Burying the Past: Locality, Lived History, and Death in an Aymara Ritual of Remembrance

Abstract

On March 12, 1921, Aymara from the ayllus (indigenous communities) surrounding the town of Jesus de Machaqa attacked the town’s residents and government officials. The attacking Indians burned and looted houses and killed some 16 vecinos—ethnically non-Indian (mestizo) residents of the town. A number of the victims were burned to death, “roasted” alive in their blazing houses. In urban circles the event was imagined as a cannibal feast; remembrances recorded from indigenous Machaquenos in the 1990s depict the uprising in similar ways. The Aymara were responding to increasing pressures on their lands by surrounding haciendas as well as to abuses committed by the corregidor, Lucio Estrada—the principal victim of the attack according to Machaqueno oral histories. Estrada had a reputation for corruption and mistreatment of Indians. The news of his appointment as corregidor in 1919 prompted a letter of protest from Machaqueno leaders to the prefect of the Department of La Paz. The proximate cause of the attack was likely the death of a local Aymara man in a jail cell in Jesus de Machaqa. Prominent among the rebels were a father and son: Faustino and Marcelino Llanqui. They were part of a broader movement of Quechua and Aymara leaders from across the altiplano who had taken on the title of cacique, once used by the Spanish to refer to the local indigenous nobility who played a prominent role under the Spanish colonial system of indirect rule. “Neocaciques” such as the Llanquis were part of a multifaceted effort to defend the interests of rural indigenous communities in the shifting context of the Bolivian nation-state (see Condori Chura and Ticona Alejo 1992; Soria Choque 1992). When survivors of the attack brought news of the uprising to the city of La Paz, President Bautista Saavedra ordered a reprisal raid. Twelve hundred Bolivian army troops garrisoned in the nearby town of Guaqui sacked the communities around Jesus de Machaqa, killing some fifty Aymara, burning houses, and looting herds and fields. Leaders of the rebellion, including the Llanquis, were