbed public peace. Communities were, thus, still seen as a serious

obstacle to achieving order and progress. It was the responsibility of the Welfare Office

to grant individual rights and pacify the Indians by repressing their bloody strategies

against non-indigenous people.

Later, in 1933 when the proposed community bill received a positive review in

Congress, the conservative Remigio Romero y Cordero, from Cuenca, wrote in El

Comercio an article defending Indian communities, but alerting about the proposal.69 He argued that Ecuador was built around racial hate. Since early colonial times, mestizaje became the foundation of this racial hatred. The offspring of Mestizos felt superior to their parents and, during the republican era, Mestizos and Whites targeted their hate against natives. Romero y Cordero considered that the proposed bill intended to construct cooperatives, to increase solidarity, and to humanize the Indians. But, in his view, Indian community generated fear among some elite members because of the disruptive nature of

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collective behavior and uprisings. But Romero y Cordero believed that this was an

unfounded argument since, on one hand, Indians lacked the credentials to participate in

the political sphere and, on the other, the community was a social contract. In his opinion,

however, the proposed legislation did not solve the problems of familial patrimony and

the inheritance of land. For him, the ideal was to promote small property among

comuneros, a policy that would give way to a “controlled” evolution. In this approach,

community law needed to articulate the social defense of Indians with the principle of

private property; only this double consideration would help to overcome racial hatred.

Once the communal regulations were issued, the media opposed the distinction

between comuna and comunidad and the preservation of the collective land.70 An

editorial argued that contemporary racial divergence had increased. In spite of the

republican efforts to erase Indian origins, the fortitude of the aboriginal race had proved

elusive to intervention. This consideration, however, did not imply the need to maintain

the Indian community. Though the republic had preserved fragments of the original

Indian communities, including its authority structure, any effort to support the old

communal forms was out of time; the community had proved inadequate to incorporate

Indians into Western tradition.

Although the regulations avoided directly linking the institution of the community

with natives, the media clearly associated it with Indian communities and authorities. The rulings provoked a reflection about hate and racial war that suggested that elite feared a possible Indian revenge and their lack of private interests, an image that I developed further in the next chapter. While elite members feared the reinstatement of the community, the state’s discourse and policies “indigenized” and “peasantized” the

158 population of the nation’s small rural settlements. This complex move was part of the state’s effort at “population management” of community Indians. Instead of subjecting

Indians to the universal rule of law, the state developed administrative procedures based on individualized inspections of communities. These explorations were based on and promoted by the scientific knowledge about the Indian race, also the subject of the next chapter.

Notes

1 Political instability was interwoven with the 1929 global economic crisis, which in Ecuador was preceded by a decline in cacao exports. During this time, the government took several fiscal measures, including the creation of the Central Bank (Rodríguez 1985).

2 For several authors, populist policies in the figure of José Velasco Ibarra emerged during this time, a controversy that has lasted until today.

3 The Ministry started as an office of the Ministry of the Interior and received several names until it became the Ministerio de Previsión Social y Trabajo in 1938.

4 The Socialist Party and the Communist Party were created in 1926 and 1931, respectively. A heterogeneous ideological group, including liberals who were unhappy with the political conduction of the nation, established socialism. The media pointed with alarm to Indian participation in the constitution of leftist parties (En contra y en pro del comunismo, El Comercio, 09 March 1931; Tobar 1926b and 1936). Indeed, leftist attempts to organize the Indians exacerbated the fears of landowners. In this context, the strike lost its initial meaning as a legitimate expression of discontent and came to be seen as a weapon of subversion (Prieto 1980; Becker 1997).

5 The liberal Manuel Cueva García argued that the Constitution introduced the idea of the protection of the Indian race intending to protect the poor; otherwise all Ecuadorians would have to be included in such protection because all had indigenous ancestors. Moreover, the Constitution protected poor people from the rural areas, because “raza india” meant “poor rural population” (AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado, 1934, Vol. III: 347-365, Sesión No. 72, 26 November 1934).

6 The Assembly was presided by Agustín Cueva, the liberal intellectual who fought against concertaje in Congress and led the creation of a Sociology chair at the Central University in Quito. It is plausible that Mexican post-revolutionary thinking also inspired this corporate model.

7 Asamblea Nacional de 1928-29 1930, Vol. II: 454. The following discussion is based on AFL, Asamblea Nacional de 1928-29 1930, Vol. II: 432-456, Sesión No. 66, 24 December 1928. The participants were: Agustín Cueva (Loja and President of the Assembly), Luis F. Vela García (Chimborazo), Ortíz (?), Juan Checa Drouet (Esmeraldas), Temístocles Terán (Tungurahua), Luis Larrea Alba (El Oro), Pedro Leopoldo Nuñez (Pichincha), and the Foreign Ministry.

8 The Constitution of 1929 established the representative for “the tutelage and defense of the Indian race.” In other written documents, the position is also referred to as the representative for “the protection of the indigenous race.” The election law of 1929 established that every four years the State Council should publicly select a principal representative and two alternates “for the defense of the Indian race” (Ley de

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Elecciones, Registro Oficial, 60, 27 July 1929; Reforma a Ley de Elecciones, Registro Oficial, 206, 20 December 1929).

9 The Chimborazo representative José Alberto Donoso Cobo complained that the government should not assign Morocho the role of “pacifier of the Indians;” it should repress the rebels instead (ALF, Actas Cámara de Senado, 1921, Tomo II: 282-286, Sesión No. 21, 08 September 1921).

10 AMG, Libro Copiador de Oficios, Ministerio de Previsión Social, 1929. Carta del Ministro de Previsión Social a Coronel Cornelio Tenelema, 02 May 1929. Eloy Alfaro had named him a colonel after the Gatazo Battle.

11 Petitions from Chimborazo Indians asking for the abolition of concertaje, tax relief, restitution of communal lands, and establisment of communal shools (AFL, Asamblea 1928-29, Caja 1/86, Carpeta No. 5; Cámara de Senado, 1930, Caja 99, Carpeta No. 50; Cámara de Senado, 1931, Caja 110, Carpeta No. 80).

12 During this time, Luis Felipe Borja proposed a constitutional reform that established, first, the requirement of a history and civic exam in order to acquire the right to vote, and, second, granted women the right to vote (Borja 1937; Velasco 1937; Actas Academia de Abogados, 1941: 197-211).

13 “El Sr. Duchicela como indígena que es de nuestra sangre [tendrá] un asiento en la asamblea para que hable por nosotros y defienda nuestros intereses de manera especial” (AFL, Asamblea Nacional Constituyente 1937-38, Caja 2, Carpeta No. 114).

14 Cabecilla referred to the informal indigenous authority that replaced the colonial civic indigenous authorities that were part of the cabildo such as the gobernador or vara, alcalde, and regidores. It was a term used often in the context of indigenous uprisings as well as petitions. Some authors suggest that this label spoke of the transforming conditions of the indigenous community since the liberal revolution (Moscoso 1991).

15 The well known literary writers, Joaquín Gallegos (1951 [1935] and g. humberto mata (1935), worked around the figure of A. Lasso. An interesting point of g. humberto mata’s discourse was the idea that an Indian social revolution would come from the Indians themselves: “La Revolución Social—India saldrá netamente de la Raza. Por dinamia propia. Por estallido propio. Con actuaciones propias!” (1935: 212).

16 Luis Atthy recalls that he fought with liberals during the revolution, migrated to a costal town (Bahía de Caráquez), organized a local syndicate, and, after traveling all over the world, took residence in San Francisco (BPJ, Loja, Correspondencia Pio Jaramillo A., # 809.6 537c. Carta de Luis Ahtty a P. Jaramillo, 22 August 1939). Similarly, the well-known pensador Segundo Maiguashca (1949) represented himself as a redemptive leader of the Indians.

17 Since Alfaro’s time, indigenous people were dispensed from using official sealed paper, which was sold at a cost; therefore it was common for petitions to be sent to Congress with no special paper or seal.

18 Duchicela y el locro constitucional, El Comercio, 01 March 1937.

19 AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1937-38, Caja 3, Carpeta s/n.

20 Representación Indígena, El Comercio, 24 February 1937.

21 Decreto 682-bis, Regisro Oficial 58, 09 September 1944.

22 The following discussion is based on AFL, Actas Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, 1944-45, Vol. VI: 380-448, Sesión No. 96, 21 November 1944. The participants were Eduardo Ludeña (Loja), Ricardo

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Paredes (Representative for the Indians), Bustamante (?), Juna Isaac Lovato (Pichincha) and Emilio Uzcátegui (Representative of Education).

23 This position was in line with Stalin’s rhetoric about communist practice in Latin America. The Indian question was a problem derived from their oppression (Ibarra 1984: 43), a controversial perspective in Peru.

24 The following discussion is based on AFL, Actas Asamblea Nacional Constityente, 1944-45, Vol. VII: 610–688, Sesión No. 111, 07 December 1944. The participants were Emilio Uzcátegui (Representative of Education), Eduardo Ludeña (Loja), José Santos Rodríguez (Manabí), Ricardo Paredes (Representative of the Indians), Alfredo Chiriboga (Chimborazo), Daniel León Borja (Chimborazo), Gallegos (?), Carlos Zambrano (Pichincha), Enrique Gil Gilbert (Guayas) and Manuel Elicio Flor (Pichincha).

25 For example, other communist argued that there were “indigenous associations,” constituted by “racially pure people,” whose traditions must be consulted.

26 AFL, Cámara de Diputados 1919, Caja 62, Carpeta s/n.

27 In some cases, Congress intervened under the consideration that these were state lands, an assumption that I explain later.

28 Thurner (1997: 43) demonstrates that during early Peruvian Republican times, Indian and Mestizo local authorities invoked the Laws of the Indies to maintain their access to water, wood, and resources that were in the process of privatization in hacendado hands.

29 Tierras de reversion were lands under temporary private usufruct that belonged to the central state or the municipalities, while tierras baldías were lands not yet appropriated and belonged to the state.

30 The Attorney General was consulted regarding a controversy between the community and the municipality of Santiago, Loja. In his report, he argued that reversible lands disappeared with the laws of 1854, 1865, and 1867.

31 For example, during the 1896-97 Assembly, indigenes from Gonzamaná, Loja, asked Parliament for the confirmation of their property rights and the suspension of a rental fee paid to the Municipality. The Congress informed them that the land belonged to the sate and that the Municipality had the right to charge them a fee (AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1896-97, Caja 69, Carpeta No. 171). Later, in 1916, in relation to another case of the same region, Congress issued a decree that recognized the property rights to the Municipality of Loja over the nearby communal lands based on the notion that these were state lands (AFL, Cámara de Senado 1930, Caja 98, Carpeta s/n).

32 For example, indigenes from Matango, Imbabura, asked for the division of their communal lands (A granel, El Comercio, Crónica, 16 July 1909) and indigenes from Casco Valenzuela, in the same province, proposed the division of the communal land as a strategy to maintain their property (Rosero 1986).

33 The liberal Peralta, during the 1906 Assembly, stated that the best two strategies to liberate the Indians were education and property (AFL, Actas Asamblea Nacional de 1906, Tomo III: 638-656, 13 December 1906).

34 He presented this idea into a meeting of the municipality in 1930 and insisted in this proposal in Jaramillo 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 66.

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35 During the 1940s, several pensadores argued that, based on economic, political, and cultural considerations, it was necessary to force people in order to maintain undivided the collective property (Zambrano, 1940; Mosalve Pozo, 1943; Paredes 1943; Mora 1946; Santos 1944).

36 In Cuenca, during early postcolonial times, Indians became members of the “cabildo pequeño,” an organizer of Indian taxation, and cabildo authorities became state functionaries (Palomeque 2000: 128- 129). In Chimborazo, around 1850, there was a cacique governor in charge of the Indians and each parcialidad or comunidad had its own alcalde (mayor) and several regidores (councilmen), who were elected authorities recognized by the municipality of Riobamba. These civic authorities were interwoven with a complex of religious authorities (Sattar 2002: 175-176). The abolition of the tributo de Indios eroded the figures of the governor, cabildo, alcalde, and regidores; by the start of the twentieth century, there were only fragments of the variety of Indian authorities that were commonly called cabecillas (Moscoso 1991). However, in Chimborazo, some of these colonial figures were reinstated during the 1920s by the local state office that organized public works. As I show in Chapter 6, Indian regidores in Chimborazo were still alive by 1950. Similarly, Debenais de Valencia (1948: 84) described Indian authorities among the Salasacas, Tungurahua. Here, Indian governors, accompanied by an assistant, mediated internal disputes, organized collective work, and represented the Indians vis-à-vis external actors. At the same time, the mayor and his assistants were also part of the religious authorities.

37 Highland Indians, during a meeting, claimed their rights to be officially represented by their cabecillas (Cabecillas indígenas de toda la sierra celebran asamblea, El Comercio, 12 November 1935).

38 AFL, Cámara de Senado 1922, Caja 76, Carpeta s/n.

39 AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1928-29, Caja 4, Carpeta No. 43.

40 Nations were evaluated by considering the majority of their population and not the elites. In Ecuador, the barbaric state of the people was considered to be ever present in spite of the existence of an enlightened elite (Gallegos 1929: 18).

41 Later, the conservative A. Mora proposed that the communities were private juridical personae, maintained by the private efforts of Indians (Mora 1943: 232), a notion that was not considered in the political controversies.

42 This recognition reinforced the notion of comunidad as a space historically constructed and registered on diverse state records. For example, in 1944, terratenientes complained that indigenes and lawyers were excavating in official archives remote property entitlements (AFL, Actas Asamblea 1944-45, Vol. X: 375- 443, Sesión No. 154, 25 January 1945).

43 In 1929, the Ministry proposed to name an indigenous representative of the community to this commission (Ministerio de Previsión Social. Informe a la Nación, 1929-1930: 49).

44 For example, a petition from the community of Santiago, Loja, based on a report presented by a Welfare official, asked Congress to issue a special decree in order to obtain the rights over the land they occupied (AFL, Asamblea Naciónal 1928-29, Caja 4, Carpeta No. 43).

45 In 1930, Congress received petitions from several communities of Imbabura asking for tax relief for their communal lands (AFL, Cámara de Senado 1930, Caja 99, Carpeta s/n). Later, during the 1940s, several communities filed similar petitions (AFL, Cámara de Senado, 1943,Caja 245, Carpeta s/n). Tax relief for communal lands was approved every year since 1935 and maintained during the period under study.

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46 An interesting petition presented by indigenes from Gatazo, Chimborazo, in 1941, asked for reforming the Municipal Law and for the removal of functionaries who did not follow the precepts established by the constitution and laws (AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1941, Caja 221, Carpeta s/n).

47 The Indigenous Governor from Guamote, Chimborazo, asked for the derogation of the Junta de Vialidad of Chimborazo. The Junta was reintroduced in 1940 to organize public works and conscript indigenous labor (AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1942, Caja 233, Carpeta No. 16).

48 In 1930, the communities of Caisaiche and Salinas, Bolívar, asked to be recognized as a special collective institution. They argued that the communities lacked a juridical status and had no defined civil relationships and that both facts had opened the door to land usurpers. They believed that a specific law was needed to address the mechanisms that threatened the integrity of communal lands, equity in the distribution of benefits, an end of judicial and extra-judicial disputes, and the reintegration of usurped lands (AFL, Cámara de Senado, 1930, Caja 101, Carpeta No. 24).

49 In 1916, sponsored by Pío Jaramillo, Congress assumed the reversible status of community lands from El Ejidos, Loja. A congressional decree assigned the communal lands to the municipality and approved selling them to the Indians possessors (AFL, Cámara de Senado, 1930, Caja 98, Carpeta s/n.).

50 Dipute Carvajal, AFL, Actas Cámara de Diputados de 1931, Vol. I: 521-552, Sesión No. 27, 10 September 1931.

51 Fidel López Arteta, AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado 1934, Vol. I: 222–253, Sesión No. 16, 05 September 1934.

52 Previously, the liberal Abelardo Moncayo (1986 [1912]: 289) argued that Proudhon was right when he proclaimed that property was robbery, and several sources suggested that liberals believed that property could be limited in order to construct the common good of society (García 1906: 196). This became known as the “social character of property” and was recognized by the 1929 Constitution.

53 The following polemic is based on AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado 1930, Vol. II: 397–405, Sesión No. 78, 01.December 1930. The participants in the discussion were: Castillo (?), Luis Maldonado (Representative of Peasants), Agustín Cueva (Loja), Ayora (?), Remigio Crespo Toral (Azuay), Díaz (?), Pacheco (?), Luis Utrera Gómez (Representative of Education), Leopoldo Nuñez (Representative of the Indian Race) and Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (Representative of Industry).

54 However, the conservative Julio Tobar, while publicizing Catholic ideas based on the Rerum Novarum Encyclical, criticized the pagan notions of property and capitalism. In his view, private property carried moral and social considerations: on the one hand, it was subordinated to God’s law; and, on the other, it was intended to promote the public good (Tobar 1926a: 115-16). Both ingredients allowed him to promote the notion of small property for the pueblo, restrictions on property, and the constitution of a family patrimony (Tobar 1917).

55 AFL, Actas Cámara de Diputados 1931, Vol. I: 521-552, Sesión No. 27, 10 Spetember 1931. The participants in the debate were: Rafael Montero Carrión (Loja), Enrique Gallegos Anda (Pichincha), Alberto Burneo (Loja), Espinoza Smith (?), Alberto Rodríguez (Los Ríos), Carvajal (?), Antonio Borrero Vega (Azuay), Nicolás Maldonado (León), Serafín Larriva (Loja), Carlos Cueva Tamariz (Azuay), Clodoveo Dávila Cordero (Cañar), and Juan Benigno Moncayo (Chimborazo).

56 This case put together numerous important documents that are found in AFL, Cámara de Senado, 1931, Caja 110, Carpeta No. 48. It includes a report prepared by functionaries of the Ministerio de Previsión Social. The ministry’s document uses the term “White,” suggesting that it was the local label for people of mixed Indian origin.

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57 This argument was repeated several times in congressional debates and in official reports, e.g., the Ministerio de Previsión Social’s annual reports. Paradoxically, for this office, community issues became the core of a report section entitled “the protection of the Indian race.” Later on, communities were incorporated as a legal and administrative issue.

58 The following arguments are based on the Ley sobre Comunidades Campesinas and on the Exposición de Motivos, AFL, Cámara de Senado, 1935, Caja 152, Carpeta No. 2.

59 AFL, Cámara de Senado 1932, Caja 120, Carpeta No. 112; Cámara de Senado, 1934, Caja 145, Carpeta No. 16; Asamblea Nacional, 1937-38, Caja 21, Carpeta No. 1245.

60 AFL, Actas Cámara de Senado 1934, Vol. I: 176–186, Sesión No. 11, 27 August 1934.

61 At the same time as the communal laws were passed, problems relating to land division and usurpation increased and the defense of patrimony acquired preeminence. Several comunero petitions to Congress referred to the appropriation of indigenous lands through exceptional executive decrees signed during the same dictatorial government that passed these regulations. The following congressional assemblies received numerous petitions regarding abuses derived from the delegation to the municipalities of rights over communal lands in order to provide them with financial resources. For example, Zhacundo, Bolívar (AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1937-38, Caja 4, Carpeta No. 227); Achupallas, Chimborazo (AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1937-38, Caja 1, Carpeta No. 103); Tocagón, Imbabura (AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1937-38, Caja 200, Carpeta No. 24) and Apagua, Cotopaxi (AFL, Cámara de Senado, Caja 216, Carpeta No. 23).

62 However, the tenientes políticos complained that it was not possible to establish such a communal government. A letter from the teniente político from San Rafael, Imbabura, informed that after explaining to indigenes of the parcialidades the advantages in forming comunas and cabildos, they replied that it was difficult to establish the representative body. They were ignorant and did not know how to write and read and they did not understand the Spanish language: “… me dijeron que ellos no saben leer ni escribir ni tampoco entienden el idioma castellano. Aún me manifestaron que lejos de creer en el beneficio que les reportaría al constituirse en Comunas, temían que esto mismo les serviría de un dogal para seguir siendo explotados por gentes inescrupulosas que no pierden ocasión para abusar de su ignorancia y buena fe” (Comunicación Teniente Político San Rafael, 13 October 1937. Andrés Guerrero, Personal Communication, December 2002).

63 República del Ecuador. Ley de Organización y Régimen de Comunas, Registro Oficial, 555, 6 August 1937 and Estatuto Jurídico de las Comunidades Campesinas, Registro Oficial, 39 and 40, 10 and 11 December 1937. These complex legal frames established the procedures to constitute, represent, and manage the communities as well as their basic rights and protection.

64 AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1937-38, Caja 33, Carpeta No. 1960.

65 AFL, Cámara de Senado, 1939, Caja 197, Carpeta s/n.

66 AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1946-47, Caja 276, Carpeta No. 5.

67 Later, Congress approved a law that prohibited the establishment of legal communities within private domains; i.e., the haciendas. During 1943, terratenientes proposed and passed a legal prohibition to establish communities inside haciendas (AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1943, Caja 241, Carpeta s/n).

68 AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1950, Caja 02, Carpeta DD-50-III-A-40.

69 Romero y Cordero, Remigio, El problema indigenista, El Comercio, 21 August 1933.

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70 Editorial, El indio y el montuvio, El Comercio, 29 July 1937; Editorial, Comunas y poblados, El Comercio, 3 ugust 1937.

CHAPTER 5 INVESTIGATING AND UPLIFTING THE SPIRIT AND BODY OF THE INDIAN RACE, CA. 1930-1950

[El indio] conserva sus tierras, guarda su ámbito terrestre; pero en cambio, ha perdido en la totalidad el ámbito de sus tradiciones históricas. Es pues un nómada por el lado de la sangre (García 1935: 14).

In Ecuador, the period between 1930 and 1950 witnessed new approaches to the

scientific study of the Indian race, including the inspection of its biology and mentality as

well as the production of local ethnographies.223 The 1940s, in particular, were a time of

what Salomon (1985) calls the “internationalization” of the Andean research, the renewed

interest of North American anthropology in Andean peoples interwoven with the Inter-

American Indian discourse and the “anthropology of action” (Tax 1952).This chapter visits the twin notions of the spirit and the body of the Indian race. Both were explored at the university and state communities where indigenismo framed the official rhetoric. The notion of the spirit of the Indian connected the landscape—or the fuerzas telúricas

(telluric forces)—with the body.224 It entailed three layers: first, the historical account of the Indian past; second, the Indian attachment to the land and language; and third, the measurement of Indian bodies and psychology.

Although some pensadores de-emphasized the notion of race or replaced it with a

“factor étnico”(ethnic factor), ideas about the Indian spirit and body informed all notions of the collective identity of the Indians, and were useful in identifying them as a peculiar type of citizens. As in several Latin Americas nations, the notion of Indian race and the practices of the indigenista movement tended to associate indigenes with rural people.

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The indigenous question was thus framed in terms of a collective soul and body attached

to the land; but, as I will argue in this chapter, it was this Indian collective identity that

prompted additional fears among the elites.

The Search for the Indian Spirit

During the 1930s, the disciplines of sociology and archeology emerged at the

Universidad Central. Both cultivated the notion of an “Indian spirit.” Archeology confronted the dilemma of how to integrate the indigenous population while “maintaining their soul.” Sociology searched for the Indian spirit through direct observation of native

communities. The notion of an Indian spirit inspired the celebration of the Indian past as

well as their attachment to the land; at the same time, it legitimated state procedures that

targeted Indians in efforts to “preserve the native soul.”

Preserving the Native Soul

After the heated polemic on the pre-colonial Kingdom of Quito (see Chapter 3

above), the Universidad Central engaged Max Uhle to lecture and later teach American

archeology.225 Uhle had closed the polemic on the Kingdom of Quito by stating that it was plausible that a small kingdom did exist in the central highlands of contemporary

Ecuador during its prehistory. In his account, Inca Atahualpa was proclaimed in Quito as king in opposition to Huáscar, king of Cuzco (Uhle 1930b: 5-6). Thus, Atahualpa’s figure was enhanced and became a national icon of the glorious past of the Indian spirit—a spirit publicly celebrated in Quito in the early 1930s.226 This glorious past reinforced the

liberal view of the need for a “civilized Indian revival.” Jaramillo proclaimed: “It is not a

matter of resurrecting the Inca Empire… but something truly new as political concretion,

full of justice, full of liberty” (Jaramillo 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 181).227 The basis for a

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revival were not only historical figures, but Indian institutions as well—particularly the

Indian community.

In 1931, Jijón y Caamaño took over Uhle’s post and was named to the chair of

prehistory at the School of Education. While this was an opportunity for him to discuss

the Kingdom of Quito, his syllabus combined European and North American traditions of

ethnology and anthropology (Jijón y Caamaño N.d.). His course reviewed both

evolutionary and cultural history theories and then focused on archeological and

ethnographic methods, the sources of the Ecuadorian prehistory, the origin of humans in

America and in Ecuador, and, finally, aboriginal languages.228 The civic goal of his

course was to provide knowledge and lessons to those interested in the betterment of the

homeland. It was a useful class for future teachers, he argued, in their difficult mission to

promote “a country with a uniform culture, without destroying the native soul that

survived in the fragments of indigenous culture and without degrading the Western

civilization brought by the Castilian” (Jijón y Caamaño N.d.: 1).

Jijón y Caamaño held that prehistory and ethnology could support contemporary

cultural processes. These disciplines recovered the history of the people—not of

particular characters—based on material and spiritual remains, via the methods of linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, and archeology. The disciplines revolved around four basic categories: race, language, culture, and pueblo (people)—distinctions that Jijón y Caamaño believed were useful for teachers. He assigned the study of race to anthropology and defined it as the physical features of humans, including inherited physiological traits but excluding the contents of spirit or culture.229 On the other hand,

culture, several times described by Jijón y Caamaño as “spirit,” referred to customs,

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traditions, and behaviors produced by the mentality of the people. Finally, Jijón y

Caamaño’s class stressed the notion that ethnography must be based on direct observation

and must contain detailed descriptions of people; ethnography’s use of the native

language was also essential in the collection of oral traditions.230 He described

ethnography as an animated photography of the life of a people that revealed their

collective psychology. In his view, the ethnographer should use native persons as guides

but not as teachers or portraitists of truth. Native interpretations were data for the analyst rather than true explanations. He stressed that ethnographic descriptions, following the scientific method, must guide classification and comparison of neighboring peoples in order to arrive at hypotheses.

As we saw in Chapter 3, Jijón y Caamaño subscribed to the theory of cultural diffusion, while accepting evolutionary principles that divided advanced and primitive people. However, in his classes, he presented a radical critique of evolutionism as a

“byproduct of the positivism and materialism of the nineteenth century.” Evolutionary schemas assigned superiority to the white European while non-occidental people were considered backward. In contrast, Jijón y Caamaño held that cultural history and cultural diffusion approaches explained how progress had been achieved. However, in spite of his critique of evolutionism, he maintained a distinction between pueblos naturales (natural peoples) and pueblos cultos (cultured peoples). The scientific approach, like Catholic principles, assumed that every human being, including savages, had a similar essence.

The differences between peoples reside in the amount of culture they have accumulated:

“[cultured peoples] receive at birth a large cultural heritage accumulated by previous generations [while natural peoples] lack this patrimony, but both … act as humans” (N.d.:

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21). Contrary to prevalent local notions, Jijón y Caamaño located the deficiency of

indigenes in “culture” rather than race, although both were inherited. He argued that natives had costumbres y tradiciones (customs and traditions) but not “real culture.” He classified Indians as naturales (naturals) and considered that their lack of culture affected their political behavior—the rational behavior par excellence—and limited their citizen credentials. His approach, which was similar to that of several liberal pensadores, explained the cultural inferiority of Indians in ways that prompted interventions for the betterment of Indian culture. It was thus possible to improve indigenous culture while maintaining the natives’ soul, an idea that he never fully elaborated, however. His main interest was to maintain a clear distinguishing line between the indigenous and the white culture in order to preserve the purity of the “Castilian Western tradition.”

Attaching Indians to the Land

In the early 20th century, pensadores considered the Indian community to be a colonial institution, originated in Spain and transferred to America. However, by the

1930s, the notion that the communities were rooted in the pre-colonial period acquired preeminence. Historically, Indians were seen as an agricultural people or civilization organized in communities, with commons and parcialidades (settlements), a notion that was officially recognized in the communal laws. Pensadores advanced the idea that the communities were based on land, the Andean ayllu (kin group), and cooperative arrangements such as the ayni (reciprocity) and minga (collective work). Mora, for

example, defined communities as Inca remnants that provided Indians with rights to lands

“inherited by blood” (Mora, 1928: 286). Indian-ness, in this view, was confined to

inherited communal patrimony and blood. Other authors, following the Peruvian Castro

Pozo, emphasized instead the indigenous historical ability for cooperation; i.e., the ayni

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and the minga, as their distinctive pattern (Garcés 1943: 54), in regardless of the presence or lack of commons.

The agricultural origin of Indians led pensadores to attempt to recover their spirit from the land. The notion of a “peculiar native soul” or the “spirit of the Indian” was deepened by a series of sociological essays and research monographs by several of

Professor Cueva’s students. Cueva retired in 1931 and his students filled his chair until, at the close of the decade, Luis Bossano assumed it.231 Cuevas’s students followed their

mentor’s critique of racism and emphasized the historical and exploitative elements that

had shaped native psychology, but they turned to the “spirit of the Indian” as well as to

the “ethnic condition”—a notion that combined Indian bodies and psychology—as the

salient features of indigeniety.

The spirit of the Indians was seen as a complex interface between biology and environment—fuerzas telúricas and adaptation—that defined the contents of the Indian ethnic condition (Bossano 1951: 193-199). The notion of telluric forces entailed natural resources and the means to make a living. For this reason, some pensadores shifted their focus from Indians to peasants, including rural workers and the former conciertos. This stress on natural resources highlighted the common problems found all over rural

Ecuador, at the same time that it equated natives and peasants. Indians were thus depicted as rural people using peculiar housing, food, and clothing, and as having peculiar ways of working (Bossano 1933).

Other students of Cueva, some of who became state functionaries, inquired about the Indian spirit by observing indigenes of the Imbabura region.232 Víctor Gabriel Garcés

(1932)—a liberal who played a key role in the enactment of the communal law—wrote a

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thesis that explored the “social and psychological conditions of the Indian.” Based on

dispersed observations of their feasts and litigation, the condition of laborers, servants,

and students, and comparing them to the Whites, he defined the Indian spirit and laid out

a program of intervention by the state. For Garcés, the challenge to reinforce the Indian’s

collective and individual credentials to live under the rule of law required establishing laws flexible enough to persuade Indians to accept them as legitimate. Up to that time,

Indians were compelled to obey the law, but they there were not true citizens (Garcés

1932: 563). Garcés proposed legal procedures and social policies that targeted the Indian.

Víctor Gabriel Garcés believed that Indians were retrasados (backward) instead of maladapted people; as such, they required special treatment by the state, civil associations, and Whites. The special treatment included respect, schools, and legal procedures that employed persuasion and educated Indian brokers. He also believed that natives were different from Whites. In his view, language, clothes, and external physiognomy, though important, were insufficient to describe the Indian’s backward psychology. Indians unveiled their psychological condition by either concealing their spirit or mimicking and reshaping the spirit of Whites. This concealment strategy revealed that in their “deep soul” there were traces of an undiscovered Indian-ness, which had not yet been revealed. This unknown promise was the spirit of the Indian. Garcés wanted to prove that Indians and Whites were different and that, when Indians acquired

education and changed their clothes and language, they were only mimicking Whites and,

thus, remained Indians deep inside. Ethnologically, Indians remained Indians: “One

cannot erase the origin, the history, all the accumulation of events that make up the past

and that gravitate mysteriously in each soul, in each spirit” (Garcés 1932: 537).

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“Ethnicity” recovered this double concept of race in which the external or superficial features—which to Garcés were the starting point of the Indian condition—and the internal or deep psychology combined as a “spirit”. Both of these dimensions were inherited and reinforced through socialization. Although it was possible for Indians to rise to the level of Whites through education and culture, their Indian-ness would not thereby disappear. Moreover, Indians who mimicked the clothes and vices of Whites were not evolved but ignorant. More important than a racial and cultural mestizaje was the notion of “spiritual unification,” a notion that he never fully explained233 that but allowed him to imagine a future rehabilitation of Indians, based on more dense relationships with Whites.

Garcés asserted that a potential positive peculiarity of the Indian—their “inner spirit”—was their attachment and impulse to work on their own land: “Instinctively, traditionally, Indians are attached to the soil, to the land… A piece of land is their richness, their sustenance, their best hope. For land they fight and struggle, for land they can kill and let themselves be killed” (Garcés 1932: 150). As other pensadores had noted, a fundamental characteristic of the Indian race was its positive feeling toward the land, a sentiment that had pressed them into a sedentary life (Pozo 1929-30: 137). Later, other authors took as proof of this attachment to the land the Indians’ strategy of recapturing their lost property (Monsalve Pozo 1943: 390) and described it as “love” for the land

(Buitrón and Salisbury 1947: 85). But this attachment to the land could wane. The risk of

Indians mimicking Whites was that they could refuse to work, especially in the countryside, and become lazy. It was also dangerous that Indians would emulate Whites and invade the cities. Therefore, the attachment to the land was the starting point for the

173 development of a state agrarian program that promoted rural schools, special laws, Indian brokers, and the improvement of rural ecology (Garcés 1932: 543, 552-556).

Humberto García’s ethnography (1935)—perhaps the best up to that time—was based on systematic observation and interviews among parcialidades indígenas

(indigenous settlements) in Imbabura province. It elaborated the notions of the spirit of the race and a “peculiar indigenous psychology” by using the metaphor of the “loss of psychic territory.” García argued that, although Indians had maintained fragments of their language and lands, they had become “nomadic” due to a loss of historical traditions that created a psychological void.234 This loss of historical traditions pushed Indians to become more attached to the land: “[Indians] are, thus, nomads on the side of the blood.

Because of this … they have to attach themselves strongly to the land, the only common support left to them in order to avoid the dissolution of their communities” (García 1935:

14). The blood-imprinted nomadic condition had become the psychological feature of natives and was now an inherited racial trait. In this psychological void, communal lands acquired for them a substitutive and mythical meaning that García called “anthro-telluric solidarity.” At the same time, the Quichua language allowed them to unite fragments of the native past. Thus, land and language were supports that allowed them to maintain their spiritual community. Land and language were, in turn, tied to a “peculiar Indian psychology.” Indians had not been able to develop the individual side of their personality, which García labeled as “brumosa” (clouded). They spoke in the plural form and individuals hid in collective realities; since the Inca past, they had been thwarted in the development of their private interests. Moreover, they concealed their personality in the presence of Whites.

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Humberto García’s notion of the Indian’s incomplete development of individuality

was an old liberal theme that was merely re-framed and further developed during this period (Moncayo 1986 [1912]: 308; Cueva 1984 [915]: 29). Nearly all pensadores shared the image of natives as having an underdeveloped sense of private property and individual interest. Conservative and liberal intellectuals drew different conclusions, however. For example, the conservative Jijón y Caamaño (1960 [1929]: 123) considered that, in pre-colonial times and especially during the Inca period, aboriginal institutions did not single out individuals. Individual rights and liberties were fused with the ayllu and the rights and interests of the empire.235 Thus Indians could not develop a sense of

“individual prevention” or responsibility and, therefore, needed tutors—the caciques and

the state—to take care of them and order their needs, further preventing the development

of their individuality. According to Jijón y Caamaño, this historical condition was still

prevalent, only that today hacendados had replaced the caciques. The liberal indigenistas

Jaramillo and Garcés, on the other hand, considered it important that the Inca experience

had introduced a notion of collective and familial property (Garcés 1943: 48-9) because,

even though contemporary Indians lacked a sense of private interest, they used their

collective interests to protect their patrimony. The conservative intellectual Remigio

Romero y Cordero (1933), who promoted Indian communities, argued that in the present

it was not possible for indigenes to develop their individuality while they struggled for

survival. If they abandoned themselves to their egos, they risked being absorbed by the

powerful; therefore, they needed to act as a collective person and they required collective

protection.236

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In García’s view, the collective personality and “nomadic” psychological condition of indigenes clashed with the existing rule of law because legal principles assumed the existence of individuals, a homogenous people, and a shared history. Law and legal procedures were thus inapplicable to indigenes, not only because of their collective nature and “nomadic” history, but because they were exploited: “Rights cannot appear with the same intensity among indigenes, who only have a vague knowledge of these rights as a result of the repressive measures that are employed against them” (García

1935: 35).

Thus, García’s inquiry into the communities of Imbabura convinced him that

Indians had a “peculiar psychology” rooted on a historical void. But the void had been

partially filled by a variety of adjustments, including attachment to land, language, and

the mimicry of white customs. It was this capacity for accommodation that promised an

“indigenous renaissance.” García envisioned a rebirth of the “indigenous spirit” that

would lift up not only indigenes but all of the nation: “The indigenous race as such does

not yet exist… and when it comes into being it will not be as a unilateral expression of a

sector of the population, but as the integral expression of the totality of the population”

(García 1935: 58).

Hygiene, Anthropology, and the Indian Body

In 1919, the School of Medicine at the Central University appointed the physician

Arturo Suárez to the chair of Hygiene.237 Ten years later, Antonio Santiana became a member of the Laboratory of Anatomy, where he started his inquiry into native skeletons and bodies (Santiana 1936). The School of Medicine was a pioneer in student research as part of the learning process; later, this practice spread to other university schools, including Education and Law. Anthropology, following the European tradition, was

176 established as a discipline that focused on the native body and human evolution. Initially located in the School of Medicine, Anthropology was moved to the School of Education in 1945 where it was fully developed as a biological and historical science. Both Hygiene and Anthropology were important in defining the peculiarities of the native body and reframing the notion of the indigenous race based on its alleged fortitude and a random distribution of native body markers.

Hygiene and Scientific Expeditions

Suárez undertook several initiatives in the field of hygiene and established the basis for state intervention of bodies through the municipalities and health offices. He brought together the notions of hygiene—a new consciousness of bodily health—and environment (Suárez 1931: 67). His researches included nutrition, clothing, illness, and living conditions in urban and rural settings. Each object of analysis pointed to interventions intended for the betterment of hygiene. According to Suárez, the highland

Ecuadorian workers, including Indians, lacked sufficient instruction and information to develop a healthy household ecology. Information, more social services, and state regulations would result in the improvement of people living conditions.238

In the 1930s, Dr. Suárez introduced student scientific research in his hygiene seminar aimed at training the future ruling class of the nation. Suárez felt that the governing class needed to develop abilities to discover, evaluate, and solve national problems based on local realities (1936: 5). Students and professors carried out fieldwork and developed a systematic method to observe communities and collect data based on household surveys and bodily inspections. Over time, the seminar developed a research method that partially filled the void created by the absence of a population census by allowing the municipalities and sanitary offices to collect basic information about their

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communities, especially in urban settings.239 Students started their research on the lower

social classes of Quito by exploring the environment of their everyday life (1931: 67-68).

Children and clothing—as a medium of contamination and thermal regulation—attracted

special attention. Other students explored the eating and nutritional habits of workers,

revealing a lack of caloric intake that negatively affected their bodies and psychology. As

in archeological expeditions, target families resisted the research efforts; workers saw the

students as official functionaries looking for ways to levy new taxes. The tensions were

handled by providing some halagos (gifts) (Suárez 1931: 100).

In the following years, Suárez’s seminar deepened its research methods and

strategy while it expanded to include a diversity of social and geographical groups. A

detailed explanation of the field research methods used is included in the study of

Saquisilí, a small town near Quito. The community was divided into different sections

and students were assigned diverse tasks. Each group240 had specific research responsibilities, including civil administration, illness, schools, children’s bodies, and household practices regarding food, clothing, incomes, and expenditures. The survey assumed student sagacity to crosscheck information, construct summary indices, and translate the data to pre-designed charts.

Most of the findings were gathered in a well-known volume entitled Contribución al estudio de las realidades entre las clases obreras y campesinas (A Contribution to the

Study of the Realities of the Working and Peasant Classes, 1934), which generated numerous commentaries in newspapers and in the intellectual community. According to

Suárez, “ethnic considerations” were irrelevant because the biological and psychological conditions of the workers were derived from the economic and physical environment, and

178 all workers—Indians, Blacks, and Mestizos—shared a similar environment that involved them in a process of degeneration. In Suárez’s research, Indians were located in cities like

Quito241 as well as in the countryside, and they were part of the working classes. Thus, he did not explore the biology of Indians as a special race.242 However, after doing research among the Indians of the Otavalo region in the early 1940s, Suárez came to accept the idea of the “biological peculiarities” of their race.

Figure 7: Dr. Suárez’s team on a scientific expedition

The Degeneration of the Pueblo

From a medical standpoint, race had long been an accepted category that did not require inspection. Medical studies classified patients by race (Báscones 1901), but race itself was not inspected and there were no inquiries into the relationship between a patient’s race and health.243 But parallel to the ethnographic inquiries into the Indian psychology and spirit, a medical tradition emerged that studied the biological, psychological, and moral features of the Indian race. In this emerging medical field, the starting point was the body.

In the 1920s, an interest in the consumption of alcohol opened the question of race degeneration. Alcoholism was considered to leave an evil imprint in descendants.

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Moreover, chicha (corn beer), a beverage favored by Indians that contained a special

toxin, was thought to diminish intellectual capacity (Suárez 1923: 8) and induce

irrationality and aggressiveness (Torres 1923: 12-13).244 The study of Indian alcoholism

opened an explicit interest in the mysteries of inheritance.

Consistent with what has been called Latin American neo-Lamarckianism (Stepan

1991; Clark 1998; Stern 2003), most Ecuadorian pensadores held that acquired and environmental features were inherited and became part of hereditary features.245 For example, Suárez believed that alcohol impregnated the cells of the progenitors and of the embryo. Therefore family vices were inscribed in the cells and exhibited in the aptitudes of descendants. But it was possible to transform certain inherited aptitudes with education

(Suárez 1923: 7). Another belief was that the degenerative problems grew worse as generations succeeded one another, increasing the risks of racial extinction (Tinoco 1932:

28). Both ideas contributed to a view that considered that Indians and the pueblo were in the process of degeneration.

Peculiar pathologies were observed among Indians, such as the so-called enfermedad azul (blue sickness). The systematic exploration of the pathology and biology of the pueblo, including the Indians, was initiated by the hygiene seminar of Professor

Suárez. As noted previously, the seminar inspected diverse variables—food, clothing, and environment—thought to mold the biological conditions of the pueblo. Researchers observed that living conditions of the rural and urban pueblo were deficient, and concluded that these deprivations translated into a long-term decline in the physical, intellectual, and moral aptitudes. These defects were evaluated with several indicators of racial degeneration, including a high birth rate (read as a sign of a lack of sexual control);

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high mortality rates (construed as the result of the organic degeneration of progenitors);

and the presence of illnesses like goiter, cretinism, and congenital abnormalities (that

spoke of moral and physical decay) (Suárez 1934: 45-50).

Suárez illustrated his arguments with photographs of deformed people and charts of

the generational distribution of illness and concluded by advising that, in the general

population, “temperaments”—the relationships between the body and personality—were

close to a pathologic level. In short, degeneration had become constitutional or genetic

(Suárez 1934: 58). The pueblo was a “sick race” in the process of “decay”; the

“proletariat” was in a process of “hypo-evolution” instead of progressing. But the pueblo

was not only degenerating biologically. Like the Indians, the people exhibited an unruly

temperament: “Individuals, languishing because of the depressive effect of the physical

and moral environment… hide a vengeful impulsiveness that can explode at any

moment” (Suárez 1934: 20). The origin of this alarming condition lay in the low salary

that workers received as well as in their bodily condition, which was aggravated by a lack

of hygienic self-care and consciousness. Dr. Suárez proposed, however, that instead of

increasing wages the state should provide social services and information to promote the

welfare of the workers.

In Suárez’s view, the working pueblo was composed of six different classes, urban and rural, distinguished by their income.246 Each stratum could include Indians. For example, Suárez classified Indians of Quito as belonging to the lowest income category

(Suárez 1934: 13).

Other physicians, however, focused on the hygienic conditions of the community and hacienda Indians and confirmed the images of biological degeneration (Quevedo

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1938). A notion of biological adaptation was also in the making, as physicians found, for

example, that Indians had high red blood cells counts and peculiar pathologies

(Lasso1931: 373-376), both adaptations to the Andean environment or “telluric forces.”

Race Fortitude

Although the intellectual movement that searched for the Indian spirit needed an

explanation of contemporary Indian inferiority, it revealed new and more positive

aspects, which held the promise of future change. This positive perspective was enhanced

during the 1940s, when Professor Suárez and his seminar carried out research in several

communities in Imbabura. The seminar measured the nutritional conditions of the

population and attempted to establish its effect on their biological constitution. The

hypothesis was that malnutrition resulted in biological deficiencies such as shorter height, low weight, mental retardation, anemia, and dental caries, and moral deficiencies like laziness, indolence, and hate, among others (Suárez 1943: 4-3). However, the research results suggested that although Indians were malnourished—in quality and quantity— they did not portray pathological symptoms, except short height and low weight. These

results were viewed as evidence of a positive adaptation of the indigenous race made

possible by their close connection to the land: “The lack of alterations which originated in

faulty diet could be explained by racial characteristics, by special adaptation of digestive

organs and endocrine glands” (1943: 40).

Nutritional problems, however, did affect the psychological state of Indians.

According to Suárez, indigenes lacked aspirations and were indolent. Nevertheless,

Indians exhibited exceptional fortitude and strength, expressed mostly through their ability to carry out heavy work. Moreover, “nothing in their hostile living conditions has left them weak or clouded their brains” (1943: 38). This notion of a strong-backed race

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was an old theme; during the moment we are considering, however, a connection was

made between the Indian “spirit”—attachment to land and language—and their fortitude

and promising future.

Thus a new opening for an inquiry into the character of the Indian race was in the

air, and it acquired a special meaning when the psychiatrist Julio Endara focused on

“indigenous psychology” and “ethnic features,” that he equated to race. Endara applied

the Rorschach test—a test that did not require education—to a stratified sample of

seventy “Indian peasants” from Imbabura who had previous contacts with “civilization”

and seventy white student applicants to the university (Endara 1954 [1945]: 269). His

purpose was to understand the differences among “diverse ethnic groups of the country”

and to measure the intellectual and emotional features of indigenous personality.

Endara assumed that the process of “racial and cultural” mixing had not ended and that indigenes were not fully incorporated into (Western) “culture” (Endara 1954 [1945]:

267). In comparing the results of the test, Endara decoded the assumption of indigenous

mental and emotional inferiority. He concluded his report by saying that the intellectual

level of indigenes and peasants was quite similar to that of white students, except in

certain characteristics associated with their environment and lack of education, and that

there were no traces of mental deficiency (Endara 1954 [1945]: 282-284). This discovery

that the mental capacity of the indigenes appeared normal was welcomed by other

pensadores (Bossano 1940: 79; Cueva T. 1949: 147). The emotional features of the

indigenous personality were also found to be normal and similar to those of the white

population; indigenes exhibited deficiencies in their mechanisms of adaptation, but not a

“process of degeneration.” During the 1950s, this deficiency was partially rephrased as an

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“inferiority complex” developed by the “indigenous race” in the process of adapting to the larger society (Jácome 1953 and 1955).

The Polemic on Mestizaje

Although Suárez never discussed mestizaje, his discourse on working class and

Indian degeneration was taken up by Rodrigo Chávez, who lectured in Quito about the need for mestizaje and for an Indo-American revival. While arguing for interbreeding,

Chávez pointed that Indians were in a decaying condition. Applying a developmentalist perspective to the “indigenous race,” he claimed that civilizations followed the path of a bell curve, and Andean civilization had reached its apex just prior to the Spanish conquest.

Chávez cited as evidence of indigenous decay the high rates of homosexuality at the time of the conquest and the remote existence of bearded Indians who became extinct for an absence of racial mixing. Today Indians’ lack of bodily hair, the non-existence of brave persons, the child-like head, and several others racial markers that highlighted the

“feminine” side of the indigenous race, were all signs of a degeneration that would continue because of their diet (Chávez 1937: 77-79).247 Psychological features like the

tendency to cry, cruelty and revenge, and the low fertility rates were also signs of

indigenous femininity and degeneration. However, as several European travelers had

pointed out, indigenes did exhibit an “encephalic capacity to evolve.” Therefore, mestizaje was the best alternative to stop racial degeneration; moreover, the historical antecedents of interbreeding had showed that the mix of indigenes with other inferior races—such as Blacks—resulted in healthy, smart, and masculine people like the

Montuvio of Ecuador’s coastal region.

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Pensadores from Cuenca, while opposing European racism and the idea of the superiority of pure races, also stressed the idea of mestizaje and “eugenic” strategies as a way to improve the conditions of local peasants and Indians—their biotypes (Cueva T.

1941-42, 1949; Monsalve 1941-42).248 Interbreeding, however, did not mean fusion, but a layered combination that followed Mendel’s principles and would reproduce some of the existing features (Cueva T. 1941-42: 86).249 In this sense, these authors departed from

Chávez’s mixing idea, as well as from conspicuous indigenistas from Quito who praised evolution and the spirit of the Indians and thought that before promoting racial mixture it was necessary to improve the cultural conditions of the natives (Bossano 1933: 43-44;

Garcés 1932; García 1935). Quito’s indigenistas believed that mestizaje was the natural evolutionary path of all races and that most Mestizos and Cholos had white skin but were indigenous in their mentality; interbreeding was a risk because the more primitive features could be reproduced and take root (Jaramillo 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 97-100). Most

Quito intellectuals did not stress mestizaje as an integrative strategy; instead they proposed indigenous incorporation to the state, a perspective to which I turn next.

Anthropology and Body Measurements

The explorations of mestizaje and indigenous body fortitude coincided with the anthropometrical study of the indigenous race. By the mid-1940s, the Archeology chair of the School of Education was filled by a physician specialized in human anatomy—

Antonio Santiana—sponsored by Jijón y Caamaño and several other university members.250 University records named the chair as American “Anthropology” or

“Ethnology.”251 The curriculum included two offerings for students, one in archeology and another in anthropology.

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Santiana’s course in Anthropology focused mainly on biological anthropology,

especially the measurement of the Indian body. His teaching efforts included scientific

expeditions and fieldwork (Ayala 1948) and some students prepared theses based on

ethnographic and archeological fieldwork (Castro 1948). But his main interest was in

race and Indian anatomy, a concern that dates back to the 1930s when he started to

inquire about Indian biology at the School of Medicine. Santiana made use of empirical

data from Imbabura and Chimborazo regions, and later from other locales, as well as his

training in Chile,252 to describe the Indian race. He established the anatomic features of

the natives by pointing to peculiarities regarding the cranium, blood, hair, teeth, and the

distribution of the Mongolian spot. He depicted Indians as hairless and feminine-like and

argued that skin color was not an accurate indicator of Indian-ness (Santiana 1941).

Similarly to what John Gillin (1940)253 had described as different types of Quichua-

speaking Indian bodies in the Andean region, Santiana found a high variability in his

measurements of blood types, cranial capacity and shape, and the other variables. In his

view, “this is explained by the multiple racial and cultural influences to which Indians

have been exposed… since long-past prehistoric times” (Santiana 1944: 272). The

variability reinforced the idea that Indians belonged to different “races”—i.e., that they

were a “raza mestiza”—a standpoint that opened the door to a more flexible perspective

on the biology of race. But Santiana believed that it was possible to trace a statistical

tendency that defined a particular native race. Its salient features were a childish and

feminine hair distribution, the predominance of the zero positive blood types,254 and the

Mongolian spot in the lumbar region (Santiana 1949-51; 1952). As a biometric

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distribution of inherited characters, race became a probabilistic phenomenon instead of a

fixed category.

Figure 8: Biology of the Indian race

Influenced by Mendelian genetics, biometrics, and the ideas of several Latin

American intellectuals, Santiana attempted to elaborate a racial typology of the nation

that included Mestizos (Santiana 1958). The more flexible notion of race as a distribution

of several biological features helped to attract attention to interbreeding as a strategy that, though it created new combinations, maintained basic indigenous markers. Thus mestizaje lost its most dangerous ingredient derived from racial miscegenation: the risk of racial contamination and degeneration. More importantly, this flexibility unlocked a mobile demarcation line between Indians and non-Indians. For some pensadores, people of mixed races became “Indigenes,” for others, “Mestizos” (Jaramillo 1946: 29-30). The racial composition of the national population became a puzzle. Santiana, for instance, considered that the majority of the Ecuadorian population was Mestizo and White and that Indians were a minority (1949-51: 174-5); Costales, on the other hand, stressed the opposite view (1970).

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Santiana, as well as a number of foreign anthropologists,255 considered the biological approach to race—a mixture of in situ bodily measurements and statistics—as the most “scientific” way to deal with Indians and their physical and social betterment.

He criticized indigenista artists who, in picturing indigenous abnormalities, had forgotten the “real” Indians (Santiana 1949-51: 171-2). His scientific enthusiasm coincided with a campaign promoted by North American cultural anthropologists and UNESCO that sought to restrict the use of the category of race, although it remained alive and well in biological anthropology.256

One effect of the discussions about the spirit and body of races was the view that

Indians were collectively attached to the countryside. Ethnographic descriptions of rural

Indians spoke of change, assimilation, and acculturation, and posed doubts about the existence of urban Indians (Buitrón 1947; Buitrón y Salisbury 1947; Castro 1948;

Rodríguez 1949). For some authors, the notion of “race” did not have the ability to explain cultural change, while “class” appeared as a more apt category to explore changes over time (Garcés 1945: 292). However, race remained in place as a quotidian idiom to describe Indians (García 1944), although official rhetoric and the media explicitly avoided the term (for example, in the upcoming national census of 1950).

Indigenismo and Official Rhetoric

The late 1920s and 1930s in Ecuador were a time of artistic, political, and

intellectual effervescence.257 A variety of avant-garde positions, which came under the

rubric of “indigenismo,” translated into diverse state programs. Indigenismo became the

idiom to frame Indian integration and to solve the tensions between equality and the

exclusion of the Indians from civilized life as a consequence of their inferiority

(Jaramillo, C. 1935: 186).

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Tactics of Integration

In 1922, Pío Jaramillo published his “indigenista manifesto” entitled El indio

ecuatoriano (1922). This work was several times rewritten and published; it informed the

shifting liberal strategies to end “Indian servitude” and the tactics to reinforce their

subjection to the state, framed by the social question. Tracking the modifications that

Jaramillo made to his manifesto allows us to better understand the installation of

indigenismo in official rhetoric.

After the first edition appeared, two conjunctures prompted Jaramillo to make

alterations. The first was the focus on the recovery of Indian land in the mid-1930s; the

other was the expansion of the notion of “indigenes” to include mixed peoples from the

countryside. After arguing that schools and military service had not improved the living

conditions of Indians, the 1930 version of Jaramillo’s manifesto emphasized indigenous

attachment to land and work and opposed mestizaje under the slogan of “land, salary, and

liberty” (Jaramillo, 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 180-181). While arguing for land and the

retorno a la comunidad (return to community), Jaramillo introduced a proposal for Indian

syndication promoted by the state and based on class-consciousness as a guarantee of a

more fair juridical and social order. 258 The notion of class-consciousness emphasized the communal and worker identities of Indians and pointed to the renaissance of the nuevo indio (new Indian). In Jaramillo’s perspective, this was the road to incorporate Indians into national life. In his view, incorporation did not mean erasure, a fact that was “absurd and impossible” (Jaramillo 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 175).259

Incorporation became a key—but polemical—concept in the construction of a

public agenda. Redención (redemption), regeneración (regeneration), or resurrección

(resurrection) were the keywords of the state discourse of indigenous integration, which

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assumed a strategy based on peculiarities while avoiding desindianización (de-

Indianization) or the mimicking of white people (García 1935: 43). For the liberal Julio

Moreno, however, the indigenous race was not excluded from society since Indians and

Whites were tied together by prejudice and incomprehension. The indigenous race was a

core ingredient in a dual nation, and this was the starting point to think about its progress,

a process that encompassed both White and the Indian psychologies (Moreno 1979

[1936]: 232-35). Other pensadores stressed the notion of “resurrection” or indigenous

“renaissance”. They promoted the preservation of communities and Indians’ espíritu de

cuerpo (esprit de corps), under a special legal status and with the aid of education

programs (Garcés 1932 and García 1935). At the same time, they pushed for an increase

in social relationships among the different races, a strategy that recalled the state’s

promotion of a multiracial constituency in communities.

In a move that combined indigenous pride and racial mixing, certain conservative

pensadores from the Catholic Church proposed a policy of indigenous “regeneration.”

This strategy sought to develop racial pride through practical education of young males in

what they called a granja-taller (training farm), the reinforcement of Catholic religious

teachings, and the “spiritual education” of women. The latter was intended to promote the

selection of educated partners, including White men, and thus deepen racial interbreeding

(Torres 1935: 27). García criticized this conservative project of regeneración, or rehabilitación (rehabilitation), because it merely extended la mediocre educación mestiza

(mediocre Mestizo education) (García 1935: 22, n1) already proven to be a failure for

Indians. Liberal indigenistas like García, who supported pro-community and educational policies, proposed the “resurrection” of lo indio (Indian-ness). The idea was to

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persuasively shape the indigenous race with Western elements that were likely to be

accepted (Garcés 1946a: 32-33).

Finally, some state officers, educators, and physicians deployed the liberal notion

of indigenous redemption to emphasize educational, hygienic, and economic policies as

part of the model for cultural missions. In general, pensadores imagined an educated and

clean Indian, peasant and worker, living in a comfortable rural environment, under the

tutelage of state offices. The Inter-American Indian Institute’s meeting at Pátzcuaro in the

early 1940s established indigenismo as the language that encoded state interventions for the betterment of Indians. The meeting stressed the mixture of native and European traditions and recognized the rural and collective condition of Indians (Garcés 1946b).260

Opponents of official indigenismo—mainly conservative hacendados—continued

to ridicule it. A humorous essay published in 1944 explained, for instance, why official

indigenista attempts to promote citizenship among indigenous made no sense. The author

made his argument by telling a personal story. Motivated by what he assumed was an

indigenista policy, he introduced massive changes in the everyday life of an hacienda

Indian, including soap and showers, western clothes, and food. Soon Juan, the laborer,

nearly died and protested that White people wanted to take away even the small pleasures

he had and abuse his traditions. Juan begged not to be drawn into the vorágine (vortex) of

Western civilization. By allowing “his” Indian to “speak” this conservative author made

it clear that liberal indigenistas failed to consult “authentic Indians” (Garrick 1944: 166-

67). The conservative critique begged the question; the need to consult Indians was in the air. In his attempt to unite progress and the preservation of native culture Santiana asked:

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“Are we permitted to take away their culture after we have already taken away their rule

in the continent without consulting them?” (Santiana 1949-51: 56).

The issue of indigenous voice raised new considerations like the expansion of

voting rights and the assimilation of rural indigenes. Several indigenistas agreed upon

their transformation into proletarios campesinos autóctonos (native peasant proletariats)

(Manifiesto indigenista 1946: i). This group consisted of both pure Indians and

Mestizos—a notion similar to “indigenous Mestizo” (Stutzman 1981, de la Cadena

2000)—and it was promoted in Jaramillo’s 1950 edition of El indio ecuatoriano, which

included model proposals for land redistribution.261

Echoing the Polemics

State journals echoed the polemics of liberal and leftist elites while generating new knowledge. During the 1940s, the welfare office established its own journal, which became a meeting point for several indigenista pensadores. The periodical, entitled

Previsión Social, reproduced university discussions on issues regarding collective lands,

education, and welfare.262 The journal was intended as a medium to inform citizens and

intellectuals about the Ministry’s activities. It carried a variety of essays, most of them

written by students and professors from the Universidad Central, as well as basic

information regarding the office’s interventions. The essays combined, in eclectic ways,

arguments and information that spoke of the spirit of the Indians as well as efforts to

strengthen indigenous bodies. Three topics stood out: the distinction between hacienda

and community Indians, hygienic deficiencies, and the Indian spirit.

In the state’s view, a policy of welfare had two referents: dependent and free

workers. The former made up the vast majority of the nation’s population and required

cultural and hygienic missions and the provision of social services.263 The proposal was

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that the state be in charge of the betterment of this population under a mobile missionary

strategy. On several occasions, this strategy was viewed as an alternative to a legal

system that had proved inefficient in granting people happiness. In line with the

distinction between dependent workers and autonomous workers, social welfare policy

also distinguished between “hacienda” and “community” Indians. This distinction

reproduced the old division between indentured workers or conciertos, now called

“huasipungueros,” and community Indians now identified as “free Indians.” Several

essays re-framed the old idea that community Indians enjoyed better economic and health

conditions than huasipungueros, emphasizing the exploitative relationship between

Indians and landlords (Suárez 1942; Andrade 1946; Buitrón and Salisbury 1947).264 The

state attempted to define the influences of landlords on indigenous living conditions and

to re-construct them as businessmen instead of masters.

The state’s cultural and hygienic missions assumed a peculiar indigenous biological condition. Some journal essays reported findings from applied research on hygiene and health. The studies followed the research agenda defined by Suárez. The journal reported on pests, particular pathologies, and nutrition among the highland and lowland indigenous population, referred to mostly as Indians (Binswanger 1945; Castillo 1942;

León 1941, 1944; Ottolenghi 1943; Santiana 1943; Wandemberg and Rivadeneira 1941).

Some essays reviewed intervention strategies and results (Vacacela 1946). All maintained a racial distinction of the population that did not entail marking only Indians but Whites and Mestizos as well, although the distinctions did not imply particular state procedures for each group. However, in contrast to Suárez’s later statements about indigenous

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fortitude and adaptation, most of the official literature assumed the degeneration of the

indigenous race and stressed the need for state intervention.

The themes of indigenous integration and the indigenous spirit united the official

publications. Clothing, food, housing, music, and dance265 were viewed as expressions of

the indigenous spirit, although all of these cultural elements needed improvement. Most of the official proposals began by arguing that Indians did not belong to an inferior race, but once this ritual assertion was made, the authors pointed to several features that revealed an inferior, if provisional, condition. They stressed that indigenes had not sufficiently adapted to Western culture, a condition depicted negatively as resistance; and they painted a state of degeneration or stagnation derived from social and environmental conditions (Andrade 1943). In these assertions, which never failed to stress either the willingness of Indians to change or their potential spirit, allusions were made to current decay or inferiority, a temporary state until the indigenous renaissance became a reality.

Moreover, a shared premise of indigenista intellectual production was the belief in the silent resistance and revenge of Indians that threatened the progress of the nation.

The rhetoric about indigenous education266 referred to the molding of the

indigenous spirit. Teachers and students embodied true citizenship and a fundamental

mission: saving their own race.267 In an official letter to Jasper Hill, an indigene from

Canada who participated in the indigenista meeting at Pátzcuaro,268 indigenous teachers

and students presented themselves as members of a great race, inheritors of a cosmic thought, and committed to saving their race from extinction:

We have a lived history that has yet to be recognized. We love the traditions of a people of conquerors that were never slaves. […] This is why we loudly ask for the liberty that was taken away from us and for the lands that were usurped from us. […] We, the future indigenous teachers, understand that we must save our race; we

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know that we are obligated to take it down the roads of civilization without loosing its autochthonous and genuine spirit (El Día del Indio 1943: 19).

While indigenous teachers reproduced the indigenista language of the Indian spirit,

they stressed their citizenship credentials—the object of state inspection and interest.

Reinaldo Murgueytio—a liberal who was behind the writing of letter to Hill—wrote an article about the formal training of indigenous teachers in a mixed environment with

Mestizo students. It was an opportunity to inquire about the psychological traits of both groups and to test the hypothesis of a peculiar indigenous psychology and spirit. The author evaluated the performance of indigenous and Mestizo students in their physical, intellectual, and artistic training. His observations led him to stress indigenous physical strength and ability for adaptation. He depicts the Indians’ intellectual development as

“concise and realistic,” based on a remarkable memory that allowed them to mimic and learn, but insists on their limitations for the retention of ideas. At the same time, the author argued that indigenes functioned more on the basis of instincts and sentiments than reason, and had a strong sense of justice that moved them close to rebellion

(Murgueytio 1943: 38-42). Thus, the old idea of an indigenous tendency towards rebellion was still alive and remained an element of the description of their peculiar psychology and spirit. Though the law now offered them the exercise of political rights, indigenes were still seen as being unable to use them due to their underdeveloped civic emotions.

In sum, the journal Previsión Social echoed the rhetoric of the peculiar biology and psychology of the indigenous race and stressed the old distinction between hacienda and communal Indians. Consistent with the emphasis on a collective soul and their status as citizen-subjects, ministerial proposals argued for the maintenance of a protective law as

195 well as administrative means to better hygienic conditions and shape the Indian spirit

(Murgueytio 1943: 43-44).

Indian Concealment, Nomadism, and Social Fear

The alleged concealment strategy of Indians was seen as having a variety of effects and was connected to the lack of individual interests and desires among Indians, including property rights. It also contributed to misunderstandings between Indians and

Whites, although it had prevented Indian mistreatment by Whites. The concealment strategy was based on the historical repression of private interest. Concealment had protected the Indians from Whites and maintained deep secrets that promised a future renaissance of the Indian spirit. However the lack of private interests and desires prevented the development of modern individualism and rationality among the indigenes, an indecipherable condition for the elites. And at the same time, this concealment strategy allowed natives to hide their intentions and made governmentality difficult, fuelling elite fears.

Since the late 1930s, the tendency of indigenes to migrate became a major concern among the elites, particularly, the conservative and landed class (Jaramillo 1983 [1936],

Vol. II: 160; Bustamante 1941; Núñez 1942; Robalino 1944). Intellectuals agreed that it was time for Indians to return to the countryside and to communal life. Thus they emphasized the existence of a positive Indian spirit and body, their essential attachment to the land, peculiar languages, and their collective persona. Moreover, land was the means of subsistence and liberty for the indigenous population (Rodríguez 1949: 38). But the official rhetoric did not develop a strong discourse on land reform;269 instead, it opened a discussion about race, living conditions, and welfare in rural and urban settings

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and within communities. This nomadic condition of the indigenes fed additional

apprehension among the elites.

Víctor Gabriel Garcés, who worked to enact a communal law, masterfully assembled the different elements of state discourse on Indians. He delivered a speech for the inauguration of the Instituto Indigenista Ecuatoriano, in which he insisted that Indians were culturally attached to the land since the remote past and that land was for them an

“object of veneration” (Garcés 1943: 47). Originally, it was the ayllu that connected

Indians to the land; through time, the ayllu gave way to parcialidades or village settlements. In his view, the native communities had been largely destroyed during colonial times, to the point that most had lost their lands. The parcialidad was the strongest Indian institution to survive; it was the basis of group reciprocity—ayni—and

collective work—minga (Garcés 1943: 52-54). The parcialidad, together with a positive

consideration of Indian spirit, opened the door to a more “political” understanding of the

indigenous question. The very notion that the community constituted an urban-like

settlement helped elites consider the possibility of “indigenous rebirth.”

In 1943, a socialist university intellectual, Angel Modesto Paredes, wrote an insightful essay that stressed the idea that through state recognition Indian communities had acquired relevance from a demographic and administrative standpoint. They had become a particular lifestyle network that, in the long run, would give a new physiognomy to the state (Paredes 1943: 197). A salient political feature of this style was their self-government, a mixture between the republican municipal council and the colonial cabildo, but based on popular vote. The cabildo and its election procedures locally mimicked national democratic institutions and thus provided an arena for the

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exercise of political rights. For Paredes this democratic novelty was the most intriguing

feature of the communal law, and he expressed fear of its effects regarding national unity

and peace. At the communal level, indigenes were putting into practice the renaissance of

their race; at the same time, they shared a political language with the national community.

Paredes feared that the Indian renaissance would exacerbate rivalry between the races. He

imagined the possibility of “Indian towns and counties” as well as an “Indian proletariat”

acting against Whites. This analysis recalls the old elite image of Indians invading towns

and cities, proving that it was very much alive that was enhanced by the nomadic

condition of the Indians. Indian insurgence should be prevented, argued Paredes. He

reasoned that “indigenous” attachment to and love of the land, combined with state

intervention in the interests of building equality, would prevent further development of

racial hatred (Paredes 1943: 199-201).

Paredes considered that a central element of state policy was to bring an “urban

culture” to the countryside. This would create a middle ground between rural isolation

and urban social life. The liberal García, however, was cautious about an indigenous

integration into white culture;270 he considered that the state still needed to eliminate the

coercive elements of the relationship between Indians and state institutions (García 1946:

174). Instead of opening channels to Indians, he argued that indigenous communities

needed to be more independent from local state powers. This required strengthening their links to the central state welfare office and reinforcing their rural identity. This meant giving greater recognition to traditional indigenous authorities in the management of local public services.

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While indigenistas discussed state governmentality tactics regarding Indian community, a more integrative nation was being imagined by the elites that re-opened the issue of Indian citizenship, the subject of the next chapter.

Notes

223 During this period, 28 percent of the published record dealt with archeology and ethno-history, 47 percent with ethnological studies, and 25 percent with Indian biology. Most of these works (85 percent) were published in Ecuador (León 1946).

224 This notion resembles that of the Neo-Indianistas from Cuzco (Poole 1997: 182-191). In Ecuador, influenced by the Bolivian Arguedas, Espinosa (1979 [1914-1917]) used telluric force to stress landscape influences on the psychology of the pueblo instead of climate. Bossano (1933) related it to the peasant culture and to Indian peculiarities, a consideration shared by several pensadores. Telluric forces provided the frame to construct a future shared national consciousness that did not exist. The notion of telluric forces was based on two concepts: on the one hand, the notion of lo indio—Indian-ness—(a future shared consciousness) and el indio (body and psychology of a particular group, a race).

225 Max Uhle devoted himself mostly to research in the coastal and northern highland regions, including Colombia, and to the development of the museum collection. The museum was burned in 1929 and Uhle, together with Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, reconstructed the main collection. Then the museum was stored for a long time and later, by the end of the 1950s, Antonio Santiana recovered it and transformed it into an ethnographic display (Santiana 1959: 45). Today, scant traces of this museum can be found at the Universidad Central.

226 During 1933, both indigenous groups and the Quito Municipality celebrated the fourth centennial of Atahualpa’s death, in which he was depicted as the founder of the Ecuadorian nationality. One indigenous group gathered in Guayaquil around the figure of Felipe Huaraca Duchicela XXVI; the other, gathered Indian syndicate workers from Quito. The celebration marked an important difference between the rural and urban Indians. The latter were able to remember and honoring their history while the rural Indians displayed music, dances, and rituals. This assumption was enacted in 1942 in a “Festival Aborígen.”

227 Pío Jaramillo (1936b) qualified the revival of the Tuhantinsuyo, the Inca Empire, in order to support Ecuador’s international rights to the Amazon River, an old border controversy between Peru and Ecuador.

228 Each topic contained a vast bibliography that included among others the American anthropologists Boas and Kroeber as well as the European Darwin and Comte. These sources were supplemented by several ethnographic questionnaires. He developed guidelines to collect anthropological data that were not published, in which he emphasized the registration of the physical features of a people, their body care, clothes, housing, food, and subsistence activities. At the same time he recommended the use of photographs to register details (AHBCE, Colección JJC, # 01993).

229 In Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño’s view, anthropology was related to the study of the physical conditions and the races of the people, ethnography dealt with the study of the spirit or cultures of the people, and archeology explored the cultural remains of the past in order to reconstruct the costumes of the past generations of a living people (N.d.). But Jijón y Caamaño had doubts about the relevance of race to explain human diversity. He presented Boas’s measurement of the immigrant population to the United States that showed that anthropometric indices were rapidly transformed in a few generations.

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230 During this time, a Quichua course was established at the Educational School (AUC, Actas Consejo Universitario, 1921-1950 and Salgado 1936). The course aimed to demonstrate that Quichua was a sophisticate language and that was different from the Peruvian Quechua.

231 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s works on primitive mentality as well as Freud’s theories were added to the previous European intellectuals. In 1930, José Vasconcelos as well as the European educator Adolph Ferriere, lectured at the Universidad Central on educational topics (AUC, Actas del Consejo Universitario, 1921-1950). At the same time, the visit of the Mexican Moisés Sáenz highlighted the interest on Indians and education.

232 It is interesting to note that most of the essays focused on indigenes written during the 1930s and 1940s were based on inspections of the Otavalo region, Imbabura. Indians from this region were considered racially “pure,” hard working farmers, and creative artisans (Orellana 1930: 401-06).

233 As among previous pensadores, Garcés considered that Indian psychology included a desire for revenge and hatred towards White people. In an oblique way, he argued that it was necessary to overcome racial hatred by filling the void of Indian culture.

234 The author stressed that Indians had no memories of their historical past that was usurped by the Spanish conquerors (García 1935: 14). Later Parsons described this phenomenon as a “cultural void” (1940: 224) and Debenais de Valencia, as “oblivion” (1948: 71-2). The proof was that rural Indians did not remember Atahualpa. However, as I have described, the elite’s notion of indegeneity was based in part on memories of mistreatment and communal property. In this vein, Jorge Carrera’s poem, Levantamiento (1931), presents Indian memory as a central weapon: “Iban delante nuestros padres/ buscando el vado de la tarde crecida/con sus pies cargados de memoria.”

235 Thuner (2003: 239) traces the image of the despotic and totalitarian Incas who prevented the development of individuals to William Prescott’s work at the end of the nineteenth century.

236 Remigio Romero y Crespo, El problema indigenista. Quito: El Comercio, 21 August 1933.

237 The notion of hygiene was by this time well established and combined biological and moral concerns about the ability of self-administration of the pueblo. Since the beginning of the century, several manuals of hygiene were published and circulated among students and the general public.

238 State regulations included repressive measures that banned the use of rustic clothes and domestic animals. However, the ban on Indian clothes did not generate consensus among the elites and prompted protests by female Indians (AFL, Asamblea Nacional 1937-38, Caja 3, Carpeta No. 177). Other hygienic regulations regarding pests and domestic animals also triggered Indian uprisings and protests (Suárez 1934: 33; AFL, Cámara de Senado 1942, Caja 238, Carpeta No. 42).

239 Quito, Ibarra, Latacunga, and Ambato, among others cities, estimated their populations and registered the number and social conditions of housing and families based on Suárez’s method.

240 Groups were formed to conduct household surveys and to measure parasitism, weight and height, and similar biological indices. They also observed and analyzed the water consumed by the local people and the sanitary conditions of the environment (Suárez 1936: 1-5).

241 He assumed that at least 10% of Quito’s population was indigenous and that most of the workers wore poncho and lacked shoes (Suárez 1934: 13, 8 and 19).

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242Although Suárez did not use the category of race and the notion of eugenics, he promoted a “ficha antropométrica” (anthropometric chart) that was applied to school students and urban customers of the welfare services, as well as a requirement for issuing pre-nuptial certificates.

243 Similarly, the Hospital San Juan de Dios in Quito used the category of race to describe patients in its records, information that was never scrutinized. A staff member filled the form based on the declarations of the patient and his or her observation of the physical appearance, clothes, and language (Defossez 1992: 43).

244 Several descriptions spoke of the terror that Indian drunkenness in the towns and cities produced among White people. Based on such considerations and on similar experiences in other countries, the central government and the municipalities prohibited, on several occasions, the sale of chicha sale and the operation of bars during holidays.

245 Like in other Latin American nations, in Ecuador, the acceptance of Mendelian hereditary laws—the notion that the hereditary composition of a species was transmitted immutably from one generation to the next generation—was a conflicting process. Although Ecuadorian pensadores considered that those principles restricted the possibility of educational and environmental improvements (Llerena 1932 and Chaves 1932), soon Mandel’s laws opened new approaches to Indian race.

246 Later on, diverse authors, including Suárez himself, translated the classification of the two peasant classes as “hacienda” and “community” Indians (Jaramillo 1983 [1936], Vol. II: 132; Suárez 1942), a distinction that was also reproduced in the state’s rhetoric.

247 Rodrigo Chávez (or Rodrigo de Triana) was recognized by his interest on popular characters and by his promotion of montuvio traditions. His arguments were inspired by the Spanish physician Gregorio Marañón’s (1933) notion of “estados intersexuales” (intersexual states), the mixing of masculine and feminine sexual features.

248 The community of pensadores in Cuenca, and specially Agustín Cueva Tamariz, made used of the idea of “biotypes” that combined the biological study of Indian body and psychology and proposed an indigenous bio-typology (1949). By using this frame, Luis Monsalve Pozo suggested that Indians in a new and different social environment, such as urban settings, had started to erase their peculiar ethnic condition and Indian-ness (1943: 303).

249 A similar argument provided the basis to construct what the composer Francisco Salgado (1949) called “national music”: a symphony that put together, but did not mix, indigenous, Mestizo, and White musical traditions.

250 Jijón y Caamaño introduced Santiana to Paul Rivet in Paris and asked him to train Santiana in physical anthropology (Jijón y Caamaño 1990). Jijón y Caamaño also lent skulls and skeletons from his museum to the anatomy laboratory where Antonio Santiana was doing his initial research on the Indian body (AHBCE, Colección JJC, # 01934).

251 During the 1950s, Antonio Santiana promoted the creation of the Anthropological Institute as part of the School of Education, thus installing Indian studies focused on the biology of race—under the label of anthropology—in the university community, from where new graduates spread them to the rest of the country. As the university created a more stable teaching position and anthropological research centered on a biological perspective continued, the state, together with the private Instituto Ecuatoriano de Antropología y Geografía (IEAG), organized a course on “action anthropology” (Tax 1952) to train field and development practitioners from several countries of the region. This latter experience would open the door to a new generation of anthropologists, instructed in a more systematic way to focus on ethnographic records that included the first Ecuadorian anthropologist trained at Chicago University. As the university

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lost its teaching monopoly, the postwar world attracted to Ecuador foreign visitors including anthropologists (Parsons 1940 and 1945) interested on indigenes living in rural communities, and the new generation of practitioners became increasingly involved in state demands (AUC, Actas del Consejo Universitario, 1945-50).

252 The Chilean physician Alejandro Lipschütz from the Universidad de Concepción trained him. He was also a member of an Americanist network that researched the native races. Lipschütz argued that the Indian race implied both a statistical distribution of biological features as well as the social classifications by the people themselves. In this vein, the Indian could not only be described as a biological entity, but as a social perception (Lipschütz 1944 [1937]).

253 During 1934, the North American anthropologist, John Gillin measured more than one hundred and fifty indigenous from the Imbabura region and described them by color, hair, height, and other physical traits and concluded that there was not a unique physical type among the Quichua-speaking natives of the Andean region (Gillin 1940).

254 The blood test fascinated the local scientific community. It was low cost and easy to conduct and, as a result, was applied extensively (Plutarco Naranjo, Interview, February 2002). Moreover, it reinforced the connection between the body and the nomadic condition of Indians.

255 The sixth volume of the Handbook of the South American Indians contained several articles about the physical and anthropometric features of Indian and mixed populations, by members of Alejandro Lipschütz’s research network. Lipschütz (1941) cautioned about the political manipulation of physical anthropological research and the risks involved in the notion of a peculiar Indo-American race that could easily be depicted as inferior due to its peculiarities, especially those related to the hair distribution.

256 During 1949, UNESCO campaigned against racism by arguing that there were no scientific bases to prove different mental capacities among races or biological degeneration as a consequence of hybridization; race was less a biological fact than a social myth. However, conservative politicians and physical anthropologists criticized some of the antiracial statements and opened a second wave of reviews of the prior statements that accepted the existence of races and race mixtures. Race and racism were not over; both maintained their attraction to anthropologists (Patterson 2001: 115). Contemporary biological anthropology still discusses the status of the concept of race.

257 The local consolidation of socialist and communist ideas, the images of Mexico and Russia, and the European war influenced elite approaches to the indigenous question with elements that criticized, reinforced, or expanded the liberal rhetoric on the natives.

258 In contrast to communists who promoted Indian syndication, Jaramillo proposed it as a state strategy. As early as 1926, communists had promoted the unionization of the hacienda Indians as well as the creation of a national confederation of Indians (Prieto 1980 and Becker 1997).

259 A supplementary state proposal was written by Abelardo Moncayo R. and printed in the newspapers. He mostly focused on the indigenous work force (Ideas acerca de la mano de obra indígena en la agricultura y su posible mejoramiento, El Comercio, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 October 1935).

260 This was the meeting that gave way to the creation of the Inter-American Indian Institute where different nations converged and agreed upon a regional rhetoric regarding the natives. The Mexican Moisés Sáenz paved this initiative during the 1930s by doing research among the Indians from the Andean nations.

261 Jaramillo participated in the Ecuadorian delegation to the Pátzcuaro meeting and, later, he was invited to the United States to lecture and visit Indian reservations. His perspective also converged with the need to

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consolidate a middle class in order to guarantee democracy and prevent indigenous uprisings (Jaramillo 1983 [1954], Vol. II: 183-199).

262 Soon, this effort was displaced to the newly created Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana where a national academy of science was founded and several journals were established.

263 References to hygienic missions to Indian communities, focusing on pests, can be found in the late 1920s. Such missions introduced hygienic measures and distributed information and were imagined as a mobile welfare system. The idea of cultural missions implied services that were mobile and included hygiene, culture, and economic advancement (Suárez 1936: 31) and opened the road to later community development strategies.

264 However, in the official discourse, this distinction changed in the context of disputes regarding the haciendas that belonged to the Junta de Asistencia Pública that supported social welfare. Clark (1999) suggests that, in this context, hacienda Indians were transformed by the official rhetoric into rich peasants who had impressive livestock.

265 Garcés (1944), for example, pointed to the nomadic Indian spirit while analyzing the differences between huts and houses. At the same time, he organized an “Aboriginal Festival” as part of the process of national recovery after the war with Peru (Garcés 1942).

266 Based on the ideas of indigenous schools and recovering the native language, the state exhibited its achievements regarding the strengthening of the indigenous spirit. The “active school,” in vogue during the 1930s, opened the path to rural and indigenous schools as a means to create a rural and indigenous culture that contained the ingredients of civilization and, at the same time, prevented indigenous displacements. It was in this context that Congress discussed and accepted the recognition of native languages as a tool for schooling indigenes and the Universidad Central introduced Quichua classes. Propositions about indigenous education were put in motion such as the training of indigenous teachers, the use of Quichua language, and bilingualism. In the state staff’s gaze, indigenous students and teachers incarnated the idea of the spirit of the race and became crucial links between American indigenismo and public policies.

267 This group of indigenous teachers was the same group that asked Congress to translate into Quichua its political and legal decisions, including their right to choose an indigenous representative to Congress (AFL, Asamblea Nacional de 1937-38, Caja 3, Carpeta s/n).

268 Jasper Hill, a member of the Lenni Lenape Canadian group, sent, in the meeting, a message to the Indians of the Americas urging them not let the native language and culture die and calling for the reconstruction of the indigenous nations (El Día del Indio 1943: 13). This letter was translated into Quichua and distributed to indigenous students. Several others Indians participated at the meeting. The letter was signed by Berta Lahuatte, Matilde Manangón, Jorge Chango, Pedro Coro, Juan J. Colimba, Valerio Cuji, José J. Toapanta, Ricardo Ingo, J.E Quillepangui, José M. Tupiza, José G. Tipán, Nicolás Pillacho, Pedro Caisabanda, and E. Quilachamín (El Día del Indio 1943: 19).

269 Although there were several controversies regarding land distribution, the state timidly promoted some interventions guided to land distribution among the Indians. In 1928, 1931, and 1933, the Junta de Asistencia Pública was given permission to distribute land from its patrimony, but only in two cases, Quinoa Corral-Espino (Bolívar) and Tambo Viejo (Cañar), land was returned to the Indians.

270 Humberto García considered that the goal was not to assimilate indigenes into the way of life of Whites. Whites possessed defects while Indians revealed positive practices. He critically states, “we as White believe that we possessed a cultural infallibility” (García 1942: 27).

CHAPTER 6 NATIONAL CRISIS AND RECONSTITUTION, 1941-1950

The 1940s in Ecuador were marked by the traumatic loss of a large section of its

territory. In 1941, Peru occupied the southern portion of the country claiming that

Ecuador had broken the status-quo agreement signed in 1936 and was gambling on a new

frontier demarcation. For Ecuador, it was an invasion to take control over its Amazonian

territories. For the elite, the event revealed the weakness of the nation: poverty and

military inefficiency, but especially a political system that had been unable to take

possession of the “aspired territories” (Ibarra 1999). Elites blamed the loss of territory on

the corrupt “oligarchic liberal government.”

The press gave limited coverage to the short-term war. Ibarra (1999) suggests that during the occupation the media chose to promote patriotism by showing people’s anger against the invaders. Patriotism was interpreted as an awakening of Ecuadorian-ness and the subject of many reflections. But newspapers provided few clues regarding the roles indigenes played in the border conflict. Elites timidly discussed Indian participation in the army and they noted that highland and lowland Indians, incorporated into local defense groups, had exhibited “una clarinetada de patriotismo” (a bugle call to patriotism).1

The controversy regarding the country’s southern and eastern borders stirred up

civic movements that provided a context for re-imagining the country and facing the

problems that had seemingly prevented the constitution of an integrated national

community. The aftermath of the war brought mixed feelings about the fragmentation of

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the nation, its governmental and economic weaknesses, and the cultural as well as

political exclusion of the pueblo. Public disagreement with the liberal government

regarding the war erupted during the first semester of 1944 and frustration was expressed

in a multi-class movement called the “Gloriosa de Mayo,” which opened the road to a

short-lived but imaginative government coalition (Cueva 1973: 54-62). This coalition

discussed several issues regarding the indigenous population—including corporate

representation, native languages, the establishment of Indian courts, and political rights—

and marked a shift from previous liberal times. This chapter reviews elite debates on the expansion of the political community and the first national population census that would unlock new elite tactics of Indian governmentality. As the elite’s imagery opened toward an expansion of political rights for Indians, the official rhetoric of population was increasingly defined in “cultural” terms.

Reframing the Political Community

A major concern of the period of post-war recovery was the impressive number of

Ecuadorians—including Indians—who were illiterate and thus excluded from the political community. A small proportion of literate Indians had been voters since the mid nineteenth century, but most continued to be excluded from voting because of their lack of Spanish language skills. Although several critics had commented on the difficulties and restrictions implicit in the political exclusion of indigenes, it was during the aftermath of the war that civil society and Congress analyzed the issue and acted to enlarge the political community of the nation.

The Inability to Vote

To liberal pensadores, suffrage was a public right linked to the concept of the state.

This right implied a dilemma in the case of a society marked by diversity. There was a

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tension between the principle of equal rights for all and the existence of exceptions such

as those for women, the clergy, and illiterates. The dilemma, however, disappeared once

it was argued that there were powerful reasons to negate, not the right, but its exercise in certain groups. Thus the important point was that all people maintained the same rights in principle, even though they were prevented from exercising them (Mosquera 1903: 80).

In this view, illiterate people were not prepared to exercise a right that required reading and writing, impersonal information, autonomous decisions, and an acceptance of the state.

Although exclusionary strategies based on indigeneity were not legally established,

Indians deserved special consideration based on their “dependant mentality” and deep racial hatred, both indications that they did not accept the national state.2 Since the 1890s,

liberal and conservative politicians and pensadores had argued that, although some

Indians could write and read and therefore were political citizens, they were still uncivilized and did not have the required “mental” autonomy to properly exercise their right to vote (Moncayo 1986 [1912]: 299). For example, local caudillos—in the liberal view, mostly conservative authorities—took advantage of Indians, supplying them with alcohol to vote for a convenient candidate.

Conservative intellectuals, on the other hand, criticized the utopian liberal idea that recognized Indians as equals and granted them political rights (Pólit 1913: 22) and, later, called attention to the “travesty” of a democracy in which liberals manipulated elections

(Vega 1930: 15-16). In the conservative view, local tenientes políticos manipulated the vote of indigenous groups; these political figures traveled to indigenous communities to announce the up-coming elections and pressed them to vote according to their bosses’

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instructions (Dávila 1932: 15). Thus, both conservative and liberal intellectuals agreed

that indigenes voted without knowledge and autonomy. In addition, some pensadores

suggested that it was mainly racial hatred that prevented indigenes from acquiring

citizenship rights.

In the past decades there had been few attempts to evaluate the liberal criterion of

literacy for citizenship. Juan E. Naula, a worker intellectual from Guayaquil, criticized

the liberal notion of citizenship (1921:190-92). Modern times—argued Naula—revealed

a gap between rhetoric and constitutional reality. Liberal rhetoric spoke of equality while

constitutional norms restricted political rights to literate men. Workers did not have the

opportunity to learn to read and write, but they were conscious people who possessed a

“natural philosophy,” paid taxes, and made other contributions. Their exclusion from the

political community—argued Naula—meant that democracy did not exist and the whole

idea of equality was a farce. But Naula never explicitly spoke about indigenes; his

analysis referred to workers, and we do not know if he included indigenous workers in

this category.

Explicit references to Indian exclusion from political rights appeared in the early

1930s. The Mexican educator and indigenista, Moisés Sáenz, had visited several

indigenous settings in Ecuador and had argued that suffrage rights be extended to them

(Sáenz 1933: 128).3 But the most salient event of the early1930s was the attempt to

organize an “indigenous congress” or a “peasant congress” under the sponsorship of

communist and socialist intellectuals. The government feared and repressed the effort on the grounds that it would incite public unrest. This episode was nevertheless viewed by some liberal and leftist pensadores as an indication of the improvement in the civic

207 consciousness of the natives. Angel Modesto Paredes argued that Indians understood the principle of republican equality that protected them and had the capacity to demand from society and governments the enforcement of legal precepts. At the same time, by acknowledging that they were victims of unjust limitations of their civic and political rights, Indians had begun to shed their position of inferiority (Paredes 1943: 190). Pío

Jaramillo, writing in the newspaper El Día and inspired by the frustrated indigenous meeting, argued that the representative system of the nation was a fake.4 Ecuador had a population of around two million, but the half million Whites and Mestizos governed through the suffrage of a mere twenty thousand people; three quarters of the population, mostly “pure Indians,” were excluded from political society. This falsified representation legislated for the whole population and was the reason that the Indians were not taken into account in government spending and administrative actions. Contemporary Whites, argued Jaramillo, were like the Spanish colonizers: public rights were their sole prerogative and the constitution granted them “divine” privileges; these, in turn, had been used to constrict the republic and democracy. If liberal principles and justice were followed, Congress would have to be composed by a majority of Indians. This, Jaramillo concluded, was the true reason for their exclusion on the grounds of literacy.

And yet, in Jaramillo’s view, even though Indians were excluded from the political community, they were not on the margins of society: they were key elements in the economic and military development of the nation. At the same time, they passively resisted progress as a form of revenge for being excluded from the political community.

Thus the dilemma in Jaramillo’s view was familiar: would change come as a result of state intervention or revolt? Peasants and Indians were once again making it clear that

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they wanted to live in the nation, to be a positive economic factor, and to become active

citizens. But the notions of Indian revenge and unruliness continued to be present.

The Literacy Campaign

Post-war local responses to the problem of a severely limited political community included several attempts to teach people how to read and write.5 These efforts converged

on a literacy campaign in the highland and western provinces. Fueled by post-war

sentiments of national brotherhood, the National Union of Journalists (Unión Nacional de

Periodistas, UNP), lead by the liberal indigenista Garcés, revived the idea of a literacy

campaign and used the national newspapers to promote it.6 A diversity of social sectors

rallied around this effort. The crusade summoned students and teachers, workers and

owners, housewives, the Catholic Church, guilds and syndicates, and other civil

associations. Later, the campaign received financial and personal support from the

government, although the UNP continued to run it.

During the preparations for the campaign the illiterate population of the country was estimated at fifty five percent of the total population, with the highest rates found in the indigenous highland provinces. The campaign was sustained by the idea that literacy would lead to the cultural and economic integration of the nation. It was not only intended to impart reading and writing skills, but to make people cognizant of their citizenship rights and connect them to the political community and to the market.7 The idea was to supplement the teaching of literacy skills with civic lessons. The campaign would enlarge the number of political citizens and consumers (Albornoz 1945: 2).

The campaign enrolled individuals who would act as trainers—students, teachers, among others—and asked businessmen, landowners, syndicates, and civil associations to help in the identification of illiterate people, and in the instruction process.8 Instructors

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were trained in a method that utilized an adjusted reading card developed by the North

American missionary Frank Laubach in the Philippines, and used in several Asian and

Latin American countries (Laubach 1947; 1950). Laubach was invited to Ecuador to train instructors, discuss the campaign strategy, and exchange experiences.9 The missionary

and local intellectuals agreed on the idea that illiteracy was the most important enemy of

a nation and that a homeland with high rates of illiteracy, such as Ecuador, was poor and

backward. By using the idiom of war, Laubach labeled ignorance as the “enemy” and

every person who taught as a “soldier;” in order to win the war, each soldier needed to

fulfill his or her duties. He gave a public class with a female servant as a student. The

secret of his success, in the eyes of the local audience, was the “paternal” manner in

which Laubach treated the lady and encouraged her to become an instructor once she had

learned. The main idea of the method was the association of images and sounds and then

syllables and letters; but as the daily El Comercio commented, its most important

ingredient was its commitment to the illiterates and the nation.10

The campaign was officially launched with a public event in the popular Plaza

Arenas in Quito. Indigenous folklore11 and music, speeches, and posters—with slogans

such as “one less illiterate, one more citizen”—were part of the paraphernalia displayed

during the event. The process started with a census of illiterate people and their

assignment to designated centers. Based on this information, the campaign headquarters

provided each center with materials such as reading cards, posters, and pencils.

Soon the organizers of the campaign received a visit from members of the

Federación Ecuatoriana de Indios (FEI) to ask for alphabetization of Quichua speakers.

Dolores Cacuango, a native leader from Cayambe, Pichincha, spoke in the name of the

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highland Indians and their desire “to know what diverse persons said and wrote in

newspapers and books.”12 El Comercio called this petition a “proof” that Indians were

interested in education and “culture” and that it was possible to keep the aboriginal

language and be at the same time interested in learning Spanish.13 This was also a turning

point in how the newspaper referred to the effects of literacy among the Indians. At the

beginning of the crusade, El Comercio considered that transforming Indians into citizens

through the alphabet was not a reliable endeavor: they required a “special program

adjusted to their peculiarities,” a statement that was not further explained.14 The Indian

petition opened the door to reinforce the crusade among the Indian population and to

include a bilingual component. A photograph that portrayed Dolores Cacuango and

several other Indians together with the campaign leaders accompanied the newspaper’s

acceptance. The picture was taken beside a plaque honoring the Spanish foundation of

Quito—a symbolic representation of Indian acceptance of the conquest and Western

culture.

Figure 9: Dolores Cacuango and literacy campaign leaders

The campaign translated Laubach’s reading card into Quichua15 and developed a variety of strategies for the instruction of indigenes based on the level of bilingual ability and the everyday idiomatic usages in indigenous communities. In the case of bilingual

211 and Quichua speakers—persons living in a Spanish context—the objective was to reinforce their use of the Spanish language, although Quichua was used to teach; and among Quichua speakers living in an indigenous context, the objective was to strengthen the Quichua language. The objective of the campaign was thus the castellanización

(castilianization) of Indians who lived in bilingual environments and the quichuización

(Quichua-ization) of Indians who lived in a monolingual environment. The campaign, however, did not have an official method for the instruction of indigenes; some groups used alternative techniques such as the bilingual strategy developed by a missionary at an indigenous cultural center in Peguche, Imbabura.16

After four months, the organizers became convinced that it was a difficult, but feasible crusade. Sixty percent of the students had deserted and many volunteers did not keep their commitments. At the same time, the method, although easy to apply, required a great number of teachers; it was a one-to-one process that made it difficult for students to maintain their interest when there were few instructors. To overcome this problem, the campaign attempted to implement a proposal developed by a group of North American educators, based on a separation of reading from writing that used audio-visual media—a set of films produced by Walt Disney—to aid in the teaching of reading. One of the films’ main characters was Donald Duck wearing a poncho and an Indian hat. The

Disney image was interpreted by local elites as that of an “indio Otavaleño.”17

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Figure 10: Donald Duck in Indian garb

This method, however, was discarded when it was pointed out that the

transformation of illiterate people into citizens required that they learn to write as well as

read. In spite of the effort, enthusiasm, and support for the campaign, over a period of

five years the crusade reached only thirteen percent of the illiterate population.18

However, the campaign did succeed in creating a sense of national brotherhood and integration. At the end of the learning process each student received a “citizenship diploma,” signed by several authorities as recognition of their new identity, while the teachers received a “diploma of patriotism.” Students were also persuaded to continue their education through a set of “transitional” readings—in the evolution from ignorance to citizenship—about national history, civics, and hygiene. Several students wrote letters in Spanish as well as in Quichua thanking the UNP for the opportunities opened to them by their new identity.19 At the same time, elites made a point of emphasizing that the

newly alphabetized people were quick to abandon timidity, adopt hygienic practices, and

acquire self-esteem.20

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The Debate on the “Civic Strike”

The post-war climate of national brotherhood resonated in the progressive

legislative Assembly of 1944-45.21 This congressional session was also concerned with the small size of the political community and the apparent lack of political commitment by the pueblo. Congressmen argued that only ten percent of the population had elected the new president in what was considered the most fair and open election in the nation’s history. The assembly sought to enlarge the political community through measures such as the reduction of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen.22 A more contentious

issue, however, was the extension of electoral rights to the illiterate population.

During the session, Carlos Cueva Tamariz,23 a socialist with liberal views from

Cuenca, put forth his theory of a “civic strike” in order to emphasize the lack of interest

of both the people and the traditional ruling elite in the political life of the nation.

According to his hypothesis, the pueblo—including indigenes—stayed at the margins of

politics in a sort of “civic strike.” At several moments the pueblo and the “peasant

masses” had ended their civic strike and shown their capacity to participate in political

life—as in the case of Alfaro’s revolution—though they soon return to their “strike”. In

his view, the contemporary post-war conjuncture showed a new attempt by the pueblo to

participate in the political community, but this time the pueblo was asking for political

citizenship and expressing its interest in the national welfare and progress. Granting the

pueblo political rights would help prevent social unrest and open new avenues for their

self-government.

Cueva Tamariz, in the name of the constitutional commission, argued against

granting political rights to all adult persons, since a minimum of “culture” was required.

Citizens required information and knowledge about political issues to participate in the

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political community. Thus, the literacy requisite was maintained,24 although an

exemption was granted for the election of local parish authorities. The right to vote for

municipal and congressional offices and the presidency remained closed to illiterates. The

notion shared by most congressmen was that all illiterates, but especially indigenes, lived

under conditions of servitude and therefore had limited autonomy. Moreover, it was

dangerous to introduce “the masses” into public life. This would expose them to the

manipulation of powerful interests. In this way, this progressive Assembly made use of

the notions of “lack of autonomy” and “dependent mentality” of Indians. But the old idea

that this condition was not their fault also came into play. Therefore, the state and—now

too—civil society had the responsibility to remove the mechanisms that entrapped Indian

liberty. The Assembly was confident, therefore, that the political exclusion of the pueblo

would wane as a result of the literacy campaign and the experiment in local voting rights.

Meanwhile, it was necessary to prepare the illiterate pueblo and indigenes for the near future. One step in the process of integrating illiterates into the political community—clearly experimental—was the right to elect parish authorities. The constitutional proposal considered that in their “transition” toward citizenship, illiterates

should have the opportunity to “awaken their interest” on local issues.25 This right would

allow illiterate indigenes and peasants to voice their claims and train themselves in

political participation. During the discussion of the legislative commission’s proposal,26

most parliamentarians celebrated the previous arguments and approved the idea of local

citizenship for the illiterate. However, there was a group of conservatives who opposed

the initiative by arguing that illiterates did not know the function of suffrage or the needs

of the nation. In their view, responsible voters required knowledge of the country’s

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history and political organization. The argument that illiterates did not have the

credentials to act consciously and with autonomy was repeated several times. Moreover,

one congressman insisted that to have the right to vote it was necessary to have

completed at least primary schooling, and another argued that instead of granting

illiterates the right to vote it was necessary first to “pull them out” of ignorance. Again,

the main argument against granting illiterates the right to vote was that they would fall

prey to manipulative political bosses.

The congressmen who agreed with the proposition reinforced their position during the debate. For one congressman, it was important to distinguish between rural and urban illiterates because urban people were better prepared to participate in political life.

Another representative proposed that the experiment in voting rights in local elections should be evaluated before extending it to higher offices. The liberal who headed the literacy campaign recalled once again the results of the crusade and insisted that in the medium-term illiteracy would be eradicated; therefore, the proposal under discussion should be temporary. Alphabetization allowed each citizen to defend and assert his or her rights without representatives or middlemen; it was both a way to integrate the masses into the national political life and to lead them in the road of self-betterment.

The opening of voting rights at the parish level was accompanied by a prudent administrative decentralization that granted decision-making powers to the provinces and strengthened the municipalities and parishes.27 A communist representative pointed to the

cabildo (municipal council) as the basis of nationalism and democracy. However, for the

most part, councils had been unable to integrate the surrounding parishes into modern

life. Several factors prevented this integration including, for example, the existence of

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political lieutenants who exploited peasants and indigenes. This was a political arena that

congressmen believed would change with the voting and institutional reforms. The idea

of reinforcing the local institutions was particularly appreciated by conservatives. The

parish, with the participation of local people, would be better equipped to solve its

problems. One of the functions of local politics should be the promotion of indigenous

accountability in order to control bad functionaries and local authorities, the subject of

numerous indigenous petitions.28

The Assembly members did not exhibit a uniform language in speaking for and on

behalf of the native population. Most members interchanged the terms “indígena”

(indigene) and “indio” (Indian), while a few preferred to avoid such terms altogether by

using the term “campesino” (peasant). During the discussions on citizenship, and

language issues, the notions of “pobladores indígenas” (indigenous inhabitants) or

“pobladores indios” (Indian inhabitants), “cultura indígena” (indigenous culture),

“indígenas” (indigenes), or “indios” were used to describe the native population, their language, and their political exclusion. In this discursive context, “race” was conspicuously absent. However, race and the “ethnic factor” did appear in the midst of the discussion about nationality29 and the corporate representative (see Chapter 4).30

While communists fought for the representative of the “indigenous race” and stressed that there were indigenous organizations that should be consulted, composed by people who belonged to a “socially discernible race,” socialist representatives from the Universidad

Central argued that it was very difficult to define the “raza indígena.” For them, it was preferable to use the term “indio,” a social category that included both natives and those who “lived like natives” in the countryside; both categories, in turn, came together in the

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category of “peasants.” Although, as these comments make clear, new understandings

and approaches to the native population were in the making, the notion of race was still a

pervasive discursive tool.

As in the case of “indio” corporate representation, proposals that opened local

voting rights to illiterates and rural democratization were soon discarded. Almost

immediately (1946), political elites turned back and eliminated the local “civic”

experiment, arguing that it was too radical and could contribute to the spread of

communism. It was also the end point of the protective agenda established after the

Liberal Revolution. For several pensadores, including liberals (Jaramillo 1949: 15), the

notion of protection now clearly implied the inferiority and incapacity of those who were

protected. Leftist politicians proposed the elimination from the Constitution of the

principle of protection during the Assembly of 1944-45, and they succeeded in their

efforts the following year (Constitución 1946, art. 174).

The 1950 Population Census

Since the 1890s, the idea of a national population census was ever present among

the liberal elite, but it never materialized. Budget problems and regime changes, among

other factors, prevented its implementation. However, several local enumeration efforts

were undertaken including, for example, a census of the Province of Pichincha in the

midst of the centennial celebration of 1922. This provincial census did not have

administrative objectives, however; it did not register the racial or ethnic characteristics

of the population, despite the suggestions of several young academics from the Central

University. 31 Alfredo Pérez, for instance, wrote about how easy it would have been to add a column for racial identification (1922: 134). But organizers were weary that the census would spark Indian uprisings or protests. Therefore, they gave out instructions to

218 the local authorities responsible for the enumeration of the indigenous population that required them to treat the Indians “courteously” and expressly prohibited the use of force or threats in the case of resistance.32

During the post-war period, several civic associations together with the

Universidad Central promoted the implementation of a census in the capital city. This census, which became a trial for the 1950 national census, introduced an observation chart designed to count the “población indígena” (indigenous population). The enumerator was instructed to register members of the “raza indígena” by taking into account clothing, hairstyle, and language.33 A more rigorous method was deployed in another effort, this time in the highland region of Otavalo. Here enumerators were instructed to record the racial appearance of the individual—including skin color— together with other characteristics such as clothing and language in order to classify them as “Indio,” “Mestizo,” or “Blanco” (Guerrero 2003: 413). Previously, Buitrón and

Salisbury (1945) had developed a method to classify indios based on clothing, which they argued was a widely accepted practice.34

The 1950 national census, which was intended as a practical tool for public administration, avoided the biological classification and categorized individuals on the basis of cultural characteristics such as language, clothing, and housing. Census classifications included individual, family, and residential features.

Classifying the Indians

The 1950 national census was part of a regional effort to gather basic information in all Latin American nations (Procaccia 1945). The classification of Indians proved elusive and became a major theme during the 1948 Cuzco meeting of the Indian Inter-

American Institute (Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, III). Several regional

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intellectuals submitted their contributions; some of these were later published in the

Institute’s journal, América Indígena.

The intent of the III was to establish a practical procedure to define Indians in order

to promote efficient state interventions on behalf of Indian “rehabilitation.” Several ideas

were circulated at the meeting in Cuzco. For Ecuadorian intellectuals, the ideas of

Manuel Gamio (1942), Oscar Lewis and Ernest E. Maes (1945), and Alfonso Caso (1948)

were the most influential. All agreed that a definition of “el indio” (the Indio) must take

into account racial and cultural mixing as well as local perspectives. In other words, the

definition had to be flexible. But they did not deny a biological content to the indigenous

question. They shared the notion that, in the Americas, there was not a unique native

biological race and that native races had mixed with other races. In addition to these

shared considerations, each of these intellectuals proposed particular tools to classify “el indio.”

Manuel Gamio (1942) insisted on the importance of a cultural evaluation in order to establish a people’s biological, economic, and cultural deficits. Instead of anthropometric measurements or linguistic inquiries, he proposed a complex process of classification based on the material cultural fragments displayed by each household. The procedure required a concurrent exploration of the genealogy of the material culture, so as to classify each household by observing pre-Hispanic, post-Hispanic, or mixed cultural fragments. With this material culture method, families would be classified in a continuum that started with full native material culture and ended in full European material culture.

Oscar Lewis and Ernest E. Maes (1945), for their part, proposed the construction of a

“practical definition of the Indian” aimed specifically to assist targeted betterment

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programs. Criticizing Gamio’s approach, they argued that the starting point of any

classification should be the specific information needed by the staff of intervention

programs. This approach would result in an inquiry into the peculiar social and economic

deficiencies and basic needs of peoples located in particular territories, the information

needed to adapt programs to the local culture. Like Gamio they argued that the

peculiarities of Indians derived from the historical evolution of colonial oppression. But

Lewis and Maes departed from Gamio on what was the main focus of the census. They

introduced a basic needs perspective that observed the differences in the living conditions

between Indians and non-Indians, and the lack of Western material cultural among the latter, but did not explicitly propose an assimilation strategy.

An editorial in the III journal emphasized that although it was difficult to define

Indians and that each existing perspective was limited in this endeavor, the best way to

classify the population in a census was to register the use of languages. Although the

linguistic method had an implicit factor of error—the misclassification of racially and

culturally autochthonous natives who spoke Spanish—it was the best and most feasible

approach to identify the primitive people of a nation who were in need of urgent support.

The assumption here was that people who spoke native languages embodied a greater

proportion of Indian blood and culture than those who spoke Spanish and were primitive

(Editorial 1946: 103). Later, the Mexican Alfonso Caso (1948) partially accepted this

linguistic method but introduced an additional consideration: community belonging.

Although Indians tended to hide their mother tongues and several groups had completely

lost their native languages, it was, according to Caso, their subjective attachment to a

community together with language that defined el indio.

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This polemic and the pressures regarding a local census resonated among the

Ecuadorian pensadores. Jaramillo (1949) prepared a paper for the III meeting arguing that

it was not possible to define “el indio” and proposed instead to define “lo indio” (Indian-

ness) conceived as the surviving fragments of the spirit of the aboriginal race—“a moral

entity,” as the Peruvian Uriel García had defined it years ago. The starting point of any

definition, in Jaramillo’s view, should be the rejection or avoidance of any pejorative or

racist implication. Thus, he advocated eliminating the Indian category altogether and

recalled San Martín’s 1821 decree, which established that “aborigines,” “indios,” or

“naturals” would henceforth be referred to as “Peruvians” (1949: 12-13). Departing from

his old rhetoric, he posed that the contemporary challenge was to assimilate and

nationalize “el indio,” rather than stress their peculiarities or differences.

In Ecuador, the starting point for integrating Indians, Jaramillo argued, was to erase

the two sources of the Indian “inferiority complex”: the protective principle contained in

the liberal Constitution and the tutorial (tutelar) legislation that assumed the inability of

Indians to defend by themselves their rights. The Indian question, in his mind, became

“the problem of the peasant proletariat, in which el indio and lo indio are the vital

nucleus” (1949: 20). Jaramillo never explained what he meant with this ambiguous

statement, but based on other writings it would appear that he wanted both to point out

the issue of land distribution and expand the notion of Indian-ness to all the rural workers

and peasants. Jaramillo was, in this sense, a contributor to the authorized public vision

that the nature of natives was rural.

Santiana (1950) published an essay—reproduced later in the daily El Comercio— that used a scientific idiom to advocate for the inclusion of racial classification in the

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census. Race, in his view, was not necessarily a “discriminatory” category; it was an

“explicative” category that alluded to the evolution of populations and their biological deficits. Racial measurements, he suggested, should be applied to urban Mestizos, individuals whose origins were difficult to pinpoint; otherwise the census risked registering as “White” those Indians who lived in cities and towns and had changed their clothing, language, and names. Although this argument was a major concern among the conservative elites, it was not the time for the state to promote racial measurements; as a result, racial approaches such as Santiana’s were confined to scientific practices in the universities.

Avoiding race

The daily press played a major role in the implementation of the census. Not only did it argue for the relevance of the counting and mapping of the national population but it also sought to persuade people to collaborate in the initiative. It subscribed to the idea that race was not the correct idiom to depict Indians. Although El Comercio published

Santiana’s article lobbying for a racial evaluation, it soon moved away from this perspective. An editorial note clearly expressed this change of perspective: “[In the past] when analyzing the problem of the indigenous population we have started from a fundamental error: considering it as a race that was not capable of assimilating modern life and science.” Furthermore, science had not demonstrated that peoples were different based on innate characters.35 In very similar terms, the director of the census informed a gathering of Indians, organized in support of the event, that the enumeration would not ask for a person’s race because the census staff knew that skin color was not important; instead, he argued, it would register cultural characteristics.36 At the same time as it

avoided racial considerations, the newspaper reproduced the old idea that Ecuador was a

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nation of Indian origins, an idea that was also repeated by President Galo Plaza during a

speech he delivered in a gathering with indigenous leaders in 1950: “all of us

Ecuadorians have Indian blood.”37 This statement was an apt summary of the all-

inclusive notion of lo indio, that some authors converted to mestizo.

A central element of the census discourse was the assumption that the state had an

obligation to improve “cultural” deficits, an idea that was translated as “social problem”

and as the need to re-establish Indian confidence on the state. Thus, El Comercio insisted

that the Indian question was “social” and not “racial”, and that social problems were a

result of both the environmental and economic factors. More specifically, some articles

published by the newspaper argued that the Indian problem turned on servitude, land

concentration, inadequate basic needs, and lack of education.38 President Plaza stressed the notions of human dignity and the need to avoid Indian mistreatment.39 Old issues,

once confined to the scientific and political domains, were now articulated in public

opinion.

Alfredo Costales (Costales, 2002), who participated in the census as a field

researcher, recalls that the technical team discussed several alternatives for the

classification of Indians—language, last names, dwellings, and clothing—but all of them

were deemed unsatisfactory. In actuality, the census included questions about native

languages and material culture as an expression of basic needs. The census asked the

head of the household (who could be a woman) the usual language of the household and

the most used language of each member over six years of age. At the same time, the

enumerators were instructed to observe the type of shoes worn by each member, the use

of sleeping beds, and the type of dwelling (Dirección General de Estadísticas y Censos,

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Instrucciones 1950: 18-19, 23). Finally, in the case of rural workers, the census questionnaire asked to specify if they were hacienda peons or huasipungueros. It is clear, then, that the census did not conceal the Indians: it counted the Indian rural workers and generated information about native languages and the basic needs of the population.

Unfortunately, we do not know exactly what the intent was in registering the use of native languages.40 It is possible that, through languages, the census designers intended to identify and map the most primitive people—those who spoke native languages and presented acute basic needs deficits—as Caso (1948) had argued.41 But, as we have seen, the declaration of the use of native languages could have several meanings. During the literacy campaign, Quichua was officially used as a tool to bring the alphabet to the

Indians; Quichua was reinforced among the monolingual population while Spanish was promoted among bilingual speakers.

Additional clues about this intricate problem can be found in the congressional debates regarding native languages. In the 1938 Assembly, representatives discussed and decided to legitimate the use of native languages.42 While some conservative and liberal members considered them “primitive” and rejected their official recognition,43 other representatives held positive views about linguistic variety, particularly the Quichua language. Some radical politicians considered that this language was not primitive but a

“cultured language” (un idioma docto) that had proven its ability to evolve together with its speakers. A conservative congressman expressed that by officially recognizing native languages the Assembly was honoring and maintaining the historical past of the nation— an idea that was expanded further during the 1944-45 Assembly. In this context, native

225 languages were seen as living indigenous cultural expressions that would contribute to molding Ecuadorian culture.44

Most representatives to both the 1938 and 1944 Assemblies agreed on the importance of native languages in the teaching of Spanish; indigenous education had failed because it had not been based on native languages. Languages were a mark of indigeneity, subjected to evolution and changes, but not a clear symbol of primitiveness.

At the same time, language was a practical tool for the establishment of programs for the integration of Indians as Spanish-native speakers—the main interest of the national state.

Thus, we can understand the decision to use the census to count native speakers by registering features that were open to state intervention: language and basic needs.

Indeed, the processing of the census data considered bilingual speakers ( i.e. Spanish-

Quichua) as Spanish speakers, but rather stressed the condition of the monolingual indigenous speaker (Dirección General de Estadísticas y Censos 1954, 4).

Flexible rural-urban frontier

In counting the population, the census also located people in space. Mapping the nation, including remote places, was a difficult but necessary undertaking to discover the homeland (López 1951: 2-3; Costales, 2002). Both geographical mapping and population counting were an opportunity to locate Indians—i.e., those who spoke native languages and exhibited peculiar housing and clothing habits—in the rural areas. As we have seen, the idea that Indians were properly rural people was in the national political discourse since the1930s. However, Indians proved elusive in the effort to confine them to the haciendas and rural communities. Towns and cities sheltered Indian workers and urban spaces included community Indians.45.

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An interesting report published in El Comercio about Conocoto, a village near

Quito,46 raised the difficulties in mapping the Indians given the existence of diverse

Indian social categories. It points to hacienda workers—the huasipungueros—as being without doubt natives; but it notes that this small town sheltered Indian stonecutters and masons who worked in Quito. This latter group knew how to read and write, spoke

Spanish and Quichua, and wore mostly modern dress (a la moderna). They had discarded the poncho, wore leather shoes on Sundays, and hemp sandals (ojotas) on weekdays. This report suggested that indigeneity was more difficult to define in the case of urbanized

Indians. Language, residence, dress, and economic activity were not enough to define indigeneity; local stories and biological markers provided better clues.

Similar ambiguities about free Indians who lived in small towns were pointed out in the case of rural community Indians in Otavalo (Buitrón 1947: 56) and among Indians who lived in communities imbedded in urban settings (Monsalve Pozo 1943: 303; Castro

1948; Rodríguez 1949: 35).47 Indeed, several pensadores had recognized urban Indians or urbanized Indians as a type of permanent or nomadic workers (Mora 1931: 43-44;

Chaves 1933), while others insisted that they were plainly workers (obreros) (Jaramillo

1983 [1936]: 174). Fernando Chaves, while describing the Indian urban worker, stated that it was not possible to establish a clear demarcation between rural and urban areas

(1933: 8-11).

The census attempted to solve the dilemma of how to classify urban Indians de- emphasizing bilingual indigenous persons—usually located in towns and cities—and tracing a flexible frontier between rural and urban settings. The census defined rural areas as consisting of several small localidades or centros poblados (small villages)—the old

227 communal notion of parcialidades (see Chapter 4)—thus reinforcing the idea that it was possible to integrate and civilize the rural population, especially native monolingual language speakers.48

The spatial division implied several definitions that were incorporated into the administrative partition of the country established in the early Republican period and reinforced in 1897: provinces, counties, and parishes. The 1950 census division defined as “urban” the provincial and county seats that had, at least, a street grid,49 regardless of population. Territories traditionally considered urban—the surrounding areas of towns and cities—were classified under the ambiguous label of “suburban,” although several analyses counted the population of these areas as rural. The census report stated that living conditions among the “suburban” population were similar to those of “rural” people (Dirección General de Estadísticas y Censos 1954, Vol. 2: 6). On the other hand, rural areas were defined as territories classified as such by the administrative framework, while both rural and suburban areas included small villages—“centros poblados,” also called ”localidades” (Instituto Interamericano de Estadística 1960: 55). In other words, the census definitions adopted the notion of “parcialidades” as a salient ingredient of rural areas, an idea that could be traced back to the indigenista debate on the comunidades de indios (and later, on parcialidades) as the seed to construct local citizenship (see Chapter 5).

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Figure 11: The census taken among the Indians

At the time of the census, several public visual images insisted on the links between

Indians and a rural environment. El Comercio displayed images that associated the Indian family, the choza (mud hut), peculiar clothes, and agricultural and weaving activities.

Although not all peasants and rural workers from the highlands were Indians, all embodied the native spirit—lo indio or Indian-ness as proposed by Jaramillo. Moreover, rural areas sheltered most “indios puros,” i.e., those who spoke native languages. These

two assumptions would frame state interventions in years to come. Therefore, the census

tended to erase Indians from cities and towns (most of them spoke some Spanish) and

reinforced their location in the countryside.

The ambiguities implicit in the census definitions, as well as the methods used in

the enumeration, opened a controversy regarding the size of the native population. This

controversy continues to the present; today, however, Indians claim that they are not adequately represented in the census statistics. At the same time, the equation between

Indian and rural resident, used to exclude the native population from towns and cities, has

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recently given rise to a timid discussion among the new generation of Indian pensadores

(Wray, 2002). The 2001 census revealed an increasing number of urban people who self-

represent themselves as indigenes.

Indian Unruliness

For Ecuadorian intellectuals and state functionaries, concerns about the census did not refer only to definitions and locations of el indio, but how to handle the assumed aversion of Indians to any inquiry about their family and individual lives (Garcés 1950:

322).50 Many believed that the census would be rejected by the “backward” people— meaning Indians—and would prompt social unrest. Moreover, ethnography pointed out that natives had not incorporated the notion that the state was a guarantor of social and legal equality, nor that the solicited information was needed to fulfill this objective

(Garcés 1950). An interesting newspaper report that narrated how the census staff had contracted a group of nuns to collect the pre-census information in Chimborazo, referred to the innate “resistance” of indigenes to all indicators of civilized life. The article concluded by describing how the nuns had been expelled from the communities after

“heroically” recording the required information.51 Similarly, during the experimental

phase of the census, the fear of potential Indian unrest in response to the inquiry was

frequently repeated.52

And like an announced chronicler, the census prompted an Indian uprising in the

Province of Chimborazo, in the same place where the liberal Colonel Morocho, named by

Alfaro as “jefe de los batallones de indios” (Chief of the Indian battalions), lived. Indeed,

indigenous leaders rejected the census but immediately opened a direct dialogue with the

President. The liberal President Galo Plaza—a landowner himself and a son of a figure of

the Liberal Revolution—used his long experience with indigenous workers and his

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knowledge of Quichua to personally intervene to resolve the uprising. He negotiated with

the indigenous authorities (regidores), took control of the local census taking, and

personally went to the villages to supervise the process. According to the capital

newspaper, during the first “pacification” meeting in Quito following the uprising,

“indígenas” presented themselves as “rational people” obedient of Republican law.53

They reminded Plaza that a law issued by “amu presidente Alfaru” (master President

Alfaro) protected them. During the presidential audience, a regidor unfolded a document and handed it to the President: it was a copy of the 1898 decree that exonerated them from paying taxes.

Figure 12: Indian regidores and President Plaza

In the minds of the elite, this episode—revealing once again the foundational effects of Alfaro’s decisions—clouded the national census and reinforced a missionary conception of the state. The newspaper claimed that the episode was a “republican shame” (una vergüenza republicana). Since the founding fathers had adopted the language of equality and liberty nothing had been done to govern the Indians as equals.

They had been maintained in slave and barbaric conditions with only a tenuous nexus to democratic institutions based on fear54—a problem, the media insisted, that was derived

from the colonial caste system.55 This time, however, the media did not mention racial

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problems or racial revenge; instead, the event was framed by the discourse of “social

problems.”

In addition to the basic needs and welfare perspectives that I have reviewed here, the census contained elements that alluded to the old notion of Indian racial hatred that

had kindled fear among elites. In the pervading images, the natives were resistant to

external persuasion, unpredictable, and inscrutable. These elements convinced the state

authorities and the media that it was time to develop an in-depth study of Indians to better

understand their needs.56 As a result, the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Antropología y

Geografía (IEAG) was selected to undertake several studies that would help state offices

know how to manage Indians, a research process that stressed once again the notions of

cultural and hygienic interventions. This time, the task would become embodied in a new

state program with international assistance: the Misión Andina.

The border conflict (1941) with Peru and the long process of recovery from the loss of national territory pushed intellectuals to imagine a more integrated nation. In the

aftermath of the border conflict, civil associations started a literacy campaign that was

given considerable attention by the press, while Congress discussed granting voting rights

to illiterate persons. This more integrated imagined nation included the notion of a

stronger and more technical state that would manage the national constituency based on

statistical knowledge. Towards the end of 1950, the first national census was undertaken.

This highly publicized event became an opportunity to discuss indigeneity within the

Inter-American framework and to delineate a perspective on the assimilation of indigenes. The census informed about a population of more than three millions and two thousand of inhabitants, quite balanced in the coastal as well as highland regions. Close

232 to twenty-one percent of the rural population—mostly located in the highland central provinces—spoke native languages while only one percent of the urban people were

Quichua speakers (Saunders 1959: 42).

The war aftermath in Ecuador marked a shift on the strategies of indigenous govermentality that included the enlargement of the political community, the removal of the principle of protection from the constitution, and the identification and enumeration of indigenes as rural and needy inhabitants. The equation between indigenous and rural people, a major twist in the elite’s image of indigeneity that started during the 1930s and was reinforced by the census, has important contemporary consequences. Today, indigenous intellectuals are searching for ways to re-capture their urban-ness. But paradoxically, the continuously re-worked notions of community and indigenous attachment to land pose a familiar dilemma to them: what are the true bases of indigenous culture?

Notes

1 Pelotón de indios en las guardias nacionales, El Comercio, 17 February 1941and Los jíbaros contribuyen a la defensa nacional, El Comercio, 21 July 1941.

2 Nicolás Martínez, for example, stressed that literate Indians were quite similar to those who could not manage this technology because they still maintained their hatred to Whites (Martínez 1993 [1916]: 222- 25).

3 This observer provided glimpses of the indigenous electoral practice. For example, in Ilumán, Imbabura, where 74% of the population was indigenous, only 44% of them voted. On the other extreme, in Flores, Chimborazo, a predominantly indigenous setting, only 1% of the electors were Indians (Sáenz, 1933: 128).

4 Pío Jaramilllo, El congreso de campesinos. Quito: El Día, Crónicas de Petronio, 15 February 1931.

5 Campaña de desanalfabetización en Pujilí, El Comercio, 17 June 1941; Los que no saben leer ni escribir, El Comercio, 09 October 1941; Se pide colaboración, El Comercio, 30 October 1941.

6 The campaign started in 1943 with limited private funds (La educación pública en 1943, El Comercio, 01 January 1944). A similar campaign was undertaken by a civil association in Guayaquil to cover the coastal region.

7 Cruzada por el alfabeto, El Comercio, 22 February 1944.

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8 It is interesting to note that several hacendados undertook personally the alphabetization of their workers (Varios propietarios interesados por alfabetizar a peones de haciendas, El Comercio, 20 April 1944; Los hacendados y la alfabetización, El Comercio, 13 June 1944).

9 Profesor Laubach autor del método de desenalfabetización llegó ayer a esta ciudad, El Comercio, 03 March 1944. Similar campaigns were launched in several Latin American countries during the 1940s.

10 El analfabetismo debe ser declarado el enemigo No. 1 del país, El Comercio, 05 March 1944.

11 The public display of aboriginal dance and music often used during this period. Of special interest was the 1942 Indigenous Festival, organized to show that national progress was a plausible undertaking (Garcés 1942: 58; RVL 1942).

12 Indígenas del poblado de Yanahuaico piden a UNP que se les enseñe a leer, El Comercio, 18 March 1944.

13 Editorial. Un reclamo a la cultura, El Comercio, 19 March 1944. However, a bilingual strategy has been established during the 1930 decade in the Ministerio de Educación.

14 Contra el analfabetismo, El Comercio, 09 January 1944.

15 Carmen Ochoa, a teacher who maintained a bilingual radio program—Quichua and Spanish—in the HCJB radio station, was responsible for the translation to Quichua. An article published in El Comercio commented the positive effects of this program among indigenes (C. González Hidalgo, Reviviendo el Quichua, El Comercio, 20 January 1945).

16 They used Mi cartilla Inca, an instrument that attempted to reinforce bilingualism among the indigenes (Hna. María de la Sagrada Corona et al. 1947).

17 Película sobre ensenanza de lectura e higiene se exhibió en la UNP, El Comercio, 23 October 1944; Las películas educativas y los experimentos del doctor Rodriguez Bou, El Comercio, 31 October 1944; Recursos mágicos y multitudinarios de la enseñanza en la post-guerra, El Comercio, 05 November 1944.

18 Up to the first semester of 1949, 150.000 adults were alphabetized; 61% of them were Quichua speakers (UNP 1949: 6).

19 Agradecen en castellano y en quichua por haberles abierto los ojos, por la seguridad que tienen que mejorarán sus ingresos, pero también reclaman por la falta de escuelas y problemas con profesores (Otro que ya sabe leer y escribir, El Comercio, 11 September 1944; Un analfabeto dio sus opiniones sobre la campaña de la UNP, El Comercio, 03 January 1945; Ex-analfabeto expone por intermedio de la radio Quito, El Comercio, 31 January 1945; Indígenas demuestran que han aprendido a leer y escribir, El Comercio, 18 May 1950).

20 Las cintas alfabetizantes, El Comercio, 09 November 1944 and Campaña alfabetizadora, El Comercio, 04 January 1945.

21 Few liberals integrated the Assembly, although most of the discussed topics—democracy, citizenship— belonged to the liberal agenda. Almost 40% of the Assembly members were socialists and communists.

22 The right to vote was extended to the population eighteen-years and over, instead of the traditional twenty-one years voting age.

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23 AFL, Actas Asamblea Constituyente 1944-45, Vol. II: 351-416, Sesión No. 23, 04 September 1944.

24 In contrast, a socialist group sponsored the modification of the basis of political citizenship. Instead of the required writing and reading technologies, they proposed the notion of “socially useful labor”as the condition to exercise the right to vote, while people were educated and enlarged their civic knowledge. According to this proposal, all adults who worked would have the right to vote and be elected to office. The responsibility and criteria they embodied as workers allowed them to participate in the political decision of the nation (Paredes 1947: 320).

25 By this time, the Inter American Indigenous Institute was promoting a “spoken vote” in local assemblies for illiterate people to choose their candidacies (Editorial. El voto verbal para analfabetos, 1944).

26 The following arguments are based on AFL, Actas Asamblea Constituyente 1944-45, Vol. II: 351-416, Sesión No. 23, 04 September 1944 and Vol. 68, 24 October 1944. During the two sessions, the participants in the citizenship debate included Carlos Cueva Tamariz (University Representative) , José Santos Rodríguez (Manabí), Gustavo Vallejo Larrea (Representative of the media), Manuel Eliceo Flor (Pichincha), Juan Isaac Lovato (Pichincha), Alfredo Silva del Pozo (Bolívar), Alfonso Larrea Alba (Guayas), Emilio Uzcátegui (Representative of primary schools), Cárdenas (?), Alejandro Herrería (Guayas), Alvaro (?), Vásconez Valencia (?).

27 AFL, Actas Asamblea Constituyente 1944-45, Vol. I: 802-874, Sesión No. 14, 24 August 1944. The communist Pedro Saad proposed that the parish counsels be constituted by corporate representatives from the workers (including Indians), landowners, and teachers, as well as elected representatives.

28 The most emphatic request was one presented by an indigenous from Gatazo, Chimborazo, who asked for procedures for the removal of local functionaries and elected representatives from the municipality (AFL, Cámara de Diputados, 1941, Caja 221, Carpeta s/n).

29 The “ethnic factor”, which divided the nation among Whites, Mestizos and Indigenes, together with mestizaje as the dominant social process, were introduced while discussing national integration (AFL, Asamblea Nacional Constituyente 1944-45, Vol. II: 167-218, Sesión No. 19, 30 August 1944).

30 AFL, Actas Asamblea Nacional Constituyente 1944-45,Vol. VII: 610-688, Sesión No. 111, 7 December 1944.

31 The census was not used for state management tasks; instead it was carried out as part of the celebrations of the centennial of the nation.

32 Local officials were asked to form local councils to assist in the census with the participation of landowners, hacienda administrators, parish priests, and community leaders. They were asked to convey to the Indians that the census was not related to military service or tax collection (Oficina de Seguridad y Estadística 1922: 4).

33 BAEP, Censo de la población de la ciudad de Quito. Instrucciones para llenar la sección tercera del formulario 601 de la boleta censal. Hoja Volante, 27 June 1947.

34 In their view, this was the same method used the civil registrar in Otavalo, Imbabura, and Colta, Chimborazo, to register the population, although the law did not ask for this classification.

35 Editorial, El problema social en Ecuador, El Comercio 05 November 1950.

36 Se inauguró el Congreso de la FEI en esta capital, El Comercio, 19 November 1950.

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37 Con asistencia del Presidente se clausuró el Tercer Congreso de indígenas. El Comercio, 21 November 1950.

38 Editorial, Un problema social, El Comercio, 01 December 1950; Editorial, Gestión Presidencial, El Comercio, 22 December 1950.

39 Presdente Plaza organizará personalmente el censo en parcialidades indígenas de Chimborazo. El Comercio, 15 December 1950.

40 The use of language to define the native races has a long history that can be traced to the early postcolonial times (Harrison 1996). The Academia Nacional de Historia assumed that the native languages were primitive and that languages molded the ideas and emotions of the speakers and was an apt tool to classify people.

41 Egas, Aníbal, El Censo Nacional, El Comercio 26 November 1950: 2.

42 The following arguments are housed on AFL, Actas Asamblea Naional Constituyente 1937-38, Vol. III: 250-284, Sesión No. 60, 15 October 1938. The participants in this discussion were Guillermo Baquerizo (Los Ríos), Luis Maldonado Tamayo (Cotopaxi), Alfredo Parea Diezcanseco (Guayas), Wilfrido Loor (Manabí), Guillermo Peñaherrera (Imbabura), Víctor Falconí (Loja), Manuel Eliceo Flor (Pichincha), Octavio Muñoz Borrero (Cañar), Rigoberto Veintimilla (Cañar), Antonio Ortíz Mesa (Tungurahua), Juan Rocha (Los Ríos), César Durango (Bolívar), Carlos Cueva Tamariz (Azuay), César Plaza (Esmeraldas), Alfonso Mora (Azuay), Alfonso Fierro (Carchi), Moisés Luna (Imbabura), and Francisco Arízaga Luque (Guayas).

43 For example, a representative from the Province of Bolívar argued that native language speakers could no been consider Ecuadorian citizens because the national or official language was Spanish. This statement, in his view, implied that in order to be a citizen you need to know how to write and read in Spanish. At the same time, a conservative representative argued that language had been a mechanism of Indian stagnation.

44 See the debate among Enrique Gil Gilbert (Guayas), Emilio Uzcátegui (Representative for primary school), Angel León Carvajal (Bolívar), Eduardo Vásconez Cuvi (?), Gonzalo Cordero Crespo (Azuay), Antonio Parra Velasco (Guayas), Ricardo Paredes (Representative for Indians), Rafael Terán Coronel (Cotopaxi), Gustavo Buendìa (Pichincha), Carlos Zambrano (Representative for highland agriculture), Gustavo Becerra (Esmeraldas), Víctor Antonio Castillo (Loja), Agustín Vera Loor (Manabí), Francisco Madera (Imbabura), Gustavo Vallejo Larrea (Representative for the media), Miguel Angel Aguirre (Loja), and Enrique Gallegos Anda (Pchincha) in AFL, Actas Asamblea Constituyente 1944-45, Vol. III: 1008- 1024, Sesión No. 49, 03 October 1944.

45 Since colonial times, highland towns and cities required Indians to carry out several paid and unpaid chores in public works, maintenance, and cleaning.

46 Conocoto es una de las poblaciones más antiguas de los alrededores de la capital, El Comercio, 16 May 1944.

47 These Indians were in the process of loosing their traditional features and lands. Sandoval (1949: 35) recommended privatizing their land and promoting their assimilation.

48 Ecuador was represented having 11,104 settlements, while Brazil had only 5,409 (Instituto Interamericano de Estadística 1960: 40).

49 García (1946: 170) proposed a similar notion regarding urban settings, while defining rural areas as “peasant” settings.

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50 The census was seen and carried out as a civic family activity; each family received a civic certificate after being counted (Dirección General de Estadísticas y Censos, Instrucciones 1950: 25).

51 It is interesting to note that the nuns, of Colombian origin, were working among the indigenes since 1944, when Velasco Ibarra contracted them to carry out hygienic and social activities (Tres monjas realizaron trabajos pre-censales entre hostiles indígenas de Chimborazo, El Comercio, 15 July 1950).

52 Censos experimentales, El Comercio, 10 August 1950.

53 Presidente Plaza organizará personalmente el censo de parcialidades indígenas de Chimborazo, El Comercio, 15 December 1950.

54 Editorial, Los indígenas de Chimborazo, El Comercio 16 December 1950.

55 Editorial, Gestión Presidencial, El Comercio, 22 December 1950.

56 Investigaciones antropológicas se efectuarán en provincia de Chimborazo, El Comercio 19 December 1950; Discordancia sobre linderación de parroquias movían a indígenas a oponerse al censo, El Comercio, 23 December 1950.

CHAPTER 7 LIBERALISM OF FEAR AND THE INDIANS

In the course of my discussion I have brought together the Ecuadorian elites’

political, scientific, and public or newsprint debates regarding the country’s native

population, framed mostly by a liberal rhetoric. My aim has been to trace the production

of indigenous subjects and the inscription of social fear. The political and scientific

discourses worked in unison and produced special forms of liberal governmentality for

natives. Both social processes were connected by the notion of race, a concept that

allowed elites to separate the native population as a peculiar, albeit evolving social type.

At the same time, I have argued for the continuity of liberalism as a governing tactic

between 1895 and 1950. By the end of this period, two liberal perspectives were

consolidated: one that stressed individuality and another that put emphasis on collective

rights and identities. In this final chapter, I review the trajectory of liberalism in Ecuador

in comparison with other Latin American nations. And, finally, I discuss the association

of fear with the images of indigenous subjects and the effects this connection had for the

strategies of governmentality adopted by the Ecuadorian state vis-à-vis native

populations.

Liberalism: Trajectory and Comparison

Liberalism, as a governing tactic, proposes universal principles such as equality and public good in order to establish a “modus vivendi” between conflicting views (Gray

2000). In Ecuador between 1895 and 1950, liberal political debates produced diverse

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images of the natives, which were amplified in the scientific domain. Both discursive

domains were involved in the fabrication of indigenous subjects.

Protection and Equality

Between 1896 and 1923, the proposition about the protection of Indians, expressed

mostly in the debate on concertaje, was addressed in several domains—science,

Congress, and the media—by elites from diverse locales. Concertaje was framed as a

public issue regarding how to govern the Indians. It is interesting to note that, during the protracted dispute on concierto labor, the demarcation of ideological positions labeled

“conservative” and “liberal” was often blurred. Several Catholic Church members favored some of the reforms of concertaje while some liberal landowners opposed them.

Liberals and conservatives used the language of equality and protection to make their arguments, but they combined both elements in different ways, projecting their diverse agendas. The discussion was not monotonous; a variety of local meanings and interpretations were concealed behind the notions of equality and protection of the Indian race.

How did the notions of equality and protection come together in these elite discourses? Paradoxically, while in the political arena conservatives insisted on the universal principle of equality, liberals, deploying the official rhetoric that assumed the temporary stagnation of the raza india and the need for justice, introduced the notion of protection as a strategy to construct a state of equality that did not exist. Liberals assigned to the national state the role of promoting equality as a process of civilizing the raza india, based on a social contract rather than bondage or the threat of prison. Most conservatives, on the other hand, assumed the essential inferiority of Indians and the need to govern them through the discipline of hacienda work together with public prisons. In

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other words, coercion was the cornerstone of the discussion on how to govern the raza

india. On the one hand, liberals proposed that the suppression of coercion under state

protection would open the road to equality for the raza india and, on the other hand,

conservatives argued that the peculiarity of Indians required coercion and education. As a

result, Indians had reasons to fear both liberalism and conservatism on the question of

their labor.

To pensadores and politicians labeled conservative, equality was a principle available to whoever might use it. Liberals, on the other hand, stressed that equality was a future state that did not yet exist, and that it was important to officially recognize this abnormal situation in order to deal with it publicly. Thus, the tensions between protection and equality were suspended in time: in the present, liberalism promoted state interventions to construct equality, but it postponed equality to a vague future.

Conservatives and liberals alike considered Indians to be members of a peculiar race; many feared native rebelliousness and their alleged detachment from their homeland and the haciendas—the Indian’s “nomadic condition.” For liberals, concertaje was the source of indigenous rebelliousness and lack of discipline; under this compulsory arrangement Indians were unable to develop interests, needs, and desires. Liberals exhibited faith in the redemptive qualities of the market. But still, in their view, Indians needed education to fill the void produced by the Spanish conquest; the trauma of history was inscribed in the psychology of the raza india. Conservatives, on the other hand, considered that rebelliousness and indiscipline were racial traits that proved the inferiority of Indians. And it was racial inferiority that justified to conservatives maintaining Indians attached to haciendas and subjected to the threat of prison.

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Throughout the debates on concertaje, the use of the notions of “raza india” and

“clase india” or “clase indígena” suggest that natives were seen as a segment of the pueblo and society. They were not only natives or aboriginals: as workers, they constituted the foundation of the nation. This perspective connected Indians to the notions of race and labor. But here again, the ambiguity of language came into play. In the official rhetoric, conciertos became “jornaleros,” a special type of rural laborer, sometimes labeled plainly as workers. From this perspective, the debate about concertaje marked the Indians as the future working class of the nation, while circumscribing them to social and spatial niches—mostly workers administered by the haciendas. At the same time, in this discourse, the term “indio” emphasized the ingredients that described their racial inferiority. Thus, the notion of “race” became the cornerstone of proposals for the integration of Indians in a way that brings to mind how the language of race encoded the emergence of social classes (Balibar 1991, 1996; Stoler 1995).

The Vanquished Race and Indian Rebelliousness

In different ways, all pensadores assumed explicitly or implicitly a notion of race; but such a notion did not have a unique meaning. Instead, it was a flexible idiom used to argue different degrees of inferiority or superiority, a perspective that was developed in the domain of science and acquired special urgency when elites discussed the existence of the precolonial Kingdom of Quito between 1900 and 1930.

As I describe in Chapter 3, this discussion was sustained by pensadores from Quito

who were engaged in the local development of the disciplines of sociology and

archeology and was echoed by intellectuals in the provinces. Sociology offered a critique

of race based on phenotypic features and proposed instead a notion of race rooted in a

people’s psychology, which combined environmental and historical features to explain

241 evolution. Archeology emphasized evolution and cultural diffusion, tracked the Indian past, and incorporated the notion of scientific expeditions as a disciplinary practice. Both disciplinary elaborations were grounded in positivist and spiritualist frames that stressed forms of solidarity inspired by French social thought and by social Darwinism. As Hale

(1989) has pointed out for the case of late nineteenth century Mexico, such approaches were deployed to build the state rather than constrain its intervention in the private sphere. At the same time, however, the evolutionary and neo-Lamarckian views on race generated an insidious category. On the one hand, local pensadores—like those in most

Latin American countries (Helg 1990; Knight 1990; Stepan 1991)—agreed upon the idea that races were susceptible to modifications; but, on the other hand, natural evolution provided little room for short-term transformations, reinforcing the postponement of equality and Indian betterment to a vague future.

The polemics over the Quito Kingdom had three major rhetorical implications: first, the introduction of an evolutionary perspective (stages in the evolution of natives); second, the acceptance of “evolved” Indians; and finally, the construction of Indians as members of a “vanquished” race. All of these elements reinforced the old elite apprehension regarding Indian hatred against Whites and their ability to rebel. Thus, the inspection of the Indian past was an instrument used not only to trace a baseline to which to compare the contemporary decay of the native race (Lomnitz 2001), but also to ground contemporary forms of liberal governmentality vis-à-vis Indians.

The existence of the Kingdom of Quito implied that in the ancient past natives had had political experience with a state system, which in turn proved the potential of natives to participate in a civilized order. In this view, indigenous decay and abjection were

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consequences of Spanish exploitation and republican concertaje, both determinants of the

Indian’s present peculiar psychology. Indians, particularly indentured laborers, not only

displayed a special disposition, but were waiting for a leader who would redeem them.

Liberals, therefore, considered that it was time to reform the dangerous institution of

labor servitude. Pensadores who dismissed the existence of the Quito Kingdom

considered that Indians had not had previous political experience and that they had

always been subjected to caciques—local chiefdoms, Inca rulers and, presently,

landlords. According to this alternative narrative, contemporary natives were not looking

for the reinstatement of a lost kingdom; Ecuadorian Indians were docile and moderate—

in comparison, for instance, to the southern Indians of Peru—and had the ability to mock

Whites.

But this latter argument became more difficult to sustain when pensadores

developed and made use of the notion of a vanquished race. All pensadores agreed in

considering the natives as part of the vanquished race, a construction that accepted,

however, that natives had not been fully defeated. If their race was still alive, revenge against Whites was conceivable. The elites considered evidence of this latent hatred the small but continuous Indian uprisings that swept the highlands, creating apprehensions and fear among the populations of towns and provincial cities that lacked policing staff.

Images of Indians surrounding towns and marching to the provincial cities became part of the arguments to justify governing tactics.

Finally, the narrative of the Quito Kingdom pointed to the existence of a native ruling elite, a consideration that legitimized the contemporary existence of “evolved”

Indians, sometimes also called “free” Indians. Such evolved specimens had literary,

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property, and army experience and, in some cases, royal origins. However, the

boundaries between “pure” and “evolved” Indians were subject to debate and shifting

arguments. These uncertainties, together with elite anxiety about social contamination,

helped to sustain a discourse of indigeneity and a strategy of integration via the state that did not erase native origins of the population. Hence, ethnocide is not an apt term to characterize the consequences of late liberalism in Ecuador as Platt (1985) proposes for nineteenth century Bolivian liberalism.

Communal Indians and the Social Question

Chapter 4 traces two political debates during the period between 1925 and 1945: corporate representation of the Indian race and state administration of indigenous communities. Both debates articulated ideas of political representation in light of urgent social questions associated with the inferior condition of the natives. Both debates also gave way to legislation that allowed corporate representation of interest groups and accepted the social functions of property, as part of a strategy to construct the public good, guarantee equality, and provide reparation to the original inhabitants of the nation.

The state assumed a regulatory role as a civilizing tutor of communities, including their population and property.

The notion of an “Indian race” allowed elites to visualize a ventriloquist corporative representative of the indigenous population. Indians, because of their peculiar differences from other subaltern groups such as peasants and workers, were not able to choose their corporate representative; instead, a state institution selected their representative from among persons who investigated and knew the natives’ needs and could speak for them. As in other nineteenth century Latin American nations (Anderson

1991 [1983]; Thurner 1997; Guerrero 1997), ventriloquism became a central tactic that

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connected the Ecuadorian political community and the country’s indigenous

constituency. Moreover, the aperture of a corporate representative exemplified the

“double gesture” of modern political institutions (Wilder 1999): once the right to have a corporative representative was recognized, indigenes themselves asked for a seat in

Congress. Later, this system of ventriloquist representation was opened to a process of consultation of the Indians for the election of their representative to Congress.

Liberals also discussed the status and privatization of the commons as well as the representation of communal Indians. After an extended discussion, the state recognized the existence of collective property and settlements. The debates concerning communal

Indians, increasingly called “indigenes” in the 1930s, were accompanied by state intervention to improve the citizen credentials of natives and to grant recognition to their settlements and collective lands. Thus, the state separated settlements (or population) from land tenure (property and resources) and made use of the comuna (community) as a model to administer the rural population of the nation. The state, as a result,

“indigenized” and “peasantized” the population of the nation’s small rural settlements.

This complex move was part of the state’s effort at “population management” of community Indians. Instead of subjecting Indians to the universal rule of law, the state developed administrative procedures based on case-by-case inspection of communities.

These explorations were founded on and promoted by scientific social knowledge of the

Indian race, displayed in state reports and journals.

The recognition of communities, however, was not new. In Ecuador, as in most of the Latin American republics during the nineteenth century, the state attempted to privatize Indian communal lands based on the argument that private property had a

245 civilizing effect. But in Ecuador, as in Peru, instead of privatizing all of the collective property (as in Colombia or Mexico), regulations first recognized the communal lands and then auctioned the “remnant” of the commons. The Ecuadorian state extended this form of collective property to non-Indians; the expectation was that communities would evolve naturally to forms of private property. Thus the twentieth century recognition of collective lands in Ecuador and Peru was a continuation of the nineteenth century strategy; in Ecuador, however, the state reinforced both Indian and non-Indian commoners, distinguished two components of the community (land and settlements), and re-established the cabildo as a political body for self-administration. All in all, in Andean and Mexican twentieth-century state policies, the notions of collective property rights and identities were part of solving the social question. The enactment of social rights deepened the subjection of the indigenous race to the state.

While I agree with Lomnitz (2001: 74-75) on the notion that the collective rights of indigenes and peasants served to enhance the state, I differ with the argument that opposes state recognition of collectivities to the construction of citizenship. Similarly, I would disagree with the assumption that the recognition of collective rights was proof of the withdrawal of liberalism from the Latin American stage after the Great Depression

(Jacobsen 1997; Lomnitz 2001). In Ecuador, liberal rhetoric exhibited two tendencies that articulated collective and individual rights and identities. Liberal discourses regarding indigenes and equality led the Ecuadorian elites to imagine collective tactics to govern the indigenous population, notwithstanding the anxiety caused among elites by the images of the Indian race and its collective emblems.

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Social Fear and Indian Spirit and Body

In Chapter 5 I described how during the 1930s two new perspectives were brought to the understanding of the Indian race. First was the notion of a peculiar history and psychology that attached natives to land and language; second was the idea of a peculiar physical native condition. Both encouraged the development of a positive notion about the spirit of Indians and their physical capacity for adaptation to the harsh Andean environment; such imputed traits preserved the native soul and became, in turn, ingredients of the future promise of the indigenous race. In a context of increasing apprehensions regarding the migration of natives to towns and cities, accompanied by an agenda that equated Indians with rural people, the focus on the future indigenous revival became the community or free Indians. The elites upheld the notion of nomadism—the cultural void produced by colonialism and territorial displacement—as a central feature of the Indian spirit, which could only be revived in contact with their treasured land and language. While waiting for the future revival of the Indian spirit, elite intellectuals pointed to the Indian’s present deficiencies: their peculiar body and psychology, and cultural backwardness.

The construction of the Indian race combined the trauma of the Spanish conquest, the roots of surviving Indian institutions, and the distribution of emblematic cultural, psychological, and biological features (language, clothing, food, huts, concealment, lack of individual interest, the Mongolian spot, hairlessness, zero positive blood, among others). Thus, in contrats to Cuzco’s intellectuals as described by Poole (1997: 186),327

Ecuadorian elites during the 1930s held that Indian peculiarities did not lie only in their historical past, but also on their contemporary rural condition, psychology, and body. At the same time, Quito pensadores did not encourage a research agenda focused on the

247 construction of a biotypology as in Mexico (Stern 2003). Instead, some made use of the notion of race to describe Indian biology, while others spoke of the “ethnic factor” to describe the Indian spirit and psychology. However, in Ecuador like in Peru (Poole 1997; de la Cadena 1997, 2000), discourses on indigenes varied by locale. I have focused on the

Quito intellectual community and only provided glimpses of indigenista practices in

Riobamba, Cuenca, and Guayaquil.

I have argued that in Quito the controversies about the Indian race took place mostly at the Universidad Central and had considerable influence on the official and state discourses as well as on the indigenista agenda of social reform. The state, for its part, generated subjecting knowledge—based on the rhetoric of indigeneity—through its interventions. In contrast to recent research (Hale 1996; Clark 1998b; Gould 1998; de la

Cadena 2000; Field 2002) that projects an image of a national, assimilative, and uniform discourse of mestizaje, I found that in Ecuador the notion of mestizaje was scarcely debated at all and, when used, it had a variety of meanings. The concept of miscegenation shows a diversity of local translations and oppositions and, in contrast to Peru and

Mexico, only became part of the official strategy by the mid 1940s. Mestizaje as a form of miscegenation that could create new subjects was explored by pensadores from the port city of Guayaquil. But in contrast to this strategic approach, most highland pensadores considered mestizaje a natural evolutionary process that did not erase the qualities of the Indian race. Moreover, interbreeding—seen by this time in terms of

Mendelian inheritance laws—did not guarantee the disappearance of the Indian race.

And, in this sense, mestizaje was not necessarily an approach to end Indian-ness; on the contrary, mestizaje was an ambiguous strategy that resulted in flexible dividing lines

248

between Indians and non-Indians. The elite’s imagery proposed an integrative strategy

that would not result in a compact, uniform unit but in a collection of different varieties

of people. The official rhetoric framed by indigenismo combined different integrative

strategies to subject Indians: assimilation together with the revival of the indigenous race.

Scientific explorations conceived of Indians as collective persona, with a variety of

racial emblems. This collective understanding of the Indian race generated additional

apprehensions among the elites. Indians were considered to lack private interest and desires, a feature that prevented the development of modern individualism and rationality. They were also considered to exhibit a strategy of personal concealment that inhibited transparency in their behavior in front of Whites and made governmentality unpredictable. Thus, at least one pensador imagined the possibility of community Indians invading towns and cities, re-enacting the old race war between Indians and Whites.

Indigenous Citizenship

In Chapter 6 I argued that the aftermath of the war with Peru opened inroads in the

elite’s imagery of the nation that pointed to a more integrated homeland based on the

enlargement of the political community, the removal of Indian protection from the

constitution, the slow abandonment of the notion of race from the official rhetoric, and

the acceptance of monolingual native speakers as potential citizens—all strategies that

were present in the Latin American political agendas. Discourses produced at different

domains were intended to advance the dream of a “small citizen nation.” The salient

elements of this production were a literacy campaign, the enactment of the right of

illiterates to vote in the election of local authorities, and the first national population

census. The literacy crusade included instruction not only in basic skills but also in the

civic principles of the imagined national community. The campaign was also directed at

249 monolingual Quichua speakers—since they had accepted the “Ecuadorian tradition”— and it reinforced the recognition of Quichua as a linguistic tool for indigenous integration. The official strategy became, then, the maintenance of this native language among the Indians who lived in a monolingual ecology. Therefore, it was now possible to become a Quichua-speaking Ecuadorian citizen. Linguistic recognition and coexistence, together with the preference for the label “indígena” (indigene) in the context of the crusade, were constitutive elements of the integrationist turn of the post-war discourse.

Another discursive element of the moment was the contemplation of citizen credentials for illiterates by the Legislative Assembly as an instrument for extending citizenship and overcoming the chronic “civil strike” of the excluded. Intellectuals were convinced that, in normal times, the pueblo and the indigenes resisted the national political community instead of becoming a part of it. Yet, even for the most progressive intellectuals of the time, it was not possible to grant the pueblo an unrestricted voting right. The illiterate pueblo—even considering, as some claimed, its sense of reason and responsibility—needed first to learn to be a member of the political community. A solution was offered in the form of “citizenship experiments” in local settings. The parish was transformed into a formal political arena where Indians—literate and illiterate— would be the dominant voices. This strategy was also a way of recognizing rural communities—the parcialidades—and their governing institutions—the cabildos—as the seeds of citizenship. In consequence, the reforms introduced the notion of inclusive local political communities as a complement to national policies. Together these were the two main pedagogical instruments of modern nation building.

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The congressional debate about citizenship was supported by a liberal rhetoric that avoided the language of race. This change, however, which started in the late 1930s, did not mean that a new unified idiom had replaced the old notion of race. The congressional discussion of citizenship rights deployed mainly the terms “indigene” and “peasant” to refer to the excluded. But again, the “ethnic factor”—which divided “human groups” into

Whites, Mestizos and Indigenes—and mestizaje—as the dominant social process— were introduced in the discussions of national integration and of the corporate representative of the Indians. Part of the political elite adopted the notion of a “mestizo nation” at the same time as they “indigeneized” rural inhabitants: the countryside became the setting for natives and those who lived like natives.

A clearer turning point in the discursive use of “culture” as a replacement for

“race” was evident in the 1950 population census. This public event was also an instrument for the location of native language speakers in the countryside. The census was a mechanism of state administration designed to define an unambiguous frontier between Indians and non-Indians. The first nationwide enumeration accepted as “non-

Indian” those Indians who were Spanish speakers and lived a la moderna (with modern ways), i.e., the “evolved” Indians who mostly lived in town and cities. In contrast to

Clark (1998: 199) who argues that the census acted to conceal the indigenous population,

I suggest that it reinforced the location of Indians in the countryside, equated Indians and native speakers and, moreover, opened a debate—staged in newspapers and scientific essays—on how to define “el indio” (body, psychology, and lifestyle) and “lo indio” (the native spirit), both elements of governmentality vis-à-vis natives.

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Ecuador started the discussion about granting political rights to illiterates at the same time that literacy campaigns were organized. Yet in Ecuador illiterates remained excluded from the political community until the end of the 1970s.

Liberalism of Fear and Governmentality

The central argument of this dissertation has been that liberal discourses on

indigenous subjects were constructed in the face of elite fears reminiscent of the old

colonial apprehensions toward the natives. It was the notion of a native race that raised

anxieties among elite pensadores and politicians. Elite members were sensitive to

indigenous racial hatred and revenge as well as to their repressed economic needs (Rivet

1906: 110; Tobar 1913: 134 and 1916: 288; Cueva 1984 [1915]: 37-38; Tobar D., 1926;

Mora 1931: 48; Rubio 1933: 9; Garcés 1932: 144, 158-59; Bossano 1933: 33; Jaramillo

1983 [1936], Vol. II: 167; Andrade 1946: 63). At the same time, elites exhibited

uneasiness regarding the nomadic condition of the Indians and their collective identities

(Garcés 1932; García 1935; Paredes 1943). Moreover, as described in the introductory

chapter, the socialist pensador Aguirre developed a persuasive view of social fear

(Aguirre 1935). According to Aguirre, fear engaged all members of society, a notion

similar to what Taussig (1986) has called the “culture of terror,” a combination of

violence and consent. Aguirre argued that this ubiquitous condition had several cultural

effects: it created masks of ferocity to conceal individual and social weakness, fear of

losing property and social positions, social monologues, and, thus, the inability of

Ecuadorians to understand one another.

I have used the notion of “liberalism of fear” to describe elite anxieties and tactics

of governmentality vis-à-vis the native population, but liberal governmentality had

multiple facets. These tactics eventually located the indigenous population in the

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countryside and postponed equality and citizenship to a vague future. I have also

suggested that it was the racial foundation of Indian-ness that was at the root of elite

fears: the indigenous race embodied peculiar and unexpected behaviors, and, following

Aguirre, this could be read as the inability for mutual understanding that resulted in social monologues. The notions of a “vanquished” race, and later of a particular Indian spirit and body, generated fears among both conservative and liberal elites. I have examined three major rhetorical foundations of elite fears: indigenous rebelliousness and revenge; indigenous cultural and spatial mobility (their nomadic condition); and indigenous communal identity that concealed individual personalities.

The historical narrative about the indigenous past contributed to elite fears of a latent indigenous rebelliousness and desire for revenge. The idea of a dormant unruliness referred back to the Spanish conquest of a supposedly highly civilized kingdom; the conquest was at the roots of the attitudes and desires for revenge exhibited in contemporary times in the form of passive resistance to progress and “unexpected” uprisings. The elites’ historical narratives depicted the indigenous race as repeatedly vanquished but not as submissive. Its autonomous instincts were sleeping and ready for awakening; they were waiting for a leader to avenge both their past and contemporary injuries and end their submission. Several pensadores defined racial hatred as the most salient psychological feature of the indigenous race.

The early images of fear were particularly centered on indios conciertos or bonded laborers. They were seen as different from modern workers because they acted like a mob: they staged “uprisings,” not organic protests against the large landowners; instead of defending their workplace and duties, they opposed progress. These images

253 contributed to the arguments that sought the transformation of conciertos into laborers and the acceptance of the workers’ right to strike. However, when leftist parties attempted to unionize the natives, indigenous protests came to be seen as more intricate weapons that, according to elite spokesmen, enhanced their unruliness. But to some pensadores, the autonomy of communal Indians was even more risky: they fought against the White race living in towns and cities. The ghost of indigenous rebelliousness and revenge was one way indigenes intervened in the political arena (Mora 1931). Moreover, the fear of revenge justified tactics to mitigate latent unruliness: a liberalism of fear legitimated tactics of governmentality directed at the indigenous race.

The images of the nomadic condition of indigenes were part of a multi-layered discourse that entailed territorial, social, and cultural displacements, as well as detachments that were paradoxically deepened by the liberal tactics of government.

During the debates on indentured laborers, and later, on community Indians, elites proposed that the loss of indigenous historical traditions created a void that was partially filled by mimicking Whites, all the while repressing their origins. At the same time, as a result of the abolishment of imprisonment for debts and the establishment of a labor market, indigenes became an increasingly mobile people, moving into White cultural environments—urban and coastal settings. Stories of social mobility and displacement to the coastal regions, to town and cities, increased while elites discussed the recognition of

“evolved” Indians and the need to return indigenes to rural life. To counter the idea of an intrinsic nomadic condition, pensadores developed images of indigenes essentially attached and rooted to land and language.

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The images of the nomadic condition of indigenes sparked elite fear in several ways. Landlords worried about losing their workforce and urban liberals about the ensuing invasion of urban places; they lacked governmental tactics to deal with mobile people. Elites also exhibited anxieties about their communication with and understanding of indigenes in their efforts at acquiring recognition as members of the Western tradition; indigenous nomadism threatened the elites’ search for distinction and the purity of what they called the “Castilian” tradition in a way that recalls Aguirre description of elite fears of losing wealth and social positions. In this context, race became an argument to construct class differences, a language to configure the bourgeois order (Balibar 1991,

1996; Stoler 1995).

Elites also feared indigenes concealing themselves behind their communal identity—an identity that the elites themselves had partly fabricated. The argument assumed that the lack of private interest and desires prevented the development of modern individualism and rationality among Indians. Elites developed the notion that the indigenous personality was hidden behind their collective identity, just as Indians hid their true nature in front of Whites. But the collective identities of Indians attached to a rural life and environment had a downside. The existence of collective persona, based on communal ties that were concealed in front of Whites, enhanced the images of indigenes as capable of engulfing towns and cities, becoming a mob, and avenging their conquest.

At the same time, this assumed concealment strategy created anxiety in the elites in regards to their ability to see into indigenous personality; elites now expressed doubts about the extent to which they could interpret indigenous culture and behaviors.

Unexpected Indian behavior made governmentality difficult in a way that brings to mind

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Aguirre’s idea of social monologues and lack of mutual understanding among the

members of society. In a pessimistic tone, one pensador stated that mutual understanding

would never be possible: Creole power, and especially the differences in languages,

sensibility and interests, had created an abyss between the indigenous and the white races

(Véliz 1934: 71). But at the same time, the liberal rhetoric of reforms and indigenous

subjection to the state made it imperative for them to develop classificatory principles

and instruments to identify and represent the collective needs of the indigenous

population. In order to speak for indigenes and to protect them, pensadores needed tools

to classify them and investigate their nature.

I suggest that this dilemma was a consequence of the classificatory rhetoric that

pointed to emblematic features of the Indian race instead of individual characteristics

(Cueva 1988: 642).328 The notion of race allowed pensadores to define indigenes as a subordinate people (a people that shared a history of being the victims of conquests and exhibiting peculiar psychological and biological traits) while developing different tactics of governmentality. Liberal elite knowledge in Ecuador during this period departed from

Mehta’s (1997) notion of the “inscrutability” that resulted in the inability of colonial rule to define the object of government, or Lomnitz’s (2001) hypothesis that knowledge was not a useful instrument to govern the Mexican nation. In the case of early twentieth- century Ecuador, elite knowledge became the basis for governmentality. This knowledge, in turn, mirrored elite social suspicions of indigenes, producing what I have called a

“liberalism of fear.”

A related argument of this dissertation is that a liberalism of fear informed diverse forms of liberal governmentality and established a long-term tactic that displaced

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indigenes to the countryside, while postponing equality to a future and imprecise

moment. Liberalism in early twentieth-century Ecuador did not manufacture a unique and centralized discourse on indigenous subjects and it did not promote an overall strategy of indigenous integration. Instead, elites developed two rhetorical moves to govern the indigenous population: on the one hand, they saw them as a unique race—with gradations—and, on the other, they divided them into diverse social groups: “concierto” laborers, “communal Indians,” and “evolved Indians” also called “free Indians.” The first two categories gave way to specific debates—mainly around the institution of indentured labor and the administration of Indian communities—that proposed different tactics for the government of the indigenous population located in haciendas and in communities.329

In the imagination of the elites, both institutions encompassed the rural territory of the

highlands.

Concierto indios, who later evolved into a new form of worker on the haciendas

(the huasipungueros), were imagined by liberals as rural laborers disciplined by the

market and by contracts supervised by state functionaries. Disciplining mechanisms were

another field of heated discussions between liberal and conservatives. The latter assumed

that large landowners and state prisons were the natural agents to govern conciertos, a

people of inferior racial condition. Indians, in their view, were not able to negotiate and

respect labor contracts and, consequently, the natural market laws pushed them inevitably

to prison: people who had no resources, other than their labor ability, needed the threat of

punishment and prison in order to respect labor contracts. Community Indians were

imagined as a rural collective personae, civilized by land property and by their interaction

with other races and the missionary state. Elites envisioned these multiracial settlements

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reproducing and mimicking modern democratic institutions through a local government

body (the cabildo), special legal procedures, and the surveillance of indigenous brokers

and state functionaries. Community Indians and rural people were excluded from the

regular courts and subjected to hybrid legal and administrative and surveillance

procedures by the central state. At the same time, communities were displayed as

laboratories of indigenous collective living, under state observation and intervention for the revitalization of the race. In this context, indigenismo became the official rhetoric of the liberal state.

The two institutions—hacienda and community—assigned indigenes both rural and laborer identities and, in the case of literate Indians, political rights. At the same time, these institutions provided powerful means to govern the pueblo of the highlands.

Concierto and communal Indians offered models of government that could be deployed to “indigenize” the non-Indians in villages and rural areas. Yet as I have argued, the indigeneity of “free” Indians—the mobile Indians in towns and cities as well as the countryside, also referred to by some authors as “evolved” Indians—posed a challenge to the governmental strategies of elites. They embodied all the vices of other Indians as well as hatred against the white race, but they did not live under servitude arrangements or in self-governing nation-like territories as concierto and communal Indians. They were elusive to classify; in time, this tension was solved by a discursive shift that ran parallel to the equation of “indigenes” with “rural” people. This equation transformed “nomad” or “evolved” Indians into non-Indians based in part on they speaking Spanish.

Notes

327 Poole proposes that the narrated images of race among Cuzco intellectuals display two main approaches. One developed by Luis Eduardo Valcárcel who located differences in past history, and the other by Uriel

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García who considered that race and identity were yet to be constructed. Poole suggests that, in this latter approach, race was seen as an attitude (1997: 190).

328 In a persuasive analysis of Huasipungo, Jorge Icaza’s famous indigenista novel, Cueva (1988) proposes that this literature created emblematic features of indigenes instead of unique individualized characters.

329 However, these two regimes were connected. The limits between these territories were flexible (Guerrero 1991) and, at the same time, the labor market generated a dense network between these two regimes (Parsons 1945).

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Interviews Alfredo Costales, February 2002. Natalia Wray, February 2002. Plutarco Naranjo, February 2002.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

I was born in Santiago, Chile, and studied anthropology in Chile and Ecuador.

Later, I obtained a master’s degree in environmental studies from the Pontificia

Universidad Católica de Chile and a graduate diploma in Andean anthropology from the

Facultad Latinomericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Sede Ecuador. My early research interests and publishing focused on social movements. I explored the political and economic practices of the Andean indigenous peasantry and urban and rural women.

I studied indigenous protests and associations as well as the economic rationality of small producers (peasants and artisanal fishermen). My work on women, both in urban rural settings, has paid particular attention to the interrelation of gender, political practices, and public policies.

I have geared my academic training to applied fields and topics: peasant and gender policies, development and training programs. I belong to the generation that created the contemporary nongovernmental movement in Latin America. I was associated for more than a decade with a research-oriented first-generation organization and later became increasingly involved in development programs for women and rural groups. My professional experience includes basic and applied social research.

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