Copyright by Robert Leland Smale 2005
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Copyright by Robert Leland Smale 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Robert Leland Smale certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Above and Below: Peasants and Miners in Oruro and Northe rn Potosí, Bolivia (1899 -1929) Committee: Jonathan Brown, Supervisor Susan Deans -Smith Virginia Burnett Margot Beyersdorff Erick Langer Above and Below: Peasants and Miners in Oruro and Northern Potosí, Bolivia (1899 -1929) by Robert Leland Smale, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2005 Dedicated to the memory of my father: Leland “Skipper” Smale 1940-1990 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following institutions and organizations for their financial assistance in the execution of this dissertation. The Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin which provided me with a Dora Bonam and Gardener Marston Fellowship in 2002 and 2003. The Tereza Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (TLLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin which provided me with a Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant in 1999; I would also like to thank the Tinker Foundation. The TLLILAS also provided me with a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship for the study of Quechua in 1997. The Graduate College of the University of Texas at Austin provided me with a Thematic Fellowship (Poverty, Mobility, and Environmental Studies) in 2001 and 2002 and a David Bruton, Jr. Fellowship in 2000 and 2001. Finally, the Department of Education provided me with a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship in 2000 and 2001. I would like to thank the administration and staff of the following archives and institutions in Bolivia: the Prefecture of Oruro, the Supreme Court of Oruro, th e Subprefecture of the Cercado Province of Oruro, the Municipal Library of Oruro, the Casa de la Cultura of Oruro, the Casa Simón Patiño of the Technical University of Oruro, the Historical Archive of La Paz, the Archive and Library of the Casa de la Moned a in Potosí, and the National Archive and Library of Bolivia in Sucre. I would like to single out Estanislao Sotomayor, Secretary of the Prefecture of Oruro, for his two years of assistance during my stay in Bolivia. I would also like to thank Hmno. Gilb erto Pauwels and the rest of the staff at the Centro de Ecología y Pueblos Andinos in Ouro for their v support during several stages of my dissertation research. In the United States, I would like to thank the administration and staff of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas at Austin. Individually, I would like to thank Jonathan Brown for nine years of advice and support while at the University of Texas at Austin. I would also like to thank Erick Langer of Georgetown University; since meeting him in Oruro, he has always treated me as if I was a graduate student who had studied with him for years. I would also like to thank the three other members of my dissertation committee at the University of Texas at Austin: Susan Deans-Smith, Virginia Burnett, and Margot Beyersdorff. I must also thank my first professor of Latin American history: Thomas Wright of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I am also grateful for the support and input of my fellow graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin; I would like to single out two for a special note of gratitude—Matt Childs and Russell Lohse —the two who introduced me to the explanatory power of historical materialism. Finally, I must thank my family for their years of support: Linda Smale, my mother; Scott Smale, my brother; and Eloise Koenig, my grandmother. I could not have completed this project without the love and support of my beautiful wife Maria Daveiva Murillo Condo and the joyful diversion of our son Skip Sam iyuj Smale -Murillo. vi Above and Below: Peasants and Miners in Oruro and Northern Potosí, Bolivia (1899 -1929) Publication No. __________ Robert Leland Smale, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: Jonathan C. Brown During the first three decades of the twentieth century, massive industrial mining operations developed among the wind-swept hills and steppes of the Andean highlands. From out of these isolated mining camps arose one of the most militant union movements in Latin America —a movement so powerful that in 1952 the miners imposed a socialist revolution on the country. Mining prospered in the Andes even before the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. As the mines developed, European entrepreneurs cemented their co ntrol over the more advanced capital -intensive operations, but they never completely abolished small mills and mines controlled by the popular classes. The rivalry between the capital -intensive pole of mining and the artisan pole continues today. Both th e Spanish state and the later republican government of Bolivia supported the dominant classes in this struggle. Also during the Spanish colonial period, urban mineworkers emerged as a separate and distinct segment of Andean society. The rapid industrializ ation beginning in the early 1900s fortified the nation’s working class; as the vii mines expanded and employed new technology to boost production, the workers strengthened their own union structures and experimented with new political philosophies. The Boliv ian peasantry did not make a similar advance; the rural population of the country never shed the political and ideological tutelage of Bolivia’s dominant classes. Ironically, the Indian majority of the country did successfully resisted oligarchic and sta te encroachment during the years 1899 to 1929. This victory, coupled with their only indirect contact with industrial capitalism, retarded the development of independent ideological programs among the peasantry. The Bolivian working class, with a mixed European and Andean cultural heritage, built upon a centuries -long history as a distinct social group to craft a forward -thinking ideology very much their own. Only the working class had enough direct exposure to capitalist industry and the vagaries of Bolivia’s oligarchic government to understand the true character of the country’s economic and political order. More than any other segment of Bolivia’s popular classes, the working class of the mining camps accumulated the necessary historical experience an d ideological sophistication to formulate viable alternatives to the nation’s capitalist economy. viii Table of Contents List of Maps ………………………………………………………………...xi Introduction: 1932, 1952 ....………………………………………………....1 Chapter One: Silver and Tin ……………………………………………...27 Silver in the Colonial Period………………………………………..33 Silver in the Nineteenth Century……………………………………56 Conclusion…………………………………………………………..71 Chapter Two: The Success of Ayllu Resistance ………………………….75 The Hacienda and the Ayllu in Bolivian History……………………77 Guaracata and Sullcavi vs. the Colquechaca Mining Company…….96 Land Tenure on the Eve of Revolution…………………………….113 Conclusion………………………………………………………….124 Chapter Three: Capitalism in the Countryside …………………………127 The Ayllus and Industr ialization……………………………………130 Laboring on the Hacienda…………………………………………..156 Peasant Political Movements……………………………………….166 Conclusion………………………………………………………….186 Chapter Four: Organization and Ideology …………………………….....189 Laboring in the Boss’s Shadow, 1899-1915…………………………192 The Growth of Association, 1916-1923……………………………..215 The Massacre of Uncía, 1923………………………………………..239 An Ideology of their Own, 1924-1929………………………………251 Conclusion…………………………………………………………...258 ix Epilogue: The Permanent Revolut ion Triumphant ………………………261 The Thesis of Pulacayo………………………………………………268 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………276 Vita …………………………………………………………………………...289 x List of Maps Map 1: Railroads, Towns, and Cities of the Bolivian Altiplano …………275 xi Introduction: 192 3, 1952 The proletariat is characterized by having the sufficient strength to realize its own objectives and even those of others. Its enormous weight specifically in politics is determined by the place that it occupies in the process of production and not by its relatively small numbers. The economic axis of national life will also be the political axis of the future revolution. The Syndicalist Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers, Tesis de Pulacayo (1946) Winter in the Bolivian Andes begins in late May; by June, the nights are clear and cold (the coldest months of the year closely correspond with the driest). On the night of 4 June 1923, the small mining town of Uncía in the isolated northern reaches of the department of Potosí experienced what is popularly remembered as the first massacre of striking miners by the Bolivian government. That evening the military opened fire with rifles and a machine gun on a crowd of workers gathered in the Plaza Alonso de Ibañez. The workers had congregated in the plaza to protest the arrest of their union leaders; men eventually exiled from Uncía to break the momentum of organization in the region. After the night of bloodshed, the Bolivian state ensured the return of company control over the mines and mills in the region, but the conflict presaged future confrontations between state and capital on the one hand and the Bolivian working class on the other. Three decades later, the workers and the Bolivian military again confronted each other with very different resu lts; this time most of the fighting