Bolivia

By: Rob Garrison

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Bolivia

Landlocked country in central South America, bordered on the north and east by Brazil, on the south by Argentina, and on the west by Chile and Peru.

For those who think of the Andes region and conjure up images of indigenous Indian populations, it is surprising to realize that black people also live in Bolivia. There are even Bolivians who are unaware of this fact. Many Bolivians, not aware of their country's historic involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, think that blacks are migrants from Brazil or other nearby countries. The scarcity of Afro-Bolivians in the country (about two percent of the population) may partially explain the superstition held by some citizens that pinching someone when they see a black person will bring good luck. Whatever the origin of this belief may be, the objectification of black people that it represents illustrates the subtle forms of racism that Afro-Bolivians find offensive.

Reputed to be the most Indian of the American republics because of its large Aymara- and Quechua-speaking population, Bolivia accords little if any recognition to other ethnic groups that reside within its territory. Afro-Bolivians are one such ignored group. It is currently impossible to know the number of blacks in Bolivia because the national census classifies populations only by language, not by race or ethnicity. Unlike indigenous people, blacks are not officially considered a separate ethnic group, since they speak Spanish and do not exhibit marked cultural traits that would distinguish them from the rest of Bolivia's populations. In mainstream society, Afro-Bolivians are pejoratively referred to as negritos (little black people) and are seen as part of Bolivia's history, not its present.

Bolivia

view larger image

Currently, at a time when ethnic groups are receiving recognition and support from governmental and international sources, Afro-Bolivians are moving into the spotlight by showcasing their culture to demonstrate their contribution to Bolivian society. Hoping to distinguish themselves as a unique ethnic group, Afro-Bolivians attempt to rectify the marginalization caused by slavery and its aftermath. The reconstruction of dance, song, and music that were on the verge of extinction is part of this effort. An Afro-Bolivian movement has been established with the goal of affecting social change and promoting cultural awareness.

Political History of Bolivia

In the middle of the fifteenth century, Inca armies from the region that is now Peru invaded the Bolivian highlands and conquered the indigenous peoples there. The Aymara, the predominant regional group, essentially maintained their way of life under Inca rule. The Inca extracted tribute labor from them, but allowed the Aymara to kept their traditional leaders. In 1532 Spanish conquistadores entered the region and took advantage of political strife within the Inca Empire. The Spaniards subdued the indigenous populations and utilized the Inca system of tribute labor called mita. Under this Spanish-controlled system, Indians were drafted into periods of forced labor to establish the new society. When silver deposits were discovered in the southern town that is now Potosí, Mining projects increased the need for laborers and the Spaniards began to import African slaves. More than half the silver in the New World came from the mines in Potosí between 1570 and 1650, making this highly profitable region the most densely populated area of South America.

Aymara  This member of the Aymara Indian tribe was captured on film sometime in the twentieth century.

Library of Congress

view larger image

Bolivia, known as Upper Peru throughout the colonial era, fell under the jurisdiction of the viceroyalty of Peru at Lima. After 1776 it became part of the viceroyalty of La Plata, in Buenos Aires. Bolivia gained its independence in 1825, the last Spanish-American continental territory to be freed. The newly founded country was named for Simón Bolívar, the revolutionary figure who symbolized liberty from colonial occupation. Since its birth, Bolivia has been fraught with political, social, and economic instability. Misguided leadership drew the country into two wars that greatly diminished its territory. The entire Pacific coastal region was lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), while sea access and oil were forfeited to Paraguay in the Chaco War (1932–1935).

The unrest that gripped the country in the years following these wars culminated in the pivotal 1952 Bolivian National Revolution, led by tin miners. Universal suffrage, nationalization of the tin mines, agrarian reform, and diversification of the economy were the results of the revolution that continue to affect Bolivia. Over the next thirty years military intervention in government became a common occurrence, as the economy endured cycles of growth and decline fueled by fiscal crises and economic mismanagement. After the 1985 election of Paz Estenssoro, the main Bolivian political parties made a public commitment to democracy, and since that time the military has stayed out of political affairs by and large.

Since the 1990s, the Bolivian government has focused its attention on issues of economic development and narcotics trafficking, with widely varying degrees of success. The economy showed impressive growth from 1993 to 1999 under Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and his Successor, Hugo Banzer. Sanchez de Lozada also began a drive to privatize many national industries, a policy that Banzer continued. Working in close cooperation with the United States, Banzer began an aggressive campaign to eradicate most of Bolivia's coca crop and replace it with alternative cash crops. While this program succeeded in destroying much of Bolivia's coca production, it also sowed the seeds of political discontent. In 2002 Sanchez de Lozada again captured the presidency, but rural unrest caused by his continued support of the unpopular coca eradication program forced him to resign in 2003.

Slavery in Colonial Bolivia

Bolivia's introduction to the slave trade began as early as 1535 with the expedition of Diego de Almagro, who brought the first African slaves into the region from Peru. Slaves were used to supplement the labor of the indigenous population in Potosí, whose numbers declined rapidly due to poor working conditions and exposure to European diseases. Most scholars believe that the enslaved Africans were brought from Ríos de Guinea, a section of the West African coast that lies between the Senegal River and the Niger River. Others believe that Angola supplied most of the slaves to this region. The ambiguity is unlikely to be resolved for two reasons. First, Spain did not establish trading centers in West Africa, so captives were brought from diverse areas rather than one predominant region. Second, there was no standard form of classification for captured Africans. A slave's assumed origin would depend upon the labels given by the captors and the port of exit from which a slave sailed, neither of which was a reliable source of information and therefore made the true origin a mystery.

Adverse conditions, including the high altitude and rigorous labor, caused a rapid decline in the African slave population, and Spanish authorities removed the remaining blacks from the Potosí mines in 1554. Under a system of forced tribute labor, indigenous populations replaced slaves as silver miners, and blacks were moved into other positions. Some slaves became domestic servants or even artisan apprentices in Potosí and Sucre. Others lived and worked in the Royal Mint, locked in the building to prevent escape. Most were transported to rural areas like the Cochabamba Valley and the Yungas (hot lands) region of La Paz to cultivate agricultural crops for the country's growing cities. The main products of the haciendas (large, agrarian estates) in the Yungas were sugarcane, citrus fruit, coffee, and coca. Coca leaf was the principal crop because it was needed as a stimulant and an appetite suppressant to maintain the efficiency of silver miners. Bolivia's coca-leaf cultivation met local demands and also supplied Peruvian mining towns.

Bolivia had the smallest African slave population of any colonial South American territory. The main reason was the great distance of the mining town of Potosí from major slave ports such as Buenos Aires, Argentina and Cartagena de Indias, on the Pacific coast of present-day Colombia. The distance slave traders had to travel, and the rugged terrain they had to traverse, raised the cost of importing slaves. Early in the colonial period, the only established slave trade routes to Bolivia were through Paraguay, Brazil, and Buenos Aires. Later, in the early seventeenth century, Spanish administrators required that Pacific coastal colonies ship slaves through Panama. Although primarily used to support the lucrative mining operations, slaves were also valued as status symbols among members of the upper class. To own a slave for domestic services signified extreme wealth.

The number of African slaves living in Bolivia during colonial times has been a subject of scholarly debate. Philip Curtin, in The African Slave Trade: A Census, estimates that 100,000 slaves were imported to Bolivia and the rest of the La Plata region (which included present-day Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) throughout the entire trading period. Once in Bolivia, the black population grew and mixed with other ethnic groups. Calculating the number of the blacks, therefore, is difficult because of racial mixture and the categories in which Spanish administrators placed blacks. Mixed-descent populations like mulattoes (of African and European descent) and zambos (of African and Indian descent) were sometimes classified separately from the all-inclusive category of “black,” while other records made no distinction. For example, records for the city of Potosí in 1611 indicate the presence of approximately 6,000 free and enslaved blacks and mulattoes, differentiating between the two groups with no mention of zambos. In the mid-1600s sources count the black population at 30,000 of a total 850,000 residents, but no subdivisions were made.

Blacks after Independence

Most sources do not mention that Afro-Bolivians took part in the fight for independence when Bolivar's forces finally arrived in the country. Black Bolivians did participate in the war, but their numbers were so few that they did not constitute a significant contribution. Rebel forces achieved independence in 1825, and emancipation was legislated one year later in the constitution but was not upheld. As in most Latin American countries, Bolivia's 1831 constitution contained a Free-Womb Law, which stated that no one born in Bolivia after independence was a slave but that those enslaved before 1825 were not liberated. Slavery continued uninterrupted, but the number of slaves decreased to about 1,390 by the year 1846 because of legislation. Only in 1851 was total abolition decreed and the liberation of slaves completed.

Information on the black population after abolition is sparse. The first national census in 1900 reported the number of Afro-Bolivians as 3,945 under the category raza negra (black race), which included zambos and most likely mulattoes. Between 1900 and 1950 no complete census was compiled, so anything close to an exact figure for the Afro-Bolivian population during this period is unavailable. A 1930 study conducted by Mexican geographic scholar Gilberto Loyo reported that there were 59,740 blacks in Bolivia. How Loyo arrived at this figure, or how he defined “black” as a category, is unknown. Considering the national census figure of nearly 4,000 blacks in the year 1900, such dramatic growth in thirty years seems improbable. Information on the size of the Afro-Bolivian population after the 1900 census is based on scholarly estimates, since the census records after 1950 include no data on race. Bolivia's 2001 census was the first to count Afro-Bolivians as a separate group.

The “Disappearance” of Afro-Bolivians

After abolition Afro-Bolivians were relegated to the background, beginning in 1851 with a request to meet with the president, which was denied. Some Afro-Bolivians said that they wanted to thank the president in person for their freedom from slavery, but at that time black and indigenous peoples were not allowed to enter the government palace. It would not be until the late 1990s that an Afro-Bolivian group would be granted an audience with a governmental dignitary. Racial discrimination is the main reason for rejection of Afro-Bolivians by a society that sees slavery as black people's most significant contribution.

One sign of this attitude is the fact that Bolivian history texts rarely mention two of the important figures in Afro-Bolivian folklore and history: El Rey Negro Bonifaz (Black King Bonifaz) and Pedro Andavares. El Rey Negro was enslaved with other Africans and brought to Bolivia to work on a hacienda in the Yungas. The slave owners of the Mururata hacienda gave him special privileges to keep the other slaves content. El Rey Negro was even given a crown, a scepter, and a cape to replace the valuable originals that were supposedly sent from Africa by his family. During festivals such as Easter, he was carried around in a litter and would dance the zemba, a royal dance that only he would perform. The Black King remained a figurehead in this section of the Yungas, and the tradition was continued with each successive generation. The last traditional Black King was El Rey Bonifacio Piñedo, who died in the 1960s but was succeeded by his grandson in 1982, allegedly as part of a cultural revival.

Another figure disregarded in Bolivian historical literature is Pedro Andavares, one of the few black soldiers who fought in the Chaco War in the 1930s. Andavares went to war for his country and had to fight not only the Paraguayan forces, but also racism within the Bolivian army. He returned to Bolivia a hero, and a monument was erected in his honor in Chicaloma, a small town in Sud Yungas. As one of the few blacks ever acknowledged for their contributions in Bolivia, Andavares still evokes pride among many Afro-Bolivians

One reason for the lack of interest in the black population is that, unlike indigenous people, Afro-Bolivians have not been viewed as a distinct ethnic group by the government. Through centuries of cohabitation with the Aymara-speaking people, blacks have assimilated much of this indigenous group's culture. Many Afro-Bolivian women wear polleras (indigenous dress) and have their hair braided into two plaits, like Aymara women. Rural Afro-Bolivians and indigenous people have much else in common. They have benefited equally from the 1952 Agrarian Reform, which made many of them landowners instead of tenant farmers. Blacks now work the same land as their ancestors and the ancestors of the Aymara. Like many indigenous communities, the towns in which rural Afro-Bolivian communities live often have no electricity, no potable water system, and no adequate sanitation facilities (i.e., household latrines). The main distinction between these two communities is government acknowledgement of indigenous ethnicity, and the economic support received as a result, neither of which has been granted to black Bolivians.

Settlement patterns also seem to determine differences between Afro-Bolivian and indigenous communities. In the communities of the Nor Yungas, where the incidence of interracial marriage and interethnic group socialization is lower, the differences between Afro-Bolivians and Aymara are more apparent. In contrast, black communities of the Sud Yungas have a less distinct presence owing to higher rates of interracial marriage and more pervasive acculturation. Blacks in the cities live interspersed with indigenous and mestizo (of Indian and European descent) populations in the poorest neighborhoods. They compete for jobs as shop clerks, professional drivers, and domestic servants while settling in housing that may have insufficient electricity and inadequate sanitation.

Modern Afro-Bolivian Culture

Relatively recently, Afro-Bolivian cultural movements have developed as part of a local effort to cultivate the traditional dance and music forms of the black population. In 1982 a group of students from Coroico, Nor Yungas, formed a dance troupe to perform la Saya, an original Afro-Bolivian dance from the Yungas region. To ensure the authenticity of the compositions, the troupe collected and re-created traditional music, lyrics, costumes, and instruments. Having gained local support, they began to explore other dances in danger of disappearing, such as la Cueca Negra (a variation of an Andean dance), el Baile de la Tierra (traditional wedding music), la Zemba (a dance formerly associated with the Afro-Bolivian monarchy), and el Mauchi (funeral music). The troupe's initiative and its pride in Afro-Bolivian culture inspired the creation of similar groups throughout the black communities of the Yungas.

Naming themselves Grupo Afroboliviano, the troupe carried its performances to other parts of the country. In 1991 it released its first musical recording, Saya This recording, along with performances at religious and folklore festivals, reintroduced many Bolivians to the unique Afro-Bolivian culture. In turn, this cultural revitalization evolved into a social movement whose aim is to gain recognition for Afro-Bolivians as a distinct ethnic group, help unite them as a community, and improve conditions in rural black communities.

The new movement began as two separate efforts, one in the Yungas valleys and the other in the city of La Paz. Rural blacks of the valleys were concerned with reviving a purer form of Afro-Bolivian dance and music. To this end, these communities held conferences between 1992 and 1994 to discuss and demonstrate a variety of dance and music forms. Animosity arose as each rural town claimed to have a more authentically African dance form.

While the people of the Yungas valleys argued over aesthetics, the residents of the city of La Paz worked at establishing connections with black cultural movements in other parts of the world. The two factions met in 1994, called together in La Paz for a conference with the theme “Consolidando Nuestra Identidad” (Strengthening Our Identity). The meeting helped resolve tensions based on class differences between the two populations, and raised awareness of the black presence and its culture among the rest of Bolivian society. The name Movimiento Cultural Saya Afroboliviano (Saya Afro-Bolivian Cultural Movement) was chosen to honor the dance that is used as a medium for cultural expression and a connection to the African past.

Another goal of the conference was achieved when an Afro-Bolivian contingent met with Vice President Victor Hugo Cárdenas to demand official governmental recognition of the Afro-Bolivian population as a distinct ethnic group. Cárdenas agreed to place relevant government offices in charge of assisting Afro-Bolivian populations. The results of this historic meeting are yet to unfold.

Afro-Bolivian Political Movements

Although Afro-Bolivians have not historically been involved in national politics, they have worked in peasant syndicates in the Yungas region. Believing that indigenous groups controlled the traditional syndicates and that black representation was lacking, Afro-Bolivians in the Yungas tried to form their own syndicate. This effort, however, divided worker support and ultimately proved counterproductive. More concentrated organization has been achieved with the creation of juntas, which are permanent men's work groups and which no other ethnic group has.

Large-scale organization for Afro-Bolivian communities is a challenge, since the concerns of one group are not always shared by the rest. Rural Afro-Bolivians have an interest in social justice, but their immediate concerns center on such local issues as declining crop value and the need for improved sanitation and potable water systems. Urban Afro-Bolivians, conversely, often are concerned with the African diaspora and the issues that affect all people of African descent in the world. Merging the interests of both groups into one social movement is difficult but not impossible.

Afro-Bolivians are currently enjoying far more political and cultural recognition than in the past. Grassroots leaders of the Saya Afro-Bolivian Cultural Movement have traveled to other countries to participate in conferences. Awareness of the movement, as well as support for its efforts, has increased. Agencies like the Washington, D.C.–based Organization of Africans in the Americas are now coordinating efforts with Afro-Latin populations to present the issues of these communities to Latin American government officials. With such steps, Afro-Bolivian communities hope to eliminate the racial discrimination that deeply affects their progress in Bolivian society.

See also Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean; Pan-Africanism and Afro–Latin Americans; Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.

processed xml | source xml