Cultural policy in Bolivia; Studies and documents on cultural policies ...

I Cultural policy

in Bolivia Mariano Baptista Gumucio

Studies and documents on cultural policies

In this series: '

Cultural policy: a preliminary study Cultural policy in the United States, by Charles C. Mark Cultural rights as human rights Cultural policy in Japan, by Nobuya Shikaumi Some aspects of French cultural policy. by the Studies and Research Depsrtment of the .French

Cultural policy in Tunisia. by Rafik SaId Cultural ~oliev in Great Britain. bv Michael Green and Michael Wildk, in consultation with

Ministry of Culture

. . Richkd Hoggart

- Cultural oolicv in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, by A. A. Zvorykin with the assistance of N. Î. Golubtsova and E: I. Rabinovitch

and Josef Chroust

for Unesco

- Cultural policy in Czechoslovakia, by Miroslav Marek with the assistance of Milan Hromadka

Cultural policy in Italy, a survey prepared under the auspices of the Italian National Commission

Cultural policy in Yugoslavia, by Stevan Majstorovik Cultural policy in Bulgaria, by Kostadine Popov Some aspects of cultural policies in India, by Kapila Malik Vatsyayan Cultural policy in Cuba, by Lisandro Otero with the aesistance of Francisco Martinez Hinojosa Cultural policy in Egypt, by Magdi Wahba Cultural policy in Finland, a study prepared under the auspices of the Finnish National

Cultural policy in Sri Lanka, by H. H. Bandara Cultural policy in Nigeria, by T. A. Fasuyi Cultural policy in Iran, by Djamchid Behnam Cultural policy in Poland, by Stanislaw Witold Balicki, Jerzy Kossak and Miroslaw Zulawski The role of culture in leisure time in New Zealand, by Bernard W. Smyth Cultural policy in Israel, by Jozeph Michman Cultural policy in Senegal, by Mamadou Seyni M'Bengue Cultural policy in the Federal Republic of Germany, a study prepared under the auepices of

Cultural policy in Indonesia, a study prepared by the staff of the Directorate-General of Culture,

Cultural policy in the Philippines, a study prepared under the auepices of the Unesco National

Cultural policy in Liberia, by Kenneth Y. Best Cultural policy in Hungary, a survey prepared under the auapiees of the Hungarian National

The cultural policy of the United Republic of Tansania, by L. A. Mbughuni Cultural policy in Kenya, by Kivnto Ndeti Cultural policy in Romania. by Ion Dodu Balan with the co-operation of the Directoratm of

Culrurd policy in the German Democratic Republic, by Hans Koch Cultural policy in Afghanistun, by Shafie Rahe1 Cultural policy in the Unifad Republic of Cameroon, by J. C. Bahoken and Englebrrt Atangana Some ospsel~ of Cultural policy in Togo, by K. M. Aitbnard Cultural policy in the Republic of Zaire, a study prepared under the direction of Dr Bokonga

Clrlrurd policy in Ghana, a ~ t ~ d y prepared by the Cultural Division of the Ministry of Education

Cultural policy in the Republic of Korea, by Kim Yersu Aspects of Canadian cultural policy, by D. Paul Schafer Cultural policy in Costa Rica, by Samuel Rovinski C h r d policy in Jamaica, a study prepared by the Institute of Jamaica Cultural policy in Guyana. by A. J. Seymour Cultural policy in Peru, by the National Institute of Culture Cultural policy in Columbia, by Jorge Eliécer Ruiz, with the assistance of Valentiua Marulanda Aspects of Algerian cultural policy, by Sid-Ahmed Baghli Cultural policy in the Republic of Panama, by the National Institute of Culture Cultural policy in Bolivia, by Mariano Baptista Gumucio The serial numbering of titles in this series, the presentation of which has been modified, was discontinued with the volume Cultural policy in Italy.

Commission for Unesco

' the German Commission for Unesco

Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia

Commission of the Philippines

Commission for Unesco

the Council of Socialist Culture and Education

Ekanga Botombele

and Culture, Accra

Published in 1978 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 7 Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris Printed by Imprimerie Oberthur, Rennes

LU polític~ d t u r U i en B O I ~ V ~ W 92-3-301519-X ISBN 92-3-101519-2

Q Unesco 1979 Printed in Frunce

Preface

The purpose of this series is to show how cultural policies are planned and implemented in various Member States.

As cultures differ, so does the approach to them; it is for each Member State to determine its cultural policy and methods according to its own conception of culture, its socio-economic system, political ideology and technical development. However, the methods of cultural policy (like those of general development policy) have certain common problems ; these are largely institutional, administrative and financial in nature, and the need has increasingly been stressed for exchanging experiences and information about them. This series, each issue of which follows as far as possible a similar pattern so as to make comparison easier, is mainly concerned with these technical aspects of cultural policy.

In general, the studies deal with the principles and methods of cultural policy, the evaluation of cultural needs, administrative structures and management, planning and financing, the organization of resources, legislation, budgeting, public and private institutions, cultural content in education, cultural autonomy and decentralization, the training of personnel, institutional infrastructures for meeting specific cultural needs, the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, institutions for the dissemination of the arts, international cultural co-operation and other related subjects.

The studies, which cover countries belonging to differing social and economic systems, geographical areas and levels of development, present therefore a wide variety of approaches and methods in cultural policy. Taken as a whole, they can provide guidelines to countries which have yet to establish cultural policies, while all countries, especially those seeking new formulations of such policies, can profit by the experience already gained.

This study was prepared for Unesco by Mariano Baptista Gumucio,

,

I

formerly Bolivian Iinister o Education and Culture, at the request

The opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarib reflect of the Bolivian National Commission for Unesco.

the views of Unesco.

Contents

9 Geographical, historical and cultural characteristics of Bolivia

Ethnic groups and pluricultural condition of Bolivia

20

29 Literature and the arts

41 Educational systems and problems facing them

Bolivian universities, science and technology

Cultural policy of Bolivian governments

Dissemination and preservation of culture

52

61

73

Geographical, historical and cultural characteristics of Bolivia

Bolivia is still, in the last quarter of this century, a country about which little is known and which is therefore mysterious. F r o m time to time, it gets into the international news-when there are reports of coups d’état, intrepid strikes and bloody repression, fluctuations in the market price of tin or, possibly, the reprinting of some work by Alcides Arguedas, Jaime Freyre or Augusto Céspedes. Towards the end of the 1960s, the country suddenly hit the headlines of the world press with the activities, downfall and death of ‘Che’ Guevara.

But the reality behind such sporadic newspaper reports, which are inevitably oversimplified and distorted, is m u c h more complex and many-faceted, full of cultural life that is varied and original, though always confined within the limits of the country’s general condition-its dependence, its underdevelopment and its underprivileged status.

Bolivian culture, about which so little is known, has its origins in an imposing geographical background, a turbulent and tormented history, and the violent impact and intermixing of different ethnic, linguistic and social worlds, as well as in the vicissitudes of an entire people striving to overcome backwardness, poverty and illiteracy and to achieve economic independence, democratic government, well-being and culture. It is a melting-pot full of ingredients in a state of ebullition, the definitive shape, permanent form and texture of which have not yet become clear.

Geographical background

The total area of the Republic of Bolivia is 1,098,581 square kilometres, approximately twice the size of Spain, or twice that of France. It has been incorrectly called a ‘high plateau country’ (altiplano), but it is actually situated in the torrid zone of South America, only its

~

I 9


south-eastern tip being outside the southern tropics. In fact, it lies in the heart of the continent, being situated between Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the south-east, Argentina to the south, Chile to the south-west and Peru to the west. Since the time when it lost its seaboard, it has been confined between the mountains and the forest. It m a y be said to be a Prometheus in chains.

In an official Bolivian publication it is thus described:

The country as a whole presents the following characteristics: to the north-west, hot river basins covered with luxuriant vegetation, all the rivers being navigable along most of their course and forming extensive groves and rich lowlands full of tropical plants; to the east, undulating plains covered with lush grazing land and age-old woodland and intersected by large rivers which, when in flood, form vast marshes or swamps, some of them flowing in a north-easterly direction, others towards the south-east from 170 S. latitude. These regions, which enjoy a climate of perpetual spring, are known as llanuras to the east and chaco to the south-east. In the west is a rugged, mountainous area topped by a high, cold plateau where lakes Titicaca and Poop6 are situated and whose western and eastern extremities are flanked by chains of mountains covered in eternal sn0w.l

Since this account was written, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the country lost the region known as EI Chaco (243,500 square kilometres) in the war against Paraguay. Fifty thousand Bolivian soldiers perished in this conflict, which lasted from 1932 to 1935.

Bolivia lies partly in the basins of the Amazon and the River Plate, which flow into the Atlantic, and at the same time it is close to the Pacific coast. The principal feature of its relief is the Andean massif-the high steppe-like plateau which rises up in the midst of the huge mountain walls of the Cordillera Real (or Oriental) and the Cordillera Occidental.

Most of the people live on the altiplano and in the more temperate valleys in between the Andes, where the great pre-Columbian cultures of the Quechuas and Aymaras flourished and where the Spanish colonists established their cities and developed their main economic interests.

The country’s-three climatic regions-cold, temperate and torrid which correspond to different altitudes above sea level ranging between 4,000 and 400 metres harbours an impressive variety of natural resources, though they are not inexhaustible, as the exploitation of the mines has shown.

‘ W e shall not attempt to list everything produced in the three realms of nature that are to be found in Bolivia’, wrote Pedro Kramer, ‘as that would mean giving the names of nearly all the animals known

1. Oficina Nacional de Inmigración, Estadística y Propaganda Geográfica, Sinopsis Estadistica y Geográjca de la República de Bolivia, Vol. I, p. 3-4, La Paz, Taller de Tipografía y Litografía de J. M. Gamarra, 1903, 3 vol.

10

I Geographical, historical and cultural characteristice of Bolivia

by students of zoology, all the plants classified in botany, all the minerals and inorganic materials of which mineralogy tells us and, indeed, all the products used in industry.’l

That impressive but over-optimistic view of the situation is somewhat marred by the fact that, in the case of animals, neither the ox nor the horse, the mule nor the ass, which are indispensable for drawing vehicles, were known to the indigenous societies prior to the discovery of America. Although the mineral resources in the west are almost wholly non- ferrous, there are immense deposits of iron and manganese in the eastern llanura-El Mutún-close to the Brazilian frontier. N o coal deposits have been discovered as yet.

Ever since colonial times Bolivia has been essentially a mining country. In the past, the town of Potosí became famous through the export of silver, and it has been calculated that the galleons filled with silver ore shipped to Europe could have formed a bridge stretching across the ocean between the Old World and the New. In the twentieth century, the export of tin ore formed the basis of the enormous wealth of the Minería Grande concerns, in which Simón I. Patiíío made his n a m e and succeeded in setting up the only transnational consortium of Latin American origin.

Yet Bolivia was and is still a terribly poverty-stricken country. This paradox was noted by H. L. Keenleyside, the head of a United Nations economic mission, w h o said: ‘The Bolivians have a singular knack of using startling and picturesque phraseology to describe their country, themselves and their ideas. One of their colloquial metaphors is the description of Bolivia as “a beggar sitting on a golden throne”.’2

The overwhelming effect of the imposing geographical scenery of the country always affects the character and cultural make-up of the inhabitants, for there is a pronounced telluric element in the native religion and mythology, in folklore, in literature and the arts. The scenery often plays an important part in novels, painting, music, and so on.

1

The indigenous population in ancient times

Numerous cultural remains such as ceramics, textiles, copper and bronze objects, burial mounds or chullpares, huge monoliths, symmetrical stone buildings and high reliefs show h o w what are known as the high Andean cultures arose, flourished and died out, vanishing on the altiplano of Bolivia.

1. Pedro Kramer, La Industria en Bolivia, p. 37, L a Paz, Taller Tipolitogdfico, 1899. 2. Misión Keenleyside de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, Informe Keenleyside,

p. 13, L a Paz, Escuela de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad Mayor de I San Andrés, Imprenta Universitaria, 1952 (Cuaderno No. 8.)

I 11


F r o m time immemorial, the indigenous societies were agro-pastoral people, leading a life based on the structure of the ayllu or consanguineous clan; there was no private ownership of land or other goods. The original communities were grouped together in marcas, which were similar to the Greek fratrias or the medieval German markas; they grew potatoes, maize and quinua (pigweed) and kept flocks of llamas.

A revolutionary change in this primitive structure apparently occurred with the establishment of permanent authorities and the formation of paternalistic and efficient aristocracies, which gave rise to one or more Colla kingdoms prior to the arrival of the Incas, who merely continued, developed and perfected that unique type of social experiment based on a communal aristocracy. The role of the enlightened, planning, dominant group was justified in their eyes by the organization of the population into decimal units for the purpose of controlling production, building palaces, fortresses, temples, aqueducts and roads, and meeting threats of war. The ordinary people were denied the means of instruction available to the upper class; their job was to work as long as they were able to, but as they did so they sang during the sowing and harvesting ceremonies and as the building of public works proceeded.

The royal city, the most greatly revered shrine and the largest astronomical observatory in the greatest of the pre-Inca Aymara kingdoms was probably Tiwanaku, whose original name has been lost, but is thought by some people to have been Wiñay Marca or Eternal City.

To understand the Ltime and space’ occupied by Tiwanaku in the evolution of the Andean region, w e must look at the various cultures that flourished in this part of the world before it, at the same time and later. W e therefore direct the reader’s attention to the general description of those cultures given by Ibarra Grasso in his work Arqueología Boliviana: Viscachanense: very primitive food-gathering peoples with a flint culture,

who did not use pointed spears, and whose origin goes back to more than 20,000 years ago.

Ayampitinense: true hunters, comparable with those of the Folsom complex in North America and Solutrian m a n in Europe; three distinct stages of development, the second of which goes back to- 6,000 B.C. in Argentina and to 7,500 B.C. in Peru.

Megalithic or Tumulus culture: agriculturalists, who had polished stone implements, unpainted ceramics, textiles, copper and gold; their origin is certainly earlier than 1,000 B.C. ; the location of Huanicarani on the altiplano can be dated by the Carbon-14 method; it corresponds to a primitive cultural level, which points to 800 B.C.

Tiahuanacuy I, II and III (or ancient), Chiripa, Sauces, Tupuraya and Mojocoya: the first cultures in Bolivia in which painted ceramics are found, the designs being almost exclusively geometrical ; according to Carbon-14 analysis, they originate around 600 B.C. in the Chiripa

12


area and last until shortly after the beginning of the Christian era in the altiplano region and until considerably later still in the valleys.

Nazcoid culture: derived from Nazca, although not directly, and with Recuay elements; painting on ceramics with naturalistic, stylized motifs, showing human and animal figures, highly polychrome; must have reached Bolivia shortly after the beginning of the Christian era, and forms the basis of Classic Tiahuanaku, later on following the valleys and developing along new lines.

Classic Tiahuanaku: Nazcoid, Mojocoya and polychrome Tarija developments. Under Nazcoid influence, the Tiahuanaku civilization developed to the south of the lake, and did not expand further at this period; the Nazcoid, M,ajocoya and, possibly, polychrome Tarija cultures developed in the valleys of Cochabamba, Chuquisaca and Tarija; an ancient stage of the Huruquilla culture, partly derived from the previous Tupuraya, probably developed in Chuquisaca.

Expansive Tiahuanaku, Yampará: towards the middle of the eighth century A.D., a great expansion of Tiahuanaku culture took place; it predominated in Cochabamba, northern Potosí and Oruro, L a Paz, northern Chile and over half of Peru, including its coastline to the north. To the south of this area of expansion, in Bolivia, the previous cultures continued to exist. At the end of this period, the Yampará culture made its appearance; it lasted up to the time of the Inca conquest.

Colla Kingdom and Potosí cultures: these were a continuation of Expansive Tiahuanaku from the point of view of territorial diffusion, and also in some of the shapes and designs on ceramics, especially in the case of the Mollo style; to the south-east, the Yampará culture continued and the Huruquilla, Yura, Chaquí, Atacameíía and Chicha cultures existed, the latter being possibly of more ancient origin.

Inca supremacy: the Incas gained supremacy in 1438, through the conquest of the kingdom by Pachacutec, who appointed himself monarch; the southern part of the country-Chuquisaca, Potosí, Oruro and Tarija-was conquered later, towards 1470, by Tupac Yupanqui, son of Pachacutec.

According to- the Bolivian archaeologist Carlos Ponce Sanjinés:

It has been possible to establish three stages of development in the case of Tiwanaku: village, urban and imperial. Tiwanaku was apparently an old city in the third, fourth and fifth periods; in this last period, it had the status of an empire brought about by military expansion. A cultural sequence has also been established; it covers five distinct periods, the oldest naturally belonging to the first one, which would go back to the first millennium A.D. . . ..l

1. Carlos Ponce Sanjinés, ‘La Cerámica de la spoca I de Tiwanaku’, Puma Punku, No. 2 (second half of 1970 and first half of 1971), p. 7, 8. (Published by the Instituto de Cultura Aymara de la H. Municipalidad, La Paz.)

13 I


Outstanding among the remains of the pre-Colombian city of Tiwanaku are the step pyramid of Akapana, which was 18 metres high; the temple of Kalasasaya, which consisted of an immense earth platform measuring 136 by 118 metres and providing room for hundreds of people; and the Sun Gate, a huge stone construction on whose frieze the archaeologist Arturo Posnansky discovered a complete calendar. It is interesting to note that the Cyclopean walls of the various buildings are made of stone blocks which fit together so perfectly that it is impossible to insert a knife-blade between them. The Tiwanakota ‘step’ symbol, which is repeated in the decoration of objects in ceramics and in sculpture, probably performed the important function of an abstract, ideographic language, which remains undeciphered to this day.

W h e n the Inca Mayta Kapac, on a conquering expedition, crossed the River Desaguadero and penetrated into the Colla region, all he found was a couple of Aymara kingdoms engaged in fighting each other, which he subdued, and the uninhabited ruins of Tiwanaku. N o one knows what h u m a n event or natural disaster precipitated its destruction, turning it into a ghost city.

Nevertheless, the vitality of the Aymara language, economic institutions and culture was such that the Incas annexed the region to their empire, making it their largest, richest and most valuable province-the Collasuyo-and respecting its characteristics. The sun-god, Inti, and the deifications of the mountains-the Achachilas and Machulas-were added to the legion of deities of the Tawantinsuyu. Thus the Aymara myths and legends, preserved by oral transmission, were perpetuated up to the time of the Spanish chroniclers, and even up to our o w n day.

The Inca empire organized production and State administration in an admirable but uneven fashion: communal lands, the supreme ownership of which was vested in the monarch, were distributed annually to allow for the rotation of crops, in accordance with the working capacity of m e n and women. The gross product was divided into three parts; two went to the State and the remaining part to the producers. Out of its share, the State provided a kind of social security to avoid mendicity and the abandoning of orphans, widows, the destitute and old people. The c o m m o n people-jatunrunas-were in the first place cultivators, then shepherds and, lastly, artisans, craftsmen, miners, builders, warriors and so on, though there waa no precise division of work. W h e n they were not engaged in farming activities, m e n of working age were recruited through the mita (forced labour) system for important public works, the imperial granaries and storehouses providing their means of subsistence.

The Incas perfected a system of accountancy by making knots in woollen cords of various colours according to a code, which enabled them to record precise details as well as totals. These cords were known as

14


kipus and were mostly destroyed through the Christianizing zed of the white invaders.

In Cuzco, the capital of Tawantinsuyu, there was a school for the sons of Inca nobles w h o lived in the provinces or belonged to conquered tribes, which taught all that was known at that time. This school produced the priests, magicians, learned men, artists, administrators, accountants, engineers, poets, dramatists and military leaders of the country. The Inca aristocracy wore splendid clothes of various kinds and gold and silver jewellery. The jatunrunas, on the other hand, went about in roughly woven garments which varied according to the region; they were forbidden to move from one area to another. Apart from the sun, they worshipped local deities. They were organized on a tribal basis.

Moral, religious and legal standards were not separate concepts: a crime was also a sin, and even minor offences were severely punished. The words of greeting used by the inhabitants of the Inca empire s u m m e d up their moral and legal code: ama sua, a m a llulla, ama khella (don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t be lazy), a code entirely fitting for a society in which work was the primary duty, so m u c h so that the Inca and the nobles returned to work on the land for a few days each year; h u m a n beings constituted the country’s principal capital asset and its main source of power.

Cultural activities, in which art, religious rites and the cult of Inca power were closely interwoven, were more sophisticated among the ruling classes, but the people too had m a n y festivities in honour of Pachamama (Mother Earth) at sowing and harvesting times, the most important being those in celebration of the winter and summer solstices, known as Inti Raymis or Sun festivals. On these occasions, the people could listen to the history of the country recounted to them in tales and poems by their amautas (learned men), gaze at the paintings of their gods and Incas and watch theatrical performances, making their o w n contribution in the form of ritual dances and varieties of music which, with the changes introduced during the course of time, have come down to us. The extraordinary aptitude displayed by the indigenous Aymaras and Quechuas for cultivating the arts, as later became apparent under the colonial regime and the republic, comes from this centuries-old ancestral source. The Quechua play Ullanta, translated as Ollantay by Ricardo Rojas and others, m a y be compared to Greek tragedy.

One of the most striking features of these communal aristocracy societies seems to have been their persistent, unchanging economic system based on collective agricultural property, with a privileged group enjoying usufructuary rights at the summit, while at the same time changes and adjustments could be made in the higher spheres of politics and the machinery of State. After the Colla kingdoms came the Inca empire, without bringing any changes in that economic basis.

The Inca Huayna Kapac divided the empire into two independent

15


kingdoms, that of Cuzco for his legitimate heir, Huáscar, and that of Quito for his illegitimate son, Atahuallpa. Almost immediately a civil war broke out between them, at the same time as the discovery of the N e w World and the conquest of America which was to have fatal consequences for the indigenous cultures.

White colonial domination

It was in 1532 that a handful of Spanish soldiers wearing suits of armour and coats of mail, brandishing steel weapons, and with harquebuses and chargers, overcame the weak resistance offered by the thousands of men defending the last Inca, Atahuallpa, who were terrified, dumbfounded, frightened out of their wits. As the Quechua warriors butchered by the invaders shed their blood, the Andean empire came crashing down. Francisco Pizarro’s victory was not an extrinsic event, nor did it merely lead to a political revolution: it meant a complete change in every respect.

The first transformation to take place, due to the violent impact of the Spanish victory, was in the religious and cultural domain. After the Inca’s ransom had been paid, the Inca temples were sacked, the images of the gods destroyed, the sanctuaries pulled down, and the priests massacred. By fire and sword, the effigy of the sun-god was replaced by the symbol of the Cross. All that was saved from oblivion after the disappearance of the sun worship, the magnificent ceremonies and sacred chants, was hidden away in the depths of the mountains; almost nothing remained but the rites practised by witch-doctors and local priests, known as yatiris, who still function to this day.

The Spaniards were unable to suppress the native languages, communal rites, dances, music, clothing and festivals which, by a process of religious fusion or syncretism, finally reappeared in the Catholic festivals in honour of the saints, under a more or less superficial varnish of Christianity.

The second transformation was in the economic and social structure. The conquest was followed by the reorganization of society. At first, the mining of precious metals-gold and silver-was the chief economic activity. This was based on unremunerated labour-if not servitude- through the reintroduction of the mita system, which took the form of a periodic levy of unpaid indigenous manpower for forced labour. The mining industry was directly connected with export to the metrop- olis beyond the seas, in accordance with the prevailing mercantile system. Towns arose close to the mines as centres of white domination and colonial administration, and mining, together with the life of the towns, gave a stimulus to agriculture for the provision of food. The distribution of large estates (haciendas) and the encomienda system

16

A puma in the open air animist temple at Samaipata, near Santa Cruz (Inca culture), barbarously disfigured by visitors who have scratched names and initials on it.

A stylized anthropomorphic head in ceramic from the fourth Tiwanaku period.

The semi-subterranean temple and Kalasasaya compound at Tiwanaku.

The courtyard of the Santa Monica monastery at Potosí. Spanish colonial period.


(the assignment to colonists of groups of Indians for the purposes of tribute and evangelization) changed what had been the Collasuyo into a region of Spanish latifundia with a system of ploughing with a yoke of oxen dating from the time of the Pharaohs, extensive cultivation and unpaid employment of Indians known as pongueaje (from the word pongo, meaning a slave of serf). The colonial latifundio system did not wholly replace the old communal one, but relegated it to the less productive regions, the ayllu being maintained as a source of manpower for the mita.

The mining-cum-latifundist structure which lasted in Bolivia up to the middle of the twentieth century, combined with the agrarian clan organization and the lively indigenous culture, produced considerable miscegenation of various kinds, leading to a social stratification in which racial or racist distinctions corresponded to class differences. At the apex of the social pyramid were the whites (with full economic and political power); after them came the Creoles (whites born in America, wielding economic but not political power); then the cholos (who were descended from whites and Indians and were artisans and tradesmen), and lastly the Indians (the indigenous mass of people, employed in servile occupations). To these last should be added the black slaves imported from Africa, but they were few in number, and very soon disappeared almost entirely.

In the cultural sphere, the ecclesiastical architecture and other building styles imported from the Iberian peninsula were transformed by the indigenous or mestizo bricklayers, stonecutters and carvers, who added typical N e w World motifs, thus creating the colonial baroque style. The style of painting brought over from Europe by the mannerist school of painters under Italian influence also changed, in the hands of Indian painters, into the mestizo style principally associated with the Potosí school.

In secular music, the combination of the Spanish vihuela (an early form of guitar) and the protective shell of the armadillo or quirquincho produced a new instrument-the charango (small five-stringed guitar). Above, in the ballrooms of the whites they danced Spanish dances; below, among the Indians pre-Colombian dances such as the huayiio, yaraví, llamerada, etc. Besides this, as a result of miscegenation, adapted dances such as the cueca, the pasacalle and the Chuquisaca traditional dance arose, and in religious processions pre-Columbian ritual dances were revived, together with other new ones parodying Spanish customs, such as the wakatok’oris (parodying bullfighters) and the morenada (imitating the military), etc.

As time went on, the Castilian language itself began to acquire indigenous terms, principally terms from the Aymara and Quechua languages, with changes in pronunciation. In the western part of Bolivia, the peculiar pronunciation of the Castilian c and z were dropped, and

17


in the eastern part the sibilant s became merely aspirated, giving rise to the Colla and Camba varieties of Castilian, respectively.

A m o n g locally born persons who, during the three centuries of Spanish domination of Charcas or Upper Peru made notable contributions to cultural development, are: Bartolomé Arzans de Orsua y Vela, teacher and historian, author of the monumental work Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí; Melchor Pérez de Holguín, a painter of the Potosí school; Bernardino de Cárdenas, priest and writer, of La Paz, Bishop of Asunción (Paraguay), w h o took noteworthy political action against the Jesuits; Pedro Nolasco Crespo, naturalist, of L a Paz; Francisco Tito Yupanqui, a sculptor, of L a Paz, famous for his image of the Virgin of Copacabana; Julián Apaza, alias Tupac Catari, who led the indigenous peoples’ rebellion of 1781, also of L a Paz; Gaspar Escalona y Agüero, economist and jurist, of Chuquisaca; Antonio de la Calancha, writer, also of Chuquisaca, author of the Crónica Moralizada; Juán Huall- parrimachu, a poet, from Potosí; and Juana Azurduy de Padilla, a lieutenant in the guerilla forces.

From independence up to the present day

There was no peace under the Spanish colonial regime. From the beginning, the altiplano and forest regions were the scene of bloody civil wars between the conquistadors. Later on, abuses on the part of the local authorities brought about insurrections of the people in the cities, such as those of Alejo Calatayud in Cochabamba, Antonio Gallardo in L a Paz and Sebastián Pagador in Oruro. In 1781, the indigenous population raised the standard of revolt on a wide scale, throughout the viceroyalty of Peru and the Audiencia of Charcas (Bolivia), which shook the Spanish colonial structure, but was crushed with terrible bloodshed, its failure being attributed to the lack of sufficient co-ordination between town and country. Then, from 1805 onwards, the Creoles made every effort to launch rebellions against the colonial administrative monopoly, which turned into a struggle for independence.

After the collapse of the revolutions of 16 July 1809 in L a Paz, led by Pedro Domingo Murillo, and 25 M a y 1810 in Chuquisaca, led by the Zudàñez brothers, guerrilla bands were formed which kept fighting until 1825 ; this struggle for independence by the guerrilleros played a decisive part in preventing colonial Peru, which had been turned into a royalist counter-revolutionary stronghold, from crushing the revolutionary centres of Caracas and Buenos Aires.

The war dragged on for sixteen years, but when it was over the establishment of the Republic of Bolívar (later Bolivia) thanks to the invasion of the altiplano by the liberating army under the command of General Antonio José de Sucre, did not change the economic bases

18


of society: it was a political revolution (Spanish landowners being exchanged for Creole ones), but not an economic one. Simón Bolívar’s dream of a single Hispano-American nation turned out to be impracticable when a series of oligarchic, atomized and unstable republics came into being.

During the last years of the nineteenth century, the silver mining industry completely declined. The liberal revolution, led by young anticlericals and partisans of French positivism, led to the transfer of the seat of government from Sucre (formerly Chuquisaca) to La Paz, where the country’s new major industry-tin mining-arose, resulting in the amassing of huge fortunes by Patino, Aramayo and Hochschild. At the same time, British influence was gradually replaced by American as a result of the country’s entry into the dollar zone.

The domination of the ‘tin barons’ and big landowners ended in 1952, when the people rose in arms and the National Revolution began-a liberalizing and democratic process that was part of the move towards decolonization and economic independence made by the Third World. Although many people think that the revolution failed and was inconclusive, merely encouraging counter-revolutionary measures, it is certain that it brought about profound changes in Bolivia through the nationalization of the big mining interests and through the agrarian reform which put an end to the feudal land-owning system and eman- cipated the Indian peasants, turning them into a class of smallholders.

The most important forerunner of that revolution was the Chaco W a r with Paraguay from 1932 to 1935, which ended with the defeat of the Bolivian army and the loss of an immense stretch of territory. The death of 50,000 young men (mostly from the poorer classes) who were killed in battle or succumbed to thirst, hunger and dysentery in the torrid scrubland of the Chaco, produced a deep feeling of resentment among the population, who laid the blame for the disaster on the leaders of the feudal mining oligarchy and on the Standard Oil Company. The new spirit of criticism and revolt was reflected in a powerful literary and artistic movement, of which ‘Chaco literature’ and ‘indigenous painting’ are examples, with a host of thinkers’ and artists who are discussed below.

Present-day Bolivian culture, in its most felicitous manifestations, does not repudiate either its European (paternal) or indigenous (maternal) origins. It takes its mestizo experience over four centuries as its foundation, sublimating that experience, with the sound and laudable aim of creating an art, a literature and, a culture which, while stdl in process of formation, are authentic and varied, and fully representative of the cultural wealth and originality that is specifically Latin American.

19


Bolivia is essentially a multiracial country; in other words, throughout the length and breadth of its territory peoples of different race and language and at different stages of historical development live side by side. Not all of them are treated alike or enjoy the same rights. It is true that the Constitution recognizes the equality of all the inhabitants before the law, but, apart from the social differences between rich and poor, customs prevail and the so-called ‘respectable’ whites, of whatever complexion, show contempt and racial discrimination for the mestizos or cholos and the Indians.

The factors of cultural separation, superimposition and segregation, which produce the sociological phenomena of acculturation and trans- culturation, operate simultaneously with those making for cultural miscegenation or syncretism, but in the opposite direction. Factors of both kinds develop, conflict, repel each other or amalgamate in the same melting-pot, from which, in the long run some new product is bound to emerge. In spite of this, for methodological reasons, w e must consider the pluricultural sitvation in Bolivia, distinguishing between the components of the official Castilian-speaking world and that of the indigenous vernacular languages, which, in turn, m a y be subdivided into two groups: the Indians living in the Andes and those living in the forest.

The Castilian-speaking world

The medium of Bolívia’s written culture is the Castilian language, which abroad is usually referred to as Spanish, although various languages are spoken in Spain. Castilian, then, is the language of official proceedings, everyday living in the towns, the education system and the mass com-

20


munication media. Castilian was the language through which Western culture reached the country and became the most striking and predominant feature of its multifaceted daily life. This most valuable contribution, bequeathed by Spanish colonialism, through which the philosophy, science, literature, art and technology of the West took root in a great part of Latin America-and of course in Bolivia-is what links the country to civilization and makes it a part-though a small part-of that civilization. The ‘Castilianization’ of Bolivians who speak other languages is often regarded as a powerful means of national unification, and whatever the prospects of revivifying and spreading the indigenous languages m a y be, it can be asserted that Castilian-one of the essential languages for integrating Latin America-will become more and more the common language binding together all the peoples and regions of the central part of South America. In Bolivia today, Castilian serves as a bridge connecting the various cultures of the country, as it will in the future.

Some people maintain that Castilian as spoken and written in Bolivia is one of the least-distorted forms of Castilian in South America; but that is true only of the educated classes. In the Castilian spoken by the people in general, indigenous syntactic forms have been grafted on to the grammatical constructions; and in addition the influence of the pre- Columbian languages is perceptible in the many words known as ‘bolivianismos’. The Bolivian form of Castilian is not static or set; it is constantly changing because the atmosphere is different from that of the Iberian peninsula.

The predominant culture of the country is the Western, Castilian- speaking type. Perhaps one of the criticisms that might be levelled at it is that, as in the past, it still fosters Eurocentrism, i.e. admiration for cultural models from the industrialized countries, whose predominance militates against efforts to restore the prestige of what is authentically indigenous. Thus it comes about that literary and artistic schools of thought produce more or less praiseworthy attempts at imitation and good workmanship in a spurious, non-authentic atmosphere of cosmo- politanism. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is found all over Latin America. An example of this tendency towards cultural alienation is the fact that secondary-school history pupils learn more about the Merovingians than about the state of silver mining in the Audiencia of Charcas in the seventeenth century.

Ever since the Bolivian writer Carlos Medinacefi launched a vigorous campaign against phoney culture, forty years ago, there has been a move to renew and review officially accepted values; it m a y be termed ‘cultural nationalism’, and its purpose is to reveal the superstructural identity of Bolivia. It is not a xenophobic kind of nationalism; it does not reject the productions of other countries, but it holds that if such

I productions are to be valid they must be assimilated through

l 21


appropriate and rational selection and acclimatization, the starting-point being the restoration of the prestige of the Bolivian cultural heritage of all periods.

Urus and Chipayas

The Aymara and Quechua cultures were undoubtedly the two most vigorous and highly developed Andean cultures. In pre-Columbian times, when these groups constituted kingdoms or empires, they reiegated other lesser peoples w h o were at a lower evolutionary stage-more or less that of fishing, hunting and gathering wild fruits-to a marginalized position, because they could not assimilate them. The most noteworthy of these Andean marginal cultures, which still exists in our day, are those of the Urus and Chipayas.

The language, dress and customs of the Urus, w h o live in the neigh- bourhood of Lake Poopó, in the Department of Oruro, are different from those of larger indigenous groups. Their contributions to culture, which can be clearly seen in the town of Oruro itself, are the strength of the ties binding the humble folk of the poorer quarters to their original indigenous communities, respect for their authorities, and the widespread worship of their gods: the Old Man, or the ancient god Huari (the vicuña), the toad, the serpent (taking the shape of the surrounding mountains) and the ants which, according to legend, were transformed into the sandy stretches round the town of Oruro.

The Chipayas live close to the River Lauca on the frontier between Bolivia and Chile, in the area of the Coipasa salt swamps, on extremely barren land where they cultivate quinua (pigweed) and raise small flocks of llamas and sheep. Their language and dress also differ from those of the Quechuas and Aymaras; they are gradually abandoning the circular houses they have always lived in, and moving into rectangular ones. Their music, dances and instruments are found nowhere else, and they practise weird rites. Thus, on the Christian All Souls’ D a y (2 November), the Chipayas pay homage to their Achachilas-the Corddlera and the River-in the Catholic church, without a priest, and disinter the remains of their ancestors in order to fête them. Both Urus and Chipayas are n o w assimilating some aspects of civilization and are thus becoming more or less rapidly acculturated.

W e shall n o w consider the major cultures of the Bolivian Andes.

Aymaras

The Aymaras, with their harsh-sounding language, live on the altiplano in the region of L a Paz, partly in Oruro and partly in northern Potosí.

22

I Ethnic groups and pluricultural condition of Bolivia

They are culturally the richest of the indigenous peoples, and their culture permeates the urban environment of the towns in the region. Their myths and legends, songs, dances, masks and other elements of their folklore are of an altogether exceptional variety and exuberance. They have popularized the huayño as a musical instrument, dances such as the llamerada (the ritual dance of the llama herdsmen), chutas (parodies of country life), cullaguada (another ritual dance), etc.

Quechuas

The Quechuas, with their soft-sounding language, which was the official language of the Inca empire, live in Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, partly in Oruro and partly in Potosí, although their influence from the point of view of toponymy and the perpetuation of indigenous words in Castilian extends southwards as far as Tanja and eastwards to Valle- grande. Quechua traditions, legends, theogony, poetry and theatre are most impressive, but their repertoire of songs and folk dances is somewhat more limited than that of the Aymaras. Owing to the fact that the Quechuas are by nature more extrovert than the Aymaras (who are well known for their reserve), their language, as they speak it in Bolivia and particularly in the immediate vicinity of the towns, has been to a large extent distorted through the introduction of Castilian words.

In the country, both Aymaras and Quechuas live in rectangular- shaped, one-roomed houses made of adobe (blocks of sun-dried earth and straw), usually alongside corrals full of animals or actually with them. The m e n wear a fairly Westernized, though old-fashioned, style of clothing, combined with the lluchuchu (in Aymara) or chulu (in Quechua), which is a pointed woollen cap with earflaps, and the poncho, a hybrid or mestizo garment dating back to colonial times (an imitation of the cloak), which is a large, oblong piece of cloth with a slit in the middle for the head. These clothes m a y be either plain or multicoloured. The w o m e n wear a voluminous, many-pleated skirt known as a pollera, a shawl covering their back and shoulders and a hat of varying shape and fabric, depending on the region, which makes it easy to k now where they come from.

The number of Quechuas and Aymaras is reckoned to be about 1.5 million, in each case.

In the most remote places, rites and customs persist of which the Bolivians in the towns know next to nothing. Let us look at two of them.

The tinku, or fight between the tribal communities of the region, is celebrated annually in the region of northern Potosí, where both the Aymara and the Quechua languages are spoken; it is a representation in miniature of the ancient clan wars, under the modern guise of a

23


religious, sporting and spectacular event. The leaders of the neighbouring and rival communities-the Laimes and the Jucumanis-appoint champions who, wearing helmets, breastplates and brassards made of leather and gloves of the same material with an iron casing, engage in a bloody contest, sometimes to their death. If such a tragic outcome is avoided, the general belief is that the gods will send a bad year for the crops. An enormous amount of alcoholic drink is consumed, and sometimes the tinku develops into a pitched battle.

Again, in Potosí, there are communities which celebrate a curious festival during the llamas’ rutting season. The female llamas are shut up in an enclosure and the males are removed to the top of the neighbouring hills. T o the sound of pututus (made of animal horn) and music, the males are released and rush down to meet the females for copulation which will result in increasing the flocks-in the midst of offerings made by the yatiris or witch-doctors to the local gods. W h e n that ceremony is over, the young girls of the community flee across the Countryside, pursued by the young men, and the same ceremony is repeated on a human scale. Such ritual love-encounters usually result in good, solid marriages.

A very deeply rooted cultural and social custom of Quechua-Aymara and other origins is the institution of the tantanacu (a Quechua word), known in the south of Bolivia as sirviñacu. This institution, which is widespread in the countryside and in the poorer quarters of many towns, consists in young couples embarking upon a trial marriage, lasting one or two years (sometimes it is prolonged indefinitely), to see if they can adjust to conjugal life. After that, a civil marriage m a y be celebrated, according to the laws of the Republic, or even a religious one. There is usually no problem about the position of the children, as most fathers recognize them legally. Religious teaching that concubinage is a sin has never had much effect. In view of such overwhelming evidence, both the State Constitution and the Family Statute have been forced to give recognition to the legality of a de facto marriage or union between two persons capable of contracting a legal marriage. Under the laws relating to employment, if a worker dies, wage claims are payable to his concubine, who does not need to produce a civil marriage certificate.

Another flourishing institution of the Aymara and Quechua people is that of the yatiris or witch-doctors. The most famous among them are the Callaguayas, a Quechua-speaking community in the midst of the Aymara territory (presumably as a result of a mitimacu, an Inca system of transferring large communities from one place to another for colon- ization purposes or as a means of collective punishment). The Calla- guayas hand down their knowledge from father to son, speak a mysterious language (supposed to have been the secret language of the Incas), and are indefatigable travellers not only throughout Bolivia but over a large part of South America. They combine an expert knowledge of herbal

24

Ethic groups and pluricultural condition of Bolivia

medicine with various rites, the making of amulets, the art of divination and psychological treatment. It is indicative of the widespread repu- tation and authority acquired by the yatiris that, even among the upper classes, when it is clear that scientific medicine cannot effect a cure in certain clinical cases, the services of the yatiris are invoked in the last resort.

From the remotest times, the handicrafts of the mask-makers and costume-embroiderers for dancers were among the cultural necessities of the people. Nevertheless, until well into the twentieth century, all expressions of the indigenous culture, its religious beliefs, its rites, dances, music, ceremonial dress, language, and so on were despised, repudiated and abhorred by the white Castilian-speaking part of the population. The importance of these expressions of the indigenous culture was not recognized until the Chaco W a r brought together the young people from the country and the city, who shared the suffering of the trenches, and the general discontent crystallized in various governmental attempts at reform, culminating in the nation-wide uprising of 1952, known as the National Revolution. The policy of restoring the prestige of our common heritage, which was introduced in the 1930s, began to yield fruit in the 1960s and 1970s. Indigenous cultural forms of expression are now highly regarded, and it is expected that they will prove to be a great attraction for both national and international tourism. As a result of this change of attitude, the Carnival of Oruro (with its ritual in honour of the god Huari, transposed into an act of homage to the Virgin of Candlemas) and the religious festivals of the Gran Poder (the all-powerful one) in L a Paz, the Virgin of Urkupiña in Quillacollo (Cochabamba), the Virgin of Cotoca in Santa Cruz, the Virgin of Guada- lupe in Entre Ríos (Tarija), etc., are now magnificent. The guilds of mask-makers and costume-embroiderers have surpassed themselves, displaying an extraordinary inventiveness in keeping with tradition and creating ever more exquisite and perfect examples of their work, which is strikingly baroque in style.

One event of special cultural importance has been the emergence from isolation of indigenous groups over the past fifteen or twenty years, thanks to the increased use of transistors, which has brought about

side. The local music of different places rapidly becomes known to all, national and international news reaches the rural areas instantly and, what is very important, the native languages most widely spoken- Quechua and Aymara-are more and more used by the transmitting stations in the morning and, in some cases, the whole time. The consumer market has been the first to take advantage of the increase in the numbers of listeners by endeavouring to persuade the rural people to purchase a variety of articles from all over the world, which they do not need, on the pretext that this is part of civilization. Against this

1

l a veritable revolution in human communication in the Bolivian country-

I 25


negative factor, there is a positive one-albeit accompanied by faults of judgement that m a y readily be imagined: the theatrical and literary broadcasts given in Aymara and Quechua. Compared with the previous total absence of any organized mass culture, this is a step forward, a real advance.

Some years ago, the Technical University of Oruro successfully staged indigenous plays for local audiences and, more recently, in 1976, a theatrical group from Cochabamba adapted for the stage, in Castilian, a series of Quechua folk tales dealing with the subject of cumpa Atoc or Brother Fox, before enthusiastic audiences.

In La Paz, there are two institutions-the Institute for the Teaching of Indigenous Languages and the Municipal Institute of Aymara Culture -concerned with reviving, promoting and developing the Aymara language. One of its leading lights (though of course there are others of great merit) is Professor Juán de Dios Yapita. In Cochabamba, the Portales Cultural Centre and the writer Jesús Lara are the chief promoters of Quechuan culture.

Under the constitution adopted at the time of the National Revol- ution, Castilian, Aymara and Quechua were recognized as the official languages of the country. Under a later constitution (the present one), this provision was revised, and now there is a movement aiming at the legal recognition of those indigenous languages as national languages, as has been done in Peru in the case of Quechuas.

Forest cultures

Prior to the arrival of the Spanish missions in the forest which now forms part of Bolivia, the indigenous population was at various stages of savagery. According to a recent scientific publication: ‘Whereas an economy based on hunting and gathering only enabled groups such as the Aroreods to live at a subsistence level, other groups such as the Mojos, Baures and Chanés, which Epoke Aruak, had reached the threshold of high (Andean) culture’.l

The indigenous forest tribes inhabit the eastern part of Bolivia, from the frontier with Peru and Brazil to the north down to the frontier with Paraguay and Argentina to the south-west. According to research carried out in 1800 by Abbot Lorenzo Herbas, they speak Guarani, Chiquitano and Zamuco. Other writers think that there is a common linguistic stem, the Tupi-Guarani language. According to the 1950 census, there was a total of only 87,000 forest dwellers, as compared with 3 million or so indigenous inhabitants of the Andean zone. The tribal populations

1. Jiirgen Riester, E n Busca de la Loma Santa, p. 343, La Paz-Cochabamba, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1976.

26


were and are extremely variable. Towards the end of the 19609, the Summer Language Institute, which is in charge of Protestant and evangelizing missions, supplied the following figures: Araonas, 43 ; Ayoreos, 4,000-5,000; Cavinefíos, 800; Cayubabas, 75 ; Chacobos, 170; Chanés, 3,000; Chimanes, 700; Chiquitanos, 20,000; Guarayos, 5,000; Ignacianos, 3,000 ; Itén-Moré, 150; Itonamas, 3,000; Kanichanas, 75 ; Lecos, 50; Matacos, 500; Yuracarés, 500.l

It is widely believed that the Indians of the tropical zone are ‘irrational creatures, similar to animals’. Such an oversimplified notion is completely false, since the so-called ‘savage’ groups possess everything that m a y be called culture, that is to say, a body of knowledge, beliefs, moral and religious systems, artistic forms of expression and pratiral skills applicable to everyday life.

During the colonial period, the only people w h o achieved any real success in bringing together the wild people of the tropical plains in communities and persuading them to settle were the Jesuits. F r o m their headquarters in Paraguay, they organized a vast territory on an economically self-supporting basis, taking advantage of the fact that the local tribes knew nothing of private property to introduce a system like that of the Incas, i.e. collectivized agricultural communes under the supervision of a planning and paternalistic body of missionaries belonging to the Society of Jesus. The period between the establishment of the Jesuit settlements (a measure taken by Spain to contain Portuguese encroachments from Brazil) and the expulsion of the Society in 1767 was the only one since the conquest during which the inhabitants were to enjoy a certain degree of prosperity, thanks to the increase in production, the introduction of skills unknown until then, the teaching of the catechism, and religious canticles and music-although, of course, the major part of what they produced passed into the hands of those in charge. With regard to Catholicism, the same thing happened as elsewhere: animism continued to prevail, through the veneration of the images of the saints, or camouflaged beneath it.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits, a decline set in, and m a n y of the Indians %ed to the depths of the forest and resumed their old no,madic habits. ‘It is no exaggeration to say’, writes the historian Enrique Finot, ‘that the decadence into which the province of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and its dependencies of Mojo and Chiquito Indians were plunged on account of this persists to this day’.2

The transfer of the settlements to the Spanish colonial civil administration did not raise any major problems. This is h o w B. Fischermann

1. Walter Hermosa Vireira, ‘Estudio Sumario de los Grupos Selvícolas de Bolivia’, Puma Punku, No. 2 (second half of 1970 and first half of 1971), p. 78. (Published by the Instituto de Cultura Aymara de la H. Municipalidad, La Paz.)

2. Enrique Fiuot, Nueva Historia de Bolivia, 5th ed., p. 122, La Paz, Editorial Gisbert y Cia, S.A. Libreros Editores, 1976.

27


and Jiirgen Riester describe the process: ‘The Jesuits did not teach them [the Indians] to conceive of the system as capable of existing outside the settlement; consequently the taking over of the settlements by non-Jesuits was able to proceed without disturbances, except for a few minor incidents, and in this way control over entire populations was secured.’l

A new type of penetration of the Bolivian forest by whites took place towards the end of the last century and in the early years of the present one, with the increasing demand for rubber for the purposes of modern international industry, especially as a result of the growing use of motor- ized transport. Due to the need for cheap manpower, company managers and recruiters of labour used every possible means, ranging from gross deception to atrocious forms of violence, to turn the Indians into a servile labour force. W h e n the rubber boom ended and synthetic substitutes were introduced, the Indians partially returned to their old nomadic ways.

Present-day activities-farming and stock-breeding, tapping rubber trees and gathering chestnuts-have produced as destructive a situation as the one just described, owing to the degeneration and disintegration of the way of life and culture of the surviving tribes. Jiirgen Riester, w h o m w e have already mentioned, asserts that the Bolivian forest groups are undergoing rapid cultural annihilation; 70.8 per cent of them are threatened with extermination, and about 55 per cent of these will not survive to the end of the present decade; 30 per cent would probably be able to survive if they were to receive adequate assistance, but none seems to be forthcoming.

A perverted civilization such as that of our own day, not content with destroying the whale, the tiger, the seal, the vicuña, the chinchilla and the alligator, wipes out frail, savage or semi-savage human groups that ought to be rescued. Are Bolivians to sound the knell-perhaps before this present generation disappears-for the final extinction of large groups of Indians living in the torrid region of our country?

W e should remember that although a pluralistic and multilingual culture m a y to some extent impede the expansion of our market economy, those very attributes are of immense potential value for developing a rich and varied national life and culture, if the means for making them viable are used in time.

1. Riester, op. cit., p. 344

28

Literature and the arts

W e shall deal briefly with the nineteenth century, mentioning a few odtstanding names, and then turn to the twentieth century, which is of greater interest.l

In 1825, having achieved its political independence from Spain after fifteen years of bloddy civil war, the country fell into the hands of military leaders, and the establishment of its institutions and independence took a very long time. Not until the victory at Ingavi, in 1841, was it able to gain its independence from Peru. But in the disastrous war of 1879, when it was allied with Peru against Chile, it lost its extensive stretch of coast on the Pacific and has since remained landlocked.

Having cast off the influence of Spain, the governing classes proceeded to imitate British and French fashions, forms of government, literary schools, and so on.

The greatest nineteenth-century writer was Gabriel René Moreno, of Santa Cruz, a highly prolific historian and critic. His principal books are Ultimos Días Coloniales en el Alto Perú, Las Matanzas de Yáñez, Ayacucho en Buenos Aires y Prevaricación de Rivadavia, Estudios de Literatura Boliviana. Another notable figure, this time in the domain of the novel, is Nataniel Aguirre, of Cochabamba, author of Juán de la Rosa, Memorias del Ultimo Soldado de la Independencia, which is regarded as one of the best works of fiction produced in South America during the last century. Another outstanding writer is Emeterio Villamil de Rada, a philologist, and author of a most extraordinary and original work, L a Lengua de Adán; he only published a summary of this work

1. For a more detailed survey of the subjects dealt with here, the reader is referred to: Augusto Guzmán, Poetas y Escritores de Bolivia, La Paz, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1975, 273 p. ; Mariauo Baptista Gumucio, Historia Contemporánea de Bolivia, La Paz, Editorial Gisbert, 1976, 381 p.

29


which contains m a n y arguments in support of the theory that the Aymara language is the mother tongue of the h u m a n race. His voluminous output, in manuscript form, was destroyed in a fire, and he ended by committing suicide. Other outstanding figures are the blind poetess María Josefa Mujía, the historian Manuel José Cortés, the poets Ricardo José Bustabente, Felix Reyes Ortíz and Manuel José Tovar, and the writers Modesto Omiste, Julio Lucas Jaimes, Santiago Vaca Guzmán, Mariano Baptista and Rosendo Villalobos.

Literature

There are three widely known names in the early decades of this century: Franz Tamayo, a great poet (La Prometheida, Nuevos Rubayat, Scherzos), a penetrating writer and an educationist with original ideas (La Creación de la Pedagogía Nacional) ; Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (Castalia Bárbara, Los Sueños son Vida), who, with Rubén Darío, introduced modernism into Latin America; and Gregorio Reynolds (El Cofre de Psiquis, Prisma, Illimani), who wrote in all the poetic forms, achieving special distinction with the sonnet.

The names of Oscar Cerruto, Yolanda Bedregal, Guillermo Viscarra Fabre, Octavio Campeso Echazú and Oscar Alfaro, in successive gener- ations of poets, occupy an important place in Bolivian literature, as do also Juan Capriles, José Eduardo Guerra, Javier del Granado, Antonio Avila Jiménez, Primo Castrillo, Raúl Otero Reiche, Fernando Ortíz Sanz, Jesús Lara, Armando Soriano Badani, Julio de la Vega, Luis Mendizábal Santa Cruz, Lucio Diez de Medina, Luis Ameller Ramallo, Federico Delós, Héctor Cossío Salinas, Oscar Rivera Rodas, Mery Flores Saavedra, Alcira Cardona Torrico, Jaime Saenz, Gonzalo Vásquez, Jorge Suárez, Edmundo Camargo, Jaime Canelas, Silvia Mercedes Avila, Nora Zapata, Jaime Choque &ta, Ambrosio García Rivera, Hernando García Vespa. A m o n g the younger generation w e m a y add Pedro Shimose, Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón, Eduardo Mitre, Waldo Lizón and Diego Torres.

Our review of Bolivian literature would be incomplete if w e did not give the reader at least some idea of developments with respect to narrative prose. W e shall mention only the most outstanding works of the past fifty years, but reference to a few novels of an earlier period seems to be indispensable, in view of the exceptional importance of certain works in a domain which is far from rich in noteworthy literature of this kind.

Raza de Bronce by Alcides Arguedas, which is regarded as the first realist South American novel, is a moving denunciation of the exploitation and degradation of the Indian. It was given a unanimous and enthusiastic reception by critics the world over, and its numerous

30


editions attest to its enduring significance. Written in a vigorous and realistic style, it denounces the enforced submission of the Indian and describes the splendours of the desolate scenery on the majestic altiplano and the mild, peaceful valleys, the background against which the action of this novel with its strong social and regional flavour, takes place.

Jaime Mendoza, a famous sociologist, historian and poet, is another writer renowned for his novels, written in an austere style which earned him the nickname of the ‘Bolivian Gorky’. His principal novels are En las Tierras del Potosí and Páginas Bárbaras. The former, published in 1911, gives the first realistic description of conditions in the mines from a social point of view, showing the arduous living conditions and exploitation of the workers, although its simple narrative plot points to no reformist solution, nor does it make any demands. The latter, published in 1914, is a novel dealing with the forest and the rubber industry in the north-east of the country. It is a densely packed novel of the tropics, describing the various aspects of man’s exploitation by man, his moral wretchedness, destitution and misfortune. There are poetic descriptions of the beauties of nature in this novel, whose intrinsic value is heightened by the fact that it was published ten years before La Vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera.

After the publication of important novels such as L a Candidatura de Rojas by Armando Chirveches, Aguas Estancadas by Demetrio Canelas, Intimas by Adela Zamudio and Lágrimas Indias by Guillén Pinto, the Chaco W a r brought new themes into the novel, based on individual experience, with social and revolutionary repercussions owing to the nature and magnitude of the struggle. This produced a realistic and naturalistic type of war novel, combining individual first-hand experience with the fictional element which is an essential characteristic of such literature.

Furthermore, the novel dealt with the social situation, being full of descriptions of mining and agricultural conditions couched in terms of denunciation and protest, particularly in the period before the nationalization of the mines (1952) and the Agrarian Reform (1953) which changed the inspirational motive, although some writers continued to write about themes which had become quite anachronistic.

Of course, the inhabitants and scenery of the altiplano, the tropics and the sweltering valleys are still described in the novel, but in our day its principal themes are different, new psychological material has been introduced, and, especially, new technical expedients and literary methods taken over from contemporary trends in narrative prose are n o w employed.

Following the same chronological order, the principal novels from the Chaco W a r onwards m a y be listed as follows: Prisionero de Guerra, by Augusto Guzmán, which is based on the Chaco

campaign, describes the life of a captive in Paraguay, in a lofty,

31


extremely graphic style springing from the author’s own experiences. Caucho, by Diómedes de Pereyra, a long and attractive story about the

rubber industry. It has a gripping plot and is written in a natural, elegant style and with a sound knowledge of the subject.

Aluvión de Fuego, by Oscar Cerruto, an important novel of definite revolutionary inspiration, dealing with topics such as the feeling of isolation that war brings, the harrying of those lying in ambush, the Indian uprisings and their bloody suppression, mining, and other themes, treated in a distinctive poetic style befitting a writer who is also one of the country’s outstanding poets.

Altiplano, by Raúl Botelho Gosálvez, a versatile writer who has produced a number of novels. In this work, with its local realism, he describes the life of the indigenous population in its struggle against adversities that are due to the environment. It is a vigorous song of the earth, couched in magnificent prose. M e n and scenery are described with penetrating accuracy and ennobled by the quality of his style.

L a Punta de los Cuatro Degollados, by Roberto Leytón, describes the tragic intensity of trench warfare in sober language which testifies to the veracity of the description.

Tierras Hechizadas, by Adolfo Costa du Rels, who writes in a spare, dignified style, is about rural feudalism in the region of Parapetí (Gran Chaco). The writer is skilful with dialogue and has a flowing, poetic narrative style. H e has recently published Los Andes no Creen en Dios.

L a Virgen de las Siete Calles, by Alfredo Flores, is a distinguished regional novel, the scene of which is set in Santa Cruz. The setting is attractive and the love intrigue, which takes place in a forbidding atmosphere, is dealt with in a restrained manner.

El Precursor, by Manuel Frontaura Argandoña, an attractive novel, with a colonial background, based on the legendary life of José Alonso de Ibáñez (Alonso Yáñez). Its literary qualities have been rightly acclaimed by the critics, who have compared it to the famous novel by Larreta, L a Gloria de Don Ramiro.

L a Niña de sus Ojos, by Antonio Díaz Villamil, is a good example of costumbrismo (the depiction of regional customs and manners) and displays considerable psychological penetration. It is a detailed study of a birlocha (young half-breed girl) caught in the cross-fire of the social prejudices of a narrow and backward society. The psychology of the various characters is delineated in a clear, straightforward manner.

Yanacuna, by Jesús Lara, is a social plea for the indigenous population. This author’s entire work, which is marked by a genuine realism, is characterized by his researches into the life of the peasants and his championship of their cause.

Metal del Diablo, by Augusto Céspedes, is an impassioned analysis of

32

The Señor de lu. Columna in the Church of San Lorenzo, at Potosí. a sculpture of the colonial period.

An Aymara woman learning to read at night class. As she has nowhere to leave her child she brings him with her. Instruction is given in Castilian, the official language of Bolivia.

Aymara dancers in a festival on the altiplano, near the town of L a Paz.

' Callawayas' (or indigenous doctors) of Charazani, before setting out on one of their periodic journeys. Note the bag for carrying their herbs and medicines.

I Photos: The author, the Bolivian Tourist Institute and the newspaper UIfima Hora


the dreadful conditions in the tin-mining industry, exposing its methods of operation and its connection with the domestic economy and the international market. The chief character is an unvarnished portrait of the tycoon Patiño, seen against an unrelieved background of darkness. The author, w h o is famous for his penetrating and brilliant style, gives some masterly descriptions of local characters and scenery.

L a Ilustre Ciudad, by Tristán Marof, is a light-hearted sardonic costumbrista novel, the scene of which is laid in the town of Sucre. Various representatives of Chuquisaca society are described in a piquant, racy style and in simple language.

Chaskaíiawi, by Carlos Medinaceli, is a profound study of the conflicting feelings that arise when a young white m a n marries a mestizo girl. This costumbrista novel, describing village life and customs, contains characters drawn with sound psychological acumen, and shows the author's exceptional gifts as a novelist.

Socavones de Angustia, by Fernando Ramírez Velarde, is a novel about mining. There are no revolutionary undercurrents, but it gives a clear, careful description of the arduous conditions in the mines, through the experiences of a peasant family obliged to leave the land.

Trópico del Norte, by Nazario Pardo Valle, is a masterly and realistic description of the rubber industry in Caupolicán (La Paz). The competition for work on the rubber plantations and the inevitable frustra- tion give the story a dramatic quality, and there are also some fine descriptions of tropical scenery.

Los Deshabitados, by Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, marks the beginning of a new stage in the history of the Bolivian novel. With its pronounced subjectivity and existentialist introspection, it departs from traditional forms both in theme and in structure. The characters, drawn with psychological insight and described in an elegant and flowing style, are shown against an unsubstantial background that could be anywhere.

L a M u ñ a ha Vuelto a Florecer, by Hernando Sanabria Fernández, is a delightful, well-written, costumbrista novel; the action takes place in a small town.

Requiem para una Rebeldía, by José Fellmann Velarde, is a story of political desertion, in which ingenious structural techniques such as the independence of narrative levels are used. Its ingenious plot, developed in a flowing style, marks it out as representative of the new novel.

Mateo Montemayor, by Fernando Diez de Medina, is mainly a description of Bolivian political life, although the book is not without sentiment, emotion and expressions of personal thoughts.

L a Pequeña Hermana Muerte, by Enrique Kempff Mercado, is a delightful

33


novel with an oriental setting. The style, which reflects modern trends, is graceful, lively and of considerable distinction.

Los Fundadores del Alba, by Renato Prada Oropeza, a novel based on guerrilla warfare, has achieved continent-wide fame through being awarded the Cuban Casa de las Américas prize. It combines vigorous narrative qualities with skilful handling of dialogue expressed in a style representative of current trends.

Bajo el Oscuro Sol, by Yolanda Bedregal, is a novel with poetic overtones, written in a clear style and dealing with fundamental h u m a n themes. The ingenious plot is laid in L a Paz.

Matías, el Apóstol Suplente, by Julio de la Vega, a gay, satirical book, deals side by side with two themes different both in time and character (the Bible and guerrilla warfare); they are subtly combined in the flowing narrative, which is recounted in a poetic style.

Mundo Extraño, by Edgar Cevallos Condarco, is a vivid, strange and h u m a n story in a relatively small compass. The theme of mental disturbance, as revealed and explained by the disturbed person, is developed in a style combining personal narrative, description and dialogue, which displays undoubted literary talent.

Other important novels published during the last fifty years are: L a Sima Fecunda, by Augusto Guzmán; El Valle del Sol, by Diómedes de Pereyra; La Bestia Emocional, by Porfirio Díaz Machicao; Tierra Chúcara, by Raúl Botolho Gosálvez; El Sol se Iba, by José Felipe Costas Aquedas; Siringa, by Juan B. Coimbra; Cuando Vibraba la Entraña de Plata, by José Enrique Viaíia; Sumuqué, by Humbert0 Guzmán Arze; Inundación, by Luciano Durán Bóger; Sujnapura, by Jesús Lara;El Hombre que Soñaba, by Oscar Barbery Justiniano; L a Cruz del Sur, by Fernando Ortíz Sanz; M á z All6 del Horizonte and Guano Maldito, by Joaquín Aguirre Lavayén; El Miedo Bajo las Campanas, by Luis E. Heredia; L a Laguna H3, by Adolfo Costa du Rels; Trópico Enamorado, by Augusto Céspedes; Tirinea, by Jesús Uzzagasti; Sombra de Exilio, by hturo von Vacano; El Ocaso de Orión, by Oscar Uzín Fernández; Lina, by Paz Nery Nava; Los Vulnerables, by Gaby Vallejo de Bolivar; Los Réprobos, by Fernando Vaca Toledo; and Casa Superior, by Peter Lewy. In La Telaraña, Hugo Boero Rojo deals with the theme of exile-a constant feature of Bolivian life-with particular skill, and in El Valle del Cuarto Menguante, he denounces in vigorous terms the new political forms of unpaid service for Indians introduced after the Agrarian Reform; while in Medio Siglo de Milagros, by Enrique Rocha Monrroy, Bolivia enters the field of Latin American fiction dealing with dictators, but does so with originality and an extraordinary sense of humour.

In the case of the short story, two main currents-naturalism and contemporary neo-realism-are discernible from the Chaco W a r onwards, although other trends and forms of expression are found. T o the former

1 Literature and the arts

belong such writers as Antonio Díaz Villamil, Luis Toro Ramallo, Josermo Murillo Vacarreza, Enrique Kempff Mercado, Humberto Guzmán Arze, Walter Montenegro, Rafael Ulises Peláez, Raúl Leytón, Fernando Diez de Medina and Ruben Ochoa. Naturalist writers include Oscar Cerruto, Augusto Guzmán, Raúl Botelho Gosálvez, Oscar Soria Gamarra, Grover Suárez, Nestor Taboada Terán, Gastón Suárez, Adolfo Cáceres, Raúl Teixidó, Oscar Barbery Justiniano, Alfredo Medrano, Edmundo Heredia, Enrique Rocha Monroy, Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón, Roberto Laserna.

Bolivia has also produced some fine essayists such as Franz Tamayo, Bautista Saavedra, Alcides Arguedas, Juan Francisco Bedgregal, José Antonio Arze ; and, among contemporary writers, Carlos Medinaceli, Carlos Montenegro, José Antonio Arze, Ricardo Anaya, Guillermo Francovich, Roberto Prudencio, Fernando Diez de Medina, Gustavo Navarro (Tristán Marof), Augusto Guzmán, M a n Césped, Manfred0 Kempff Mercado, Walter Hermosa Virreira, Gustavo Adolfo Otero, Rubén Carrasco de la Vega, Alipio Valencia Vega, Arturo Urquidi, Sergio Almaráz Paz, Jorge Siles Salinas, Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas, René Ballevian Calderón, Arturo Vilela, Mario Rolón Anaya, Mario Miranda Pacheco, Carlos Ponce Sanjinés, Guillermo Lora, Fausto Reynaga, René Zavaleta, Fernando Baptista Gumucio, Mario Arancibia Herrera, Orlando Capriles Villazón, A m a d o Canelas, Edgar Camacho Omiste, Mario Pando Monje, Guillermo Bedregal, Jaime Martínez Salguero, Alfredo Medrano, Salvador Romero, R a m ó n Rocha Monroy.

A m o n g critics, since the disappearance of the really great figures of Carlos Medinaceli, Enrique Finot and Gustavo Adolfo Otero, the following stand out: Juan Quirós, Augusto Guzmán, Fernando Diez de Medina, Armando Soriano Badani, Oscar Rivera Rodas, Carlos Castañón Barrientos, Juan Siles Guevara, Edgar Avila Echazú.

The modern Bolivian theatre is represented by playwrights of quality such as Sergio Suárez, Julio de la Vega, Gastos Suárez, Raúl Salm&, Renato Crespo and Guido Calavi. W e should also mention Adolfo Costa du Rels, whose plays in French have met with striking success among both critics and the public in Europe.

The writers of historical works include Humberto Vásquez Machicado, Augusto Guzmán, Ramiro Condarco Morales, Manuel Frontaura Argan- doña, Rodolfo Salamanca L a Fuente, Valentin Abecia Baldivieso, José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert de Mesa, Moisés Alcázar, Jorge Escobari Cusicanqui, Eduardo Arce Quiroga, Alberto Crespo Rodas, Arturo Costa de la Torre, Roberto Querejazú, Hernando Sanabria Fernández, Gunnar Mendoza, Joaquín Gantier, Gonzalo Romero A.G., José Luis Roca, Teodosio Imaña Castro, Carlos Serrate Reich, M a n a Eugenia del Valle de Siles; and, among the younger generation, Alcides Pareja, Florencia Ballivian de Romero, René Arce and Fernando Cajías.

Nearly all the above-mentioned have also engaged in journalism, sometimes as directors of newspapers or periodicals, in other cases as

I

’

I

35


columnists or commentators. However, among those w h o have taken up journalism as a profession (though in some cases engaging in other forms of literary production) w e m a y mention Huáscar Cajías, Armando Mariaca Valdez, Renán Estenssoro A., Guillermo Céspedes Rivera, Mario Guzmán Aspiazu, Victor Santa Cruz, Jacobo Libermann, Alberto Zuazo Nathes, Luis Raúl Durán, Ricardo Ocampo, Hugo Gonzáles Rioja, Alfonso Prudencio (Paulovich), Eduardo Ocampo MOSCOSO, Samuel Mendoza, Gonzalo López Muñoz, María Elba Gutierrez, Ana María Romero de Campero, Alberto Bailey Gutiérrez, Jaime Humerez S., René López Murillo, Mario Guzmán Galarza, Ted Córdova Claure, Jorge Carrasco, Carlos Canelas, Juan Pereira Fiorilo, Herberto Añez, Raúl Rivadeneira.

Architecture

Bolivian architecture over the last fifty years is the reflection and material expression of a static and isolated society. Despite the fact that the principal architectural ideas of this century were formulated prior to the year 1920, the few architects w h o m the country has produced have, on the one hand, ignored the aesthetic principles which form the basis of contemporary architectural design and, on the other, interpreted them wrongly, copying the external appearance of buildings put up in other countries as representative of the n e w ideas. Similarly, during the past few decades, the hotchpotch of styles, irrational organization of space and destruction of historic buildings of which Bolivian architects have been guilty have done much to destroy the aesthetic values of the urban fabric in cities that have expanded rapidly. Although the h u m a n scale has been preserved in the smaller towns, it is likely to be destroyed at the national level, owing to the false idea of the meaning of progress. Only recently has any attempt been made to introduce coherent urban planning which could safeguard the country’s architectural heritage and check purely speculative growth.

It would be easy enough to draw up a list of Bolivian architects who champion an untenable neo-colonialism or a pseudo-Bauhaus style or admirers of Art Deco or of L e Corbusier, or those who, guided by intuition, try to imitate the extravagant shapes of Oscar Niemeyer. But such a list would be of no value, since few among them have made any attempt to produce anything authentic and creative within the context of their personal convictions. Most of them have been mere imitators. However, there are a few very talented architects w h o deserve mention: Julio Mariaca Pando, Emilio Villanueva, Alberto Iturralde, Ernesto Pérez Rivero and Oscar Cortés Valda.

A group of architects has arisen during the 1970s w h o take ‘organic architecture’ (the outstanding exponent of which was Frank Lloyd

36

Literature and the arta

Wright) as their basis. They seek to introduce ideas such as respect for nature, maintenance of the ecological balance, the human dimension, the importance of spatial relations between buildings and groups of buildings, and the identification of a work of architecture with the locality in which it is situated. The Cochabamba school, the leaders of which are Jorge Aramburu and Gustavo Medeiros, is inspired by that philosophy, but tends towards a down-to-earth brutalist style. Marco Quiroga, w h o showed great promise and artistic feeling, died prematurely. Juan Carlos Calderón, w h o is preoccupied with the idea of movement, regards a building as a series of dynamic spaces which correspond both to the individual person’s movement from place to place and to the development of the building’s o w n individual structure in time.

Bolivian architecture is inevitably an expression of the change that has taken place in Bolivian society during this century. It was Frenchified up to the time of the Chaco War, when the governing classes hankered after the stable and civilized amenities of Paris, which they were always visiting. It then became Germanized and North-Americanized between 1935 and 1950, its curved walls and tubular window bars reflecting the influence of the two major powers of the moment. Subsequently, with the gradual decline in the influence of the United States and the rise of n e w governing classes, not always with m u c h aesthetic or cultural sense, it began to produce a number of hybrid styles utterly lacking in taste, philosophical basis, raison d’être or feeling. The almost exclusive motive, which is that of pecuniary gain, is at present producing outsize dehumanized edifices. This is especially true of L a Paz; the city is situated in a narrow bowl, and its beautiful colonial layout, with nineteenth- century-style additions, remained up to the time of the Chaco War, but it is n o w smothered in the ugliest of ‘functional’ buildings, which compete with each other in height, deprive the streets of the magnificent sunshine of the past and turn the city into an increasingly unpleasant and gloomy place.

Painting and sculpture

A m o n g the different forms of expression of Bolivian culture, few are so prolific as the visual arts. There are m a n y professional painters specializing in oil, water-colour, engraving or other techniques, w h o are raising the standard of national art production. The standard of sculpture is not so high, although some of the few sculptors have achieved fame and prestige.

The chief post-war artist is, undoubtedly, Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas, w h o was trained at a school of arts, but possesses a free, adventurous spirit; he is outstanding among Bolivian painters. A consummate

37


portrait painter and a penetrating student of morphology, he paints Indians with distinctive faces-though not necessarily unlike the model-and has an unusual way of seeing the indigenous peoples. His vast range of activities includes impressionistic landscape painting, and he is noted for his innovations in materials and techniques. In his time, he was one of the most important painters in Latin America.

Other important painters are Raúl G. Prada, Mario Unzueta and Daniel Peña Sarmiento, a landscape painter of the valleys w h o paints in the impressionist and post-impressionist style, and is still producing excellent work. Then there are David Crespo Gastelú, a historical realist painter; Gil Coimbra, with his colourful indigenous painting, imbued with the spirit of the Chacos; Arturo Borda, a painter of portraits and the Andean landscape, and, lastly, Armando Pacheco, whose paintings show the influence of cubism. Engraving, in the form of etchings and woodcuts, is also flourishing, the leaders in this sphere being G u z m á n de Rojas, Arturo Reque Meruvia, Gastón Ibáñez, Manolo Fuentes Lira, Mario Illanes and Pablo Iturri Jurado (Ramón Katari). Their work is predominantly of indigenous inspiration.

In sculpture, classical forms prevailed, in the works of Alejandro Guardia, w h o produced some noteworthy busts and monuments, until the appearance of Marina Núñez del Prado, whose stylized originality has made her the most important sculptor in the country.

Today there are innumerable painters, m a n y of w h o m support different schools of thought, ranging from absolute realism to impres- sionism, cubism, expressionism, surrealism, primitivism and naïve painting, and abstract art, with its cinematographic and neo-plastic derivatives. A m o n g them w e m a y mention: Gildaro Antezana, Antonio Mariaca, Gil and Jorge Imaná, Armando Pacheco, Walter Solón Romero, Carmen Baptista, Graciela Rodo Boulanger, Roberto Guardia Berdecio, Inés Córdova, Raúl Mariaca, Fernando Montes, Rudy Ayoroa, Manuel Iturri, Alberto Medina Mendieta, Maria Teresa Berrios, Yolanda de Aguirre, Gerardo Zurita, Alfredo L a Placa, Enrique Amal, Humbert0 Jaimes Zuna, Agnes de Franck, Ricardo Pérez Alcalá, Oscar Pantoja, María Esther Ballivían, Beatriz Mendieta, Gustavo Medeiros, Jorge Ugarte, Tito Kuramotto, Alfredo Domínguez, Erasmo Zarzuela, Magda Arguedas, David Pringle, Willy Machicado, Alberto Medina, Moisés Chire Barrientos, Lorgio Vaca, Alfredo D a Silva, Gonzalo Ribero, Luis Angel Aranda, Mario Velasco, Fausto Aoiz, Juan Ortega Leytón, Luis Zilvetti, Edgar Arandia, María Cristina Endara, Silvia Peííaloza. M a n y others could be added to this list, which shows the country’s high level of attainment in the visual arts today.

In the case of sculpture, besides Marina Núñez del Prado, w e m a y mention the late Emiliano Luján, w h o produced notable work, as have the brothers R a d , Walter and César Terrazas. The monumental sculpture of Ted Carrasco and the works of Victor Zapana are also of interest.

38


Music

The cou try is extraordinarly rich in folk music; in the Andean region alone there are over 500 different dances. From time to time, some enterprising foreign impresario taps this reservoir for songs, which captivate the public in all parts of the world, though people are not aware that they come from the altiplano of Bolivia. The massive exodus of Bolivian farm-hands to neighbouring countries, particularly Argentina and Chile, is partly responsible for the loss of this autochthonous music, which is afterwards thought to have originated in those countries. Such is the unhappy fate of works of art that are of anonymous inspiration and come from the people.

A m o n g the composers of Bolivian music are Simeón Roncal, Eduardo Caba, Teófilo Vargas, Eduardo Berdecio, Adrián Patiño, José María Velasco Maidana, Antonio Gonzáles Bravo, Humbert0 Viscarra Monje, and, among the younger generation, Antonio Montes Calderón, Hugo Patiíío, Jaime Mendoza, Gustavo Navarre, Antonio Ibáííez, Atiliano Auza and Alberto Villalpando.

Cinema

The ‘pre-history’ of the Bolivian cinema lasted from the beginning of the century up to the end of the Chaco War, when there were isolated attempts to make fdms that have been more or less forgotten. Then, in 1953, the government established the Cinematographic Institute, which was intended to advocate revolutionary action. T w o years later, however, Jorge Ruiz produced a short film of poignant beauty, a hymn addressed to a human community in process of extinction-the Chipayas-entitled Vuelve Sebastiana. This was followed by various small productions, such as U k u m a u and Pro-Inca, which survived, though they had to overcome m a n y obstacles. The full-length film L a Vertiente, again by Jorge Ruiz, also belongs to this period. Oscar Soria was responsible for the script of both films.

The excellent documentaries by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, w h o organized Telecine, belong to the same period.

The U k a m a u group has already w o n eleven prizes at various international festivals (Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Leipzig, Mérida, Venice, Berlin), ranging from its first documentary, Revolución, to its full-length films of political protest-Aisa, Ukamau, Yawar Mallcu-produced by Jorge Sanjinés, w h o is considered to be one of the best exponents of the N e w Latin American Cinema, as it is called. Some prominent European critics think that his film El Coraje de un Pueblo is one of the twenty best films in the history of the cinema. Yet another film produced by the group is Pueblo Chico, by Antonio Eguino; Oscar Soria was again

39


responsible for the script. These few successful attempts prove the capacity of Bolivian producers beyond a doubt; with a little freedom and encouragement they are capable of producing films that show the agitated and thought-provoking life of a country like Bolivia, which has such a rich variety of human characters and of scenery.

40

Educational systems and problems facing them

The crisis in Bolivian education is neither n e w nor exceptional; it stems from the country’s colonial past, and is part of the world crisis affecting school systems. It is a crisis that is familiar enough to research workers, for m a n y foreign experts and national commissions have studied conditions in Bolivia-more than in most Latin American countries-naturally with a non-retrievable expenditure of economic resources. For instance, the following major studies and documents on the Bolivian educational system in relation to the country’s financial, material and h u m a n resources have been produced in the last two decades:

Código de la Educación [Education Statute] (Villagomez Plan), 1955. Informe al Gobierno de Bolivia sobre Diversos Aspectos de Formación Profesional

[Report to the Government of Bolivia on Various Aspects of Professional Training], Geneva, ILO, 1955, 1961, 2 vol.

Informe Gotzer [Gotzer Report], Unesco, 1962. Albert Lhoir, Informe al Gobierno de Bolivia sobre Educación Obrera [Report

to the Government of Bolivia on Workers’ Education], Geneva, ILO, 1962. Informe a la III Reunión de Ministros de Educación [Report to the Third Meeting

of Ministers of Education], Bogotá, 1963. Informe Dumwoody sobre Educación Técnica [Dumwoody Report on Technical

Education], 1966. Informe Popescu sobre Recursos Humanos en Bolivia [Popescu Report on

Manpower Resources in Bolivia], ILO, 1967. Informe de la Universidad de Ohio sobre Recursos Humanos [Report by the

University of Ohio on Manpower Resources], 1966. Informe McClurkin sobre Edificios Escolares [McClurkin Report on School

Buildings], 1968. Informe al Banco Mundial sobre la Educación en Bolivia [Report by the World

Bank on Education in Bolivia], 1968. Programa Nacional de Alfabetización [National Literacy Programme], 1970.

41


Estrategia del Desarrollo [Development Strategy], La Paz, Ministry of Planning, 1970, 2 vol.

Informe de una Comisión Nacional del Ministerio de Educación de 200 Comisionados [Report by a 200-member National Commission of the Ministry of Education], 1971.

Ministry of Co-ordination and Planning, Plan Quinquenal de Desarrollo Económico y Social [Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development], 1976.

Informe de Saint Joseph State College sobre Reforma Administrativa del Ministerio de Educación [Report by Saint Joseph State College on Administrative Reforms of the Ministry of Education], 1972.

Diagnóstico del Sistema Educativo [The Situation of Education], Ministry of Education and Culture, 1975, 16 vol.

Except for a more or less partial application of the findings of the surveys carried out, the huge quantity of documents produced on the educational problems of the country seems to be destined for the archives. In addition, the various reforms and counter-reforms of the education and university system have led to a profusion of governmental laws and resolutions of a normative character.

The crisis continues, for the structural problems have not been solved, as w e shall see.

Illiteracy and the literacy campaign

The Ministry of Co-ordination and Planning gives the following account of the situation:

In 1975, the Bolivian school-age population (6-19) was about 2,320,000, or 40 per cent of the total population. If to this figure is added the potential population at the level of higher education (20-29)-i.e. 937,000 people-we obtain a figure of 3,257,000 for the total population at all levels of education, or 57 per cent of the total population of the c0untry.l

The last population and housing census, held towards the end of 1976, indicated that the population had fallen a little-to about 4,687,718 inhabitants (5,410,000 according to the Economic Commission for Latin America’s previous estimate). In 1952, when the National Revolution took place, over 75 per cent of the total population was illiterate. During the period 1960-75, the percentage of illiteracy dropped from 64 per cent to 60 per cent, according to the figures given in the current plan for economic and social development. But, in any case, the iiliteracy rate exceeds 50 per cent of the population and indicates the scope and

1. Ministerio de Planeamiento y Coordinación de la Presidencia de la República, Plan de Desarrollo Económico y Social 1976-1980 (Resumen), p. 261, La Paz, Servicios Impresos Carlos Ltda., 1976.

42


depth of the problem, which acts as a powerful brake on attempts at development.

There have been various literacy projects during the last forty years, some on a more limited scale than others, and inadequately financed. In general, it m a y be said that the approach to a literacy policy and to projects connected with it has varied according to the type of governmental regime in power. Progressive or revolutionary governments, which are regarded as democratically inspired, have taken more interest in the literacy campaign and produced more satisfactory programmes. The most noteworthy of these is the programme drawn up by the Ministry of Education in 1970, which led to the promulgation of Supreme Decree No. 09177 in accordance with a Declaración sobre Política Educativa Cultural y Científica (declaration on educational, cultural and scientific policy) made by the democratic government led by General Alfredo Ovando Candia.

A Campaign for Compulsory Literacy Teaching was decreed, as the result of a National Conference on Literacy and Adult Education, held in December 1969. The specific objectives of the campaign were:

(a) T o enable illiterates and people w h o have had little schooling to use the oral and written language, and to give them a knowledge of elementary mathematics and of their physical and social environment and an apprec- iation of indigenous culture.

(b) To adopt Castilian as the national language, without prejudice to the preservation and promotion of the indigenous languages as a means of social communication which can give the rural masses a sense of national identity.

(c) T o develop the reading habit as an essential instrument in the lifelong education of the individual.

(d) T o make essential knowledge available and foster creative activities, so that individuals and communities can attain better standards of living, make use of public services, co-operate with the latter and participate in solving their o w n health, production, housing, civic and leisure-time problems.

(e) To disseminate basic cultural information whereby the working population m a y benefit from the services responsible for applying technology to productive processes and for the training of manpower.

(f) Through adult education, to enhance the role played in society by the education system at all levels and to promote the provision of a complete primary education for all children of school age.1

A change of government put an end to this national literacy plan, which has not been replaced by any other of comparable scope.

A reduction of the illiteracy rate by 4 per cent in fifteen years is of course totally inadequate. The plans for literacy work produced by

1. Mariano Baptista Gumucio, Alfabetización, un Programa para Bolivia, p. 19, 20, La Paz, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1973.

43


official bodies have had little impact, and it m a y be said that while the educational apex-the universities-is, in proportion, well provided for, literacy work is the Cinderella of the system. It is estimated that illiteracy will be reduced by only about 2 per cent in the five-year period ending in 1980.

In addition to State efforts, the Protestant churches conduct a literacy programme known as ‘Alfalit’, and the Catholic Church a radio literacy programme known as ‘Erbel’, both of which function regularly.

Rural education

An analysis of the structure of the population shows that, between 1950 and 1970, the rural population rate fell very little-from 74.6 per cent to 70.7 per cent-for urbanization has been a slow process in Bolivia. At the same time, the rural population comprises the bulk of the people w h o speak the indigenous languages. Furthermore, the cold altiplano region is inhabited by 49 per cent of the population, the temperate valleys by 35 per cent and the tropical plains by 16 per cent.l Thus two-thirds of the population live in the Andean region.

The first educational experiments with rural children took place in the 1940s, thanks to the concern of indigenous teachers studying at the Rural Teacher-Training School at Warizata, in the northern altiplano (Department of L a Paz), founded by Professor Elizardo Pérez, and recognized as a pioneer project in rural education.

At the time of the National Revolution (1952-64), the Bolivian Educational Statute was promulgated and a special educational system for rural areas was set up, under the recently established Ministry of Rural Affairs, independently of the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts. The intention was to introduce ‘fundamental education’, which aimed at combining the formal system of teaching the basic school subjects-the essential tools of knowledge-with community development in the broadest sense of the term. Since then, the Indians, who, thanks to trade unionism and the agrarian reform, have awakened from their prolonged lethargy, have been more eager than the State itself to provide the necessary educational infrastructure by building rural schools.

Fundamental education was criticized as being an attempt to deny the countryman the type of education given in the towns; it was decided to combine the two systems, and as a result rural education was transferred to the Ministry of Education. According to the Diagnóstico Global de la Educación Boliviana (The State of Bolivian Education), the short- comings today are as follows:

1. Ministerio de Planificación y Coordinación, Estrategia Socioeconómica del Desarrollo Nacional, Vol. II, p. 559, 560, La Paz, 1970, 2 vol.

44


Non adaptation of the rural schools to the environment. Its essential purpose is being nullified: instead of providing an all-round education that is in touch with life and with its cultural milieu, it is likely to become a mere means of conveying knowledge, or may make children want to leave the country.

Lack of educational resources and materials, which means that its principal objectives cannot be attained; this, in turn, has its repercussions on the work done, for the school curricula remain a dead letter.

Inadequate teacher training in specifically rural community education, which prevents real community needs from being properly understood.

Lack of co-ordination between the school and the institutions concerned with socio-economic advancement in the countryside.

As a rule, specific projects connected with health, farming, rural industries, domestic science and leisure activities take place in the school, and their educational action has no effect on community 1ife.l

T o demonstrate h o w little connection there is between rural education and life, the film Pueblo Chico, produced by Antonio Eguino (Ukamau group), shows us a country school in which the barefooted children are taught the sentence ‘The lady is eating cake’; it is incomprehensible to them, and they simply repeat it like parrots.

A number of psychological difficulties are involved in teaching country children in Castilian, and it would be better if the teaching were bilingual in the initial stages. Although this is recognized officially, the institutional structure for the generalized implementation of this project has not yet been established.

The rural school system consists of the rural teacher-training schools and the Higher Institute for Rural Education (ISER), in Tarija, school centres and sectional schools (only some of which offer a complete course), and a few technical schools where pupils can prepare for the bachillerato (school-leaving certificate). The country people want more schools of this type to be opened, so that pupils can prepare for a technical bachillerato. There is also a project for establishing an agricultural university.

I he-school and basic education

In 1975, 1,097,200 school-age children were enrolled at school. In the pre-school education course, there were only 39,945 enrolments out of a school-age population of 80,600 children. In the basic course, only 711,732, out of a school-age population of 900,011 were enrolled. In the lower secondary course, enrolments reached 116,828 out of a school-age population of 613,669. In the secondary course, enrolments did not

1. Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Diagníistico Global de la Educación Boliviana, p. 9, La Paz, Impresiones Planedoc del Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, 1974.

45


exceed 116,647 out of a school-age population of 716,690, a rate of only 16.3 per cent. These figures were supplied by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The school enrolment rates show that the percentage of enrolments is highest in the pre-school and basic courses. Urban areas account for 88.9 per cent of the total national enrolments.

The Five-year Plan for Economic and Social Development, which is n o w being implemented, states:

Thus, in the case of the basic course in urban areas, for every thousand pupils w h o enrol for the first part of the course, 760 of those attending a private institution complete the course, and only 600 of those attending a State sehool. In rural areas, where State schools predominate, barely 150 pupils complete the basic course for every 1,000 enr0lled.l

The drop-out is alarming: less than one-third of the pupils enrolled in the 6rst grade of basic education reach the fourth grade, and less than one-fifth of them reach the secondary course; less than 3 per cent of the total national enrolment enter the university.

The national enrolment is very unevenly distributed: the city of L a Paz, which is the seat of government and the chief city of the republic, accounts for 48 per cent of enrolments. In the Estrategia Socioeconómica del Desarrollo Nacional (Development Strategy) (1970) it is calculated that, on an average, only 26.5 per cent of the total number of pupils entering the first grade of the basic course complete the course successfully. The drop-out rate reaches 41.7 per cent and the repeating rate 31.8 per cent. In the first grade of the basic course alone, the drop-out rate is over a quarter of all enrolments. Thus the average length of studies is eight years in the case of a primary school pupil, with an average of nearly two years’ repeating for each pupil.

In pre-primary education there has been a number of systems with different curricula (one introduced in 1955 and another and more important one, in 1969), and traditional ideas as to teaching and learning prevail. But in the basic course there is no realistic educational policy; curricula are haphazard, productivity is low, teaching is confined to the blackboard, the exercise book and the school bench, and regular examinations are the principal method of evaluation. Hence the objectives of basic education are not attained. The system does not provide for the pupils’ all-round training; its aims are essentially passive, and it does nothing to make the school play its part in satisfying the Bolivian people’s hopes of bettering their condition.

Moreover, there is no school guidance service, and in some towns insufficient attention is paid to the children’s health; there are very few school dentists, no regular medical check-ups, and no arrangements

1. Ministerio de Planeamiento y Coordinación de la Presidencia de la República, op. cit., p. 262.

46

1 Educational systems and problems facing them

for the healthy use of leisure time, which is often spent in doing household chores. A reliable writer remarks that ‘The school, as an instrument of education, m a y be said to militate against change and progress; it helps to maintain and aggravate the existing situation’. H e quotes the opinion expressed by Adolfo Linares Arraya, an economist and ex-President of the Andean Public Works Corporation: ‘The Bolivian school is outside the Bolivian economy. The latter owes very little to the former, for they are not part of an overall plan, and the situation is aggravated by the fact that more and more schools are being established which have unsatisfactory premises.’l

As most pupils leave school for good on completing the basic course, or even before, they should be trained as skilled workers; but no such training is provided, either in the town or the country.

Lower secondary and secondary courses

The lower secondary course links primary and secondary education. The defects of the lower secondary course are the same as those of the basic course. So w e shall n o w consider the problems of secondary education. It should be borne in mind that the enrolment rate in the secondary course is about 27 per cent. A study carried out during the decade 1956-65 gives us the following picture: the greatest number of drop-outs occurs during the first year. The number of enrolments decreases slowly but steadily in proportion as the successive stages of the course are reached, so that at the end of the two final years of the lower secondary course and the four years of the secondary course barely 10 per cent pass the final examination. Failure to pass the examinations is the chief cause of drop-outs in the secondary course.

In Bolivia, general education up to the secondary level is provided in State institutions ; the system is k n o w n as the centralized education system, as these institutions come under the Ministry of Education and Culture. Education is also provided by decentralized mining establishments, petroleum production centres and railway centres run by public firms, as well as in private schools-mostly conducted by religious bodies. From the point of view of efficiency, the decentralized form of education, especially in the case of the nationalized mining industry, is superior to that of the centralized education provided in the towns. In 1975, the Bolivian Mining Corporation provided education €or 54,135 pupils, with a staff of 1,973 teachers and administrative officials,

I 1. Asociación Boliviana de Educación Católica y Secretariado Nacional de la Comisión Episcopal de Educación, Democratización de la Educacìón. Documento Finul del Rimer Seminario Nacional sobre Democratización de la Educacwn, p. 33, La Paz, Editorial Don Bosco, 1975.

47

Educational systems and problema facing them

in 130 schools; 238 miners’ sons were awarded secondary and higher training scholarships. The private education sector is also more efficient than State education; most of the teachers employed in private schools also teach in the State schools, and-paradoxically-they send their children to private rather than State schools.

In 1972, Ruth Payne, a research worker, and Maritza Balderrama, a teacher, published a book entitled Contenido y Métodos de la Enseñanza en Bolivia (Content and Methods of Education in Bolivia), which gives the findings of their research work. In the 300 schools they visited they found that there were 923 different school textbooks. Many were not written by Bolivian authors, nor did they refer to Bolivia, even in social subjects such as civics and history; they were written by Spaniards, and the subject-matter was treated from an imperialistic and non- Bolivian standpoint. The two authors reached the definite conclusion that both secondary education and general education failed to reflect the country’s own culture, there was confusion and misunderstanding as to how curricula should be used, and the methods used to impart information relied too much on abstraction and on the teacher’s word.1

The bachillerato (secondary school-leaving certificate) is essentially of a humanistic character. In 1972, 72 per cent of those who obtained it had done a course in humanistic studies; 9 per cent in sciences, 6 per cent in social sciences, and 3 per cent in technical subjects. Ninety-six per cent sought admission to university in order to follow a liberal profession.

One study of the present state of the educational system and its defects, especially in the secondary course, contains the following remarks:

Only a minority has access to education, which is essentially élistist and acts as a sieve from primary school right up to university.

The educational system seems to ignore the actual state of affairs in Bolivia and fails to meet the true needs of the country; it is of little real use.

Both from the quantitative and the qualitative standpoint, there are enormous defects and gaps in the education provided.

The rural masses do not participate in the educational process. Education appears to serve specific interests, whether consciously or

unconsciously. From the economic and productive standpoint, the educational system is

a heavy burden for the country to bear and of little profit: it has a very low level of efficiency.2

1. Mariano Baptista Gumucio, La Educación como Forma de Suicidio Nacional, p. 55,

2. Asociación Boliviana de Educación Católica y Secretariado Nacional de la Comisión 66-7, La Paz, Ediciones Camarlinghi, 1973.

Episcopal de Educación, op. cit., p. 57, 58.

48


The various forms of technical education and teacher training

There are three types of course for secondary-level technicians: (a) commercial, banking, customs and administrative courses ; (b) industrial technical courses ; (c) technical courses for women.

The first of these, which w e will refer to as ‘commercial courses’, are given in either State- or privately owned institutions or schools. The number of enrolments in 1971 was about 4,000, spread over 26 establishments: 75 per cent of these students attended private institutions, and 65 per cent of the total number of ‘commercial’ students were girls. The very large number of educational establishments in this sector is due to the underdevelopment of the country: in the large population centres the tertiary economic sector or the services sector predominates, rather than industry, of which there is very little, or agriculture, which is unprogressive and neglected in areas where it used to be practised.

At the elementary level, the commercial course trains office assistants, typists and shorthand typists (one year’s study); at the secondary level, secretaries, cashiers and bilingual translators (three years’ study) ; and at the advanced level, accountants (four years’ study). After these come specialized courses in administration and customs which require an extra year’s study. There is no uniformity or co-ordination in the syllabuses of the various institutes, and the teaching, which is more theoretical than practical, is based on dictated and duplicated notes on the lessons. Of those completing the commercial course 62 per cent wish to go on to university. The idea of introducing a bachillerato in commerce has been put forward.

The second type of course-industrial technical training-is very limited, and at present can only be taken at one State institution-the Pedro Domingo Murillo National Industrial School in L a Paz. At the lower level, the Ministry of Labour, in co-operation with foreign missions, particularly Spanish ones, provides training for bricklayers, mechanics, electricians, etc. in the form of short courses given by its Manpower Training Service (FOMO). The Salesian Congregation has primary- and secondary-level schools providing training in mechanics, carpentry and printing in the D o n Bosco College in La Paz and Santa Cruz and in the Youth Centre of El Alto de L a Paz. Statistics show that during the five years between 1967 and 1971 the Pedro Domingo Murillo School trained 389 medium-grade and 244 higher-grade technicians at a cost of 8,850 Bolivian pesos (U.S.$445) per pupil (in 1971). The structural organization of this school makes it difficult to change from one type of study to another; humanistic subjects are not satisfactorily co- ordinated with technical subjects, and regional needs are not taken into account in planning the curriculum. One good point is the fact

49


that 75 per cent of the school timetable is devoted to practical work. The third type of training-technical training for women-is limited

to dressmaking, toy-making, domestic science, etc., owing to prejudice in Bolivian society, which does not to any extent encourage the eman- cipation of w o m e n from household tasks, although the development process-more powerful than custom-is leading to the increased employment of w o m e n in production. However, technical education for w o m e n is most unsatisfactory, and m a y even cease to be provided.

Those completing one or other of the different types of technical course are confronted with the complete lack of a labour market in Bolivia. Those w h o have had commercial training look out for an official job, and join the ranks of those in a state of concealed unemployment, as the private sector is incapable of absorbing them. The industrial technicians trained by the Pedro Domingo Murillo School go abroad, especially to Brazil, because there are no jobs in their o w n country or because the salaries paid there are too low.

The training of teachers takes place in urban or rural teacher-training schools. Most of the former are State-administered. In Cochabamba, however, there is also a Catholic teacher-training school. In the rural teacher-training schools, enrolments increased from 3,465 in 1967 to 4,377 in 1971; only about 11 per cent of pupils had obtained their school-leaving certificate. The total number of pupils in urban or rural teacher-training schools in 1974 was about 10,000. A high percentage of urban teacher-training schools are seriously overcrowded. Thus in the Simón Bolívar Teacher-Training School in L a Paz, the number of pupils per classroom was 119. There is a serious lack of vocational guidance ; m a n y pupils enrol in teacher-training schools because these provide the only alternative to a university education, which also suffers from an excessive number of students. The content of syllabuses is outdated, and curricula are not planned as a whole or co-ordinated. The knowledge imparted to students is unrelated to their future activities, with the result that teacher training in Bolivia is failing to meet the country’s real social, economic, cultural and scientific needs. Pedagogical research is non-existent.

Finance, teachers and school buildings

In 1975, about 23 per cent of the national budget was allocated to the Ministry of Education and Culture. Out of a total of 6,832 million Bolivian pesos (U.S.$341.6 million), the education budget was 1,470.4 million pesos (U.S.$73.5 million), which is exactly 23.4 per cent.l

1. Banco Central de Bolivia, Memorio Anuo1 de Gesri6n 1975, statistical table 23-B, La Paz, Talleres Grificos del mismo Banco, 1976.

50


Previously, the education budget amounted to 30 per cent of total State expenditure. The item ‘personnel services’, which includes the salaries and emoluments of the teaching and administrative staff of the ministry, accounts for some 76 per cent of the education budget. However, the salary levels, especially in the lower categories (which are the most recently established) are unsatisfactory. Schoolteachers are seriously underpaid. Seventy per cent of the education budget goes to urban education, whereas rural inhabitants constitute two- thirds of the total population and represent 42 per cent of school enrolments. Nor should it be forgotten that the cost of the education provided by the mining and petroleum industries and the railways is met from the budget of each of those public companies and is separate from that of the Ministry of Education.

As regards personnel, it should be pointed out that from 1967 to 1971 the number of primary-school teachers increased by 28.7 per cent and that of secondary-school teachers by 90.07 per cent; the increase in the number of teachers (who by law are obliged to be employed in State education) means that there are proportionately more teachers to fewer pupils, as the most reliable sectorial statistics show. There are n o w 57,000 teachers in the country, as opposed to 30,000 in 1970.

Some of the worst aspects of Bolivian education are the schoolteachers’ poor training, bureaucratic and routine-ridden attitude and their lack of interest in contemporary educational methods not laid down by the authorities. One need hardly say that the vast majority do not read books, and some do not even read the newspapers. Profes- sional qualifications leave much to be desired: in 1971, 42 per cent of primary-school teachers and 15 per cent of secondary-school teachers were untrained. It is impossible for ill-trained teachers, w h o earn less than the salary of a door-keeper in a bank, w h o use up even their monthly book voucher to buy food and w h o have no material or moral incentives of any kind, to give their pupils a good education. They, too, are victims of the system.

School buildings are for the most part inadequate. M a n y of them are old, although within the last twenty years more schools have been either repaired or built by a decentralized body of the Ministry of Education (CONES). There is a deplorable lack of school libraries and of adequately equipped laboratories and workshops; indeed, in m a n y schools, there are no benches-they have to be supplied somehow or other by the pupils or their parents. In the large towns, the lack of classrooms has made it necessary to adopt the system of having two or three shifts for each classroom (morning, afternoon and evening or night shifts). In short, school administration as such (including school supervision) is antiquated, routine-ridden, erratic, unco-ordinated and inefficient.

51


The education crisis is also felt in the universities. It is, moreover, part of the international crisis affecting higher education systems in general, but it is of a more explosive nature in the countries of the Third World and in Latin America; in the latter, there has been a strong movement for university reform in the past fifty years.

In Bolivia, university life has always been closely associated with the ups and downs of the country’s political life. It has suffered the consequences of them and, on more than one occasion, has led protest movements. The university, therefore, in conjunction with the armed forces and the trade-union movement, m a y be considered the cradle of the national leaders w h o guide the country’s destinies.

The development of the universities

In the colonial past, the founding of the Royal and Pontifical University of San Francisco Xavier of Chuquisaca (now Sucre) was one of the decisive factors in making the Creole élite politically conscious and aware of the need for revolution and independence. Its Academia Carolina, ostensibly an institute that trained students for the legal profession, was a centre for the discussion of the principles of the French and North American revolutions and, especially, the progressive theories of Spanish humanist priests. The other universities date from Republican times, some of them, such as those of Cochabamba and L a Paz, being the outcome of the institutional and educational work done by the liberators Bolívar and Sucre. The most recent one is the José Ballivían University of the Beni, situated in the town of Trinidad.

Ten years after the university reform movement in Córdoba (Argentina), in 1918, the Bolivian student population convened the

52

I Bolivian universities, science and technology

first Student Congress and formed a National Federation. As a result, the university’s mediocrity, oligarchic character, mnemonic methods and extreme dependence on the day-to-day policy of governments were denounced, and in 1928, a plan of reform was proposed. This youthful movement had the sympathy of the government of Hernando Siles, but the government was overthrown by a coup d’état engineered by the mining barons, and the military junta that emerged rendered the students’ efforts ineffective: university autonomy was approved by a referendum held in 1931, but all other important plans for reform were dropped. Autonomy did not change the structural character of higher education. According to some shrewd observers, the only differ- ence was that the university became a Masonic oligarchy instead of an official one. It was said that not a mouse was prepared to die for it, as it was a gift from the mining oligarchy then in power.

In 1938, at the time of the military ‘socialist’ governments, the Bolivian University Federation, at its congress, formulated an ideological programme that was perhaps the most advanced in the history of the country’s student protest movements. It was proposed that university reform should be completed as part of a cultural revolution, and that the latter should, in turn, be brought about by a social revolution. It was also stated that ‘the area of struggle for the university world is the same as that for the proletarian world’. Hence the students were to be merely the advance guard of the working class, whose consciousness was still in the process of formation. However, in spite of this programme, when from 1941 to 1946 Bolivia had a politically progressive and socially reformist government, under Lieutenant-colonel Gualberto Villarroel, the universities became a stronghold of the old plutocracy; so much so that the office of the rector of the University of San Andrés in L a Paz was the headquarters of the counter-revolution.

Later on, the universities moved once more to the left, and then, when the National Revolution took place in 1952, back to the right again, being mixed up with fascist movements that opposed agrarian reform and the working-class militias. A swing to the left occurred again when General Barrientos returned to power, and the more radical sectors in the university supported the guerrilla war led by Che Guevara. Polarization, moreover, led to the formation of ultra-reactionary groups.

Around 1955, in the midst of the revolutionary process through which the country was passing, the first of the so-called ‘university revolutions’ took place, when armed workers and peasants entered the higher educational institutions. The experiment came to nothing, as indirect government support was withdrawn and university autonomy was re-established, with the right in control. Fifteen years later, another ‘university revolution’ took place, this time within the precincts of the university; it was carried out by the university students themselves, w h o issued the following declaration:

I 53


The various ideological bases which will be set out in detail may be summed up by the following twofold principle: 1. The university has no right to try to work out an ideology for the people,

for the people have worked out and evolved their own ideology in their most representative bodies.

2. The integration of the University with the people means the integration of the University in the people’s struggle for freedom1

The agitation in the universities, in which all shades of the Bolivian political spectrum were represented, ranging from pro-fascist groups to the Teoponte guerrilleros, produced a chaotic state of affairs in which the contending principles-academic freedom and freedom to teach in a university, perfecting a system of joint management by teachers and students on an equal basis, with worker participation, generalizing the people’s universities established under the previous revolution, inter-university co-ordination, and so on-all struggled for mastery.

With the latest change of government, which occurred in 1971, all university activities were stopped or suspended for a year and a half, with the object, as it was then explained, of preparing a n e w legal statute for higher education, while at the same time all political activities in the universities were severely suppressed.

General principles and structure of the Bolivian university system

The reorganization of higher education in 1972, which was carried out by the military regime, was defined in the Basic L a w of the Bolivian University System, under Decree Law No. 12972 of 17 October of that year. Its initial Articles are as follows:

Article I. The Bolivian university system is a unitary, integrated and co- ordinated system composed of the universities of the country and their administrative boards.

Article II. The universities in the system are, in order of foundation: Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier, Chuquisaca; Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz; Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba; Gabriel René Moreno, Santa Cruz; Tomás Frias, Potosí; Técnica, Oruro; Juán Misael Saracho, Tarija; General José Ballivián, Beni Department. Any that may be established subsequently will likewise be included in it.2

The basic principles of the unified Bolivian university system were drawn up at a National Conference of Rectors and of the National

1. Centro de Desarrollo Integral, L a Transformación Actual en América Latina y en

2. The Universidad Cat6lica Boliviana of L a Paz, with an annex in Cochabamba, was Bolivia, p. 128, Oruro, Imprenta Quelco, 1970.

thus included.

54


Council for Higher Education (CNES), held in the town of Sorata. The system must be:

1. ‘Bolivianist’, having a truly national character, based upon the actual condition of the country, its under-development and, consequently, its need for cultural and economic liberation.

2. Liberating, in that it seeks to assert human and national values against all forms of dependence, alienation or degradation of the individual consciousness.

3. Integrated both internally and externally [. . .l. 4. Open, its twofold aim being to provide informal education:

(a) for the whole of society, and not only for school or university students, accepting responsibility with respect to all the institutions of society: the family, the armed forces, the Church, industry, etc. ;

(b) in lecture halls and schools open to all, for the active fulfilment of a community function.

5. Of the people, in that it works for the good of the poorer social strata and strives to overcome the marginal condition of the rural sectors which form the majority of the population.

6. Humanistic, aiming at the common good, the maintenance of Christian values and man’s all-round fu1filment.l

The different public universities are no longer unattached and isolated, as in the past. O n the other hand, despite formal statements to the contrary, the old university autonomy has disappeared, since university studies are planned, supervised and evaluated by CNES, which is appointed by the central government. There is a hierarchical attitude to the appointment of rectors, deans of faculties, directors of studies and other teaching and administrative authorities. Lately, steps have been taken to change the system of appointing professors and their assistants, as they were being appointed without regard for qualifications or examination results.

The National Council for Higher Education is composed of a President, Secretary-General and four directors in charge of the following departments: teaching and scientific research, general administration, planning and statistics and educational co-ordination. Each of the eight public universities has a governing body composed of a Rector, Vice-Rector, Administrative Director-General and Secretary-General.

AU university action and opposition movements, including strikes, undertaken in order to democratize university life and to obtain the right of free election of student bodies have been systematically rejected, because they are considered as either subversive or premature. There have been repeated protests against the occupation of university precincts

1. Universidad Boliviana, Reuista Trimestral (La Paz), Vol. I, No. 1, October-December 1976, p. 131, 132. (Published by the Consejo Nacional de Educación Superior.)

55


by the police forces in times of student unrest, and more or less permanent protests concerning the imprisonment or exile of professors and students.

A survey of higher education

In the 1977 academic year, about 7,000 students w h o had obtained satisfactory marks in the entrance examinations were admitted to the Bolivian universities. The total number of university students is 50,000. This will make it necessary to review the forecasts contained in the five-year development plan, which made no provision for such a figure until 1980. However, what is commonly referred to as the ‘university explosion’ has, in fact, happened.

The entrance examinations, which are designed to eliminate a considerable proportion of the ever-increasing number of students holding the secondary school-leaving certificate, ensure that only students w h o have received an adequate preparation are admitted. The huge gap which has always separated secondary from university education has not yet been bridged, although all educational bodies tend to encourage pupils to try to obtain a doctorate at a university, whose essential function is still to provide training in the liberal professions (or, nowa- days, to train technocrats).

Nearly 50 per cent of higher level students are enrolled in the Univer- sity of San Andrés in L a Paz. In this and other universities in the provinces, the existing premises and those n o w being built are extremely crowded and uncomfortable, because of the huge increase in student numbers. S o m e students even have to sit outside in the passages. This is certainly a serious educational drawback, because of the excessive distance-physical as well as otherwise-between teacher and student. The number of students taking degree courses and technical courses at the higher or intermediate level has increased by over 100 per cent, but the introduction of a system of credits for a combination of compulsory and optional subjects encourages students to adopt an individua- listic, non-participatory attitude, diverting the attention of m a n y of them away from concern for the welfare of the university and of the people .

Nepotism, favouritism and the appointment of ill-qualified teachers have diminished somewhat as a result of student protests during the past few years, but the evil has not been eradicated, so that, as the Revolutionary Committee of the National Engineering Faculty of Oruro observed in 1970:

Bolivian universities suffer from the intolerable mediocrity of their teaching staffs. W h o becomes a university teacher? Someone who has studied for a career and who, owing to some circumstance or other, agrees to become a university

56


professor. Does he follow a teacher’s career? Does he undertake research? Does he publish any studies? Does he prepare and defend a thesis in order to obtain this highest of academic distinctions? No, he does not. The exceptions prove the rule.l

T h e majority of students, as a d e silent and passive, attend the university course because they can thereby obtain a qualification that wiU win them the respect of society and give them an economic standing and an upper middle-class standard of living. The active and boisterous minority-those w h o are politically conscious and involved in the country’s interests, from their point of view, also end up, for the most part, by watering down their ideals or abandoning them altogether as soon as they obtain the coveted qualification. They are typically incendiaries turned firemen.

Not all university graduates, of course, see their expectations fulfilled. Those w h o reach the highest positions in their profession, as State civil servants or technocrats, or in private enterprises, are the lucky ones, often owing their good fortune to family or economic ties with the oligarchical ‘upper crust’. Professional competition produces serious inequalities, for there are not only professional people w h o are poor: some are also unemployed, as happens in the medical profession. In Bolivia, where vast rural areas have no doctors (they are replaced by tiris, or local witch-doctors), there are unemployed university graduates, if by employment w e mean a salaried post under the Ministry of Health or the Social Security Service.

In short, since the counter-reformation of 1972 and further changes in 1974 (which show that the crisis is not over) the university has, as in the past, an aristocratic, liberal and technocratic outlook. It turns out a series of professional m e n w h o enjoy privileges, who have a utilitarian mentality, and w h o place the criteria of the labour market and the requirements of industry before the struggles, hopes and prospects of the people of Indo-mestizo origin.

Financing of university education

Teresa Balderrama and Jorge Rivera, in an article entitled ‘Costos y Financiamiento de la Educación Pública en Bolivia’, made the following comparison in relation to the 1970 budget: the Bolivian university budget for 23,155 enrolled students was 100,095,828 Bolivian pesos and the national education budget for 677,346 students enrolled in the various courses was 460,418,000 Bolivian pesos (U.S.$l was then equivalent to 12 Bolivian pesos). However, the budget for university students, which represented only 3.4 per cent of total student enrolments, was

1. Mariano Baptista Gumucio, Salvemos a Bolivia de la Escuela, p. 95, 96, La Paz, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro.

57


equivalent to 21.74 per cent of the total national education budget.l The final document produced by the Seminar on Democratization

of Education, held in M a y 1974, contains detailed figures; amongst them, it gives, 4,429.99 Bolivian pesos as the cost of each student per year.2

The above document says that:

Nevertheless, this overall unit cost varies from one university or faculty to another. Thus, whereas the cost of a law student is 1,548.44 pesos a year in the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, it is 10,484.31 pesos in the Universidad Tomás Frias in Potosí. An industrial engineer costs 5,502.12 pesos a year in La Paz, 7,017.37 pesos in the Universidad Técnica in Oruro and 10,214.15 pesos in Potosí. A pharmaceutical student costs 3,398.36 pesos a year in La Paz and 7,491.10 pesos in the Universidad Gabriel René Moreno in Santa Cruz. A veterinary student in Santa Cruz costs 16,155.48 pesos a year, and a zootechnical student in the Universidad José Ballivían in the Beni costs 22,982.47 pesos a year. These figures alone suffice to show the price which Bolivia has to pay for its professional men and women.3

The President of CNES, Mario Rolón Anaya, says that: ‘The country spends some 500 million pesos a year on maintaining its universities, or about 25 million dollars, which, divided among 35,000 students (1955 figures) gives an annual expenditure per student of 14,300 pesos or 715 dollars.’*

T o realize what a burden the maintenance of university students represents in a country where illiteracy is a serious and chronic social defect, it must be remembered that only one-seventh of university students (equivalent to 0.4 per cent of the country’s inhabitants) complete the university course. The amount received from students’ fees is a very small proportion of the university budget.

Scient& and technological research

In Bolivia, as in other dependent and developing countries, there is much talk of accelerated and continous development. The more progressive thinkers maintain that such development should be both economic and social, that it should be harmonious and balanced, and

1. Teresa Balderrama and Jorge Rivera, ‘Costos y Financiamiento de la Educación Pública en Bolivia’, Estudios Educucionales (La Paz), No. 3, 1973. (Published by the Comición Episcopal de Educación.)

2. For conversion into United States dollars, this amount should be calculated on the basis of U.S.$l = 20 Bolivian pesos, the rate applicable since the currency devaluation of October 1972.

3. Asociación Boliviana de Educación, Católica y Secretariado Nacional de la Comisión Episcopal de Educación, Democratizacibn de la Ensefianza, p. 46, La Paz, Editorial Don Bosco, 1975.

4. Universidad Boliviana, Revista Trimestral, op. cit., p. 22.

58


designed to achieve national economic independence in co-ordination with the regional and sub-regional integration of Latin America. These socio-economic development goals call for a qualitative and quantitative increase in scientific and technological research, so that social resources m a y be used to the best advantage.

‘The attempt to forecast and plan for technological development’, writes Gastón R. Mejía, a scientist, ‘leads, through its components- education and research-to the reinforcement of the growth of countries. This is clear from the fact that educational planning and research is responsible for about 80 per cent of the growth of developed countries, while capital investment accounts for only about 10 per cent.’l

The research centres in the Bolivian university system are as follows: Computation Centre, Bolivian Altitude Biology Institute, Bolivian Geophysical Institute, Geological Research Institute, Astronomical Observatory and Planetarium, Chemical Research Laboratory, Scientific and Technical Documentation and Information Centre, Historical Research Institute, Cosmic Physics Laboratory.

Very few scientific and technological training institutions possess specialized libraries or laboratories or equipment worthy of the name. The rest are poorly equipped, with the result that 78 per cent of research projects have not been carried out. An inventory of the scientific and technological infrastructure on a national scale is urgently needed.

Bolivian scientists are members of the National Science Academy, founded on 23 September 1960, whose object is to guide and direct scientific and technological research in the country, co-ordinating these activities with the work of the universities, institutes and laboratories of the republic and scientific institutions abroad. So far, it has confined its activities to publishing a few works. Other bodies responsible for the dissemination of scientific knowledge which carry out important work are the National Commission for the Promotion of Science, established in 1973 by the government, the Bolivian Geological Institute (GEOBOL), the Bolivian Nuclear Energy Commission (COBOEN) and the Mining and Metallurgical Research Institute (IIM).

According to Orlando Capriles Villazón:

The Bolivian Geological Institute (GEOBOL), was originally financed by USAID, but subsequently the State took over full responsibility for its financial upkeep. It provides services connected with the prospection, identification and evaluation of non-renewable natural resources. It prepared part of the geological m a p of the country, was technical consultant to the mining industry, made mineralogical surveys on a contractual basis with private and State enterprises, and carried out drilling operations and laboratory analysis. In recent years, it signed a n

1. Gastón R. Mejía, ‘La Importancia de la Investigación en la Universidad‘, Gaceta Universitaria, Revista de la Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, No. 2, November 1969, p. 68.

59

Bolivian universitiee, science and technology

agreement with the United States for the preparation and study of data on geological space exploration carried out by the satellites ‘Erzst’ and ‘Skylab’, the work done by Bolivian geologists being of the highest quality.1

COBOEN is responsible for the detection, localization, exploitation and refining of radioactive mineral resources, which are a State monopoly. Using materials taken from its deposits in Tarija and Potosí it has obtained, in a pilot laboratory, primary isotopes of uranium for civilian use. IIM was established in 1966 under an agreement with the United Nations. Its purpose is to improve the technology of the prospection, extraction and refining of mineral resources in Bolivia. The volatilization of tin complexes, analysis of the ferromagnesian minerals of Ravelo and El Mutún (one of the largest ferriferous deposits in the world), and copper retrieval through the use of bacteria are among the subjects on which it has done widely acclaimed research.

T w o more institutions coming under the Bolivian Cultural Institute are of outstanding importance. One is the National Archaelogical Institute (INAR) whose task is to make a systematic study of pre- Columbian cultures, catalogue the archaeological material discovered, preserve the pre-colonial cultural heritage and produce scientific publications. INAR was established in March 1975, on the basis of the Archaeological Research Institute of Tiwanaku, which was founded in 1958. It has carried out excavations, classified material, and undertaken research in the archaeological areas of Tiwanaku (the main centre up to now, and of world-wide fame, thanks to its director and organizer, the Bolivian archaeologist Carlos Ponce Sanjinés), Samaipata, Iskanwaya, Chiripa, El Fuerte, Comarapa, Kalakala, Copacabana, Mamkoru, Pukarilla, Khari and Aukapata. INAR has a gigantic task ahead of it, especially owing to the existence of over 20,000 archaeological sites in the El Beni forest country, which point to the probable existence of an important pre-Columbian culture in that area.

The other institution is the National Anthropological Institute (INA), established in 1975, with the object of preserving the indigenous and traditional cultural heritage, recording and cataloguing cultural property of this type, organizing anthropological museums, carrying out research and publishing studies. It is divided into the following departments: Anthropological Research, Cataloguing of the Ethno- graphic Heritage, Ethnomusicology and Folklore, Anthropological Documentation, Linguistic Studies and Museums.

1. Orlando Capriles Villazbn, Historia de la Mìnerfa Boliviana (unpublished).

60


If by a cultural policy w e mean a co-ordinated set of schemes-that is, a strategy-and of plans and projects to be carried out in accordance with a timetable, then it m a y indeed be said that Bolivia has rarely had a cultural policy forming an organic whole.

Nevertheless, every government had some kind of cultural strategy, especially in the realm of artistic and intellectual expression, in accordance with its social character and ideology.

The cultural policies of the republic up to the revolution of 1952, which were implied, but not formally stated, encouraged segregation, the exploitation and crushing of native cultures and the admiration of everything foreign. The Hispanicism of the colonial era was succeeded by the Francophilism of the thinkers of the end of the nineteenth century, and later, in the twentieth century, by the more general inthence of Europe and North America.

Amid the contempt for native music and folklore, the stifling of national literature and the general cultural alienation, a handful of creative writers and artists were starting to come forward-for instance, the eminent poet of Nordic mythologies, Franz Tamayo, w h o wrote a noteworthy Pedagogía Nacional, the novelist and critic Carlos Medinaceli, and the painters Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas and Arturo Borda, w h o took native forms and Andean mythology as subjects for their works.

Before 1952, the Ministry of Education was also responsible for the fine arts, but these were relegated to an inefficient department which administered a conservatory of music and a few schools that taught the visual arts, without m u c h vitality or vision.

61


Cultural policy of the National Revolution

The uprising of the people on 9 April 1952, which replaced the governments of the old feudal and mine-owning oligarchy by another, representing the alliance of the sectors of society that had always been oppressed, led to a radical change in the treatment of cultural problems; but they were dealt with by improvisation, rather than by the planned measures that the situation called for.

Initially, a Ministry of Culture was set up, but because of political circumstances it was replaced by the Undersecretariat for the Press, Information and Culture (SPIC), which was responsible to the Presidency of the Revolutionary Government and ranked as a ministry.

The SPIC reinforced the State Press and Radio Illimani, giving them a n e w policy and a n e w spirit. Apart from official publications and propaganda pamphlets, the State Press produced several works by new writers, especially short stories.

The daily newspaper of the leading party (the Nationalist Revolu- tionary Movement), L a Nación, did outstanding work for authentically Bolivian cultural movements, through its Sunday Suplemento Literario, although, as it was a n e w undertaking, it did not always produce works of good quality which reflected maturity of thought.

The National Revolution regime introduced ‘National Prizes’ for literature, painting, etc., which enjoyed great prestige and gave rise to heated discussion, since, as happens in such cases, besides the prize- winners, some people are always dissatisfied. It is important to note that, in the field of pictorial art, great progress was made in mural painting, in which Miguel Alandia Pantoja, Enrique and others were outstanding. The military movement, which in 1964 brought to an end the aforementioned revolutionary newspaper, destroyed the murals painted by Alandia Pantoja, which were housed in the Government Palace and the Legislative Assembly.

The April revolution resulted in the establishment of the Bolivian Cinematographic Institute, whose main function was to produce news- reels on revolutionary events and the work of the government. It was criticized by Bolivian film makers because it did not give them facilities for independent work, and only towards the end of its existence did it produce a few important full-length films.

Cultural policy of the ‘democratic renewal’

On 9 November 1969, a military coup d’état of a different political colour from that of General René Barrientos led to what was then called the ‘democratic renewal’-a return to the principles of 1952 by a coalition of the revolutionary armed forces and the n e w political generation of intellectuals.

62


The Ministry of Education and Culture not only undertook to fight iJliteracy and make better use of the available educational resources, but also, for the first time in the history of Bolivia, drew up a coherent cultural policy, which was set forth in a Declaration of the Revolutionary Government on Educational, Cultural and Scientific Policy, dated January 1970, the text of which, in view of its importance, we shall quote in extenso:l

DEC A 4TION OF HE R E V O L U T I O N A R Y G O V E R N M E N T ON E D U C A T I O N A L , C U L T U R A L A N D SCIENTIFIC POLICY

Bolivian society has been characterized by its structural duality: on the one hand, considerable numbers of peasants, workers and craftsmen, w h o have been cut off from the benefits of modern culture and civilization, and, on the other, a very small percentage of the population which possesses all the goods, has access to the social services and assumes the right to determine the fate of the nation. This disintegration of society, aggravated by the narrow-minded outlook of the ruling groups w h o have always governed the country, ignoring the aspirations to liberation of these excluded majority groups, has brought about the state of economic and cultural dependence in which the people of Bolivia n o w live.

In order to overcome these difficulties, ‘development’ schemes and models of an essentially technocratic nature have been tried out; their effect is to turn Bolivian society into a consumer society, and they ignore the true causes of internal marginalization and external dependence, creating a still more unjust social organization, modelled on that of the capitalist countries.

Effective integration demands a great revolutionary transformation which should have two co-ordinated and dynamic aims: to change social and political structures, and to change the system of values. This will produce a society based on mutual interest, whose essence lies in the dignity, social justice and full development of man, whose identity has its place in the context of national history, and whose validity is based on the scientific and technological advances of our day.

Development must therefore be understood as the achievement of the c o m m o n good, in the mutual interest of all, embracing and benefiting every Bolivian without exception, and, at the same time, including all sectors of national life. The educational system must stimulate this process, promoting the social values and scientific knowledge which the people of Bolivia need if they are to take a decisive part in the task of national transformation to which the Revolutionary Government has pledged itself.

With this in view, the Revolutionary Government of Bolivia declares that it will direct its action in education, science and culture in accordance with the following principles and objectives:

1. Mariano Baptista Gumucio, Pido la Paz y la Palabra, p. 133-50, La Paz, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1970, 154 p.

63


I. In education 1. Education is one of the State’s greatest responsibilities, the inalienable right of the people, and the instrument of their liberation. All Bolivians have the right to education, and it will be provided by making available a variety of educational opportunities which meet the need for the development of individuals as well as the need for the economic and social development of the country.

2. The education system will uphold the basic values of the human person: dignity, solidarity, responsibility, liberty and the aspiration to improve one’s, state.

3. It will be designed to maintain both the positive values of national life which are part of its historical identity, and the universal values which do not entail the alienation, mechanization, dehumanization or subjection of Bolivians.

4. In educating Bolivians it will take into account the actual condition of the country and of Latin America and the answers which must be found to the problems of underdevelopment, the disunity of the country and of the whole continent, neo-colonialist pressures and subjection to outside interests.

5. The educational process will be founded on the fundamental values of the human person and will help to consolidate real democracy, based on the principle that the people should share in political and economic power and in the enjoyment of cultural goods and vahes.

6. The State will manage the education system; it will provide and control educational resources in accordance with the needs of the psycho-biological development of the student, the requirements of the socio-economic development of the country, and the necessity of building up a national consciousness that is based on the people’b dignity and right to self-determination.

7. It will endeavour to provide national education that is an undivided whole, covering all levels of education: elementary, secondary, teacher training, higher and informal. In order to achieve this, a phased timetable for the mobilization and transformation of education will be drawn up, which will enable all educational levels, sectors and institutions to come together, and will help to eliminate the differences whose effect, until now, has been to increase social stratification and the isolation of the marginalized and underprivileged sections of society and also to bring about a considerable degree of incoherence throughout the educational and social Bystem.

8. It will promote the establishment of more primary schools providing instruction in the manual skills and in elementary agricultural methods, according to the environment, with a view to conferring dignity on manual work and equipping pupils who leave school at an early age with practical skills, working habits and social attitudes, enabling them to take their place in the economic life of the community.

9. It will encourage the mobilization of all educated people-schoolteachers, university teachers, students, the armed forces, the national guard, trade unions and the other powerful forces in the country, especially the press-to take part in a great literacy and adult education campaign, until the majority groups of peasants, workers and craftsmen play a real part in national life and both know and exercise their rights and obligations.

10. It will establish the infrastructure and conditions necessary for technico- professional education which will promote the training of the qualified man-

64


power and middle-level technicians required for the economic and social development of the country. Adult education, in its three forms-literacy, teaching, vocational training and general culture-must help to develop the community, raise the standard of living of the majority classes, and improve the quality of the workers engaged in production.

Il. It will reform the educational system by extending basic compulsory education to wider sectors of the population and, until the high drop-out rates have been brought under control, will see to it that each stage of the school course is complete in itself and equips the pupils to become citizens who can make a useful contribution to the community. It will also diversify secondary and higher education, by providing short courses in the specialized subjects, a knowledge of which is required for the development of the country, giving priority to technical training.

12. It will uphold the right of Bolivia to an outlet on the sea as a vital necessity, a principle of coUective consciousness, and a historical imperative.

13. It will encourage an improvement in the standard of schoolteachers in service, the training of temporary teachers and the specialized training of educational administrators; it will make arrangements for the rationalization of the teacher-training system and the execution of a more effective plan of aid for students in teacher-training institutions, in order to keep the most suitable students in the teaching profession.

14. It will respect the right of teachers to join trade unions and will encourage unions to take part, in a responsible manner, in the task of scientific and technical reorganization of the school system.

15. It will put into effect a plan for building, extending and repairing school premises, since the shortage of such premises and the unsatisfactory state of most of them militate against the improvement and expansion of the school system.

16. It will combine the urban and rural education services, in order to establish a single system of national education. It will rationalize the distribution of responsibilities among the personnel at different levels of the administration of education, and also between them and the planning bodies, in order to avoid the duplicatien of effort and the excessive centralization of administration which discourages initiative and restricts creative freedom.

17. It will enlist the aid of autonomous universities in carrying out the National Development Plan, in the service of the people, so that, by analysing the demands of the professional and labour market and the requirements of the country in the field of higher education, the universities m a y provide the community with professional personnel and technicians w h o are not only academically qualified but are also fully aware of social questions, and so that higher education centres m a y carry out in an efficient manner the tasks for which they are intended-i.e. scientific research and the promotion of culture.

II. In culture

18. It will carry out a genuine cultural revolution, aimed at the self-assertion of the Bolivian people and recognition of its spiritual heritage, which will help to overcome the effects of decades of colonial domination and alienation, so that Bolivia is characterized by its o w n culture, which is rooted in the native

65


tradition, though without underrating the c o m m o n heritage of Western civilizations and the stimulating contribution of other cultures.

19. It will create the Centre for Bolivian Culture to encourage activities of an authentically national character in the fields of painting, sculpture, music, dance, ballet, cinema, literature, theatre, folklore and other forms of artistic expression.

20. It will organize the National Institute for Historical Research, which will review the recorded history of Bolivia, interpret historical facts scientifically and organize the classification of archives and libraries.

21. It will establish Tiwanaku as the archaeological capital of Bolivia and give priority to the work carried out there by Bolivian research workers, in order to establish the origins of the national identity of Bolivia in this ancient American civilization.

22. It will encourage recognition of the importance of the ancient cultures which existed in various parts of the national territory and study of them- cultures such as the Ciscachanense and Ayapitense cultures, the megalithic Huancarani, Oruro, Cochabamba cultures, the cultures of Tarija and Lipez, and those of the Sauces, Tupuraya, Mojocoya, Nazcoide, Yampara, Presto-Puno, Humahuaca, Huruquilla, Yura, Chaquí, Mollo, Reino Colla or Aymara, Inca, Palmar de Chiquitos and Arawak from the Beni.

23. It will give all possible support to institutions devoted to the study of native languages, especially Aymara, Quechua and those of Arawak and Tupi-Guarani origin, as well as to universities which maintain chairs for the study and propagation of these languages.

24. It will organize the systematic registration of all that constitutes the archaeological, artistic and historical riches of Bolivia and will enforce strictly those sections of the law which forbid their export.

25. It will provide the country with more museums and improve the exhibition system in those already in existence. Museums will be established in the departmental capitals, to conserve the artistic heritage of each region.

26. It will increase the funds and improve the services of the National Library and Archives, as well as other existing libraries, and will encourage the creation of new public and school libraries. It will set up a ‘Book Bank’ to provide students of limited means with textbooks, and will encourage the reading habit among all sections of the population.

27. It will create cultural councils in each departmental capital, which will work under the supervision and with the support of the Centre for Bolivian Culture and with the assistance of the respective administrative departments, municipalities and universities.

28. It will organize a cinema library, in which cinematographic material of documentary value, made in the country, as well as the classics of world cinema, will be deposited and shown. It will also organize a national photograph library for the purposes of documenting and inventorying monuments and promoting tourism.

29. It will reorganize the national radio and television services so that they serve the people and promote literacy work, adult education and the spread of culture, and will provide the countries of the Andean region with a massive education programme via satellite, for all the inhabitants of the area.

30. It will encourage the spread of culture on a wide scale and will encourage

66

I Cultural policy of Bolivian governments

~

the production and commercializing of handicrafts, which are an authentic expression of the national soul.

III. In science and technology

31. It will set up a national scientific and technological programme for the application of science and technology to the development of the country, with specific long- and short-term goals.

32. It will encourage the National Academy of Sciences, in its capacity as a decentralized State body, to examine means of co-ordinating scientific research institutes and centres more effectively, thereby avoiding duplication of effort, waste of resources and the illogical use of high-level human potential.

33. It will stimulate all efforts made by the autonomous universities to promote scientific research. It will also encourage the establishment of research institutes in centres for higher studies, where problems related to economic and social development will be studied and analysed and where personnel of the scientific level necessary for teaching and industrial work will be trained.

34. It will promote the creation of incentives in Bolivia to halt the exodus of professional personnel and technicians, whose services are necessary in this phase of national transformation, and will facilitate the return of those who wish to settle in their own country, so that by their professional abilities they may help in carrying out the tasks of development.

35. It will give firm support to the natural and biological sciences, recognizing the advantages of investing in programmes of this kind which are suited to the level of development and conditions of the country.

36. It will promote the progressive use of cybernetics for the checking, storing and dissemination of date and information and for the improvement of statistics.

37. It will resort to foreign technical assistance only if there are no Bolivian specialists in the field concerned, thereby encouraging Bolivian experts to discharge their responsibilities towards the country.

38. It will call upon scientists to join with the people in defence of the natural resources and to study the best methods for the exploitation and renewal of such resources for the benefit of Bolivia.

In accordance with this declaration, the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Ovando regime, which was in power for a year, not only stepped up the literacy programme, but also established the National School of Folklore, the Book Bank and the Revista Nacional de Cultura (National Cultural Review), and set in motion various other programmes which it would take too long to mention in detail.

It is worth noting that before the advent of the present government led by General Banzer, General Barrientos had introduced television into Bolivia, the service being provided by a State-owned company. Later, the government of General Tórrez set up a separate Ministry of Culture to stimulate cultural activities, but the experiment failed with the fall of the government, which occurred within a year.

67


Present cultural policy

The government cultural service has once more become part of the Ministry of Education; it did little of importance until the Bolivian Institute for Culture (IBC) was set up, on 14 March 1975, under the direction of the anthropologist Julia Elena Forth. It seems likely that the institute will give a great deal of impetus to the tasks entrusted to it. These, as set out in its Charter, are the following:

(a) To promote and enrich all forms of national culture. (b) To carry out research and other investigations conducive to the development

(c) To preserve and defend the cultural heritage of the country. (d) To protect and register intellectual property. (e) To propagate all forms of national culture. (f) To draw up, programme, carry out and evaluate all plans for the develop-

of culture.

ment of cultures1

The IBC is composed of the following operative bodies: National Institute of Archaeology; National Institute of Anthropology; National Institute of Visual Arts ; National Institute of History and Literature; National Institute of Music and Dramatic Art; Department of Out-of-School Education.

The national budget must include the necessary annual financial provision for the operation of the IBC.

It is regrettable that the five-year economic and social development plan, which will be in force until 1980, makes no provision whatever for the systematic development of culture. T o remedy this situation, the IBC convened and organized the first National Conference on Cultural Development, in L a Paz, in the first half of March 1977; it was attended by bodies responsible for this type of work in the central government, the municipalities and other official organs.

Unfortunately, bodies representing those concerned-federations of writers, artists, musicians, members of film clubs, etc.-were not invited to express their opinion. Perhaps this will be rectified in the future.

This conference formulated conclusions and recommendations which are not to be compared with the 1970 declaration on cultural policy in coherence or quality, but which are none the less very valuable and useful in that they indicate practical steps to be taken. They are reproduced below:

1. Instituto Boliviano de Cultura, Estatuto Orgcinico, p. 1, La Paz, Dirección de Admi- nistración, 1976 (mimeo.).

68


General conclusions

[It is desirable:] 1. T o make it clear that cultural policy should be given priority in the general

context of the planning of national and regional development, and should be an integral part of economic and social policies. 1.1. T o implement and/or reorganize an institutional, multisectorial system,

at national and departmental level, for the co-ordinated application of the policy of overall development, with the necessary administrative, financial and legal support.

2. T o create in every departmental capital, with the direct participation of the Bolivian Institute for Culture, departmental administrative bodies, municipal corporations, universities, development corporations and/or public works committees, regional tourist authorities, departmental youth offices and all the public and private bodies at departmental level which can furnish the aid necessary to implement programmes for cultural development in line with the National Cultural Policy approved by this Conference and co-ordinated by the Bolivian Institute for Culture.

3. T o invite the Bolivian Institute for Culture to request the appropriate bodies to issue a series of postage stamps in support of the cultural programmes of this body and the departmental cultural committees.

4. T o request the appropriate authorities to establish a National School of Anthropology as soon as possible, in view of the decision of the sixth Meeting of Ministers of Education of the Andrés Bello Convention to approve the establishment of the Andean Anthropological Institute with its headquarters in the city of L a Paz, which will call for the participation of Bolivian anthropologists.

5. T o set up departmental archives in those departmental capitals where they do not already exist, in order to centralize documentation dispersed in cities, Drovinces. cantons and sub-cantons. 5, .1. To arrange for this task to be executed by the departmental cultural

committees with the co-operation of the departmental authorities concerned and in co-ordination with the Development Programme of the Bolivian Public Documents and Archives Service, sponsored by UMSA and the Organization of American States.

5.2. A n y documentation that cannot be centralized in departmental capitals should be catalogued and reproduced by such technical means as are available.

Particular conclusions

[It is desirable:] 1. To work for the achievement, at the earliest possible date, of the First National

Congress for the Defence of the National Heritage in the city of Potosí, under the auspices of the Bolivian University Tomás Frías, in the same city. 1.1. T o give firm support, through the Bolivian Institute for Culture and

the departmental cultural committees, to the achievement of this undertaking, which is of great importance for the defence of our national heritage.

69


2. T o request the Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy to suspend the works being carried out in the subsoil of Potosí, which are adversely affecting the conservation of important colonial monuments that are part of the national heritage. 2.1. That works carried out by public and private mining companies which

m a y damage urban areas of great cultural value should be restricted or prevented.

2.2. T o request such bodies to make the necessary financial contribution to the restoration of the churches of San Benito and Santa Teresa and to the organization of the museum to be set up in the monastery.

3. T o request the ecclesiastical authorities of Cochabamba to allow the Convent of Santa Teresa to be used as a Diocesan Museum, in order to prevent the loss of valuable works of art to be found in the department.

4. T o request the appropriate bodies to provide the necessary technical assistance both for the transfer, in the city of Oruro, of the Baroque portals of the Cathedral Church (Iglesia de la Compañía) and the Beaterio de los Nazarenos (house of lay sisters), of mestizo style, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively, and for the restoration of the Church of San Miguel de la Ranchería, with its valuable collection of works dating from the colonial period.

5. T o request the Ministry of Public Health to accept the offer made by the Mariscal José Ballivián University to buy the old building formerly occupied by the Busch hospital, in Trinidad, in order to establish the Archaeological Museum of El Beni. 5.1. T o make arrangements with the Ministry of Rural and Agricultural

Affairs to exchange a three hectare site it owns in the city of Trinidad, for other land more suitable for the establishment of the Institute for Forestry Research that is to be set up, in order to facilitate the setting-up of the Anthropological and Archaeological Museum.

6. T o request the Supreme National Government to give priority to the establishment of a Polytechnical Institute in the city of Cobija. 6.1. T o enlist the aid of the authorities of the Department of Pando and

the José Ballivián University so that this project m a y be promptly carried out.

7. T o express our gratitude to the Ministries of Education and Culture, and of Planning and Co-ordination, and particularly to the Bolivian Institute for Culture, for the interest and support they have shown in the convening of the First National Conference on Cultural Development, which has served to establish c o m m o n criteria and to unite the efforts of all in the pursuit of c o m m o n objectives which facilitate the application of the national cultural

8. T o thank the Mayor of Tarija for the offer to use his premises for the second Nationa I Conference on Cultural Development, which is to take place in 1978.

policy.

Recommendations

1. That the State and the Church should establish c o m m o n principles for the application of a policy of protection and conservation of the national historical, artistic and cultural heritage, entrusting the Ministry of External Relations

70


and Religion with the responsibility for signing an agreement to facilitate the tasks of inventorying and cataloguing the movable goods and immovable property which, in accordance with articles 191 and 192 of the Constitution of the State, are part of the national heritage, and which are in the possession of the Church. 1.1. That the ecclesiastical authorities, in conjunction with the departmental

cultural committees and seeking the technical advice of the National Institute of Visual Arts, should organize regional diocesan museums and Church museums to house the material taken from places where conservation cannot be guaranteed.

1.2. That all citizens should be encouraged to appreciate the national culture and to take steps to preserve the cultural heritage, as part of their civic duty.

2. That every municipal authority and/or offices of the plan should carry out town-planning studies to enhance the beauty of the historic centre of the city for which they are responsible, with a view to preserving the c o m m o n historic, architectural and cultural heritage. 2.1. That municipal authorities lacking the h u m a n and financial resources

necessary to carry out this work should ask the Bolivian Institute for Culture to assist them in achieving the object of this recommendation, in accordance with the principle of joint responsibility.

3. That steps should be taken to ensure that all artistic and cultural functions organized by the Bolivian Institute for Culture and the Departmental Cultural Committees are exempt from tax. 3.1. That the municipal authorities should be requested to issue a stamp

by municipal decree, in support of culture, to the value of 1 Bolivian peso, the proceeds of which would go to the departmental cultural committees.

4. That the State, acting through the appropriate bodies, should fulfil its obligation to facilitate the full exercise of the specific functions incumbent upon the Bolivian National Archives and the National Library of Bolivia, in accordance with their character and the legal provisions in force, with a view to the incorporation, preservation and optimal use of the documentary and bibliographical resources of the nation, providing for this purpose a satisfactory infrastructure to deal with the allocation of responsibilities, legislation, premises, equipment, personnel and budget for expenditure.

5. That, putting into effect the provisions of 1936 and of 10 September 1976, in order to further the implementation of the development programme of the Bolivian Public Documents and Archives Service, which, under the auspices of the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and the Organization of American States, is being executed by all bodies in the public sector, co- operation should be given as is requested, in particular by the Ministry of Planning and Co-operation, in accordance with its purposes and responsibilities.

6. That the National Council for Higher Education (CNES) should be requested to arrange for the study of the history of art to be included, as in the past, in the curriculum of the Faculty of Architecture.

7. That the same body should also be requested to arrange for the study of copyright to be included in the curriculum of law courses in Bolivian universities.

71


8. That, under provisions approved by the Supreme Government, State bodies, such as the Mining Corporation of Bolivia, and public and private mining companies based in the department of Potosí should be required to allocate a fixed percentage of their budget to the restoration of colonial monuments in Potosí.

9. That the Ministry of Education and Culture should instruct the Curriculum Department to include in its teaching programmes the study of the history and significance of all aspects of the national cultural heritage.

10. The Bolivian Television Company should co-operate impartially in broadcasting activities, through educational and information programmes, for the benefit of the community, providing time for cultural broadcasts for which the Bolivian Institute for Culture and the departmental cultural committees should be responsib1e.l

1. Iilstituto Boliviano de Cultura, Resumen de Conclusiones y Recomendaciones, Primera Conferencia Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural, La Paz, 10 al 12 de marzo de 1977.

72


The publishing movement

The authors w e mentioned previously in the chapter on literature and the arts have had great difficulty in publishing their books, often paying for them to be published. It is only in the last few years that a few reliable publishing houses have come into being. Occasionally, the various State institutions or the universities publish books and reviews. As a rule, the author receives 10 per cent of proceeds from sales, but since very few copies are printed (1,000 to 2,000 copies per printing, on average), his income is extremely small.

The main publishing houses are: Amigos del Libro in L a Paz and Cochabamba, Difusión, Gisbert and Juventud, all in L a Paz.

The newspaper Ultima Hora, published in L a Paz, has broken new ground by bringing out the Biblioteca Popular Boliviana; under this scheme, one book per month is published at very reasonable prices and in editions which at times reach 15,000 copies.

According to a survey carried out by the Agence France-Presse news agency and published in Ultima Hora, on 25 February 1977, no more than 400 titles a year are published in Bolivia, the majority of them being school textbooks. Book production in Bolivia is expensive, owing to the use of imported material, such as paper, ink and printing machines. Another factor that increases costs is the small readership. The country spends U.S.$5 million on importing books, which, paradoxically, are in some cases cheaper than those published in Bolivia. Spain is the principal supplier of books, especially textbooks for school and university students, followed by Mexico and Argentina.

According to the National Book Chamber, only 1 per cent of Bolivians read regularly, while 5 per cent read occasionally. Thus, in Bolivia,

73


only 50,000 people out of a population of 5 m a o n read with any regularity.

The reasons for this lack of interest in reading must be sought in the large number of illiterates, as well as in difficulties due to lack of practice; the adult population in general, having dropped out of school in the lower grades, have no further contact with the printed word, even through newspapers or magazines. The liberal professions and members of the literate middle class are not avid readers either, perhaps as a reaction to the poor teaching methods inflicted upon them when they were at school. Another new factor is television, whose programmes, however poor (and, in general, they are very poor), attract more people than does a good book.

It m a y be of interest to see what subjects have been dealt with by Bolivian authors in the last fourteen years (up to 1975), according to the publisher Werner Guttentag, author of a Bio- bibliografía Boliviana, which comes out yearly. According to his investigations, the subjects of most books are as follows: 444 books on political subjects; 425 on historical subjects; 340 on law; 254 books of poetry; 244 on economics; 179 on agriculture; 173 novels; 150 books on religion; 110 books on mining; 109 books of short stories; 105 biographies; 75 books of essays; 63 books on theatre; 63 books on music; 62 bibliographies; 59 books on medicine; 51 on folklore; 50 on art; 47 on science; 35 on archaeology; 31 on oil and 7 on sport.

The topics that arouse the most interest are politics and history, followed by law, education, economics and agriculture. Curiously, poetry takes fourth place, almost on a par with narrative works. Since Bolivia is essentially a mining country, there are m a n y books on this subject, though not on oil and gas, which Bolivia is also exploiting successfully. It is generally held that most newspaper readers read only the sports page, but this would appear to be contradicted by the fact that very few books on sport are published.

Television, press and radio

There is only one television channel; it is under State control, although it accepts publicity in order to meet costs. At bst it was available only in L a Paz, but n o w its broadcasts reach Oruro and Cochabamba, and will soon take in Santa Cruz and the rest of the republic. The programme content is based on ‘canned’ imports from Argentina and the United States of America, and very few programmes are of a truly cultural nature. The public is constantly complaining about the very poor quality of the broadcasts, but up to n o w nothing m u c h has been done, and the situation is not improved by dependence on advertisements, which means that the only official channel is the main propaganda

74


platform for unnecessary products, and creates an irrational desire for consumer goods.

The radio stations (about 100 in the whole country) devote very little space to culture, confining their activities to broadcasting news, ‘soap-operas’ of doubtful taste, commercials, and folk and international music. A few of them, such as Fides, Cruz del Sur, and Illimani include programmes of real artistic quality, which serve a cultural purpose. But bad taste and commercialization prevail.

The standard of the press has improved considerably in recent years. The main newspapers are Presencia, Ultima Hora, El Diario and Hoy, in L a Paz; Los Tiempos, in Cochabamba; and La Patria, in Oruro. Almost all publish a literary supplement, a page every day is devoted to readers’ views. The most important are the literary supplement of Presencia, and Semana, published by Ultima Hora, both devoted to Bolivian literature. The circulation of the principal newspapers reaches 40,000 copies for the ordinary editions, although it reached a record figure of 130,000 when the diary of the guerrilla leader Ernesto Guevara was published, and it has been known to reach 150,000 when Bolivia wins in an international football match.

Foundations

Of the three great Bolivian millionaires before 1952 (Patiño, Hochschild and Aramayo), who owned the tin mines nationalized in that year, only the first created a foundation which bears his name; its essential purpose is to provide grants for holders of the school-leaving certificate w h o pursue their university studies in Geneva. The Patiño Foundation provides their board and a grant for studies in that city. The Portales centre, which is financed by the same foundation, organizes various cultural activities in Cochabamba, from radio broadcasts to courses in modern mathematics for secondary-school teachers. It also does useful work in the teaching of Quechua.

Other persons in the business world, but on a more modest scale, have followed this example, such as R a m ó n Darío Gutiérrez of Santa Cruz, w h o established the cultural foundation which bears his name, Mario Mercado V.G., w h o set up the Emusa Cultural Foundation, and Mrs Mónica de Gutiérrez, w h o set up the Manuel Vicente Ballivián Foundation. The purpose of all these foundations is to promote the arts and sciences.

Unfortunately, Bolivia does not offer any incentives such as those given in the United States, for example, where wealthy persons w h o set up funds for the spread of culture and invest in works of art are granted income-tax relief.

The Patiño Foundation has an annual capital of about U.S.$500,000.

75


The other foundations give m u c h smaller sums to their operations, varying between U.S.$50,000 and U.S.$lOO,OOO.

Museums

There are not m a n y museums in Bolivia, though so m u c h material is available that there could be a wide variety. Those at present in existence are as follows: In L a Paz: the Tiwanaku Museum (in the town of Tiwanaku); the

National Art Museum; the Museum of Popular Art; the Casa del Protomártir Pedro Domingo Murillo (historical and ethnographic) ; the Police Criminological Museum; the Museum of Religious Art in the Convent of San Francisco.

In Cochabamba: the Museum of the Palace of Culture; the Picture Gallery of the Palace of Portales; the Archaeological Museum of the Uni- versity of San Simón.

In Potosí: the Mint (Art Gallery and Coin Museum); the Franciscan Museum.

In Sucre: Casa de la Libertad (historical museum); the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Cathedral; the Museum of the University of San Francisco Xavier.

In Oruro: the Archaeological Museum; the Museum of the Technical University.

In Tarija: the Palaeontological Museum; the Museum of the University Juan Misael Saracho.

In Santa Cruz: Museum of the Casa de la Cultura; the Archaeological Museum of Samaipata.

Other less-known museums should also be mentioned, such as: the Mineralogical Museum of the Banco Minero in L a Paz, the Irpavi Military Museum, in the same city, the University Museum being established at the José Ballivián University in Trinidad, etc. There are also important private collections.

The majority of the above museums are administered by public institutions and companies, universities, municipal authorities, State banks, etc.

Almost all are of a general nature, and their internal structure depends, above all, on the personal preferences of the director; there are no established norms.

N o Bolivian museum is self-supporting; all require subventions from the bodies which maintain them, and for this reason they are inadequately provided with such things as stands, shelves and show- cases, and they need more staff, or staff with higher qualifications, etc.

In more than 70 per cent of Bolivian museums there are no guides

76


or catalogues for either Bolivian or foreign visitors. This is why they fail to attract the general public, people from all sections of society, and especially schoolchildren, as museums in Mexico and other countries do.

Apart from the archaeological museums supported by the National Archaeological Institute, several others are planned, such as the Museum of Bolivian Minerals, to be run by the Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy and the Numismatic Museum, to be run by the Central Bank. If suitably adapted, several churches and m a n y buildings of architectural value dating from the colonial and republican periods which are situated in the cities could provide the infrastructure needed by the museums for their expansion.

The looting of works of art and folk culture

Bolivia is only one piece in the mosaic of international art piracy, which, according to the available evidence, is in the hands of a world-wide criminal organization master-minded by art experts, whose spoils are destined for a sophisticated and economically powerful market.

The columns of the press carry regular reports of illegal export consignments seized by the authorities consisting of archaeological pieces, paintings and relics of the colonial period, church ornaments, etc. Almost all the remaining examples of pre-Columbian art, which are left in depositories, together with the paintings, sculptures and carvings of the colonial period belonging to churches and chapels, are totally unguarded by the authorities.

This lack of physical security for the artistic and historic heritage of the nation is an outright incitement to steal Bolivian works of art. The thieves break into churches-not only those in the remoteness of the countryside, but even in the densely populated cities-under cover of darkness, scaling walls and breaking locks, to cut canvases from their frames and take engraved ciboria, crucifixes and jewels from religious statues. Presumably, what is discovered and salvaged only represents a fraction of what goes abroad for good. On one occasion the United States had to return a consignment of paintings belonging to the church and convent of San Francisco de Cochabamba.

This being so, a sort of security system has evolved spontaneously in rural villages; it is operated by the peasants themselves, w h o are suspicious of outsiders and sometimes arrest them. This surveillance by the people can be effective, if it is exercised constantly and in all places, which is not always the case. Vigdance decreases or disappears on the occasion of local fiestas, an opportunity seized upon by the looters.

The Bolivian Episcopal Conference decided that museums of religious

77


art should be set up in the departmental capitals, in which all colonial works of art from churches lacking protection would be housed, 80 that they could be properly protected. The first museum established is in the Convent of San Francisco in L a Paz. However, no agreements have yet been reached as to the inventorying of ecclesiastical art treasures by the State bodies responsible for culture.

Another aspect of the loss of works of art and of cultural identity is the appropriation by other South American countries of songs, dances and masques from the native and mestizo folk culture of Bolivia; and it is aggravated by the fact that, in these countries, unscrupulous individuals record and sell them as their own, receiving royalties for them, which is quite dishonest.

The complaints of Bolivian musicians and composers are directed particularly at Argentina, although the matter is not so simple. The point is that Argentina has about 500,000 Bolivian immigrants, m a n y of them labourers working initially on the sugar harvest and w h o have stayed on to live in the villas miseria or shanty-towns of Buenos Aires and other cities and towns. This enormous body of workers of native origin takes with it its cultural tradition, its music and other forms of folk culture, which come to be considered as products of the north of Argentina. Furthermore, this region was at one time settled by the Aymaras and Quechuas, and there are Quechua-speaking towns in the country whose folk culture is similar to that of Bolivia.

This appropriation of typically Bolivian cultural forms is particularly evident in the imitations which dance troupes from the south of Peru and the Chilean pampas have been making in the last few years, by presenting the traditional Diablada of the miners of Oruro as their o w n creation.

An agreement between the governments involved could put a stop to the illegal appropriation and dissemination of folk culture and popular songs, through the organization of effective machinery for mutual communication and rapid sanctions.

Legal regulations concerning intellectual property

A m o n g the various laws and regulations in Latin American countries- inherited from their Hispanic and Latin tradition-those on authors’ rights were among the earliest to be adopted, and, at the same time, they are extraordinarly incoherent and diffuse.

A council of ministers, entrusted with executive power during the Pacific W a r with Chile, issued a Decree on 13 August 1879. It laid d o w n that: (a) ‘The author of a printed or lithographed work is the owner of it and has the exclusive right to reproduce it during his life-time’ (Art. 7); and (b) ‘After the death of the author, his heirs, assignees

78


or representatives shall conserve the right of property mentioned in Art. 7, for a period of fifty years’ (Art. lO).l

As can be seen, only printed matter was then considered to be intellectual property.

As early as 1909, the government of President Eliodoro Villazón decided that intellectual property should include scientific, artistic and literary works, and that intellectual property rights should be exercised by authors, translators, publishers, writers of abridgements, designers, painters, musicians, sculptors, etc., and their heirs. The duration of the right to such property, transmitted by inheritance, was limited to thirty years.

In 1945 the progressive government of Lt.-Col. Gualberto Villarroe1 promulgated a parliamentary law aimed at protecting copyright. Its principal provision was that:

No literary, scientific or musical work shall be performed or published, in whole or in part, unless it has the title and in the form prescribed by the author and unless the authorization of the latter or his representative has been secured, this provision being applicable to instrumental music and dancing, as well as to broadcast public performances, such as those transmitted by radiotelephonic means.2

In 1947, the government of Bolivia ratified the Convention on the Protection of Copyright, signed in Washington in June 1946, which then became part of Bolivian law. In 1962, under the government of Victor Paz Estenssoro, the following international agreements were approved and ratified: the Agreement for Facilitating the International Circulation of Visual and Auditory Materials of an Educational, Scientific and Cultural Character, adopted at Lake Success, N e w York, on 15 June 1949; the Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials, approved in the same place, on 22 November 1950, with the annexed Protocol; the Universal Copyright Convention, approved in Geneva on 6 September 1952; the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, signed in The Hague on 14 M a y 1954.

As far as books and other printed matter are concerned, any work published must be deposited and its legal ownership registered. T w o copies must be deposited with the National Library in Sucre.

A ne w Code of Intellectual Property is to be drawn up in order to put an end to the incoherence of legislative norms on this matter and to ensure that they cover all cultural property.

1. Peter Lewy, Propiedad Intelectual en Bolivia (Doctrina y Legislación), p. 62, 63,

2. Lewy, op. cit., p. 71, 78. La Paz-Cochabamba, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro.

79


Concerted cultural development

Until now, art, science and culture have been regarded as luxuries which should pay their way themselves; in other words, the standards of the market economy have been applied to cultural matters. This has led to the neglect and abandonment of an activity which is important for the spiritual life of Bolivians.

The opposite of this would be State paternalism in the field of eulture. In other works, cultural development would be restricted, regimented and directed by the central government, and this situation would be aggravated by the fact that, owing to our tradition of political instability, a bureaucratically directed culture of this kind would be liable to constant change.

None of these solutions seems to be ideally suited to our condition, which is one of dependence and underdevelopment in every sphere. Countries such as ours must develop; we must fight for our independence principally in economic matters, and it is all the more essential that we should have our own cultural identity.

AU the sectors and resources which play a part in the cultural development of the country must be used, although no single element should become too important. Efforts, plans and programmes must be co-ordinated, whether undertaken by State and municipal institutions operating in the field of culture, business concerns or private foundations with a cultural role, or associations of creative artists and of those w h o disseminate art and other forms of cultural expression.

One of the weak points of the National Conference on Cultural Development, held in La Paz in March 1977, was the failure to invite organizations of those directly concerned who therefore were not present-the Bolivian Writers’ Union, the Association of Visual Artists, the Organization of Theatre Artists, the Society of Composers, the Bolivian Federation of Film Clubs, etc. We are firmly convinced that not even the slightest cultural development is possible without the participation of such interested parties.

Neither neglect nor State direction; our aim must be concerted cultural development.

However, the recommendations approved by that conference constitute a sound basis from which we can try to evolve a cultural policy, which will be the first our country has known.

There is also the old problem of priorities in official action. A few budgetary figures will make the situation clear. While the government spends U.S.$lOO million a year on an educational system which, as far as one can see, serves neither the community nor the students, nor even the teachers who feel frustrated and underpaid, it allocates barely U.S.$800,000 a year to the National Institute for Culture and all the bodies dependent on it.

80

I Dissemination and preservation of culture

Leaving aside the question of military expenditure, w e shall simply cite the figures for sport, in which a great effort has been made in the last few years, to such an extent that the Bolivian Games Committee has received over U.S.$15 milJion a year for sports fields and other costs. If one compares these figures with the funds allocated to the body responsible for encouraging cultural activity, it will be clearly seen that culture is still the Cinderella among the different sectors in the 1 national budget.

81

[B.13] CC 77/XIX-45JA

Cultural policy in Bolivia; Studies and documents on cultural policies ...

Documents

Transcript of Cultural policy in Bolivia; Studies and documents on cultural policies ...