Opportunism and Hierarchy in Bolivian Independence

Proclamation of La Plata to the Valiant Inhabitants of the City of La Paz

Until now we have tolerated a kind of exile in the very heart of our homeland. For more than three centuries we have watched with indifference as our primitive liberty was sacrificed to the despotism and tyranny of an unjust usurper who, degrading us as a human species, has deemed us savages and on us as slaves.

We have kept a silence quite analogous to the stupidity which the uncultured Spaniard has attributed too us, suffering calmly that the merit of the Americans has always been a sure portent of their humiliation and their ruin.

Now it is time to shake off a yoke that is fatal for our happiness and is favorable to the national pride of the Spaniard.

Now is the time to organize a new system of government founded on the interests of our homeland, which is greatly oppressed by the bastard politics of Madrid.

Now at last in the time to raise the standard of freedom in these unfortunate colonies, acquired without the least title and conserved with the greatest injustice and tyranny.

Valiant inhabitants of La Paz and all of the empire of Peru: reveal our projects through their execution and take advantage of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Do not despise the happiness of our land , nor ever lose sight of the unity that should reign among all of us so that we be as happy int he future as we are unfortunate now.

-Anonymous, 1809

Translated by Alison Spedding

An anonymously published document calling for the overthrow of the Spanish Colonial government.

The above document appears to take a radical stance for the period against the Colonial Spanish government. 1809 saw a Spain in political crisis. Napoleon’s armies had sized the Iberian Peninsula, and forced two Spanish monarchs (Carlos IV and Fernando VII) to abdicate the throne. Creoles saw a chance to finally claim dominance over the Peninsulars, and formed Juntas in the cities of La Plata (now Sucre) and La Paz with the intent of creating their own liberal state.

In this document, (which came from one of these creole-led juntas), we see a clear attempt to congratulate the colonial experiences of creoles (second in the ethno-social hierarchy only to native-born Spanish peninsulars) with indigenous Americans. This idea of Americanos, a collective identity for those both in the Americas, was employed across Latin America by many independence movements. The crimes committed by colonial authorities are placed solely on European-born Spaniards.

The commitment of the Creole elites to the idea of Americanos, was not reflected after Bolivia gained independence from Spain in 1825. The Constitution denied citizenship to over two-thirds of the population, and maintained a ethno-social hierarchy with white creoles at the top. The newly-independent Republic remained largely the same as it had under colonial rule: Native American labor fueled the mines of Bolivia and remained the largest source of revenue for the state, much as it had been under the Spanish crown.

This document, taken in historical context, highlights how the Bolivian struggle for independence was a fought within the frame of American-born Creoles versus European-born Peninsulars. Creoles realized the value of mobilizing natives for the sake of revolution, but seem to have had little, if any, intention of granting them political, social, or racial equality. Because the war for independence was fought in these terms, the emerging order after independence saw minimal gains for indigenous people.

Sources:

Anonymous, “Proclamation of La Plata to the Valiant Inhabitants of the City of La Paz,” translated by Alison Spedding in The Bolivia Reader, Edited by Sinclair Thompson, Rossana Barragan, Xavier Albo, Seemin Qayum, and Mark Goodale, Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 133-134.

Hylton, Forrest and Sinclair Thompson. “Indian Rule and Creole Rule in the age of Revolution, 1781-1825” in Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics. Verso Books: 2007, pp. 35-46.