Indigenous Protest in Andean Ecuador:

Chimborazo, 1921

 

Nicola Foote

Florida Gulf Coast University

 

Indigenous uprisings have been perennial occurrences in Ecuador since the colonial period, with major rebellions occurring in 1777, 1803 and 1871. However, during the 1920’s and 30’s, there was a rapid spate of indigenous insurgency that occurred on a wider scale and with more politically destabilizing effects than any seen until the recent ethnic mobilizations of the past two decades. Despite the importance of these movements, there has been little effective scholarly analysis of the causes of this wave of protest, or its significance in terms of understanding the relationship between race and citizenship in Ecuador, in stark contrast to the wealth of studies on simultaneous movements in neighbouring Peru and Bolivia. Interpretations of rural resistance in the liberal period have been partial, isolationist and at times reactionary, with no long-term, cohesive view emerging of the nature of peon grievances and demands.[1] This paper will begin to rethink these exclusions by examining closely one of the most significant of these rebellions: that which occurred in the central highland province of Chimborazo in 1921. It will chart the factors which caused this rebellion, and analyze the response of local and national authorities to indigenous resistance. In particular, it will examine the concept of “race war” which was raised by many elite observers at the time, and explore the racial assumptions that lay behind such proclamations. It will compare elite and subaltern ideas about state formation and community, and argue that the study of indigenous resistance can tell us much about the contested nature of nationhood and citizenship. 

 

The Liberal Revolution and Indigenous Communities                        

Ecuador is a small, ethnically diverse, country in the Northern Andes that borders Peru and Colombia. During the 19^th century it was perhaps the most conservative and religious of Latin American nations. Thus it was a major shift when in 1895, somewhat belatedly in the Latin American context, a Liberal Revolution came to power. From this point until 1944 Liberalism ruled as the dominant ideology, and the power of the Church and of conservative political interests such as highland landowners came under sustained attack. Central to this Liberal project was the issue of indigenous people. Representing approximately 40% of the population, Indians played a key role in the military struggle that brought the Liberal Revolution to power, and recognition of the decisive nature of their support put rights for indigenous people onto the Liberal agenda from its very early stages. The status of indigenous people was also considered to be central to the wider Liberal project, which aimed at integrating Ecuador more fully into the world economy, secularisation, and at shifting regional power from the highlands to the coast.

Indians were perceived to be under the control of landowners and the Church, while the institution of debt peonage which confined many of them to the highland haciendas was understood to be a check to the development of a mobile, wage labor force. Liberal policy centred around reshaping the indigenous population, at fitting them for citizenship at some point in the unspecified future by policies of education, hygiene, and economic reform. While indigenous people at first supported the Liberal party, out of a belief in the possibilities of radical liberalism to be genuinely transformative, they—along with other subaltern groups—quickly became disillusioned as it became apparent that Liberalism had become a predominately elite project, riddled with exclusionary contradictions.[2] The indigenous rebellions to be discussed here must be viewed in this context. 

While legal reforms were made post-1895 which improved indigenous rights on paper, most notably the abolition of debt peonage in 1918, the state had limited power to put this legislation into practice, and in the countryside the power of the hacienda-owning elite remained largely unchecked. Many of the infrastructural projects advanced by the central state, such as the creation of a national railway linking the highland capital of Quito and the main port of Guayaquil had increased the pressure on indigenous land and labor. The opening of so-called ‘empty lands’ (tierras baldias, often those customarily occupied by the peasantry, but to which they held no title) for development had also encouraged the spread of the hacienda in many cases. Attacks on Church landownership had also increased the strength of the landowning class, as Church land confiscated by the state in 1908 was rented to local landowners, rather than being redistributed to the peasantry. However, Liberal discourse, with its focus both legal equality, citizenship and the need for indigenous rights to be protected had created a space for Indians to mobilize, and in the early decades of the twentieth century indigenous people used petitions and legal action to challenge their continued exploitation.[3] After these legal efforts met with continued state inaction, indigenous discontent exploded into a series of rebellions which rocked the highlands during the 1920’s and 30’s.

 

Indian Unification and the Chimborazo Uprising

Indian rebellions occurred sporadically throughout the early years of Liberal rule, most commonly in opposition to perceived incursions of the state, such as efforts to undertake agrarian censuses and the imposition of new taxes or labour programmes.  However, these movements were typically restricted to single communities, and were quickly extinguished by the use of state force. From the mid-1910’s, the isolation of Indian movements began to give way to a degree of inter-community cooperation in the organisation of resistance and the articulation of demands. This shift was embodied in the rebellion of 1921 which saw indigenous mobilisation spread beyond a single community or parish and embrace more wide-reaching goals. 

Chimborazo, located in the Central Andean highlands, is the heartland of indigenous Ecuador, and the province with the largest concentration of indigenous inhabitants.[4] It is also the province where the hacienda system has historically been most dominant, with agriculture geared towards commercial food production, and based on relations of service tenure. Under the system of huasipungo and yanapa, an Indian man would be given access to a subsistence plot of land (the huasipungo) and the right to use pastures, water and firewood within the hacienda boundaries. In exchange, he was required to provide his own and his family’s labor to the hacienda five or six days per week. ‘Free’ indigenous communities were also typically tied to the hacienda through the yanapa system, in which peasants with their own lands worked two days per week on the hacienda in exchange for access to water, pasture and firewood.[5] As the region with the highest levels of hacienda-based exploitation, Chimborazo was also the province with the most pronounced history of indigenous rebellion. Most notably, the Daquilema rebellion of 1871 brought the province to a standstill for an entire week in an uprising over taxation and labor abuses.[6] 

The rebellion of 1921 shadowed that of Daquilema in that it unified indigenous groups across the region. The insurrection broke out in early May 1921 in the canton of Otavalo, and quickly spread throughout the province as the movement became more generalized. At the earliest moment of the uprising newspaper reports placed the number of rebels at more than 5000, and this number only continued to grow as the movement progressed.[7] The most striking feature of the uprising was the co-operation between members of different indigenous communities, as well as its carefully planned and coordinated implementation. The Quito newspaper El Comercio painted a vivid picture of how the rebellion spread, describing Indians responding to the call of the bugles, the sound guiding them through the mountains to new meeting places ahead of the arrival of government forces. New groups seemed to join the uprising by the day, and three weeks into the insurrection it was reported that Indians throughout the province had stopped work and were planning a full-scale uprising for Corpus Christi.[8] On 21 May a highly coordinated group of Indian rebels attacked the important town of Guano while the majority of its non-Indian inhabitants were attending the local market outside of its boundaries, showing a significant degree of foresight and planning.[9] Hacienda overseers throughout the province reported Indians talking back and disobeying orders, outrightly threatening a general uprising, while those from free communities had abandoned their houses and were roaming the hills.[10] On 26 May, the day scheduled for the general uprising, it was reported that the uprising was acquiring serious proportions and that the Indians had surrounded four separate towns. 

Elites were certainly panicking. El Comercio described a general climate of white-mestizo fear in the province over the “drunken Indians [who] are threatening to take the whole province.”[11] The employees of the Quito-Guayaquil Railway Company asked for state intervention, fearing the disruption of traffic with key station of Riobamaba.[12] However, it is impossible to know what actually happened on Corpus Christi, as the rising was immediately pushed off the pages of the newspapers by the arrival of US President Warren G. Harding and his Secretary of State. Half of the paper was turned over to a newly created “English section” —general descriptions of the city, and welcomes and salutations from various organizations—while the rebellious Indians who would present such a backward, unprogressive and embarrassing face to the visiting president were pushed off the pages. Government officials simply sought to pretend the event had never happened, denying the scale of the rising in their official reports, and accusing the press of exaggerating the movement in order to destabilize the government.   

 

War, Taxes and the Indian King: Interpretations of the Rebellion

For these same reasons, it is very difficult to ascertain the causes of the Chimborazo uprising. The Minister of the Interior argued that the uprising occurred in response to a legislative decree of 1920 enacting obligatory military service for all Ecuadorians, which made no distinction of race, and specifically included Indians for the first time. He asserted that in Chimborazo Indians were convinced that the object of the new law was to take them directly to the military barracks and enroll them in the army, to fight in a war they imagined Ecuador to be waging.[13] The US consul presented a different argument, stating that the cause of the indigenous rising was the tax registration ordered by the government, insisting that they believed registration was to be the first step in depriving them of all their property.[14] El Comercio, however, argued that “the difference between this and the uprisings that from time to time occur in the other provinces, is that this one in Chimborazo has been produced without any apparent cause,” insisting that no new taxes had been imposed on them, and that suggestions of opposition to the new military law made no sense.[15] It is clear, however, that there was already deep resentment harbored by indigenous groups towards the parish authorities. The Minister of the Interior admitted that abuses had taken place in the valuation of indigenous holdings by the rural census takers and the representatives of the Junta of Agricultural Development, with their holdings being over-valued by as much as four or five times, in addition to rights of civil registry being illegally charged.[16] Moreover, this province was at the centre of tensions between indigenous communities and haciendas regarding the boundaries of indigenous land. 

Accounts of the movement as it spread make clear that the uprising may have had deeper ideological roots, and been embroiled in more complex ethnic and religious issues, than government reports would suggest. It seems that the indigenous rebels sought to establish an Indian army and to name an Indian president, in an apparent parallel with the Inca revivalist movements that were occurring in Bolivia and Peru at this time.[17]  Manuel Moncayo, a telegraph operator who was injured in the Indian attack on Guano, reported that the insurgents carried out their strike shouting “Long live General Morocho, death to the government.”[18] Morocho was a colonel in the Conservative party who was suspected by Liberal elites of plotting rebellions against the government. Apparently he had persuaded the Indians that he was a general and had made several indigenous leaders colonels of “his” army. But it appears that rather than acting in support of a conservative military movement, the Indians sought to use his rank to establish their own army.  Reports were made of a “Generalissimo” Esteban Paguay, an Indian from Riobamba who had apparently organized the uprising.[19] There were also frequent references to an indigenous “President,” Andres Llamuca; indeed, his recognition was one of the key demands issued by indigenous leaders in the build-up to the Corpus Christi general uprising.[20] Indigenous prisoners gave testimony that Llamuca had told them to go to Quito and return with the “golden baton” which would allow the Indian army to gain its victory.[21]

This idea of a magical “golden baton” looks like it might have been based on some kind of indigenous mythology, paralleling in many ways descriptions of indigenous rebels searches for Tupac Katari’s arm during the Bolivian uprisings of the 1920’s.[22]  This should not be surprising since it is understood from studies of Indian uprisings throughout the Andes that indigenous struggles are informed by elements of the distant past found in popular myths and stories which allowed insurgents to transcend the local character of their conflict, and make them intelligible to a wider group. However, so little is known about the dynamics of memory of pre-Colombian society among Ecuadorian indigenous communities that it is impossible to imagine the exact form or content of these mythological beliefs, legends and memories. It is to be assumed that the Incaism which resurged in Peru and Bolivia during this period was not a factor in an Ecuadorian indigenous society which had very little experience of direct Inca rule. However, it is not clear what kinds of memories informed popular struggle in its place, and with oral histories already a scarcely viable source for this period, it is possible that the specific details will prove impossible to uncover. However, the very fact of a specifically indigenous mythology and cosmology as an informative factor in Indian resistance is in itself extremely significant, allowing a more direct comparison with events in Peru and Bolivia during this period.

 

The Phantom of Race War

Ethnohistorian Tristan Platt has interpreted Incaism in Bolivia not as a “messianic dream” but as a natural mirror to white-mestizo hegemony within a common Republican model, in which the subaltern Indian groups sought to reverse their positions and dominate the whites. Thus Platt sees both Indian and Liberal projects in the late nineteenth century as ethnocidal, arguing that the Inca version of racism simply held a mirror up to the Liberal version.[23] In his analysis of Peruvian resistance in this period, Alberto Flores Galindo has argued that although there is no evidence that indigenous peasants in Peru truly believed that the restoration of the Inca was possible in the 1920’s, landowners were definitely convinced that they were dealing with a real “race war” or caste struggle.[24] Both of these positions have relevance for Ecuador. In the uprising at Chimborazo there is evidence that Indians sought to overturn the existing racial order, while elites panicked amid fears that a “race war” was imminent. Despite his dismissal of the uprisings as exaggerated by the newspapers, later in his report the Minister of the Interior effectively argued for the rebellions as a form of race war, emerging from the hatred found in the Indian’s souls: “At the bottom of the spirit of this unfortunate race, there exists, latent and perennial, sentiments of ill-will, antagonism and vengeance, which can quickly be converted into acts of blood and extermination when scarcely presented with a pretext or opportunity to exercise them in this form.” Elsewhere in the report he argued for the uprisings as being “nourished by … the cruel instinct of the indigenous race.”[25] 

This was an interpretation shared by the mainstream press. The lead article in the Sunday edition of El Comercio in late May, 1921 was headlined “Lucha de razas”(Race War). The newspaper stated “at the end of the day, the Indian problem is at present, with extremely light variations, the same as it was during the colonial period, and has left a sentiment of insurmountable hatred, of cruel vengeance, in the soul of the pariah-Indian, once the owner and master of America.”[26] It also stated that the indigenous uprising was aimed at restoring indigenous dominion of the country, and establishing their power over the white-mestizo population:

 

The evident fact is that the Indians today do not demonstrate any sign of being open to conciliation—we have seen that efforts at this have failed—but have no other intention than to continue their struggle, in the illusion that they are going to emerge the victors, in this foolish campaign of reconquest, that, in the primitiveness of their brain, they believe to be holy, noble, and above all, viable.

 

The paper argued that the Indians saw violence, and in particular, overturning white rule, as the only way to win their demands. They had tried peaceful methods, they had come to Quito with petitions, only to be met with empty promises.

 

The Indian knows how to guard, in the deepest part of his heart, the good actions which have been made to him, along with the evils that produce in him resentment. They did not return satisfied in their petitions, they understood that the authorities thought them stupid, fools, whatever, and waited patiently for the opportunity to demonstrate that they preferred death to perpetual slavery …. In our understanding, this and no other is the cause of the uprising that is taking on ever greater proportions in the province of Chimborazo, and that presents a terrible threatening shade over society that could be the victim of the cruelty manifested by these primitive beings, whose reprisals are always terrorizing, bloody and unspeakable.[27]

 

This conviction on the part of elites that the mobilization of ethnic subalterns necessarily equated to “race war” was a common pattern throughout Latin America, dating back to the mobilizations of the black llaneros of Venezuela in the 1840’s, through the Afro-Cuban Independent party of color in 1912, to the Zapatista peasants of Morelos in 1910 and in 1990. As soon as it became clear that marginalized ethnic groups were seeking to follow and impose their own agenda elites would cry race war.[28] This reflects the extent to which these societies were divided along racial lines, and the fear of revolution that haunted the white-mestizo elites. An interchange described by a US traveler sheds an illuminating light on the deep-rooted fear among the white population of indigenous rebellion even in the 1940’s. He describes how an Indian servant who was guiding him to the hacienda where he was staying

 

began to show his teeth again in the moonlight in a broad Indian smile, that smile that has somehow always seemed so threatening to landholders, that smile they call the ‘mueca de indio’, the Indian grimace…. It is not a grimace. It is a smile. Only latent fear gives it a quality a little frightening to a man holding a whip—as if there were someone behind him.[29] 

 

A focus on the innate hatred in the hearts of the indigenous population enabled white elites to avoid some of the blame for the uprisings.   

However, rather than a race war with its connotations of being aimed at whites in general, indigenous anger was expressed most fervently against those they felt to be most responsible for their abuses. Thus the wives and children of hacienda owners and employees were kidnapped and assaulted, highlighting how theories of the gendered nature of the spoils of warfare can also be applied to Indian rebellions. Moreover, during the course of the uprising Indians inflicted on whites the punishments that had previously been used against them. In the attack on Guano, for example, the Indians cut off the ears of one of the watchmen, before “clubbing him cruelly.”[30]  

Significantly, the Minister of the Interior recognized the role of elite behavior and attitudes as contributing factors to the uprisings. He insisted that the landowners who were calling for the deployment of military forces were effectively calling for the extermination of the Indians. This could not be a solution. Rather, what was required was the improvement of indigenous conditions. He insisted that it was time that law and state intervened with sufficient energy to prevent Indians from continuing to be the victims of

 

 patrons who exploit their person and property, of bailiffs and officials that rob their money in the form of fabricated judicial rights, of such authorities who oblige them to lend their services for free in works of private interest, or to decree taxes that are too onerous for the scarce resources of their contributors, of tinterillos and practitioners of bad law that live on the expenses of Indians, and finally parish priests who persist in benefiting from the religious credulity of Indians to oblige them to undertake unnecessary religious fiestas.[31]

 

Some concessions to indigenous demands were also offered. The Minister insisted that the question of whether Indians should pay taxes on their land should be put before the legislature, suggesting that a compromise in which holdings valued under 2000 sucres were exempted from taxation should be installed nationwide. He also demanded that municipal authorities and provincial governors take greater care in the naming of civil judges, bailiffs and local political officials, insisting that those named to such posts be respectable, honorable people, that, “besides not directly abusing and taking advantage of the ignorance of the Indians support them energetically against the abuses of their enemies.” This represented a request for a significant shift in the role of public officials, and shows the extent to which the Indian agenda was being taken seriously by authorities in the face of the desire to subdue them and the fear of further uprisings. However, the Minister of the Interior noted that although many political officials had already been discharged following earlier complaints from the Indians their replacements, “far from exercising their duties did not delay in imitating the bad arts of their antecedents and in returning to oppress the same victims as always.”[32]  The failure of the Ministry to impose this agenda reflects the ideological distance between local and national authorities.

 

Contested Citizenship and the Meaning of Indigenous Mobilisation

Despite elite recognition of the scale of this movement, and acknowledgement of its deep-rooted causes, efforts were made to undermine both its importance and the autonomy of Indians within it. The Minister of the Interior repeatedly insisted that indigenous insurgency was provoked by “unscrupulous lawyers and tinterillos [unqualified country lawyers and scribes] who swarm through the city and countryside sowing discord and bringing misery and intranquillity to homes.”[33] The British consul explained that the Conservative party accused the government of having created the trouble in order that constitutional guarantees might be suspended and the president granted extraordinary powers, which would allow them to control the situation at the up-coming congressional elections; while the Liberals accused the Conservatives of having stirred up the Indians to try the temper of the government and their ability to deal with such a movement, in order to see what probabilities of success they might themselves have in a revolutionary movement.[34] The depth and consistency of the Indian position make it unlikely that these mobilizations can be wholly attributed to “manipulations” from above. Rather, the accusations and counter-accusations highlight the extent to which Indians were always seen as the pawns of other people and political interests, and that their own aims and desires and their ability to organize movements to pursue these were rarely taken seriously. 

The rebellions also highlight the distance between town and country. The uprising featured the powerful symbolism of Indians trying to enter the provincial cities in order to press their demands. Accounts by government ministers of these efforts make clear the extent to which Indians were feared and seen as alien by urban residents. A letter from the Governor of Chimborazo to the Minister of the Interior demonstrated the perceptions and prejudices of highland elites. The letter stated that the “peaceful inhabitants” of Riobamba live in a state of constant alarm, like “residents of incipient colonies faced with semi-savage tribes,” fearing from one minute to the next, a “savage attack” on person and property.[35] The classic dualism of “civilization versus barbarism” is clearly in play here in this imagery of a civilized urban center being threatened by barbarian peasant hordes. The very dynamics of town resistance to Indian rebellion serve to underline this, defined as it was by ethnic polarization, with Indian uprisings effectively pitting Indian peasants against the white-mestizo townspeople who joined forces with the police and army in order to fend them off.

It is likely that in arriving at the city gates Indians sought not to raze and vanquish, but simply to make their demands heard through the force of their presence. It is notable that, as even government ministers acknowledged, Indians had sought to make their voices heard through judicial cases and legal petitioning prior to the uprising. This is significant in that this armed resistance to Indian penetration into the public spheres of urban centers occurred simultaneously with efforts to create modern, progressive towns by physically clearing away the indigenous presence through attacks on Indian hygiene practices and efforts to remove indigenous markets from central spaces, thus denying Indians the possibility of participating as citizens in urban political life.[36]

Indian conviction that they had the right to express these demands—that, in short, they had the right to citizenship—can be seen in the fact that popular anger was directed at the closest representatives of state justice; those who represented the state at the level of the countryside. Local political officials in particular became a primary target.    Andres Guerrero has argued that the local political officials in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century operated as a “battering ram” that expanded the sovereignty of the national state over the indigenous population.[37] Certainly, for the rural population these groups were converted into symbols of state oppression. It is not surprising that in many places the uprising operated as an opportunity for rural populations to settle their accounts with these officials.

It is also significant that indigenous participation in the uprising was most marked on the haciendas owned by the Juntas of Public Assistance, which had been created to administer Church land confiscated by the state. In January, 1925 El Comercio published an article musing on the root causes of the recent spate of rebellions. It noted that the vast majority had emerged on state-run haciendas, and suggested that this was a result of defects in the way in which these were run. It argued that the key issue was the greed of the renters, who, not content with having access to hacienda resources, were seeking to take possession of the land of neighboring indigenous communities, and to force them into dependence on the hacienda.[38]

It was certainly the case that although in reality renters typically held land for between 24 and 32 years, the illusion of renting as a short-term economic strategy meant that renters were concerned with maximizing their profits as quickly as possible. They did not take a long term view of the management of land, livestock, construction of buildings and relations with workers. In many cases, this led to worse exploitation for workers. Renters recapitalized holdings, and wages were cut. Customs of work were violated, and a vacuum was left at the social and ideological level, since the paternalism characteristic of the patron-peasant relationship was eroded by this new system.[39] In oral testimonies gathered from Indians on the Pesillo hacienda in a neighboring highland province, informants described the renter who took over from the Conception monks as having “a bad attitude,” and of treating the Indians rudely; refusing to give them personalized aid. “He told us ‘You are huasipungeros, you have your huaspingos, your labors, your food, and for this you must work, and for this I pay you.’”[40]  He did not see their relationship as extending any further to the consternation and disgust of the indigenous workers. This disintegration of the patron-client system decreased the forms of domination exercised by the patron and his functionaries, reducing his authority and creating a space for peasant action. 

Most importantly, the confiscation of Church land without any kind of redistribution towards the indigenous population led to Indian bitterness and resentment at the way in which the transfer of land had been handled. At Pesillo, Indians refused to accept the transfer, convinced that the hacienda must have either belonged to the padres or been passed to them: they could conceive of no middle ground.  

In Chimborazo, then, indigenous uprising in this period represented a protest against a parasitic state, and the gap between the favorable legislation passed on behalf of the Indians, and the absence of any real reform. It is clear that Liberal rhetoric in favor of the Indians had changed the manner of thinking within the indigenous population about their own social position. Ideas about equality and social justice helped them to formulate their protests and made them more combative vis-à-vis the political elite. The rebellion of 1921, like others in the same period, represented the violent culmination of the indigenous community’s long process of resistance and organization in defense of their land, their own forms of organization, and ways of life, which latifundismo threatened to eradicate. Rather than the parochial reactors, engaged only by manipulations from above, that contemporary elites tried to present, indigenous peasants were effective collective actors with clearly defined goals and means.