El ‘problema indígena’ y la construcción de la nación en Bolivia y Ecuador durante el siglo XIX: la perspectiva de las luchas por la hegemonía

Abstract

This document analyses the Building-Nation hegemonic projects carried out inBolivia and Ecuador in the Nineteenth Century, and it also wrangles the idea thatindigenous people were excluded from their already formed ‘nations’ to show theways these groups were articulated to the independence Creole Nation project, as wellas for the Liberals Nation-formation project in the second half of the XIX century. Italso addresses the ways in which the Indians attempted to participate in their nationsbuildingproject. Both Nation-building projects articulated indigenous groupspassively. The Creole national project intended to integrate them through turningthese indigenous groups into ‘citizens’ but just giving this merely status, while theLiberal Project aimed to ‘civilize’ banishing their communal life social practices anddepriving them from their landholding. One of the arguments in this article is the onethat states Indians were not passive agents and they deployed collective actions, fromviolent uprisings to access to justice, and demanded an active place in the process ofnation building.