A Case Study in Development from the Cattle Region
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CONFLICT BETWEEN WHITES AND INDIANS ON THE LLANOS DEPARTMENT: A CASE STUDY IN DEVELOPMENT DE MOXOS , BENI FROM THE CATTLE REGIONS OF THE BOLIVIAN ORIENTE By JAMES C. JONES DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF A FULFILLMENT THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1980 To Ignacianos and other Peasants of the Bolivian Oriente. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many institutions and individuals, both in Bolivia and in the United States, contributed to make this study possible. Owing to the sensitivity of some of the material presented, however, the names of certain helpful Bolivians and Bolivian agencies must remain anonymous to assure their welfare. This is made especially necessary by the severe government retaliation against and repression of dissent that currently obtains in that country. Certainly the author's first debt of thanks in Bolivia goes to the Ignacianos, without whose intimate collaboration this study could not have been achieved. The story told in the pages to follow is their story in particular, but it is in a more general way also the story of all peasants of the Beni Department. Moving closer to home, the author tenders warm thanks and to Professor Wagley, chairman of his doctoral committee, Bernard, to Professors Solon Kimball, Maxine Margolis, Russell doctoral and David Bushnell for their guidance through the program and especially for their suggestions for improvement be remembered of the manuscript. Professor Wagley will always affectionately for his unstinting moral support throughout. The research reported herein was financed by three after institutions. The project was conceived and designed m a summer's preliminary reconnaissance of the Beni Department made possible by a grant from University of Florida Founda- tion Tropical South America Program. The main research was later supported by grants from National Science Foundation (BNS--7709610) and from Inter-American Foundation. The opinions and conclusions expressed in this report, however, are not necessarily those of the funding agencies or of any of the numerous individuals who provided information and assistance. The author bears sole responsibility for the contents of the report. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Pag e ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii:L ABSTRACT vii I INTRODUCTION 1 The Problem Discussed 1 The Field Situation 7 Notes to Chapter 1 15 II THE SETTING 17 Physical Setting of the Beni Department 17 Human Setting of the Beni Department 2 8 Moxos Province 4 3 Notes to Chapter II 51 III HISTORY 58 Early European Exploration and Conquest 58 Late Pre-Jesuit Moxos 61 The Jesuit Period 67 From the Expulsion of the Jesuits to Independence: 1767-1824 85 From the Founding of the Republic to the Collapse of the Rubber Boom: 1825-1912.... 97 San Ignacio from Late Nineteenth Century to the Eve of the Chaco War 117 San Ignacio from the Chaco War to 1950 133 Notes to Chapter III 138 IV SAN IGNACIO: A BICULTURAL COMMUNITY 14 5 Physical and Attitudinal Manifestations of a Dual Community 145 Mythology and the Native View of the Physical Environment 155 Socio-Cultural Forms of a Dual Community 162 Interaction and Conflict 174 Notes to Chapter IV 178 V HORTICULTURE AND RANCHING: CONTRASTING SYSTEMS OF LAND USE AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 17 9 Horticulture: An Indian Occupation 179 Ranching: A White Occupation 193 Conflict and Change 214 Notes to Chapter V 224 v Pa ge VI THE QUEST FOR MEAT, SKINS, AND PELTS 225 Hunting 225 Fishing 230 The Quest for Skins and Pelts 233 Conflict and Change 240 VII LABOR AND EXCHANGE: THE SHORTAGE OF PURCHASING POWER 24 7 Labor 247 Material Exchange 251 Conflict and Change 261 265 VIII AGRARIAN REFORM, POWER , AND STRESS Aftermath of the Revolution of 1952 265 The Land-Tenure Structure 269 Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform in Review. 276 The Locus of Power 284 Messianism 289 Notes to Chapter VIII 296 IX SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 2 99 The Current Situation of Ignacianos and its Origins 299 Continuity and Change 307 The Future 311 BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 321 vi Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CONFLICT BETWEEN WHITES AND INDIANS ON THE LLANOS IN DEVELOPMENT DE MOXOS , BENI DEPARTMENT: A CASE STUDY FROM THE CATTLE REGIONS OF THE BOLIVIAN ORIENTE By James C. Jones December 1980 Chairman: Dr. Charles Wagley Major Department: Anthropology This work is a study of the consequences for native peasants of the recent commercialization of beef cattle on the Llanos de Moxos in the Beni Department of eastern Bolivia. The writer lived as participant-observer for twenty months among the Ignacianos, a numerous native peasant group settled in and around San Ignacio de Moxos. Like most peasants of the region, Ignacianos are des- cendants of Indians who were resettled in mission towns during colonial times, when for 100 years (1667-1767) the area that today corresponds roughly to the Beni Department was a Jesuit mission reserve. The Jesuits altered Amazonian social structures, introduced European tools and technologies, and Vll grafted a folk Catholicism onto native belief systems. The Jesuits also introduced cattle to the region and fomented a dependence on beef and dairy products. The traditional dependence on wild game and fish correspondingly waned. After the expulsion of the Jesuits, native peoples of the Beni pampas either maintained small herds of cattle or hunted among the increasingly numerous wild herds that began to form from now untended mission cattle. This state of affairs essentially obtained until the late 1940's, when a rise in beef prices in the highland cities of Bolivia and the availability of cheap surplus United States airplanes from the war made the slaughter of Beni cattle and the immediate air transport of fresh beef to highland markets lucrative. This process of commercialization has resulted in a marked shift of control over and access to beef and dairy products from the peasant to a commercial ranching sector. After an initial period of unchecked slaughter which reduced herd numbers to dangerously low levels, a rudimen- tary ranching industry began to emerge in the early 1960's and cattle numbers began to climb. There is in the area today competition between peasants and ranchers for limited high ground. Peasant gardens, made only on such forested high ground, are subject yearly to the depredations of foraging cattle that must take refuge from the flooded pampas from January through March. The Agrarian Reform of 1953, which has operated amidst a land rush since the vixi physical mid-1960 ' s , makes little alowance for the unique environment of the Beni and can thus not accommodate the peasant. Moreover, rampant graft has moved Reform officials to overwhelmingly favor the ranching sector at the expense of the peasant. Limited access to beef has now forced peasants to rely on wild game and fish to a degree unknown since early Jesuit times. But fishing is seasonal, while the commer- cialization of wild skins and pelts, a process that has temporally paralleled the commercialization of beef, has led to the virtual extermination of food animals in certain zones. Such is the case with the peccary. The current generalization of firearms among the peasants, unavailable before about 1950, has further contributed to the depletion of game supplies. Peasants of the region today are geographically quite mobile and have since 1950 dispersed over the area to dis- tribute themselves more favorably with respect to critical resources such as wild game and good garden forest free of the cattle menace. Stress levels run high, as manifested by a messianic movement that has attracted peasant groups across the Beni in recent years. The Beni peasant, powerless and poor, has been neglected by national and local governments. Favored instead, even by the Agrarian Reform, have been the powerful cattle interests. International development agencies, operating with loans and IX technical assistance, have promoted the expansion of the ranching sector and must therefore assume part of the respon- sibility for the current plight of the Beni peasant. x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Problem Discussed This research seeks to assess the consequences of the recent commercialization of regional beef cattle for the Ignacianos, a sub-group of Moxos^ Indians of the Beni Depart- ment in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia. Dispersed over numerous settlements administratively dependent on San Ignacio, capital of the Beni province of Moxos, Ignacianos today comprise a peasantry numbering about 6,000 that is only mar- ginally integrated vis-a-vis regional and national socio- economic institutions. The Ignacianos are descendents of Indians that under- went a major socio-cultural transformation with the arrival of Europeans, and Ignacianos today appear to be experiencing a second such transformation due to the commercialization of beef cattle. There is ethnographic evidence from the reports of early missionaries and explorers to suggest that the Moxos were in pre-Columbian times organized into Tropical-Forest Chiefdoms, or societies characterized by "intervillage federa- tion" (Steward and Faron 1959: 252-57; Steward 1963: 1-41). Whether chiefdom or otherwise, the aboriginal "level of socio- cultural integration" was markedly transformed when the Moxos were settled in Jesuit missions for a century (1667-1767) 1 2 I I Kilometers Figure 1 The Departments of Bolivia , . 3 during the Spanish colonial era. By the time the Jesuits departed the region in 1778, the Moxos exhibited a Modern- Indian type of culture, or one "resulting from the fusion of aboriginal and, in the main, Iberian institutions and culture patterns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (Wagley and Harris 1968: 83). It is this Modern-Indian type of culture that has survived well into the present century and that Ignacianos bear today.