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"Culminating over a decade of research, "Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree" brings the republican-era Franciscan missions of the Chiriguania of southeastern Bolivia into the center of frontier history. Erick D. Langer integrates the empirical data from numerous archives into cultural frameworks in ways that create a powerful narrative of ethnogenesis in the 'fields of interaction' that emerged from the institutional mission."--Cynthia Radding, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree

Duke University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables...................................................................ixAcknowledgments....................................................................................xiIntroduction.......................................................................................11. The "Chiriguano Wars" Indian Warfare and the Establishment of the Missions.....................212. The Franciscans.................................................................................613. Death and Migration The Population Decline of the Missions.....................................1014. Daily Life and the Development of Mission Culture...............................................1265. Conversion, Chiefs, and Rebellions Relationships of Power on the Missions......................1606. Missions and the Frontier Economy...............................................................1967. Outside Relations and the Decline of the Missions...............................................2188. From the Chaco War to Secularization, 1932-1949.................................................2579. Comparisons.....................................................................................270Appendix: The Inauguration of Tiguipa Church (1902)................................................284Glossary...........................................................................................289Notes..............................................................................................291Bibliography.......................................................................................337Index..............................................................................................355

Chapter One

A new conception of frontier history is necessary to understand the Chiriguano frontier in the nineteenth century. The wars for independence against the Spaniards resulted in the creation of various nation-states in the region, dominated by Creole elites. For most Chiriguanos, these conflicts also resulted in freedom from all oppressors, including the Creoles. Most of the space that the colonial state carved out of the Chiriguana returned to the control of the indigenous villages. The reasons for this independence were multiple: the demographic weight and political culture of indigenous society, effective guerrilla warfare by the Indians and the types of weapons used, as well as the weakness of the ranching economic model and of the Bolivian state. These factors provided the majority of Chiriguanos with a period of effective independence that waned only in the second half of the nineteenth century.

In other words, frontier expansion was a variable process that did not inevitably lead to European or Creole domination. The frontier waxed and waned in different directions; at certain times indigenous groups retook territory, and at others the Creoles invaded successfully. The frontier created different possibilities for both indigenous and settler societies that changed over time as the power balance shifted from one side to the other. Groups within both indigenous and Creole societies allied with and against each other, so that an analysis based on a bifurcation between Indian and settler is simplistic. Rather, changing interethnic and intra-ethnic alliances (including between different indigenous ethnic groups) resulted in differing coalitions over time that made control of the frontier by the Bolivian state impossible until the very end of the nineteenth century.

The Franciscan missions founded during the republican period helped slowly but surely to limit the Chiriguanos' independence by creating new alliance structures that, in the end, resulted in a frontier society in which the Indians were subordinated to local Creoles and, to a lesser extent, to the Bolivian state. Even here, resistance to domination changed over time and created different opportunities for different indigenous groups as they negotiated and continuously adapted to new circumstances. During the first half of the nineteenth century it was not at all clear that either the Bolivian state or the colonists would overcome the powerful Chiriguanos. The establishment of missions was the result not of a deliberate and long-range strategy of frontier development, but rather a policy engendered by a weak state that found itself unable to protect its citizens despite its best military efforts. In the end, frontier conflict meant mainly Indian-on-Indian violence, and it was only after permanent alliances, fostered by the missions, were established between Creoles and indigenous groups that the Bolivian state was eventually able to claim a partial supremacy in the region. This chapter delineates this lengthy process and shows what role the missions played in the larger strategic, military, and political contexts of the frontier region.

The National Context

Before discussing the Chiriguano frontier, I need to provide the context of nineteenth-century Bolivian political development on the national level. The Bolivian state did not control the Chiriguana until about the turn of the twentieth century. Creole leaders in Sucre and La Paz arrogated for the Bolivian state possession of lands, including the Chiriguano territories, based on European (and colonial) ideas of statehood without any reference to the desires of the independent indigenous population. Bolivian national leaders (and their Paraguayan and Argentine counterparts) drew bright lines across maps that showed huge tracts of lands marked "unknown," believing that they thus had rights to the territory. The reality on the ground, as we shall see, was quite different. Indeed, the Chaco War in the 1930s and further into the twentieth century showed the Bolivian elites how little they actually controlled or knew about what they claimed to be national territory. Be that as it may, we still need to take into account Bolivian politics, since it impinged in myriad ways upon the frontier during the nineteenth century.

The independence wars (1810-1825) brought about the creation of Bolivia based on the territory encompassed by the jurisdiction of the Audiencia de Charcas, an important colonial administrative and judicial body. The Alto Peruvian elites believed that they were better off alone rather than as a part of neighboring Peru or the Argentine Confederation. They persuaded second-in-command Antonio Jos de Sucre to join the cause for independence and, through flattery, were able to convince the independence leader Simn Bolvar to separate the country from Peru. After all, the great Liberator would now have a country named after him, and he diligently wrote a constitution (never implemented) for Bolivia. Sucre became Bolivia's first true president and, in his short administration, was able to implement liberal reforms. Although Bolivia later became known for its many revolutions and political instability, it emerged as one of the most powerful South American states in the first half of the nineteenth century. A series of strong and reform-minded leaders, such as Andrs de Santa Cruz (1829-1839) and Jos Ballivin (1841-1847), tried to improve the country's administration. A lack of fiscal resources, the threat of...