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#120 Peasant Response to the Market and the Land Question in the 18th and 19th Century Bolivia

By Herbert S. Klein

Abstract

This study analyzes the reasons why the free Indian communities of Bolivia were able to maintain their lands and population intact during a period of major penetration of market forces in the 19th century. In recent studies of rural Andean history, it has become evident that the free Indian communities survived well into the modern period and that the hacienda system which fell to agrarian reform in 1953 dates only from the 1880s. Most commentators have assumed that government dependence upon an Indian tribute tax guaranteed the integrity of the communities until that tax became unimportant. But this study suggests that the Indians were not passive, but adapted positively to market incentives and thus finally forced the government to use extra-market forces to destroy their ability to respond to the market so that their lands could be seized and their persons subjected to hacienda labor. Attention is directed toward stratification within the free communities and to the role it played in enabling the Indians to survive.

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