1780 Author(s): Sergio Serulnikov

Disputed Images of Colonialism: Spanish Rule and Indian Subversion in Northern Potosí, 17771780
Author(s): Sergio Serulnikov
Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 189-226
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2517139
Accessed: 19/11/2009 10:05
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Hispanic
American Historical Review.
http://www.jstor.org
Hispanic American Historical Review 76:2
CopyrightC 1996 by Duke University Press
ccc ool8-2i68/q6/si.5o
Disputed Images of Colonialism:
Spanish Rule and Indian Subversion
in Northern Potosi, 1777-1780
SERGIO SERULNIKOV
the beginningof June 1780, a largegroupof Indians
from the town of Macha in the south Andean province
of Chayanta, northern Potosi, traveled to the colonial
administrativecenter of La Plata, seat of the high court of Charcas,to denounce their Spanish and ethnic local authorities.Collective pilgrimagesto
Spanish tribunals were common among the Andean and Mexican peasantries. Native communities had long since gained the reputation of being
litigious for flooding colonial courts with complaints that involved abuses
in village government. The circumstancessurroundingthe journey of these
AymaraIndians of Macha, nevertheless, were rather extraordinary.
Over the three previous years, the Macha communities had carried out
an exceptionally tenacious legal struggle. Juridicalbattles included several
appeals to the royal treasuryof Potosi, the Real Audiencia of Charcas, and
one astonishingjourney to Buenos Aires, 1,6oo miles away,where the Indians broughttheir case before the highest authorityin the land, the viceroy of
the Rio de la Plata. Local power groups responded by repeatedly attacking
Ai
T
This researchwas assisted by a grant from the Joint Committee on Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned
Societies with funds provided by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Funds also came from the Consejo de Investigaciones Cientificas y T6cnicas de la Argentina
(CONICET), the John Carter Brown Library,and the Fundaci6n Antorchas.Earlier versions
of this essay were read at the Faculty Seminaron Eighteenth-CenturyStudies, State University
of New York, Stony Brook, March 1993; and the "V Coloquio Internacional:El Siglo XVIII
en los Andes," Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolom6de las Casas and CLACSO,
Paris, April 19-24, 1993. I am grateful to those who offered comments at those meetings. I
also thank Paul Gootenberg, Leonardo Hernandez, Juan Carlos Korol,Cecilia M6ndez, Silvana
Palermo, Tristan Platt, Ana Marfa Presta, Sinclair Thomson, Charles Walker,BarbaraWeinstein, Kathleen Wilson, and the three anonymous HAHR reviewers for helpful criticism, and
particularlyBrooke Larson and Enrique Tandeter for their intellectual generosity and advice.
0
19
H
HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
the indigenous communities and several times imprisoningtheir leader, an
illiterate, non-Spanish-speaking Indian named Tomas Katari.For example,
between September 1779 and April 1780, eight months before the collective presentation in La Plata, Katari remained imprisoned in the town of
Potosi. Only an armed attack enabled the Indians to liberate their leader
as he was being conducted to Chayantato be formallytried by the corregidor (Spanish provincial magistrate).That this experience did not deter the
Aymarapeasants from continuing their legal protest is certainly remarkable; still more intriguingare the explicit motives of their quest. Warned by
the parish priest of Macha that the audiencia would immediately order his
arrest, Katarireplied that
he was not afraid of being arrested again because he was innocent and
wanted to declare his truth and his justice; and for that reason, he was
going to place himself at the gates of the audienciadaily,so that all might
see him and know of his presence.'
On June lo, 1780, the Aymaraleader was quietly led from the gates of the
audiencia to the court prison.
Reflecting on the obstacles the apparent "irrationality"of sixteenthcentury popularreligious revolts in France pose to historicalanalysis,Natalie
Zemon Davis has commented, "To bear the sword in the name of a millenarian dream might make some sense, but why get so excited about the
Eucharist or saints' relics? It is hard to decipher the social meaning of such
an event."2The Aymaramovement led by Toma'sKatari,which began as a
routine legal protest and became the most profound challenge to colonial
rule in the southern Andes since the Spanish conquest, presents a spectacle perhaps no less enigmatic. Centered in an overwhelminglyindigenous
region between the mining center of Potosi and the city of La Plata, the
Chayantarebellion constituted one of the three main foci of rebel activity
during the general Andean insurrectionof the early 178os. Unlike the overt
anticolonialrebellions led by TuipacAmaruand TuipacKatariin Cuzco and
La Paz, however, the Chayanta upheaval was a gradual process of social
unrest that evolved within the bounds of the existing system of justice and
government. Throughout the conflict, continuous processes of judicial appeal to the higher Spanish courts, as well as the self-conscious adoption of
European rituals of justice and the fulfillment of tribute and mita quotas,
1. Interrogation of Tomas Katari by the Audiencia of Charcas, Aug. 29, 1780, Archivo
General de la Naci6n, Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as AGN), XI, Interior,leg. lo, exp. 1, ff.
133-133V.
2. Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Rites of Violence,"in Society and Culture in Early Modern
France:Eight Essays (Stanford:StanfordUniv. Press, 1975), 154.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
191
did not seem to preclude, but ratherto legitimate, massive armed attackson
the networksof colonial power in Upper Peru.3
It is this pattern of insurrectionalviolence and juridical strategies that
seems to defy our understandingof the political nature of the great Andean
rebellions at the end of the eighteenth century. It also challenges conventionalwisdom about the ideological function of the Spanishsystem of justice
in the reproductionof colonialism.
The purpose of this essay is to trace the ideologicalfoundationsof Aymara
politics. At a more general level, it tries to discern what social meaning was
comprised in such public performancesas Katari'svoluntarysurrenderto assert what he called "his truth and his justice," and how this form of political
awarenesscould become the languageof mass insurrection.The first section
deals with the political frameworkof peasant collective actions by focusing
on the jurisdictional disputes within the imperial bureaucracy during the
late Bourbon era. It analyzes how competitive notions of colonial legitimacy
among Peruvianregional officialsand viceregal magistratesimbued with the
ideology of the Bourbon Enlightenment invested the Aymara movement
with opposing patterns of significance. The second part seeks to situate indigenous demands in the context of northern Potosi peasant society and to
show how the Indians' consistent pursuit of limited, "reformist"objectives
undermined the political and ideological basis of Spanish authority.
The aftermath of this process, the upheaval that took place in the town
of Pocoata at the end of August 1780, is addressed in the third section. It
traces the final transfigurationof traditionalritualsof colonial rule into acts
of political subversion. While narrowlyconceived as a study of the Aymara
movement between 1777 and August 1780, the historical relevance of this
case may permit some discussion of broader analyticalissues in the fields of
state hegemony and Andean politics and identity.
For the last 15 years, the historical literature has tended to view Spanish justice as a powerful instrument of European hegemony over the native
peoples. By the late sixteenth century, the Spanish crown had built a centralized model of exploitationof the Indian communities in the core areas of
the New World. Through a vast network of officials,the state began to monopolize the collection of peasant taxes (tribute) and the rotatingassignment
of the Indian labor force to private enterprises (mita). The division of the
3. For biographicaldata on Tupac Amaru, see John Rowe, "El movimiento nacional inca
(Cuzco)107 (1954), 17-47; Alberto Flores Galindo,Busdel siglo XVIII,"RevistaUnive-sitaria
cando a un Inca: identidad y utopia en los Andes (Lima:Instituto de Apoyo Agrario,1987); and
Jan Szeminski,La utopia tupamarista (Lima, PontificiaUniversidadCat6lica, 1983). On Tupac
Katari(JulianApasa), see Maria Eugenia del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebeli6n de Ttipac
Catari(La Paz: Don Bosco, 1990).
192
I HAHR
I MAY
I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
colonial society into two isolated sectors-the Republica de Indios and the
Reputblicade Espafioles-gave this system its juridical framework. Native
communities' lands were placed under legal protection, and the continuity
of their ethnic authoritieswas assured. Moreover,special agents (protectores
de indios) were established at all levels of the colonial administrationto
guarantee swift and inexpensive Indian access to the state system of justice.
Some of the finest historical studies have revealed the extent to which
indigenous peoples took advantage of their juridical prerogatives to protect their material resources, political autonomy, and principles of social
organization.4Although legal strategies constituted powerful means of resistance, however, they also contributed in the long term to a mentality of
subordinationto the established order. Accordingto Steve J. Stem,
to the extent that reliance on a juridical system becomes a dominant
strategy of protection for an oppressed class or social group, it may
undermine the possibility of organizinga more ambitious assault aimed
at toppling the exploitative structure itself. When this happens, a functioning system of justice contributes to the hegemony of a ruling class.5
Certainly,judicial politics did not prevent indigenous communities from
resorting to violence to resolve their conflicts with local elites. The numerous village riots that mushroomed in the eighteenth-century Mexican and
Andean ruralworld demonstrate the Indians'abilityto resort to force to defend their perceived interests. The purpose of these local revolts, however,
was not to challenge the system of colonial domination itself but to protest
particularlyabusive authorities,new taxes, and outside encroachmenton the
political autonomyof the community.As it did with the Indians'legal claims,
the colonial state tended to adopt a cautious approach to these rebellions,
a calculated mix of repression and negotiation that would allow Indians and
local elites alike to resume their daily routines.6Although the final result
varied from case to case, the state did manage to create in this way a certain
4. See Steve J. Stem, Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest:
Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1982); Brooke Larson, Colonialism
and Agrarian Transformationin Bolivia: Cochabamba,1550-1900 (Princeton:Princeton Univ.
Press, 1988); Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial
Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1983).
5. Stern, Peru'sIndian Peoples, 137; see also William B. Taylor,"Between Global Process
and Local Knowledge: An Inquiry into Early Latin American Social History, 1500-1900," in
Reliving the Past: The Worldsof Social History, ed. Olivier Zunz (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
CarolinaPress, 1985), 151-57.
6. William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages
(Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1979); Charles Walker, "La violencia y el sistema legal: los
indios y el estado en el Cusco despu6s de la rebeli6n de Tupac Amaru,"in Poder y violencia en
los Andes, comp. Henrique Urbano, ed. Mirko Lauer (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales
Andinos Bartolom6de las Casas, 1991), 125-48.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
193
sense of justice. As Friedrich Katz, synthesizingthe hegemonic role played
by the colonial state in New Spain, summarizes it, "Most rebellions were
directed at local officials,and the Indians mostly remained firmlyconvinced
that the crown, if it only knew, would redress their wrongs."7
The great Indian insurrections came to reflect, like an inverted mirror,
the hegemonic role of this "juridico-discursiverepresentationof power,"as
Serge Gruzinskihas called it.8 Unlike legal protests, peasant insurrections
rejected institutionalizedmechanisms for resolving social conflict. Mass violence was outside the law, and its very emergence was bound up with the
failure (and abandonment)of legal strategies.JuirgenGolte has divided resistance against the forced distributionof goods, for example, into two stages:
first, a period in which the Andean communities sought to denounce their
corregidores and kurakas (ethnic authorities) before superior courts; second, a phase marked by the use of force, which eventually led to the great
uprisingsof 178o-81.9 Insurgentviolence, in turn, pursued objectives antagonistic to colonial domination. Unlike the limited goals behind local village
riots (objectives often absorbed by the colonial regime), peasant insurrections adopted, by definition, the form of "conspiracieswith explicit revolutionary goals," racial wars intended to exterminate or expel the European
government and population.'0
In the Andean world, the rise of insurrectional movements has been
associatedwith the propagationof millenarianand messianic messages. The
insurrectionalviolence seems to have been inspired by an autonomous system of cultural beliefs that enabled native peoples to link expectations for
political change with an idealized pre-Hispanic past." In brief, the great
Indian uprisings of the 1780s, among which the Chayantarebellion looms
large, are considered to be the manifestationof social identities constructed
7. Friedrich Katz, "Rural Uprisings in Preconquest and Colonial Mexico," in Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution:Rural Social Conflict in Mexico, ed. Katz (Princeton:Princeton Univ.
Press, 1988), 79.
8. Serge Gruzinski, Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands: Indian Power and Colonial
Society, 1520-1800 (Stanford:Stanford Univ. Press, 1989), 18.
9. Jtirgen Golte, Repartos y rebeliones: Ttipac Amaru y las contradiccionesde la economia colonial (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1980). For a critique of Golte's emphasis
on the repartimiento system as a general cause of Indian unrest, see Alberto Flores Galindo,
"Larevoluci6ntupamaristay los pueblos andinos (una criticay un proyecto),"Allpanchis 17/18
(1981), 153-65.
lo. John H. Coatsworth, "Patternsof Rural Rebellion in Latin America: Mexico in ComparativePerspective,"in Katz, Riot, Rebellion,and Revolution,29-30.
11. Jorge Hidalgo Lehuede, "Amarusy cataris:aspectos mesianicos de la rebeli6n indigena
de 1781 en Cusco, Chayanta, La Paz, y Arica," Revista Chungara lo (1983), 117-38; Szeminski,
La utopia tupamarista;idem, "WhyKill the Spaniards?New Perspectives on Andean InsurrectionaryIdeology in the Eighteenth Century,"in Resistance,Rebellion,and Consciousnessin the
Andean Peasant World, Eighteenth to TwentiethCenturies, ed. Steve J. Stem (Madison:Univ.
of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 166-92; Flores Galindo, Buscando a un Inca.
194
| HAHR IMAYI SERGIOSERULNIKOV
outside the boundaries of colonial discourse, and their political nature is
sharply distinguished from the routine forms of negotiation and conflict
between indigenous communities and dominant groups.
The analysisof the Aymaramovement presented here proposes an alternative perspective on the political foundations of Indian insurgency. This
essay will argue that mass violence was informed not by symbolic motifs
generated from outside colonial ideology, but by an appropriationand redefinition of the principles that legitimized European domination over the
Andean peoples. At least while Tomas Katariled the movement, the Chayanta communities did not formulate their expectations of social change in
the language of millennial utopias but ratherin terms of the very same colonial juridical discourse. It was by reference to this ideological framework
that Aymarapolitics and identity were constructed. Certainly,Spanish law
was not an objective referentialsystem againstwhich participantsin the conflict evaluated their and their enemies' actions. The nucleus of the political
struggle lay precisely in antagonisticdefinitions of the set of rights and obligations that should regulate the relations between indigenous communities
and the colonial bureaucracy.
To be sure, the analysis of law and legal discourse is one of the critical means for understandingthe languages of authorityand consensus that
cemented colonial society.'2Chayantarecords, however, suggest that Spanish justice could become, under certain circumstances, a theater not only
of resistance but also of counterhegemony. By the late eighteenth century,
under the pressure of imperial reforms and Indian protests, the judicial
system seems to have turned into a prominent arena of ideological battles
over fundamentalpolitical features of Spanishcolonialismin the Andes. Key
among them was the increasingly apparent antagonism between the inner
workingsof the regionalpatrimonialsystem, on the one hand, and the juridical theory of the two republics and the Toledan model of rationalizedstate
exactions,on the other. This article intends to show how, in the very process
of disclosing this contradiction and enforcing their perceived (and legally
acknowledged) rights, the Aymaracommunities could constitute themselves
as political actors, contest the local elites' claim to rule, and eventually subvert the forms of identity and cultural hierarchy that authorized colonial
domination.
Official Narratives of Collective Violence
The collective mobilization of the Aymaracommunities of northern Potosi
evolved, in the course of three and one-half years, from a legal protest into
12. Deborah Poole, "Antopologfae historia andinas en los EE.UU.: buscando un reencuentro,"Revista Andina 10:1 (1992), 218.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
195
a large-scale insurrection, unique in this region in terms of intensity, geographical reach, and political radicalization.To frame the analysis, three
major stages in this process may be distinguished. Between mid-1777 and
August 1780, the social struggle was circumscribed mostly to the ten ayllus
that made up the Macha community. Indian resistance to local authorities
had become routine in the southern Andes by this time.'3Nevertheless, the
relentless mobilizationof Machapeasants to remove the complete structure
of native chieftainshipand to obtain the appointmentof Tomas Katarias the
main kurakaled to a growing political confrontationwith the regional network of colonial power, particularlythe corregidorJoaquinAlos, the judges
of the Audiencia of Charcas, and some parish priests. This period saw individual and collective appeals before the Potosi, Charcas, and Buenos Aires
courts; a long sequence of armed clashes with local Spanish and Indian authorities;and finallya massive uprisingin the town of Pocoata on August Z6,
1780, all of which allowed peasant communities to expel illegitimatekurakas,
to force the corregidorto leave Chayanta,and to compel the Real Audiencia
to release Tomas Katarifrom prison.
The second phase of the conflict began in early September 1780, when
Katari returned to Chayanta as the officially appointed kuraka of Macha.
Thereafter, the Aymaracommunities gained almost complete control over
the province, and Kataribecame the sole acknowledged authority.Andean
peasants accused new corregidores of supporting Alos and thus prevented
them from takingreal controlof the province. Indiansfrom all over Chayanta
and the nearby provinces of Porco and Paria started pilgrimagesto Macha,
seeking advice on how to redress their grievances concerning corregidores,
parish priests, and kurakas.
Mass violence extended from Macha to many other peasant communities in the area. Uprisings occurred in Moscari, San Pedro de Buena Vista,
Sacaca, and the town of Chayanta.'4By the end of 1780, despite Katari's
consistent efforts to reconstitute relations between the Andean ayllus and
the Spanish authorities, it was increasingly apparent that the conflict had
reached the point of no return.'5The seizure and murderof Katariin January
13. See Scarlett O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales. Perl y Bolivia,
(Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolome de las Casas, 1988),
149-73.
14. As the Chayantarebellion spread, so did three "faultlines"of tension in the indigenous
movement. The kurakaof the Anansayamoiety, Pascual Chura, resisted Katari'sappointment
as main kurakaof Macha. See AGN, IX, Int., leg. 8, exp. 1, fol. 14v-18, 34-35v, and 71-71V.
The traditionalrivalrybetween the Macha and the Pocoata communities pushed the Pocoatans
eventually to oppose the insurrection. AGN, IX, leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 222-25v; and AGN, IX,
leg. 8, exp. 8, fol. 59-61. Kataridisagreed with some indigenous sectors that organized attacks
on parishpriests to force them to exhibit the officiallist of church obventions and fees. AGN, IX,
leg. 8, exp. 8, fol. 48-49v; AGN, IX, leg. 8, exp. 1, fol. 166v-68.
15. During this period Katari collected and remitted the complete tribute quota from
Macha, as he had promised before his release. Between September and December 1780, he
1700-1783
196
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
1781, combined with the expansionof the insurrectionled by TuipacAmaru
in Cuzco, brought the confrontationto its last and most violent stage. Led
by TomasKatari'sbrothers, Damaso and Nicolas, thousandsof Aymarapeasants assaulted several towns in Chayanta,killed those who had participated
in Katari'sexecution, and, in February 1781, set up a massive, albeit brief,
siege of the city of La Plata. These impressive insurgent activities ended
with the militarydefeat of the Aymaraarmy and the execution of its leaders
in March and April 1781.
The political strugglethat took place in Chayantabetween 1777 and 1781
did not originate in a straightforwardopposition between native peoples
and their European rulers. Aymararesistance against longstanding modes
of exploitation in the Andean world became inextricablyentwined with a
larger, ongoing conflict in the colonial bureaucracy over the government
of the Indian communities. What made these two processes of contention
collide was the ambitious programs of reform the Bourbon administration
had been pushing forward since the 1750s. Facing the economic decline
of its American empire and mounting international tensions, the Spanish
crown implemented a series of policies intended to maximize the revenues extracted from its overseas possessions and to regain control over the
workings of the colonial state. Along with changes in trade, mining production, and military organization,the Bourbon reforms promoted a general
tax increase and a rationalizationor "modernization"of the administrative
structure inherited from the Hapsburgperiod. This "revolutionin government,"whatever success it may have achieved, involved an attempt to curtail
bureaucratic autonomy and collusion between officials and merchants by
uprooting local oligarchiesand creoles from government, creating a salaried
bureaucracy,and revitalizinga regime of administrativepromotion.'6
The historical literaturehas usually regarded the programof reforms as
a majorcause of Indian unrest because of the growingfiscalburden imposed
on Indians and all other segments of colonial society.'7Yet in the regional
setting of northern Potosi duringthe historicalconjunctureof the 1770s, the
other aspect of Bourbon policies, the transformationof the traditionalpatrisent more than 20 letters to Charcas,Potosi, Buenos Aires, and even the king, blaming Spanish
regional authorities for widespread violence and asking for the appointment of a neutral and
just corregidor.
16. See David A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971); Mark Burkholderand D. S. Chandler,From Impotence
to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687-18o8 (Columbia:Univ.
of MissouriPress, 1977).
David Cahill, "Taxonomyof a Colo17. O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones, 175-221;
nial 'Riot':The Arequipa Disturbances of 1780," in Reforn and Insurrectionin Bourbon New
Granada and Peru, ed. John Fisher, Allan Kuethe, and Anthony McFarlane (Baton Rouge:
LouisianaState Univ. Press, 1990), 255-91.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
197
monial system into an absolutist bureaucracy,had very different political
implications.
Let us first summarize the ideological and jurisdictional disputes that
unfolded in Upper Peru as a result of this contentious process of political
reorganization.It should be noted, to begin with, that two central actors
in the Aymararebellion-the corregidor and the audiencia-were in turn
prime targets in what John Lynch has aptly described as a transition from
"colonial consensus," a system of bureaucratic compromise, to "imperial
control."18 In the Andes, a fundamentallocus of debate and reform was the
relationshipbetween those colonial agencies of government and the forced
distribution of goods, or repartimiento de mercancias, carried out in the
Indian villages. The repartimientosystem, particularlyafter the crown'sfailure legallyto control the quota and the prices of the commodities distributed
by the corregidores, had became a major means of peasant exploitation. It
fostered a vast network of interests that linked powerful commercial groups
in Lima to local magistrates throughout the rural world. While this commercial monopoly was supposed to stimulate internal marketsby coercively
commodifyingthe economy of the Indian community,it had fiscal, political,
and social effects of prime concern for the imperial project. The repartimiento system diminished the royaltreasury'sabilityto collect tributes from
the indigenous communities, invested local magistrateswith discretionary
economic and political powers, and blocked the highest court in the land,
the viceregal tribunal of Peru, as a channel of Indian legal protest.'9
To break the collusion between Lima elites and local magistrates, the
crown decided in 1764 to restrictthe viceroy of Peru'sjurisdictionin Andean
social conflicts by permitting the Audiencia of Charcas to rule on Indian
complaints against corregidores and the repartimiento.20 Although explicitly grounded in the assumption that the empowerment of the audiencia
would contain abuses in local government, this decision seems to have encouraged new types of judicial corruption.It promoted the establishment of
informal networks involving audiencia judges and provincial corregidores,
whereby legal supportwas exchanged for a share in the profits from the repartimiento. The informalityand the changing or ephemeral bases of these
alliances made the relationshipbetween corregidoresand the regional court
18. John Lynch, "The Institutional Frameworkof Colonial Spanish America,"Journal of
Latin American Studies 24: QuincentenarySupplement (1992), 69-81.
19. Golte, Repartos y rebeliones; Alfredo Moreno Cebrian, El corregidor de indios y la
economfaperuana del siglo XVIII (los repartimientosforzososde mercancfas) (Madrid:CSIC,
1977); Larson, Colonialism and Agrarian Transformation,126-32; Stanley J. Stein, "Bureaucracy and Business in the Spanish Empire, 1759-1804: Failure of a Bourbon Reform in Mexico
and Peru,"HAHR 61:1 (Feb. 1981), 2-28.
20.
Golte, Repartos y rebeliones, 135-38.
198
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
unstable and precarious. As a whole, however, the high court's ability to
redress indigenous grievanceswas consistently weakened.2'
The transfer of Upper Peru to the jurisdictionof the Viceroyaltyof Rio
de la Plata in 1776 jeopardized the already delicate balance of power between viceregal, regional, and provincial officials.The new viceregal court,
one of the cornerstones of the new politics of centralization, was staffed
mostly with enlightened, Spanish-bornbureaucratscommitted to asserting
the crown'sfiscal and political interests over those of dominant regional oligarchies.22Unlike their counterparts in Lima, moreover, the Buenos Aires
functionarieswere linked to local commercial groups with no substantialinvestment in the repartimientosystem. These two factors combined to foster
a new pole of power with a distinctive, and broader, political perspective
on Andean affairs.It is not surprisingthat shortly after the outbreak of the
Indian rebellions of the 178os, the viceregal court was instrumentalin implementing the abolitionof repartimientos,the eliminationof corregidores,and
the establishment of the French system of intendencies, all major Bourbon
initiatives.
The collective mobilizationinitiated by the Chayantacommunities both
exacerbated and took shape from this struggle between the corregidores,
the judges of the high court of Charcas, and the bureaucracyof the viceregal court of Buenos Aires. Like many other Andean communities during
this period, the ChayantaIndians first complained that their kurakaswere
temporary (caciques interinos); that is, appointed directly by the corregidores without consideration of their hereditary rights or their consensus
of approvalin the communities. The main kurakasfrom Macha, moreover
(especially the cacique principal, Blas Doria Bernal),were mestizos, a situation that openly violated colonial ordinances.23The Indians revealed that
through the traditionalpractice of "double empadronamiento,"the kurakas
stole more than one-fourth of the tributes paid by the communities to the
royaltreasury.Accordingto the Machapeasants, the corregidorJoaquinAlos
21. Testimony of the collusion between the corregidor and the audiencia ministers was
given by the attorney Juan del Pino Manrique. See Manrique to Viceroy V6rtiz, March 1781,
cited in Boleslao Lewin, Tdpac Amaru el rebelde. Su epoca, sus luchas, y sU influencia en el
continente (Buenos Aires: Claridad,1943), 435-37.
22.
Burkholder and Chandler, FronmImpotence to Authority; Susan Migden Socolow,
The Bureaucrats of Buenos Aires, 1769-1810: Amor al Real Servicio (Durham: Duke Univ.
Press, 1987).
23. No direct relation actually existed between the kurakas'ethnic ascription or lineage
and their legitimacy in Indian communities. Katarinever probed his "rightsof blood," and his
leadership was undoubtedly based on his actions in defense of Macha ayllus. Other Chayanta
communities questioned ethnic authorities who belonged to traditionallines of kurakas.See
AGN, IX, Int., leg. 8, exp. 1, fol. 64-65v, 106-7, and 158-59. Community acceptance of kurakas
rested on their social and political role rather than their lineage.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
199
supported the illegitimatekurakasbecause of their active involvement in the
forced distributionof goods.
In 1777 and 1778, the Aymarapeasants obtained various decrees issued
by the audiencia and the officialsof the royal treasuryof Potosi summoning
the local magistrateto suspend native chiefs and to appoint Toma'sKatarias
tax collector. Despite the formal recognition of the Indian claims, however,
the corregidor refused to implement the royal decrees and repeatedly imprisoned the Aymaraleader. Charcas and Potosi magistrates, on the other
hand, ratifiedtheir previous resolutions but took no steps to enforce them.
When Katariarrived in Buenos Aires at the beginning of 1779, his testimony, about both corregidor-kurakacomplicity in diverting tribute payments and the audiencia'sinefficiency in forcing Alos to dismiss the mestizo
kurakas,struck a sensitive chord among the bureaucrats.The repartimiento
was perceived as a prominent source of fiscal and administrativecorruption
among Upper Peruvian officials and also as the likely trigger of a general
Indian insurrection.24Therefore, Viceroy Juan Jose de Vertiz ordered the
audiencia to designate a commissioned judge (juez comnisionado)to verify
Katari'sallegations. Because the Aymaraleader did not bring the records
of the legal proceedings to Buenos Aires (the corregidor had confiscated
them), the judge would have to corroborate whether Alos had effectively
ignored decrees emanating from the superior courts. In that case, Katari
would be authorized to collect tributes, and edicts would be issued for the
appointment of legitimate native authorities.More important,the audiencia
was asked to notify Alos of "the prohibition that thereafter would be imposed on him from acting against, or bringing to trial, the commissioned
judge, the supplicant [Toma'sKatari],or any other having an interest, role,
or knowledge in this case."25
The journey to the viceregal court and the favorable verdict did not
bring the immediate redress of peasant grievances that Katarimight have
expected. By not resortingto any direct mechanism of coercion and law enforcement, Spanishjustice routinely left the resolution of conflicts to local
balances of power, and particularlyto the claimants'ability to sustain over
time a collective mobilizationcapable of wrenching new verdicts or enforcing legal decisions through violence.26But viceregal intervention did have
24.
Summarizingthe new court'sconcerns about the effects of the 1764 royal edict, Viceroy Pedro de Ceballos reported to the king in 1778 that even when the Audiencia of Charcas
had suspended many corregidoresfrom their posts, "itis also well known that all were absolved,
and from this resulted deaths, insurrections,and other serious disturbances."Quoted in Golte,
Repartosy rebeliones, 139.
25.
Quoted in Lewin, Tupac Amarn el rebelde, 159.
26. Woodrow Borah,workingwith an extensive group of court cases for the JuzgadoGeneral de Indios of New Spain, has shown that the superior court decisions could include an
immediate remedy or an order for a commissioned judge to begin an investigation, which
200
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
a fundamental, albeit unwitting, effect: by pushing the audiencia and the
corregidorto close ranksto defend their sharedjurisdictionover the Indian
villages, it helped render visible and public the contradiction between the
concrete modes of exercise of power and the ideological premises of colonial
domination. After Katarireturned from Buenos Aires in March 1779, the
audiencia consistently repudiated the viceregal order to appoint a commissioned judge. The Charcascourt ignored its own previous decisions in favor
of the Macha communities' demands, professing that it no longer held the
legal documents in the case. In response to numerous Indian appeals, the
court recommended that the peasants return to Chayanta"with the assurance that the corregidor would address their grievances without inflicting
on them any harm."27
In June 1779, when Katariasked the corregidor to return the proceedings of the case and to dismiss the mestizo kurakas,Alos had him arrested
again. A few weeks later, intending to prove the misappropriationof taxes,
Katariattempted to deliver the tributes from the Macha ayllus to the cajas
reales (royal treasury) of Potosi. At the corregidor'srequest, however, the
governorof Potosi, Jorge Escobedo, imprisonedthe Indian leader as soon as
he arrivedat the mining center. As noted, in April 1780 Katariwas taken to
Chayantato be tried by Alos. It must be recalled that the primaryobjective
of the viceroy'sresolution had been "to prohibit the corregidorto rule on a
matterin which I should assume he had personalinterests, as he did have."28
The audiencia magistrates'decision to arrest Katari once more when
he traveled to La Plata in June 1780 represented the final outcome of the
process of collusion between different agencies of regional government. It
also triggered an explosion of mass violence. Within a span of three months,
native authoritieswere forced to resign;JoaquinAlos was compelled to leave
Chayanta,after a bloody battle in which dozens of Indiansand approximately
30 Spaniards died; and the audiencia was obliged to liberate the Aymara
leader and to granthim the title of kuraka.What had begun as a limited local
the claimants had to present to the accused or the judge. Naturally,if one of the parties had
personal interests in the conflict, the order could be ignored. The only control higher courts
had over the execution of their decisions was to hear appeals. Law enforcement depended on
local balances of power between the Indians and the authorities or individualsthey accused.
Borah, Justice by Insurance, 237-47. See also Colin M. MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the
New World:The Role of Ideas in Institutionaland Social Change (Berkeley:Univ. of California
Press, 1988), 124-25.
27. Report from Juan del Pino Manrique, June 1780, AGN, IX, Tribunales, leg. 181,
exp. 29.
28. ViceroyV6rtiz to Minister of the Indies Jos6 de Galvez, Oct. 24, 1780, in Colecci6nde
obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigguay moderna de las provincias del Rfo de la
Plata, ed. Pedro De Angelis (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, [183311971), VII, 667.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
201
conflict suddenly became a critical test of the balance of power between
regional officials,viceregal bureaucrats,and Andean peasants.
After being expelled from the province, Alos resided in the house of
the president of the audiencia and participated in court sessions. Between
September and December 1780, despite the volatile political situation in
Chayanta,the Charcascourt appointed new provincialofficials;but because
of their clear association with the former corregidor,the indigenous communities did not allow them to take office.
As the Indian movement began to gain almost complete control over
the province and to expand even beyond the limits of northern Potosi, Viceroy V6rtizdecided to remove the Audiencia of Charcasfrom the case against
the communities of Chayanta.In October 1780, Vertiz appointed the governor of Mojos, Ignacio Flores, as militarychief of Charcas, ordering him
to report immediately to La Plata. Flores formally became the only judge
with jurisdictionover any matters related to the Chayantaconflict. In addition, Vertiz ordered the audiencia to suspend the death penalty until the
actual situationin the province was clarified.29"In an affairas gravelyimportant as the Chayantarebellion,"the viceroywrote to the prominent Bourbon
reformer, Minister of the Indies Jose de Gailvez,"we must avoid the intervention of that court."30 In disregardof Vertiz'orders and Flores'jurisdiction
over Chayantaaffairs,however, Katariwas ambushed and seized by order of
the audiencia in December 1780. En route to La Plata, he was finally put
to death.
Now regionalpower groups'stance towardboth Indianprotest and Bourbon absolutismdetermined the type of narrativestrategiesthat could render
Indian initiatives politically intelligible. This "prose of counterinsurgency"
consisted in portrayingthe Aymaramovement as an anticolonial rebellion
and locating its roots in the "ominousconsequences"of Vertiz'instructions.3'
The case of Chayantathus appeared as a paradigm of the political turmoil
that would follow if the new viceregal court were allowed to rule on Andean
social conflicts. This symbolic strategy competed with alternative accounts
of the causes, intents, and significance of Indian mobilization. While this
essay will explore later the forms of peasant political consciousness originating from this process, let us concentrate first on the representations of
power that shaped the narrativesof Upper Peruvian officials and Bourbon
functionaries. For it was in this disputed field of political discourse that
AGN, IX, Int., leg. 1i, exp. 8, fol. 68-71v.
30. Vertiz to G6lvez, Jan. 26, 1781, cited in Lewin, Tupac Amaru el rebelde, 440.
29.
31. See Ranajit Guha, "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,"in Select Subaltern Studies,
ed. Guha and GayatriSpivak (New York:Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 45-86. For the "ominous
consequences," see Manriqueto Wrtiz, Nov. 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. 8, exp. 8, fol. 85v-86.
202
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
key concepts like legality and violence, authority and insurgency took on
concrete historicalmeaning.
The corregidor of Chayanta and the judges of the royal audiencia depicted the indigenous movement through three mutually related images.
First, the regional elites described collective actions as illegal forms of
protest. At the end of June 1780, four kurakasfrom Macha submitted their
resignationsto JoaquinAlos because
Not even the powerful arm of royaljustice that your majestyadministers
has been able to contain the sedition and arrogantuprisingof this criminal [Tom'asKatari]who believes himself to be beyond the reach of the
law because of the support he receives from the Indian communities ...
that zealously protect him from royaljustice.32
Alos, for his part, wrote to the audiencia, "The control that Katariexercises
over the Indians leaves them so completely enthralled that they no longer
obey the law and submit even less to their Caciques."33According to regional power groups, peasant violence originated in the misunderstanding
and manipulationof imaginaryroyalorders. The audiencia attorneyJuan de
Pino Manriquestated,
Katarithought nothing less than to carry out [the viceroy's order]. He
reduced everythingto seductions, disturbances,and riots, seeking not to
employ moderate methods, at least methods that would ease the shock
of his exorbitantends, but ratherthe most irregularextremes.34
Despite its seemingly conventional use, the notion of lawbreaking(and
law enforcement) evoked in these paragraphstook on peculiar and distinctive connotations in regional authorities'discourse. Thus, for example, in a
key fragment of the large corpus produced by the Upper Peruvianofficials,
Alos traced the Macha mobilizationto
the example of a similar rebellion that took place in Pocoata during my
predecessor'sadministration.It continued until their leaders, Caipa and
Ancona, managed to get themselves appointed as governors; an office
they still hold because the royal officialsof Potosi and your majesty [the
audiencia] confirmed them in their positions, instead of having them
appropriatelypunished for their crimes.35
Althoughthis passage depicts the Pocoatakurakassimultaneouslyas "rebels"
and appointees of the high colonial courts, this is not taken as a contradictirnn
PnArirN (0ninn
QnrA If.01-chNor
Anonnn
bol
otnfl-iJ1
fbhpQh,cr
thcir
32. AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1., fol. 38v-39.
33. Al6s to Audiencia, June 29, 1780, ibid., fol. 39-40.
34. Audiencia to Vertiz, Nov. 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. 8, exp. 8, fol. 89.
35. Al6s to Audiencia, July 13, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 54-55v.
f4-lpc
ac
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
203
kurakasbecause they had proved the embezzlement of tribute payments
perpetuated by the previous native authorities.6 Likewise, Pino Manrique
presented Katari'sjourney to Potosi in September 1779 to deliver the tributes directlyto the royaltreasurynot as an attempt to prove fiscal fraud but
as "a sign of disobedience to the corregidor,"a display of Katari's"ambition
and seditious nature, whose consequences have been so harmful . . . [as to]
threaten [the peace] of this area, to increase tribute debts, and to offer a bad
example for other provinces."37
The manipulationof legal testimonies and evidence was, of course, an
Aymarajudicial strategies,
entrenched practice in the colonial bureaucracy.38
however, were intended to force regional officials explicitly to assert their
representationof colonial authorityas discretionaryand limitless power. In
this account of the events, illegal action designated not an attackon colonial
institutions but any kind of challenge to the power of local Spanish magistrates. It was the act of defiance itself, regardless of its juridicallegitimacy,
that defined an action as subversive.
The second image of the peasant movement articulated by regional
power groups refers to the goals behind the Indian mobilization.Just as the
initiatives of the Aymaracommunities were attributedto their ignorance of
judicial procedures and their manipulation and misunderstandingof legal
orders, a similar argument was put forwardto explain the objectives of the
social unrest. The corregidor in effect portrayedthe indigenous movement
as a protest against tribute and mita (forced mining labor). At first, Alos
explained that Katarihad spread the news that he had received an order
from the viceroy to reduce tribute rates by half. As violence mounted, the
charge became even more serious: according to Spanish regional authorities, the communities believed that their leader had been empowered to
remove completely the state economic exactions.Althoughthe Aymarapeasants repeatedly showed their willingness to fulfilltheir economic obligations,
Upper Peruvian magistratescontinued to depict the protest as anti-tribute
rebellion.
The pervasiveness of this argument is connected to the central place
that tribute and mita occupied in the colonial imagination. Besides their
36. On the evidence Caipa and Ancona presented, see AGN, XIII, 18-lo-l, libro lo.
37. Manriqueto Wrtiz, Nov. 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. 8, exp. 8, fol. 86v.
38. As Horst Pietschmann has aptly pointed out, the value systems of the different groups
that made up colonial society did not conform to the structureof legal norms that were formally
meant to regulate social relations. Therefore, the attachmentto law on the part of both Spanish
elites and Indians was, by definition, a strategyratherthan a rule. The Bourbon reforms represented the first consistent, albeit unsuccessful, effort to impose a normative conception of law
based on the universal applicationof legal norms. "Estadocolonial y mentalidadsocial: el ejercicio del poder frente a los distintos sistemas de valores. Siglo XVIII,"in America latina: dallo
stato coloniale allo stato nazione, ed. Antonio Annino (Milan:Franco Angeli, 1987), 427-47.
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
204
economic importance for state revenues and silver production, both institutions were prominent symbols of the status of native peoples as vassals
of the crown. By articulatingthis account of the conflict, local elites constructed the political nature of the movement as the rupture of that link
between the indigenous communities and the king and as the reversal, or
the antithesis, of what the Indians explicitly said. From this viewpoint, the
peasants aimed not to curb abuses in government (includingthe divestment
of tribute payments to repartimiento debts) but "to be released from the
entire contributionof tributes and mita service."39
The third image characterizedthe Aymaramovement as an anticolonial
conspiracy, one mounted to oust European civilization from the Andean
world. As the corregidor stated, the fundamental drive of the indigenous
movement was "to live without any subjectionwhatsoever,as is their natural
propensity."40"Thisrabble,"wrote one of the parishpriests from San Marcos
de Miraflores,"has become excessively insolent, and respects neither the
King nor the Church."4' Through this narrative,regionalpower groups conjured a profound stereotype in what ParthaChatterjee has called the rule of
colonial difference, "a modern regime of power destined never to fulfill its
normalizingmission because the premise of its power was the preservation
of the alienness of the ruling group."42The manipulation and misunderstanding of royal decrees and the attempt to eliminate economic dues to
the state came to reactualizethe image of Andean peasants as an essentially
lawless and savage people, a constant social menace requiring a continuous effort of colonization. By depicting the Aymaracommunities in terms
of entrenched colonial stereotypes, regional magistratessought to link the
peasant mobilizationto widespread fears of a general Andean insurrection.
In this respect, the audiencia asserted that the Macha ayllus set alliances
with other communities "to eliminate the yoke of obedience [and] to occupy
these territories, purging them of Spaniards."43The peasants' quest, the
corregidorsummarized,
was to spread to the neighboring provinces the most detestable unrest
that [this realm] has known since the era of the conquest. And demanding exemption from the observationof human and divine laws, they have
stubbornlyrefused to acknowledge the resolutions of royaljustice or to
show obedience to our Monarch.44
39. Al6s to Audiencia, July 29, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 103.
Ibid.
41. Ger6nimo de Cardona to Al6s, Sept. 15, 1780, ibid., fol. 84.
40.
42.
ParthaChatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments:Colonial and PostcolonialHistories
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993), 18.
43. Audiencia to V6rtiz, Sept. 15, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. 11, exp. 8, fol 44.
44. Al6s to Audiencia, Aug. 25, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 141v.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
205
The description of peasant actions as an anticolonial conspiracy thus
posed the fundamental opposition between Andean peoples and judicial
mechanismsof social mediation. In so doing, regional authoritiesvindicated
notions of control and disciplinary power over the ideals of rule of law
and bureaucraticrationalityon which Bourbon enlightened discourse was
predicated.
Viewed through the prose of the viceregal ministers of Buenos Aires,
the conflict in northern Potosi conveyed a completely different structure
of meaning. When he received the copy of the legal proceedings that preceded Katari'sjourney to Buenos Aires, the protectorgeneral de indios, Juan
Gregorio Samudio, explained that those records demonstrated the corregidor'sinitial dismissal of instructionsissued by superior regional courts. For
Samudio, this policy obstructed the Indians' right to recuse abusive authorities, violated the higher jurisdictionof appellate tribunals,and harmed
royal treasuryrevenues by allowing fiscal embezzlement to continue. Consequently,he suggested that Katari,who at that time was imprisoned by the
audiencia, be freed immediately and be appointed to the position to which
he had originallybeen assigned.45
The crown attorney,Jorge Pacheco, for his part, proposed that a letter
be sent to the audienciato determine whether the court actuallydid appoint
a commissioned judge, as the viceroy had ordered the year before. Given
that Katari'stestimony in Buenos Aires "hadnot contained false information
as the corregidor assumes, nor was it "sinisterand deceitful" as the audiencia attorney affirmed, the judge should have named Kataritax collector
and investigatedthe corregidor'sbehavior.Pacheco requested that if indeed
Katarihad been arrested after his return from Buenos Aires, Joaquin Alos
be punished for "thisnew act of violence and transgression[and] suspended
from the exercise of his functions."46
With respect to regional officials' claims that the Macha communities sought a decrease in tributes, the viceroy, alluding to fictitious royal
edicts, said,
It is clear that the corregidor'sreports attributingthe origin of the disturbance to Katari'sdistortion of my orders do not deserve credit because
the corregidordoes not prove it and the documents show otherwise ...
nor is the reason the audiencia alleged for arresting Katari-that he
would seek a reduction of tributes-consistent with Katari'sproceeding
in Potosi to increase them; thus, we should suspect that they try to dis45. Samudio also said that if the Macha communities' accusation against the protector
de natutralesof Chayantawere true, then he would have to be suspended from office. In his
place should be appointed a lawyer independent enough to represent Indian claims before the
corregidor.AGN, IX, Int., leg. 11, exp. 8, fol. 38-40.
46. AGN, IX, Int., leg 11, exp. 8, fol. 58v-67v.
206
I HAHR I MAY
I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
guise their own wrongdoing with the imputation of abuses to such a
defenseless person.47
The measures the viceroy took show that in his judgment, the Aymara
communitieshad basicallyattempted to enforce his resolution.Accordingto
the highest authorityin the land, then, Katarishould be appointed kuraka,
Alos dismissedfrom his post, and the audiencia'sjurisdictionover the conflict
revoked. The cause of mass violence, as attorney Pacheco put it,
was the series of steps taken by the corregidor,commissioned officials,
and others to obstruct the implementation of the viceroy's order; and
the [corregidor's]writings, which convinced the Royal Audiencia of the
abuse that Katarihad made of the decree; [the audiencia] did not protect him, disobeying the orders that Your Excellency [the viceroy] had
issued to that end.... If the superiordecree had been promptlyobeyed,
nothing would have happened.48
According to this account of the conflict, it was not the Andean communities but the Upper Peruvian magistrates who had transgressed and
manipulated law and legal procedures. Certainly,viceregal authorities perceived the menace of Indian mobilization and the space for political contention their intervention had helped to open up. Still, if Vertiz' policies
had brought "ominousconsequences," as the audiencia attorney Manrique
stated, it was not because the Indians had misunderstood his orders, but
because they had been induced to carryout the process of law enforcement
by themselves. The threatening point the conflict had reached, Vertiz concluded, was the result of "the apathy and insensitivityshown toward affairs
so significantthat they should have been remedied and precluded through
the exact administrationofjustice."49
The highly contradictory,politically charged patterns of interpretation
that ensnared Aymaracollective actions allow us to reformulate the underlying analyticaldichotomy in most studies of Indian resistance: the opposition between collective violence and legality, between judicial strategies
and armed insurrections.50 To define peasant mobilizationas illegal or extralegal draws an artificial distinction that belies both the actors' perception
and the rules of political struggle in colonial society. As interpreted by the
viceregal magistrates,the notion of legitimacythat inspired indigenous prac47. Vertiz to Galvez, Oct. 24, 1780, in De Angelis, Colecci6n de obras y documentos, 669.
Emphasis mine.
48. AGN, IX, Int., leg. 11, exp. 8, fol. 62.
49. Vertiz to Galvez, Oct. 1780, in De Angelis, Colecci6n de obras y doctumentos,669.
Emphasis mine.
50. Coatsworthhas categorized Indian rebellions and revolts as "illegalor extralegal collective action";"illegal collective action constitutes an analyticallyfruitful object of separate
study.""Patternsof Rural Rebellion,"23.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
207
tices did not originate from a misinterpretationof alleged royal orders or
from abstractdefinitions of the king'swill. Instead, the political framework
of Aymarainitiativeswas the execution of officialdecrees and the pursuit of
a judicialprocess. Certainly,what generallydistinguishesmass violence from
state coercion is not necessarily the ends pursued, but that the coercion is
exercised in the name of a politicallyconstituted authority.In this sense, one
of the common features of eighteenth-centurypopularrevolts in France and
Englandwas "the frequent borrowing... of the authorities'normal forms of
action; the borrowing often amounted to the crowd'salmost literally taking
the law into its own hands.'
Nevertheless, given the ongoing political clash between Bourbon imperial politics and patrimonialbureaucrats,as well as the wide gap between
formal jurisdiction and actual power of coercion, the imposed distinction
between state and mass violence tends to obscure rather than to illuminate
the politics of domination and resistance in the Andean world. On the one
hand, the customaryset of colonial legal procedures made the private use of
force not an anomaly but a structuralcomponent of the operation of Spanish justice. On the other hand, the political and ideological cleavages within
the imperial government made the legitimate, official use of force an issue
subject to multiple and contradictoryinterpretations.Judicialpolitics was a
politics of violence as much as a politics of rights.
The political struggle between Aymaraayllus and regional and viceregal
bureaucratswas organizednot aroundthe oppositionalforces of popularviolence and law but around the contradictorydefinitions of who was formally
acting as the authorized agent of the juridical system. For all its mobilizing power, whether or not the Chayanta movement constituted an insurrection-an attack against Spanish rule-was not a shared premise of the
conflict; but it was a critical point of contention in the ideological struggle.
These different representations of legitimacy and violence gave rise to an
ethnic movement that, without rejecting Spanish institutions in the name
of revolutionaryprograms,would graduallysubvert the political culture of
colonial administration,and eventually the very notion of racial superiority
on which European hegemony rested.
The Politics of Insurrection
The overriding logic running through Indian legal documents is, at first
glance, paradoxical. By denouncing the misappropriationof tributes, the
51. Charles Tilly, "How (And, to Some Extent, Why) to Study British Contention,"in As
Sociology Meets History (New York:Academic Press, 1981), 161; see also John Brewer and
John Styles, eds., An UngovernablePeople: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenthand
Eighteenth Centuries (New Brunswick:Rutgers Univ. Press, 1980).
208
IHAHR
I MAY I SERGIO
SERULNIKOV
Macha ayllus committed themselves to increasing the amount of money
delivered to the royal treasury.Likewise, the revelation of the double census unmasked one of the traditionalmeans of peasant resistance. It is well
known that the hiding of Indians from the officialpopulation records constituted a longstandingpeasant strategyto diminish state economic demands,
especially tribute and mita. Certainly,we must consider whether judicial
appeals were calculated strategies of acquiescence-tactical devices meant
to meet the expectations of colonial authorities,to whom legal claims were
addressed.52
As we have seen, Upper Peruvian officials stated that regardless of the
Indians' pledges, they refused to meet their fiscal obligations, manipulated
the meaning of legal procedures, and eventually mounted a conspiracy to
bring down colonial government. The historical literature also has treated
the Chayanta rebellion as basically a protest against state levies. Whereas
at first the Indians' goals were restricted to replacing the mestizo kurakas
and curtailing the forced distribution of goods, the movement supposedly
evolved into a protest againsttributes and the Potosi mita.53It is this assault
on the structuralfoundationsof the colonial regime that seemingly accounts
for the notable support the Chayantarebellion enjoyed among Indian communities of the southern Andes. From this perspective, the significance of
peasant judicial politics was to disguise, not to disclose, the real purpose of
collective mobilization.
This essay argues that mass violence and judicial strategieswere inextricably entwined and cannot be understood in isolation. To dissociate them
confuses the logic of peasant politics with the logic of its colonial representation. Indian legal writing was highly consistent with peasant collective
actions in the Andean villages-an arena in which gestures of submission
toward Spanish local authoritieswere steadily vanishing.54It was the articu52.
See James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance:Hidden Transcripts(New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1ggo), 87.
53. O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones, 258-59; Leon Campbell, "Ideology and Factionalism During the Great Rebellion, 1780-1782," in Stem, Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness, 114.
54. Chayantapeasants spoke Aymara;their written documents were transcribedin Spanish by lawyersand clerks. This limits understandingof the Indians'true meaning. Nevertheless,
the Chayanta communities demonstrated a real control over the content of the writings, as
well as a sense that written language represented order and legitimacy,not necessarilycultural
domination. For examples, see TristanPlatt, "The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism,
1825-1900: Roots of Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Chayanta(Potosi),"in Stern, Resistance,
Rebellion, and Consciousness, 316-17; Erick D. Langer, "AndeanRituals of Revolt: The Chayanta Rebellion of 1927," Ethnohistory 37:3 (1990), 227-53. For a theoretical critique of a
rigid ascriptionof writing to the sphere of power and hegemony in illiterate popular cultures,
see Dominick LaCapra, "The 'Cheese and the Worms':The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century
Historian,"in History and Criticism (Ithaca:Cornell Univ. Press, 1985), 51-54.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
209
lation, not the disengagement, of mass violence and juridical strategies that
made Indian mobilizationa radicallysubversive movement.
To understand the material and symbolic rationalitybehind indigenous
judicial claims, we must place the denunciation of fiscal fraud in the context of the internal dynamicsof the indigenous society of Chayanta.Modern
ethnohistoricalstudies of the northern Potosi region have underscored how
the ayllu (extended kin group) has shown an unmatched resilience and
adaptivityin the Andean region. With its ethnic roots in the pre-Hispanic
Charkaand Karakaraconfederation, the Macha peasant society was organized in segments, extending from minor ayllusand moieties to largerethnic
units.5 Throughout the colonial period and well into the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, this segmental organizationwas cemented by complex
webs of reciprocity,communal labor,and ritual.
Like most Andean peoples, northern Potosi peasants practiced a land
tenure system that included the use of noncontiguouspuna and valley lands.
Unlike some Indian communities, however, where the forced resettlement
(reduccion)carried out by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the 1570S tended
to disrupt that model of "verticalarchipelagos"or "double residence," the
Aymaraayllus of Chayantawere allowed to preserve their direct access to
agriculturalproducts from different ecological levels within the boundaries
of the Spanish administrativeunit. Although rooted in traditionalprinciples
of social organization,the Andean ideals of reciprocity and self-sufficiency
could therefore develop in the context of a growing mercantile economy. By
the end of the eighteenth century, Chayanta,along with Cochabamba,had
become the main supplier of grain to the market of Potosi. But while large
landed estates dominated the Cochabambavalleys, Chayanta'sagricultural
production rested heavily on the Indian communities.56
The concrete forms of articulation of highland communities with the
structures of political and mercantile colonialism depended to a great extent on the control of native chieftainships. After the consolidation of the
Toledan model of rationalizedstate exactions, Andean kurakasofficiallyassumed the function of fiscal agents, legally responsible for the collection
of tribute and the dispatch of the entire team of mita workers. Although
they functioned within indigenous society, they were key players in preserving the norms of ethnic subsistence. As recent studies have shown, Andean
55. TristanPlatt, "The Role of the Andean Ayllu in the Reproduction of the Petty Commodity Regime in Northern Potosf (Bolivia)," in Ecology and Exchange in the Andes, ed.
David Lehmann (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), 27-69; Olivia Harris,"Laborand
Produce in an Ethnic Economy: Northern Potosi, Bolivia,"in ibid., 70-79.
56. TristanPlatt, Estado boliviano y ayllu andino. Tierra y tributo en el norte de Potosi
(Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982); Larson, Colonialismand Agrarian Transformation.
210
| HAHR
I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
lords had to guarantee the balanced assignationof lands and herds among
the members of the ayllu, the administrationand trade of peasant agrarian
surplus, and the distributionof the fiscal burden depending on the size and
productive resources of each household.57It was this set of reproductive
strategiesthat illegitimate kurakas,whether hereditaryor appointed by local
Spanishmagistratesduringthe expansionof the repartimientosystem in the
second half of the eighteenth century,placed in jeopardy.
As the Macha communities' legal documents point out, the kurakas
rented to outsiders the plots assigned to domestic units and appropriatedfor
themselves the profitsfrom the collective work of aylluson communal lands,
earningsthat were meant to provide for mitayos and eventuallyto complete
tribute payments. By activelyparticipatingof the corregidores'forced distribution of commodities, the kurakasundermined the integration of peasant
communities into colonial markets,weakening the Indians'position as both
sellers and consumers of commodities.58
Similarly,illegitimate native authorities distorted the relationship between the Aymaracommunities and the colonial state. On the one hand,
the kurakasviolated the norms of reciprocity that regulated the operation
of the tribute system in peasant society. These norms, developed outside
of and in contradiction to state regulations, set stiictly Andean criteria for
determining who fell into what tribute category and how much each household should pay.59Local authorities,on the other hand, closely guarded the
information concerning the exact amount of money that the communities
owed the state, and they transferred debts from tributes to repartimiento
payments. In so doing, they not only personallyprofited from peasant taxes
but also overlapped and confused two materiallyand symbolicallycompetitive modes of economic exploitation.Whereas the ayllusconsistentlyproved
their willingness to deliver tributes and mita, they denounced the abuses
57. See Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, "El mallku y la sociedad colonial en el siglo XVII: el
caso de Jesus de Machaca,"Avances 1 (1978), 7-27; Roberto Choque, "Pedro Chipana: cacique comerciante de Calamarca,"ibid., 28-32; Brooke Larson, "Caciques, Class Structure,
and the Colonial State," Nova Americana 2 (1979), 197-235; Rosana BarraganRomano, "En
tomo al modelo comunal mercantil:el caso de Mizque (Cochabamba)en el siglo XVII,"Revista
Chungara 15 (1985); MariaCecilia Cangiano,"Curas,caciques, y comunidades en el Alto Peru:
Chayantaa fines del siglo XVIII"(Unpublished paper, Jujuy,1987).
58. The communities focused on two aspects of the repartimiento:the sale of goods at
much higher prices than current values and the collection of debts by auctioning crops, which
prevented the communities from selling their agriculturalsurplus at marketprices. Testimony
of several Macha Indians to Audiencia, June 10, 1780, AGN, IX, Trib., leg. 181, exp. 29, fol.
74-76.
59. For details, see Caciques from Chayanta, Panacachi, and Aymayato Al6s, Sept. 10,
1770, AGN, XIII, 18-10-2, libro 2, Trib.,leg. 181, exp. 29; see also Platt, Estado boliviano y ayllu
andino, 53-55; Daniel Santamarfa,"Lapropiedad de la tierra y la condici6n social del indio en
el Alto Peru, 1573-1810,"Desarrollo Econ6mico 66 (1977), 253-71.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
211
emanating from the repartimiento and eventually asked for its complete
elimination.60
The associationbetween corregidoresand kurakasthus transformedthe
mechanism of double empadronamientofrom a strategy of collective resistance into a symbol of the disruptionof the peasant moral economy.6'While
the strong emphasis on the misappropriationof tributes in Indian legal writing doubtless had a related effect as a legal means of expelling illegitimate
kurakas,the assertiontook on meaningsfarbeyond its instrumentalfunction.
It came to synthesize and fuse the images of the violation of the two sources
on which the kurakas'legitimacy rested. By appropriatingayllu services to
the state, the kurakasundermined their role as fiscal agents of the crown;by
disruptingthe networks of reciprocityand redistributionin peasant society,
they relinquishedtheir function as native lords.62The workingsof the tribute
system thus became the battlefield for a struggle over the dominant modes
of exploitationin the Andean world-a struggle in which peasant communities sought to regain control over their economic and social resources, their
integration into the southern Andean markets, and their relationship with
the colonial fiscal system.
On a more general level, Aymaracollective mobilizationreflected a larger
political contest to define the meaning of colonial rule. As Macha communities would a century later, when they rose up against the liberal reforms
applied by the creole republican elites, the Aymaracommunities attempted
to revitalize an ideal pattern of state-ayllu relations that Tristan Platt has
called a "pact of reciprocity."63In exchange for bringing to light the misappropriationof tributes- for confirmingtheir allegiance to the crown- the
6o. For a more extensive analysis of peasant grievances, see Sergio Serulnikov,"Reivindicaciones indigenas y legalidad colonial. La rebeli6n de Chayanta(1777-1781)," Documentos
CEDES 20, 1989.
61. On the applicabilityof the concept of moral economy to Andean communities during
the colonial period, see Brooke Larson, "Exploitationand Moral Economy in the Southern
Andes: A Critical Reconsideration"(Columbia-NYU,OccasionalPapers 8, 1989); Ward Stavig,
"Ethnic Conflict, Moral Economy, and Population in Rural Cuzco on the Eve of the Thupa
Amaro II Rebellion,"HAHR 68:4 (Nov. 1988), 737-70.
62. On Andean kurakas'double legitimacy as state fiscal agents and native lords, see
Rivera Cusicanqui, "El mallku";Thierry Saignes, "Ayllus,mercados, y coacci6n colonial: el
reto de las migraciones internas en Charcas, siglo XVII,"in La participaci6n indigena en los
mercados sturandinos.Estrategias y reproducci6n social. Siglos XVI a XX, ed. Olivia Harris,
Brooke Larson, and Enrique Tandeter (La Paz: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Econ6mica
y Social, 1987), 111-58; Saignes, "De la borracheraal retrato. Los caciques andinos entre dos
legitimidades (Charcas),"RevistaAndina 5:1 (1987), 139-70; Karen Spalding,"Defendiendo lo
suyo. El kurakaen el sistema de producci6n andina,"in Reproducci6ny transforrnaci6nde las
sociedades andinas. Siglos XVI-XX, ed. Segundo Moreno Yafiez and Frank Salomon (Quito:
Ediciones ABYA-YALA,1991), 401-14.
63. Platt, Estado boliviano y ayllu andino, 40-41.
212
| HAHR
I MAY I SERGIO
SERULNIKOV
ayllus expected colonial authorities to recognize and enforce their rights to
political and social autonomy.64
This political outlook certainly was not structurallyincompatible with
the juridical formulationof colonial government as it had been established
since the late sixteenth century.The "pactof reciprocity"might indeed have
constituted the symbolic transformationof coercive power relationshipsinto
the language of asymmetrical exchange.65Yet it would be misleading to
conceptualize interethnic reciprocity as the ideological mystificationof the
realities of colonial exploitation.State economic dues, as well as Spanishjustice, represented both modes of materialand symbolicviolence and sources
of political rights. The day-to-day experience of colonial hegemony-after
the traumatic events of Spanish conquest gave way to an integrated, longterm common history-rested not on the dominance of alien institutions
itself but on the power of defining the social meaning of such institutions,
the specific links that should bind Spaniards and Andean peoples to the
colonial order.66The analysis of peasant actions seems to reveal precisely
how political subversiveness could emerge in a process through which the
Andean communities successfully used both law and force to make colonial
authoritiesaccountable and to enforce their corporativeprerogatives.
The three months that passed between the audiencia'simprisonment of
Katari and the battle of Pocoata witnessed, as a corregidor'sassistant put
it, "the largest disturbanceexperienced in the governing of this province in
64. On the role of juridical rituals, the tribute system, and colonial land titles in the
legitimation of Indian uprisingsin nineteenth- and twentieth-centuryBolivia, see Silvia Rivera
Cusicanqui, "Oprimidospero no vencidos," luchas del campesinado aymara y qhechwa de
Bolivia, 1900-1980 (La Paz: HISBOL, 1984), 42-52; Zuelma Lehn, "La lucha comunaria en
torno a la contribuci6n territorialy a la prestaci6n de servicios gratuitos durante el perfodo
republicano (1920-1925)"
(La Paz: Taller de Historia Oral Andina, 1987); Langer, "Andean
Rituals of Revolt."
65. Tristan Platt, "Entre 'ch'axwa'y 'muxsa.'Para una historia del pensamiento politico
aymara,"in Tres reflexionessobre el pensamiento andino, by Therese Bouysee-Cassagneet al.
(La Paz: HISBOL, 1987), 99. On the merging of Andean political thought and Spanishjuridical tradition, see Frank Salomon, "AncestorCults and Resistance to the State in Arequipa,
ca. 1748-1754," in Stern, Resistance,Rebellion,and Consciousness,148-65.
66. The idea that an insurrectionalprocess could emerge from the appropriation,and not
simply the denial, of symbols and values belonging to the system of domination rests on the
assumption that the meaning of institutions and social practices is fundamentallyunfixed. See
Ernesto Laclau, "Metaphor and Social Antagonisms,"in Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg(Urbana:UAiv.of Illinois Press, 1988), 254.
Homi Bhabha has categorized processes of anticolonial resistance not based on "the simple
negation or exclusion of the 'content' of another culture [but as] the effect of an ambivalence
produced in the rules of recognition of dominating discourses." "Signs Taken for WVonders:
Questions of Ambivalence and AuthorityUnder a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817," Critical Inquirny12 (1985), 153. See also Jean Comaroffand John Comaroff,Of Revelationand Revolution:
Christianity,Colonialism,and Consciousnessin SouthAfrica, vol. 1 (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1991); Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley:Univ. of California
Press, 1984), xiii.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
213
many years."67The popular violence, however, was anything but random.
Although unable to bring about the appointment of a commissioned judge,
the Andeancommunities made full use of the means of coercion at their disposal to enforce the decrees gained in Potosi, Charcas,and Buenos Aires.68
As peasant actions and statements show, Aymaracommunities assumed the
right to expel their kurakasand to oversee the corregidor'sauthority.During this period, the mestizo kurakasand their allies in rural society were so
completely overwhelmed by the Indian mobilization that their position as
brokers between the colonial state and the communities collapsed. In accordancewith the superior courts' decisions, the Macha ayllus did not allow
the kurakasto continue collecting tributes, selecting the mita contingent,
or raisingmoney for debts from the repartimiento.Thus, for example, after
chasing him for two days, they warned the mestizo kurakaof the Anansaya
moiety, Norberto Osinaga, to stop collecting tributes. The Macha communities told him that "amongthem each one would go to the royal treasuryto
deliver the tributes."69 In June 1780, approximately40 Indians attacked one
jilacata (tribute collector) of Macha, "warninghim to suspend the collection
of money from the repartimientountil Dr. Ormaechea arrivesto inform the
corregidor of the instructions concerning this matter issued by the Royal
Audiencia."70 Juan Ormaecheawas one of the three lawyersthe viceroy had
recommended to act as the commissioned judge in the trial of the mestizo
kurakas.
The corregidor'smain assistant, Lieutenant Luis Nuiiez, stated that in
the communities, word had gone out "not to pay the tributes and repartimientos to Spaniardsor mestizos until further notice."'71A mestizo testified
that in early June in Chimbona he had met "a large number of Indians."
When he asked the purpose of the gathering, two Indians replied that the
communityhad designated them capita'nenteradorand kuraka,respectively,
of the Ayllu Majapicha,"andall the people had come together to elect the
mitayos, which was what they had just done."72
Indians from Urinsaya dragged their kuraka, Francisco Flores, out of
his house, beat him, and tied him to a mule. Wrapped in a blanket, he was
brought to a hacienda, where some in the crowd persuaded the others to
67. Teniente Luis Nuniez to Al6s, July 1o, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. io, exp. 1, fol. 40.
68. For more detail on Katari'sefforts in this regard, see AGN, IX, Int., leg. 5, exp. 2,
fol. 6-7; and Katari,petition to Audiencia, May 1779, cited in Lewin, TupacAmaru el rebelde,
456-57.
69. Testimonyof Phelipe Velazco before Al6s, July i6, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. in, exp. 1,
fol. 68v-70.
70. Testimonyof Miguel de Vargas(one of thejilacatas from Macha)before Al6s, July 17,
1780, ibid., fol. 42-42V.
71. Nuniez to Al6s, July io, 1780, ibid., fol. 40v.
72. Testimony of Antonio Ribota before Al6s, July 15, 1780, ibid., fol. 6iv.
214
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
"treatme with mercy [because] I was like them, an Indian."After demanding that Flores hand over the money he was carryingwith him, the kuraka
was told "not to dare collect tribute and repartimientos, and no longer to
consider myself cacique."73 The alcalde mnayorof San Marcos de Miraflores reported that more than one hundred Indians, men and women, forced
him out of the parish house where he was hiding. The Indians took away
his baston, "saying I was the greatest thief . . . and that had I been the
Lieutenant [Luis Nuinez], I would have been stoned to death by the entire
community,men as well as women.
Collective violence aimed not only to remove the kurakasfrom office but
also to compel them to retract their previous statements against the Macha
communities and Katari.It is importantto note that the rebels had regular
access to the correspondence between the audiencia, the corregidor, and
the kurakasas a result of their strict control over the circulationof mail and
people in the province.75The ayllus thus knew that the kurakas'denunciations of Katari-accusing him of pretending to possess viceregal orders to
reduce tribute quotas-had contributedto his indictment by the authorities.
The Aymaracommunities attempted to reverse this legal process.
In the weeks preceding the battle of Pocoata, collective actions showed
a consistent pattern. After harassing mestizo kurakasand forcing them to
resign, the Andean peasants accused them of complicity in Katari'sarrest.
Then they either pressured the kurakasto persuade the corregidor to release Katari,or threatened to bring them to La Plata to have them declare
Katari'sinnocence before the Royal Audiencia. Thus, 70 Indians attacked
Francisco Flores and Pablo Chaves, kurakaand segunda of the AylluCollana
of Urinsaya,during the night and forced them to write a letter requesting
73. Testimonyof Francisco Flores before Al6s, July i6, 1780, ibid., fol. 115-17.
74. Testimonyof Dionicio Chura before Al6s, July 21, 1780, ibid., fol. 84v-85v.
75. One of the mestizo caciques declared that he could not send letters to the corregidor
"because all the roads are blocked, and there is no way to dispatch a letter without it being
intercepted by the Indians who register all the people going to see the corregidor."Roque
Sanchez Morato to Al6s, Aug. i8, 1780, ibid., fol. 8o-8i. Blas Bernal'sbrother-in-law,Antonio
Ribota, saw two Indians handling a paper. This turned out to be an order issued by Al6s for
the mestizo caciques to present themselves to give testimony against the Macha communities.
Ribota to Al6s, July 15, 1780, ibid., fol. 64v. A priest stated that all the mail received had been
opened and that "the Indians who have risen against our corregidor keep gathering at the
crossroadsto check all the correspondence to see if it contains informationabout their disturbances." Cardona to Al6s, July 7, 1780, ibid., fol. 79-79v. One alcalde from Macha said that
nobody wrote messages to Al6s because they were afraid of being discovered by the Indians.
Chris6stomo G6mez to Al6s, Aug. 14, 1780, ibid., fol. 117. A mestizo stated that as he was
returning from Potosi to Macha, he found the Indians distributed in groups controlling the
access roads to the province. Everyone arrivingin Chayantawas asked "who he was, where he
was from, which papers he carried, what he went to Chayantafor, and to which town he was
heading."Then the Indians checked the traveler'sclothes and baggage. Tomas Encina to Al6s,
Aug. 17, 1780, ibid., fol. 119-20.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
215
Katari'sliberation. Flores and Chaves were also obliged to hand over the
money necessary for sending this letter to Alosi'6
In mid-July,about two hundred IndiansassaultedkurakaRoque Sainchez
Morato as he was trying to deliver the mita contingent to Potosi. Although
Morato somehow managed to escape and put himself under the protection
of a non-Indian neighbor, the communities, "who in anticipation had set
spies in place," broke in and threatened to burn the house to the ground
if Morato did not surrender. According to the kuraka, the conditions the
Indians imposed for not taking him prisoner were that "I was no longer
Governor and had no rights as kurakawhatsoever, [and that] if I did not
obtain Katari'srelease in eight days, my protector would hand me over to
the Indians so that they might do with me as they wished."77A neighboring
mestizo from Macha heard the Indians proclaim "that they recognized no
Corregidor,but only the Royal Audiencia, which ordered them to bring all
the caciques and Alcaldes Mayores to the city of La Plata."78
In the months preceding the Pocoata battle, Corregidor Alos, too, encountered harassment.At the end of July,duringhis annualjourney through
the Chayantavalleys, he and his soldierswere surroundedby a large crowd of
Machapeasants. Though no violence occurred,Alos was intimidatedenough
to appoint two new indigenous kurakas,and finallyto submit to the audiencia the decrees Katarihad secured in Potosi and La Plata. Alos also had to
promise to reduce the repartimientosand to obtain Katari'srelease. According to a witness, the Indians warned that if he did not fulfill his promises,
"the revolts they had initiated would not cease, and they did not care if they
died in the endeavor."79
Matching the steady escalation of collective violence during this period
was a parallel increase in juridical appeals to higher colonial courts. In the
course of two months, the Aymara peasants journeyed back three times
to La Plata and presented six claims to the audiencia and the viceroy of
Buenos Aires. Although regional Spanishauthoritiesdid their best to confine
the conflict within the province, the peasants' efforts successfully brought
the dispute to officials'attention in several judicial settings simultaneously,
thereby bridgingthe physical and political gaps that under colonial administration isolated the realm of law production from the realm of law enforcement. The Aymaraayllus conveyed the viceroy'sorders to the audiencia, the
Charcas court's decisions to the corregidor,the corregidor'sactions to the
76. Testimonyof Pablo Chaves before Al6s, July 27, 1780, ibid., fol. ioi-ioiv.
77. Testimonyof Sanchez Moratobefore Al6s, July 17, 1780, ibid., fol. 8o-8ov.
78. Testimonyof Chris6stomo G6mez before Al6s, Aug. 14, 1780, ibid., fol. 117-18.
79. Testimonyof Nicolas Sanabriabefore Al6s, July24, 1780, ibid., fol. 92. See also "Diario
de Juan Gelli," in Colecci6n de mernoriasy documentos para la historia y geograffa de los
pueblos del Rio de la Plata, ed. Andres Lamas (Montevideo: n.p., 1849), 1:363.
I HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
216
audiencia,and the audiencia'smeasures to the viceroy. By enforcingjuridical
resolutions,the communities seized from local authoritiesthe legitimate use
of force. The circulation of information their activities generated, in turn,
transformedthe Spanishjustice system from a potential means of redressing
grievancesinto the very target of the political struggle. The Aymaracommunities no longer restricted themselves to reporting abuses by the corregidor
and kurakas;they began to dispute the legitimacy of the corregidores in
general, as well as the legality of the audiencia'spolicies and the viceroy's
abilityto exercise power.
The Indians declared that Tom-asKatarihad been arrested by the audiencia, and
had been treated as a criminal without our knowing why he had not
been permitted to take office, as we expected.... [For] there is no other
person who would be more scrupulous and vigilant in the collection of
tributes, and would give us the good treatment so recommended in the
laws so that we do not experience even the slightest harm or abuse.80
In one of the presentations before the audiencia, Katari declared that
he had been informed that the court "hasordered JoaquinAlos to conduct
my trial and to find evidence of the charges against me. In this particular,"
Kataricontinued,
I must say to your Highness that the said corregidorhas been and is my
mortal enemy, and as such has tyrannicallypersecuted me throughout
that province.... As I could not bear his violent methods anymore, I
came to this court in order to continue my claims;it is also apparentthat
if I were the type of criminal [I am alleged to be], I would have never
come to seek the justice that the well-known mercy of your Highness
administers.81
Well known as the audiencia'smercy might have been, it was again challenged in a petition Katari and several Indians sent to the viceroy. The
Aymaraleader, the letter stated, had spent more than two months in jail,
having committed "no other crime or fault than to have gone to that Higher
Court [of Buenos Aires] to testify on behalf of the interests of the Royal
Hacienda and the miserable Indians."The Macha Indians petitioned Viceroy Vertiz to appoint a new protector de naturales in Chayanta"becausethe
corregidor has named his secretary,Juan Antonio Castafiares,[who] is the
corregidor'sassociate and domestic, and is not instructed in our languages,
[something that] is indispensableif his functions are to remain independent
8o. Document presented by 48 Indiansfrom Machato Audiencia,June 27, 1780, AGN, IX,
Trib.,leg. i8i, exp. 29, fol. 8iv.
8i. Katarito Audiencia, July 6, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. in, exp. 1, fol. 53-54.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
217
from those of the Corregidor."Finally,the Indians not only recused Joaquin
Alos but also pleaded for the viceroy "to protect us with a decree that would
serve as example for other corregidores, and [another decree] against Blas
Bernal for being a criminal and thief of royal tributes.""On both matters,"
the Indians concluded, "YourMajestyhas indisputablejurisdiction."82
The armed battles for the enforcement of the law, then, corresponded
to an ideological struggle over the meaning of the legal structures (rights,
jurisdictions, and judicial procedures) that framed the conflict. As Pierre
Bourdieu has pointed out, the practicalcontent, the real significance of the
law, is not enclosed in the juridical canon itself. It emerges out of disputes
over its interpretation.The appropriationof the "symbolicpower"contained
in legal texts "is the prize to be won in interpretive struggles."83 If the symbolic power of the law lies in its capacity to designate certain actions as
juridicalacts and others as arbitraryviolence, then the peasants'legal politics
broke the "chain of legitimation" that bound the exercise of political authorityto the juridicalcanon. In the process, the Aymarapeasants were able
to turn official narrativesof the conflict upside down: Indian collective violence now appeared as juridical acts, and the actions of political authorities
as forms of arbitraryviolence.
Aymarapolitics transformed a conflict that had originated from a restricted set of grievances into a general struggle over the role of different
institutions and social groups in colonial society. In peasant discourse, the
corregidorand kurakashad no legitimate claim to rule whatsoever;the audiencia colluded with the corregidor in defrauding the royal treasury and
disavowingjuridical structures of authority;and the viceroy had to exercise
his jurisdiction forcefully if the crown'sinterests and the native communities' legal prerogativeswere to be served, "since all the province-as Katari
claimed-lacks the RoyalProtectionthat by Right and Justice we deserve."84
Aymarastrategies thus led to a profound disruption of the political culture of the colonial regime. "If politics is defined as the process by which
competing claims and policies are transformedinto authoritativedefinitions
of the general good," Keith Baker has argued about the political culture of
ancien regime France, "then absolutist politics occurs, in ideal terms, only
in the mind and person of the king."85If we substitute for the image of the
82. Katariand 15 Macha Indians to Wrtiz, July 15, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. ii, exp. 8, fol.
34-37.
83. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field,"
Hastings Law Journal 38 (1987), 818-24.
84. Katarito Wrtiz, Aug. 15, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. ii, exp. 8, fol. 37-38.
85. Keith Baker, "Politicsand Public Opinion Under the Old Regime," in Press and Politics in Pre-revolutionaryFrance, ed. Jack R. Censer and Jeremy D. Popkin (Berkeley:Univ. of
CaliforniaPress, 1987), 209.
218
I HAHR
I MAY I SERGIO
SERULNIKOV
king that of the crown'srepresentativesin America, this statement could be
applied to the absolutist colonial state.86And just as in eighteenth-century
France the juridical protests against seignorial rights nurtured a process of
"politicizationof the village," the direct effect of the Aymaramobilization
was to place into a public arena, to make visible, the relationship between
formal and informal mechanisms of power imposed on Andean ayllus.87
Neither the "parishpump,"the peasant microcosm, nor "(conceptually)
the human race," or the universe-the usual frameworkof peasant revolts
and millennial movements, respectively-constituted the unit of Aymara
collective action; that unit was the space in between, the domain of colonial allocation of political and economic resources.88The "theology of the
administration,"which by definition had to be contained in the realm of
the Spanishbureaucracy,began to be subjected to scrutinyand challenge in
what James C. Scott has called the "publictranscriptof power relations."89
In seizing that critical power, the Indians ceased to function as passive recipients of colonial justice, as "legal minors."They transformedthemselves
into autonomous political actors, capable not only of asserting their rights
but also of defining the means by which the delegates of the crown should
exercise their authority.
Ambivalent Rituals of Justice
The long process of contestation initiated by the Aymaraayllus in 1777 culminated in a bloody upheaval on August 26, 1780, in the village of Pocoata.
During the customaryannual meeting, at which the Chayantacommunities
delivered tributes and presented the mita team to the corregidor,the Indians attacked the Spanish militia, killing several soldiers and forcing the rest
to take shelter in the village church. The corregidor himself was captured,
taken hostage, and then exchanged for the imprisoned Tom'asKatari.This
revolt has been compared with the opening move of the Tupamaristarebellion. According to Leon Campbell, the capture of JoaquinAlos in Chayanta
and Antonio de Arriaga in Tinta present some common characteristics.90
86. For an analysisof the eighteenth-centurycolonial administrationin terms of an absolutist state, see John H. Coatsworth,"The Limits of Colonial Absolutism:The State in EighteenthCentury Mexico," in Essays in the Political, Economic, and Social History of Colonial Latin
America, ed. Karen Spalding (Newark: Univ. of Delaware, Latin American Studies Program,
1982),
25-41; Lynch, "InstitutionalFramework."
87. Roger Chartier,The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham: Duke Univ.
Press, 1991), 144; see also Hilton Root, Peasants and King in Burgundy:Agrarian Foundations
of French Absolutism (Berkeley: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1987), 155-204.
88. Eric Hobsbawm, "PeasantPolitics,"Journal of Peasant Studies 1 (1973), 8.
89. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, i-i6.
go. Leon G. Campbell, "Recent Research on Andean Peasant Revolts, 1750-1820," Latin
American Research Review 14:1 (1979), 9.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
219
Jan Szeminskihas maintained that both leaders alluded to royal decrees to
legitimatean outrightassaulton colonial institutions.TutpacAmarucertainly
evoked fictitiousroyalorders to try and then publicly execute the corregidor
Antonio de Arriagain Tinta'scentral square in November 1780. Whatever
its ideologicaljustification,this action markedthe beginning of an insurrection in which TuipacAmaru proclaimed himself the new Inca-king.9'Did
the Aymararebels follow a similarpolitical pattern? For the purpose of this
essay, two specific events immediately before and after the Pocoata revolt
are crucial:the dispatch of the mita and the culminatingencounter between
Katariand the corregidor.
As part of his general prediction that the Indians would seek "to cast
off the yoke of royal subjection"and to be released from their duties to the
state, the corregidorexpected Indian violence to erupt by the day the mita
was scheduled to be delivered. On Saturday,August 25, some 200 soldiers
took up strategic positions while Alos, escorted by 12 armed men, went to
perform the traditionalceremony of reviewing the mita team. About 2,000
Indians were gathered on the outskirtsof Pocoata when the corregidorand
his smallpartyarrived.Yet the review of the mita did not provoke a single act
of defiance. In the context of a well-prepared confrontation,the uneventful
dispatch of the mining quota to Potosi was not a matter of chance; it was a
calculatedperformance, carryinga definite political message.
By deferringthe battle for a few hours, the Aymaracommunities seemed
to be provingthat it was not their compliance with state economic obligations
that was at stake in the conflict.92An incident that occurred during the ceremony reinforcedthis message. When, for unclear reasons,Alos attempted to
seize a mine laborer,the peasants immediately came to the worker'srescue
and wrested him away from his captor.Amid threats and mockery,the communities warned the corregidor that the Indian "wascedula [mitayo] and
so could not be arrested."93Centuries of Spanish government should have
taught the Andean peasants that corregidoreshad no jurisdictionover mitayos. Yet in the context of an intense political struggle over the position of
Indian peoples and Spanish authorities regardingcolonial polity, those gestures and utterances were making a broader ideological point. The mining
mita, far from being a target of mass violence, emerged as a crucial sym91. Szeminski,"WhyKill the Spaniards?"171-74; Flores Galindo,Buscandoa un Inca, 117.
92.
Katari stated later, "It is true that many Spaniardsand Indians died in Pocoata, but
this is not reason to say that the Indians rose up, because before the confrontationthe mita was
dispatched and the corregidorwas told that the Indians were ready to pay the tributes in the
village of Macha as is customary.""Representaci6nhecha al rey por D. Tomas Catari,"in De
Angelis, Colecci6n de obras y documentos,658.
93. Colecci6n documental de la independencia del Paru (Lima: Comisi6n Nacional del
Sesquicentenariode la Independencia del Peru, 1971), tomo 2, Vol. 2, p. 238.
220
HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
bol of the privileged relationship linking the Andean ayllus and the king.94
From this perspective, the mita was an institution that empowered Andean
communities to challenge and to ignore local political authority.In the Indians' eyes, what rendered the corregidor'spower illegitimate was not that
he embodied colonial rule, as Alos had repeatedly argued, but that he no
longer did.95
The encounter between Toma'sKatari and Joaquin Alos that followed
the Aymaraleader's release represented a critical moment in the history of
Andean resistance to colonial authority. Like the public execution of the
corregidor of Tinta two months later, it enacted a remarkableritual of justice. Yet Katari'sassumption of the position of kuraka and Alos' dismissal
as corregidor illustrate the striking contrasts in ideology and strategy that
distinguishedthe Aymarafrom the Cuzco movement. To highlight its social
meaning, this juridical ceremony should be seen against the backgroundof
Katari'sarrest in Macha almost two years earlier. In June 1778, as Katari
was delivering the decrees he had obtained in Potosi and Charcas,Alos arrested him, had him publicly whipped by the mestizo kuraka,Blas Bernal,
and then confiscated the documents-depriving Katariof written evidence
in his eventual appeal before the viceroy. Katarilater recalled that as he was
being punished,
the corregidor stated before the presence of all the Indians that he was
their absolute Corregidorand Visitador,and that there were no Audiencia or Royal Officials,and if they complained again [before these courts],
he would hang them from the stirrupsof his horse.96
At the beginning of September 1780, as soon as Katarireached the village of Macha, he had the decree appointinghim kurakaread out loud. He
asked the hundreds of peasants gathered to celebrate his release to obey the
decisions of the audiencia. Then he went to the house where the corregidor was being held and, according to Alos' own account, "accompaniedby
innumerable Indians from all parcialidades and even from other provinces,
94. For an analysisof this Indian perception of the mining mita, see Enrique Tandeter,Coercion and Market:Silver Mining in Potosi, 1692-1826, trans. RichardWarren (Albuquerque:
Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1993), 17-21.
95. The rebels' position toward the mita was consistent with their position toward the
tribute. See AGN, XI, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 138v-39v. Despite growing tensions between the
Indians and the audiencia following Katari'srelease, the Machaayllusfulfilled their promises to
increase the tributes. On Sept. 28, 1780, Katarisent the tributes from Macha to the audiencia
through the village priest. The total figure was 2,595 pesos: 1,358 belonging to the Anansaya
moiety and 1,237 to the Urinsayamoiety. AGN, XIII, 18-lo-l. Accordingto the officialrecords,
the corregidor should collect 2,256 pesos from the Macha communities. AGN, XIII, leg. 84,
libro lo, fol. go. Kataritherefore had delivered 339 pesos more than the officialfigure.
96. Audiencia's interrogation of Katari, Aug. 29, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1,
fol. 132.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
221
Katariand the others made the ceremony of asking for my pardon."97That
for the communities pardon meant a formal recognition of gains, not forgiveness of guilt, became immediately clear.After prostratinghimself "atthe
feet of the corregidorwith the most profound submission I must have for
Royal Justice,"the Aymaraleader ordered that a decree commanding Alos
to appearbefore the audiencia also be read out loud.98
Before Katari had left La Plata, the court had assured him that the
corregidor and his lieutenant "would never return to the province and a
[new] Justicia Mayor who looks on the Indians with love and charitywould
be appointed."99In vivid contrast to his own previous threats, JoaquinAl's
was asked to voice his compliancewith the royaldecree. Once the corregidor
had publicly accepted his legal removal before the large crowd of peasants, Katari requested that the edict be returned to him to keep "for his
protection."
Spanish domination was reproduced, writes Thomas Abercrombie, "in
many forms of public theater and rituals through which the Andean people
had to publicly express their submission to colonial rule (and in this manner
civilize themselves)."'0l0Doubtless the administrationof the king'sjustice
in the Indian towns stands out as one of the fundamental forms of public
theater. Paradoxically,however, political insurgency in northern Potosi was
expressed through the mimicry, rather than the dismissal, of such rituals.
But mimicrywas neither a disguise for anticolonialconspiracynor a display
of ideological submission. As shown by the events in Pocoata, the encounter
between Katari and the corregidor was simultaneously a formal administration of justice and an act of political subversion. On the one hand, it
featured a carefullyarrangedsequence of judicialprocedures throughwhich
authentic royal decrees were enforced. On the other hand, its extraordinary
performing context divested this legal ceremony of its prescribed meaning
as a ritual of colonial authority,recasting it as a mimic act, something that is
both the same as and different from what it duplicates.'0'
On the public stage of colonial politics, the Andean ayllus met their obligationsto the state and resDectedthe iurisdictionof the SDanishcourts. The
97. Al6s to Audiencia, in Lamas, Colecci6n de memnorias
y documentos, 1:369.
98. Katarito Audiencia, Sept. 3, 1780, AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 184v.
99. "Instrucci6nde lo acaecido con D. JoaqufnAl6s en la provinciade Chayanta,de donde
es corregidor,y motivos del tumulto de ella,"n.d. [late 1780], in De Angelis, Coleccionde obras
y documentos, 671.
loo. Thomas Abercrombie, "Articulaci6ndoble y etnog6nesis," in Moreno Yafiez and
Salomon, Reproducci6ny transformaci6n,202-3. See also Frank Salomon, "A 'PersonalVisit':
Colonial Political Ritual and the Making of Indians in the Andes," Colonial Latin American
Review 3:1-2 (1994), 1-34.
101. On the concept of mimicry,see Robert Young, White Mythologies:Writing History
and the West (London: Routledge, 1990), 147-48; Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The
Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse," October 28 (1984), 125-33.
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
222
dramathey performed, however, no longer represented the ayllus' submission to European rulersbut something that went againstthe very ideological
core of colonial domination: the fulfillment of Aymaraideas of legitimacy
and the superior coercive power of indigenous peoples.
The founding premise of colonialism, the notion of European cultural
and militarysuperiority,was thus opened to contestation. The acute political
radicalizationthat emerged in the aftermathof the mass violence was vividly
exemplified in a letter the corregidor was forced to send to the audiencia
before leaving the province. The communities reiterated their commitment
to fulfill all their economic obligations and asked the audiencia to support
Katari;to appoint a new, impartialcorregidor;and to recognize a reduction
of the repartimientos,which they had forced Alos to grant. While these demands were essentially similar to previous ones, their political framework
was not. As Alos explained,
I have tried to erase their impression that Your Highness may wish to
send a great number of soldiers, in which case, these miserable Indians
say that all the Kingdom will tremble [because] their number is overwhelmingly larger than that of the Spaniards;and everything could be
avoided by not disturbingthem.'02
As with all legal writing, the Indians were speaking through a language
not their own. But also as with such writing, their rhetoric was not empty.
When, in January1781, after a complex process whose study exceeds the
aims of this article, the Aymaraleader was captured and killed, the threatening message the Andean communities had sent came true. A few weeks later,
thousands of peasants from several southern Andean provinces covered the
hillsides of La Plata, threatening to kill the entire Spanishpopulation.
Authority and Subversion
The analysis presented in this essay aims to demonstrate that the mobilization of northern Potosi communities was a truly subversive movement
long before news of TutpacAmaru'suprising started to reach the region at
the end of 1780. The key interpretive problem lies in how to define political subversion in this historical context. Certainly,Aymarapeasants did not
seem to pursue what we would call economic and political structuraltransformations, the kind of goals that historians have identified behind every
large-scale insurrection in colonial times. Toma'sKatari'smovement was
not directed against the two fundamental means of exploitationover native
102.
AGN, IX, Int., leg. lo, exp. 1, fol. 151v-52V.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
223
peoples, tribute and mita, and it certainly was not intended to expel the
Spanishpopulation and institutions.
As interpretedby most historicalaccounts, the insurrectionof Cuzco led
by TuipacAmaru, by contrast, aimed to reestablish pre-Hispanic polities.
TuipacAmaruwas seen as a messiah, and the social transformationhe championed as part of a broader cosmological cataclysm. This is not to say that
the insurrectionwas isolated from colonial society, or its ideology untouched
by European conceptions. The participationof non-Indiansat the beginning
of the uprisingis well documented; most of the rebels apparentlyperceived
themselves as good Christiansas well as loyal vassals of the Spanishmonarchy.'03These elements, however,were articulatedinto symbols and ritualsof
neo-Inca nationalismfrom the very beginning of the movement. Millennial
expectations, moreover, corresponded to a popular program of reform that
involved the elimination of all types of colonial exactions, including tribute,
mita, repartimientos,and alcabalas.'04
Under the leadership of TuipacKatariin the La Paz region,what began as
an anticolonialrebellion ultimately came close to a total race war.'05"Civilization or barbarism,"says Alberto Flores Galindo, "wasthe central question
posed by the TuipacAmaru rebellions."Drawing on Charles Minget, Flores
Galindo states that this question mirrored the drama of the colonial world
at large, a world in which "a Europeanized minority dominated a majority
indigenous or mestizo population that in turn recognized itself in other
traditions,which its rulers denigrated and negated."'106
The argument of this essay is that in the Aymarainsurrection of Chayanta, nativist utopias, revolutionaryprograms, and binary identities were
neither the origin of the struggle nor the driving force behind much of the
conflict. Given the Indians' socioeconomic objectives, the Aymaramovement clearly belongs to the cycle of local revolts and judicial protest that
had mushroomed in the Audiencia of Charcas since the 1750s. Like earlier
episodes of litigation and collective violence in Moscari, Aymaya, Condo
Condo, or Pocoata, the uprising led by Tomas Katarisought to regain control over community social and economic resources by attackingthe most
abusive aspects of village government.'07
103. Szeminski, "WhyKill the Spaniards?"
104. O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebelionesanticoloniales, 280-81.
105. Campbell, "Recent Research,"11.
1o6. Alberto Flores Galindo, "Larevoluci6n tupamaristay el imperio espafiol,"in Governare il mondo. L'impero spagnolo dal XV al XIX secolo, ed. Massimo Ganci and Ruggiero
Romano (Palermo:Societa Sicilianaper la Storia Patria,1991), 394.
107. For earlierlitigations,see Indiansof Moscari,ChayantaProvince,againsttheir kuraka,
Florencio Lupa, 1769, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia (ANB), Tierras e Indios (TI), 1773, 34;
Indians from Aymaya,Chayanta,against their priest, Dionisio Cortes in 1776, ibid., 1778, 48.
224
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
Historiansmay have underestimated the insurrectionalpotential of local
grievances against particular kurakas, tribute collectors, parish priests, or
corregidores.These demands may seem to refer to "reformist"goals, but for
the peasant communities they represented issues vital enough to put lives,
property,and social standing at risk. And regional power groups shared this
view. It took a three-year mass mobilization and the most violent armed
revolt the northern Potosi region had ever experienced for the corregidor
to dismiss illegitimate kurakas and reduce the repartimiento, and for the
audiencia to allow Toma'sKatarito rule the Macha ayllus.
Nevertheless, it is crucial to note that the indigenous challenge to colonial domination lay not so much in the aims of peasant mobilization as in
the process of political confrontationitself. As much as the Indian objectives
disrupted the ongoing modes of exploitationin the Andean world, they did
so within the marginsof the existing legal framework.Judicialrecords reveal
that the removalof Macha native authoritiesshould have taken place almost
immediately after the Macha communities' first appeal in mid-1777;this, as
argued earlier,was also the judgment of the viceroy of Rio de la Plata. Not
only did the Chayantapeasants believe that they had the law on their side
(and then take it into their own hands). What counterinsurgencynarratives
sought to conceal is that they were mostly right. The paradoxof the Aymara
movement is that the peasants' continual reference to colonial legality and
institutions did not inhibit, but instead unleashed and legitimated mass violence. Peasant political consciousness grew out of the symbolic articulation
of discursive battles in colonial courts and armed battles in the Andean
villages.
It was the sustained collective explorationof the contradictionsbetween
power and law, truth and justice in Andean society that graduallyundermined the consensual and coercive foundations of colonial authority. As
distinguished from previous isolated and short-lived outbursts of violence,
as well as long but usually unsuccessful legal protests, this collective effort
also empowered Indian communities to nurturebroad links of solidarityand
political awareness.
The Chayantamovement, therefore, presents a case of "radicalsubversiveness" not only for attempting "to seize existing authority"but also for
08 The political
challenging "the principle on which authority was based."'
On the revolt of Condo Condo, Province of Paria, against the kurakasGregorio and Andr6s
Llanquipachain 1774, see O'Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales, 158-59. On
the mobilization of the Pocoata communities to regain control of the native chieftainship in
1775-76, see ANB, Expedientes Coloniales, 1776, 57; ANB, Sublevaci6n General de Indios,
1777, 217; ANB, TI, 1779, 5.
1o8. Stephen Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion,"
in Glyph 8, ed. Walter Michaels (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1981), 41.
COLONIALISM
IN NORTHERN
POTOSI
225
premise that inspired the Aymara movement was that of a pact between
the ayllus and the colonial state whereby the Indians' fulfillment of their
economic obligations was linked to the state's assurance of their social and
political autonomy.Whereas Indian communities from the Cuzco and La Paz
regions manipulatedimperial Inca memories of Tahuantinsuyu,the Aymara
peasants from northern Potosi seemed to resort to a traditional pattern
of incorporationinto both Inca and Spanish state structures. The political
struggle to transform this ideal model into concrete power relationships
graduallyenabled the Andean communities to question the Spanishauthorities' claim to a monopoly on legitimate force, to redefine the legal modes of
rule in the colonial administration,and to turn time-honored judicial rituals
of domination into manifestationsof the communities' own ideological and
militarysuccess.
The process through which the Andean communities appropriatedthe
physical and symbolic power to redefine political legitimacy led, finally,to a
complete disarticulationof the modes of colonial subjectivity,the way both
the colonizers and the colonized recognized themselves and each other.'09
What should be stressed is that Aymara peasants did not construct their
collective identity by negating the idea of civilization imposed by European domination. Insofar as the European concept of humanitywas bound
to Indian subordination to Spanish institutions and laws, as well as to the
fulfillment of economic obligations as the king's vassals, it was in the regional power groups' interest to portrayindigenous practices as a regression
to the precolonial stage of barbarism and paganism."0The description of
peasant mobilization as a protest against tribute, the king, and the church
represented an attempt to subsume indigenous communities under cultural
stereotypes that justified colonial authority. "To live without any subjection whatsoever,"as the corregidorworded it, "is their naturalpropensity."
It is in the opposition of savagery and submission that colonial discourse
represented native peoples and legitimated its civilizingmission.
The unintended outcome of Chayanta'scollective mobilizationwas precisely to dislodge this opposition, to disavow any attempt to situate the
communities' actions at either extreme. The movement's political subversiveness should be sought not in what the Spanish rulers said, but in what
colonial discourse suppressed. If the European colonial project requiredthe
log. The conceptualization of colonial rule as a means of economic and political domination as well as a subject-constitutingprocess rests on poststructuralisttheoretical currents.
See Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow,
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralismand Hermeneutics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1982),
212.
lno. MaryDillon and Thomas Abercrombie,"The Destroying Christ:An AymaraMyth of
Conquest," in Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectiveson the
Past, ed. JonathanHill (Urbana:Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988), 67.
226
| HAHR I MAY I SERGIO SERULNIKOV
constructionof a "reformed,recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference
that is almost the same but not quite," the Aymarainsurrection emerged
from the pursuit of the concept of equality, such as it was defined in the
juridicaltheory of the two republics."'
Aymaradiscourses and actions did not deny or seek to deny difference
itself, but difference as a signifierof culturalisolation and inferiority.Peasant
strategies pushed to the limit what Jacques Ranciere would describe as the
consequences of their full participationin the category of human beings; or
more specifically,in the category of the crown'sfree subjects."2The Spanish
authorities were thus forced to cope not with the denial of the European
concept of civilization, but with the disarticulationof cultural and racial
hierarchies emanating from that concept.
The strangenessof Katari'svoluntarysurrenderto the audienciain order
to declare "his truth and his justice" lies in the way this act exceeded
the Indians' established role as objects of colonial knowledge and control.
What in normaltimes constituted gestures of obedience and consent (Katari
surrendered himself to colonial courts, the Indians obeyed juridical decisions, the mining labor was dispatched, the tributes were collected) became,
in this particularcontext, fragments of a larger insurrectionalscript. Those
practices radically undermined the prescribed meaning of the categories
of civilization and barbarismthrough which Spanish authority and Indian
rebellion could be understood. Therefore, counterinsurgencyaccounts of
the events dissociated those acts from the flux of mass violence by depicting Aymarajudicial politics as the result of the Indians' inherent inability
to understand law and legal procedures, or, when that interpretation was
alreadyunsustainable,as the surface of a secret anticolonialconspiracy.But
Toma'sKatari and the Andean communities from northern Potosi did not
conform to the role they were assumed and pushed to play. Thus, Aymara
practices and discourse not only challenged entrenched relations of economic and political power in the Andean world; they also subverted the
historical experience of colonial identities-the function of Spaniards as
legitimate agents of colonial institutions, the collective violence of native
peoples as a symptom of savageryinscribed in nature and history, and, in
the end, the justificationof European rule as an endless civilizingprocess.
ill. Quotation from Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man," 126. As John Leddy Phelan
has pointed out, the most egalitarianaspect of the colonial justice system "wasthat the members of every corporationhad free access to the courts in order to protect what they thought
were their privileges and obligations, however substantial or modest those rights might be."
The Kingdomof Quito in the SeventeenthCentury:BureaucraticPolitics in the Spanish Empire
(Madison:Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 213.
112. See JacquesRanciere, "Politics,Identification,and Subjectivation,"October61 (1992),
6o.