University of Northern Iowa

Latin American Report: Bolivia: New World TibetAuthor(s): Hugh FoxSource: The North American Review, Vol. 253, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1968), pp. 2-4Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116771 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 10:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The NorthAmerican Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:27:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I LATIN AMERICAN

REPORTl BOLIVIA: NEW WORLD TIBET.

Bolivia is essentially the altiplano, the high plain country in the middle of the Andes that averages be tween 12,000 and 13,000 feet. Potosi is the highest town of importance in Bolivia and lies at an elevation of 13,255 feet.

The whole altiplano is lunar. It is dry, dead, for

bidding. There is nothing green, only grey and brown. The winds are strong, the air cold and brittle. It is

basically desert, and the Indians that you see spaced out at great distances from each other live a life of bare subsistance. I never in my life have felt as isolated as the day when I was driving to Potosi from La Paz and an Indian boy started running along beside the jeep. I

stopped. He was yelling "thanta, thanta," his red wov en chullo (cap) held out in his hand. Thanta, bread in Quechua. I got out and was hit hard by the cold

sweep of the wind, and noticed that the boy was bare foot and shivering. I offered him money, but he re fused it, began to walk away. Why? Then I looked

up and saw the vast wasteland in which he lived, and realized that he couldn't buy anything with money, that there was nowhere to buy anything even if he had

money. I had been driving over dirt roads for eight hours without passing a single town, without seeing another car. Nothing but herds of llamas or isolated stone houses with their characteristic crosses placed atop them to ward off evil spirits. And it is here on the

altiplano that about 70 percent of the population is concentrated.

Although 70 per cent of the population of Bolivia is unreasonably located in the altiplano there are low lands which presumably could be opened up in the future. In Bolivia, though, for every possibility there are multiple improbabilities. The altiplano world (as

we shall see later, the world of the Inca empire) is a

unit in itself, and the other "units" that geographically make up Bolivia are also "units" in themselves, almost

totally isolated from each other. Moving east off the

altiplano the mountains suddenly slope down into semi

tropical valleys called the Yungas. The vegetation is lush and the rainfall abundant. Here is where the cacao (coco) is grown, but the region has not been

adequately exploited because of the sheer physical dif ficulties of building roads into an area that drops down at thirty to forty-five degree angles from the altiplano.

Continuing eastern, of course, the problem becomes even graver. The mountains continue to descend to an elevation of some 300 feet in the east and west. The northeastern part of Bolivia (the Beni) is in the Ama= zon basin, dense, tropical, luxurious?and isolated both

psychologically and geographically from the capital in La Paz on the altiplano. To the southeast lies what is left of the Gran Chaco, most of which was lost in one

of Bolivia's disastrous border wars with her neighbors. It is an area of rolling savannas, occupied by herds of cattle and goats?and suffering from drought some seven or eight months a year.

In Bolivia, the only "surfaced" roads are those be tween Cochabama and Santa Cruz, some roads between

La Paz and the Yunga and a few miles on the Tari ja section of the Pan American highway. The total com

munications infra-structure is minimal where it exists at all and there is at present very little possibility of

actually using a rich, potentially productive area like Beni. Here some 200,000 square miles lie virtually untouched. The national Bolivian airline, Lloyd Aereo

Boliviano, uses old out-of-service U.S. planes, and al

though it has an excellent safety record, air-travel in Bolivia is a hair-raising experience. The railroads are

totally inadequate for the twentieth century. Then too, as Amado Canelas points out in his Mito

y Realidad de la Reforma Agraria (La Paz, 1966), the

altiplano Indians are not psychologically oriented to ward the lowlands, even if the comunications were

good and the health hazards connected with the Ama zon Basin were overcome:

The Inca Empire, basically fixed in the Andian regions, never reached the plains, where, at the time of the Con

quest, all that existed there were jungle tribes. Therefore

the lands of the Altiplano and the valleys, inhabited by

peoples of quechua and aymara origin, were submitted

to an intensive agricultural exploitation, whereas the

natural resources of the plains remained untouched.

Never really good farmland, the Altiplano is now

"exhausted", but the habits and customs of centuries are not changed by logic. When experimental lowland colonies have been sponsored by organizations like the United Nations, the results have been far from

promising. One such attempt, at Cotoca, with agrono mists, veterinaries and all kinds of other technicians and technical services, was close to a complete failure.

In order to really understand Bolivia's present situ

ation, it is vital first to take a brief but penetrating look into her past. Bolivia's past weighs more heavily on

her shoulders than that of any other country in Latin America. She is suffering from a long historical process of misuse and disorientation that dates back to the

Conquest.

Bolivia did not exist as a separate political entity until August 6, 1825. In Inca times it had been part of the Inca empire which had its capital in Cuzco. In

2 The North American Review

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:27:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE WORKINGS OF BELLIES

(for Lloyd and James Greene)

A fraction of sparrows at P & 17th, laced into the catalpa trees, the dark pods twisting earthward, the impacted roots, it's no lie, the ground is a big hunger and can never be fed enough, no lie about the workings of bellies. But tigers lie down in the D.C. sidewalks, and a scrotal zoo screams

with the bright lips of noon.

And nobody's fur is safe. I'm speaking of the businessmen

going down on the politicians, I'm speaking of the politicians. It's a jungle here, alright, a jungle of power and dead men and power, and statues dedicated to dead men, and the dead hands of men not yet dead.

Sparrows churn among the leaves on a chipped wall of ivy, and I wonder what it's like to be the ex-secretary of a congressman,

Paris in April, Hongkong in December, and a free ride back to Oshkosh, or the cow country of Tilden, Nebraska.

Roots suck water beneath concrete, but the nights crying for roots is not the crying of roots.

It's cold in the ground but it's a cold a man can die with.

I'm speaking of Ralph Manners

who can hardly breathe while cleaning up the greasy shit in the kitchen, buried deep in a despised skin.

These white rich white men

eat too damn much.

Norman Hoe g berg

NORMAN HOEGBERG's poems have appeared in the MR

before. Tie is surviving Washington, D. C.

colonial times what is now Bolivia was merely "Upper Peru," and the sociological-geographical unity was still

somewhat preserved, although now, with the shifting of the government from Cuzco to Lima, the whole area

was set off balance. The Inca empire had been moun

tain-centered, mountain-oriented. The Spanish, how

ever, being invaders from Europe, with their interests

still oriented toward Spain, located their capital on the

coast. Cuzco lost the importance it had had in pre Columbian times and "Upper-Peru" (Bolivia) was now

far removed from the administrative centers of the new

Spanish government?this sense of "isolation" was to

become a determining factor in the whole future history of the region. With the cultural and administrative center of the southern part of the Spanish colonial

empire in Lima (the other center was Mexico City in the North), the only real interest that the Spaniards had in "Upper Peru" was its mineral wealth. Silver was discovered in Potosi in 1545 and by 1650 it had a population of 160,000 people and was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. Then, once the silver

was exhausted the population dwindled and by 1825 there were a mere 8,000 inhabitants. On the road to

Potosi you see piles of stone. It looks almost like a

glacial deposit. These are the ruins of the former houses and silver smelters. Today Potosi is small and

incredibly isolated, and the Indians wear costumes out of colonial times. It is the closest that one can come to Tibet in the New World. (In colonial times a system of

semi-slavery called the Mita was devised whereby the Indians worked from dawn to dark from Monday

morning to Saturday night, usually without ever leav

ing the mines. The "salary" was less than three and a half pesos a week, but if the Indian's production level went lower than the pre-determined quota he could be fined more than a week's salary. This, of course, was

the official, legal schedule. "Abuses" made the system even more punishing. This was the Indian's "heritage" from the Spanish colonial system. See Gabriel Rene

Moreno, La Mita de Potosi en 1795 published by the Institute of Historical Research and Alberto Crespo

Rodas, la "Mita" de Potosi published by the Universi dad Tomas Fr?as, both located in Potosi.)

This exhausting of the silver at Potosi is typical of another pattern regarding Bolivia. Bolivia has been a

place to take wealth out of, a country to exhaust and

deplete. First, silver and gold and later tin. The discovery of a mountain of silver in Potosi in

the sixteenth century began once again to change the

socio-political orientation of "Upper Peru." By 1551 the Council of the Indies, the administrative body in

Spain in charge of the Spanish colonies, saw fit to es

tablish an "audiencia" (executive, administrative and

judicial center) in Charcas, the town today called Sucre. After all, this region was one of the wealthiest in America now, it needed its own administrative and

judicial center, could not logically be still totally de

pendent on Peru with its capital so far away on the coast. The creation of this separate judisdictional entity was logical, but as a consequence the present area of

Bolivia, already isolated, began to add arrogance and a sense of independence to its isolation. Under the Incas it had been a province of the Inca empire; under the Spaniards it had been part of the vice-royalty of

Peru. Now, once silver had been discovered, although still within the overall jurisdiction of the viceroy in

Lima, Bolivia began to acquire its own character, its own sense of internal unity, its own mystique. Then in

1778, as if to intentionally confuse the issue, the

Spanish once again changed the jurisdictional rules and broke the Vice-royalty of Peru into two vice-royal ties. Now Charcas (Sucre) became dependent on the new viceroy in Buenos Aires.

This transferring of jurisdictional power from Lima

M ay-June, 1968 3

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:27:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

to Buenos Aires reversed the entire socio-political course of the region's history. Both Upper and Lower Peru was Indian, and the Spanish conquest had merely been placed on top of the Indian sub-structure. The Indians had been turned into virtual slaves in the

mines, but racially and culturally the "texture," the

"composition" of the highlands had remained essential

ly unchanged. Now the whole orientation of this former Inca province, this Indian world, was supposed to be turned toward Buenos Aires?essentially non-Indian,

European. The ultimate effect of trying to relate Bolivia to

Buenos Aires was to accentuate even more Bolivia's

isolation, so that in 1825 when Bolivia was freed from the Spanish by General Sucre, Bolivar's right-hand

man, an assembly of Bolivians chosen from all the Bolivian provinces chose to set up their own govern ment apart from Peru and Argentina. What had his

torically been first "Peruvian" and "Argentinian" now

became independent. After independence, as with most new Latin Ameri

can republics, apart from a few peaceful years under President Santa Cruz, the political history of Bolivia has been chaotic, a painful story of anarchy and civil strife. During Spanish colonial days, although there had been tyranny, there had been peace; now, once

independence had been gained, there was nothing but internecine war.

The case of Bolivia is particularly pathetic because not only has the country been wracked with internal

problems, but in any conflict with its neighbors, Bolivia has lost territory, and often the losses have been severe.

In a war with Chile in the 1880's, Bolivia lost her sea

coast and became totally land-bound. In 1867 Bolivia had lost another 100,000 square kilometres on the right bank of the Paraguay and Mamore rivers to Brazil and

then, finally in 1935, in a war with Paraguay, Bolivia

lost an outlet to the Atlantic by way of the Paraguay River.

It becomes rather painfully obvious that historically, since the sixteenth century Bolivia has served only one

purpose?to be exploited. The Spanish contribution to Bolivian "progress" was to strip it of most of its

silver and gold and simultaneously saddle it with a top

heavy and oppressive civil and religious hierarchy. In more recent times the old pattern of exploitation

has continued, only now the mineral is tin and now the benefactors are not the Spanish, but certain rich fam ilies like the Patinas as well as foreign companies. The

importance of tin in the Bolivian economy can be seen

with frightening clarity if one considers that more than

75% of all the mineral exports of Bolivia are tin, and

that the total mineral exports account for more than

95% of Bolivia's export revenue. In other words, again we come up face to face with the old problem of an

underdeveloped country being nothing more than a

huge natural reserve of raw materials for the industrial

ized, "developed" world outside its borders. The "solutions" to the problems of Bolivia are mul

tiple?and most of them are meaningless. Various

projects have been proposed which promise to solve

everything: nationalization of the mines, the redistri

bution of land of large landowners to small farmers

(agrarian reform), the industrialization of Bolivia, be

ginning with the establishment of tin refineries so that the tin, instead of being exported as a raw material could be exported as a manufactured product.

Faced with the reality of total under-development, however, what would be planning elsewhere, in Bolivia becomes self-destruction. Bolivia is a new world Tibet, a province of the Inca empire whose only changes since the Conquest have been for the worse. And even if the mines could be efficiently nationalized and even if loans could be secured to set up founderies, in twenty five or thirty years the tin would be exhausted and then the country would be without her major source of ex

port revenue.

Bolivia is a country whose problems defy solution. A decade passes, you return and the people you knew are

ten years older, the mineral resources and the soil are

ten years poorer, but nothing else has changed. The

majority of people still speak Quechua and Aymara, the pre-Columbian Indian dialects. They still farm as

they farmed before the Conquest. Their mentalities are

essentially unchanged. Military dictators and political opportunists succeed each other in the presidency, re forms are promised, often even half-heartedly carried

out, but the essential life of the people remains un

changed. The universities remain centers of political activity, and education?almost none of it technical?

stands still. The Jesuits are busily engaged in trying to form a new university to fight against the Masons and Communists. In Sucre the silver statue of the

Virgin is filled with jewels and the gold monstrance of the cathedral is studded with emeralds, but the Indians still go barefoot. In the cafes in Bolivia and throughout the world wherever Bolivian exiles gather, the conver sation always gravitates to the old problems: found

eries, nationalization, the agrarian reform. But still

nothing changes. More loans are obtained from the World Bank and then there is more interest to pay on

the national debt. But the basic solution, the basic beginning of any

solution, the "westernization" of the Indian, is totally ignored. Simon Rodriguez said it more than a hundred

years ago in his Extracto Sucinto de Mi Obra Sobre la Educaci?n Republicana (Bogata, 1849) "the ignorance of social principles is the cause of all evils that man inflicts on himself and others . . . there can never be a true society without social [civic] education."

There are no magic formulas to move an underdevel

oped country toward development. As Gunnar Myrdal points out in his recent Asian Drama, a country is its

people, and its physical resources. Bolivia's problems may partially stem from her almost total disregard for her human resources. Even if there were roads through out the country, and four lane highways leading down to both coasts, even if the Amazon basin areas were under cultivation, there was a port to the sea and Bolivia had the largest tin mill in the world, if the vast

majority of the population remains just as illiterate, as

poor, as exploited as it was in the sixteenth century, nothing really will have changed.

Hugh Fox

4 The North American Review

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:27:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions