The Bolivian nationalist movement of the 1950s was born of a genuine concern for the fragmented and fragile nature of the Bolivian national identity, caused not only by the virtually “feudal system” that had kept the indigenous majority in subordination since independence from Spain, but by the poor communications among the different geographic regions of the country. The leaders of this revolution took steps to solve these problems and turn the indio (Indian) majority of the country into producers and consumers by renaming them campesinos (peasants). An agrarian reform was implemented that returned the land to those who worked it, and a law was enacted proclaiming universal voting rights. Between 1958 and 1960 the government opened new roads connecting the highlands with the country’s eastern Amazonian lowlands and set up a system giving Andean highlanders land in the underexploited lowlands, as well as encouragement to become colonizers. This goal was not unlike the pre-Hispanic colonization system of Bolivia, which some of the nationalists claimed to have copied (Irurozqui 1997).
Throughout this era, and that of the military governments that struggled to rule the country from 1964 to 1982, as well as upon return of democratic elections in 1982, the intellectual and social movement of Bolivia’s indigenous highland people fought to acquire political and social power, voicing their demand for an autonomous indigenous cultural identity. Unlike the nationalist dream of incorporating indigenous peoples into a Western society, Bolivia began to construct a new model of Bolivian national identity rooted in the country’s multiple ethnicities and indigenous peoples: a multicultural mosaic united under one flag (Toranzo 1985).
In 1982, the Confederacion Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (Sole Federation of Unions of Peasant Workers of Bolivia), or CSUTCB, broke off from the political parties that had created it and became a powerful instrument for the defense of indigenous rights, arguably leading to the massive participation of indigenous peoples in modern Bolivian politics (Rivera Cusicanqui 1982). The new ideology of a “multicultural and pluriethnic” Bolivia was also instrumental in the social protests organized throughout
The country in 1992 by the CSUTCB, to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of Spanish colonialism in the Americas. As part of these protests, the Aymara indigenous nation undertook a symbolic takeover of Tiwanaku, and reclaimed the ruins as the capital of their new state (Kolata 1993). In La Paz, the Bennett monolith came under public scrutiny once again as it symbolized the appropriation and eradication of this ancient culture by Europeans (Ostermann 2002b).
Concurrent with these events, a workshop was organized at the National University of San Andres in La Paz to discuss the issue of the monolith’s repatriation to the “Aymara capital of Tiwanaku”. Five years later, in 1997, the Association of Young Professionals in the city of La Paz adopted this concern as its own and began lobbying the Bolivian government for the transfer of the monolith to its original home. Repeated negotiations resulted in the enactment of two Presidential Executive Decrees authorizing this move (Gutierrez Aldayuz 2001), yet no steps were taken to apply them until 2000, when the archaeological site of Tiwanaku was inscribed in UNESCO’s World Heritage List (see Chapter 54 for a consideration of Peru and the World Heritage List).
This designation unleashed a series of events beginning with a grant awarded by the German Government, by which a team of experts was summoned to clean and prepare the monolith for a possible move. The Bolivian government then channeled funds to build a special enclosed space, be it in La Paz or as part of a new museum at Tiwanaku, as the monolith needed a protected environment. The monolith had suffered significant damage from nearly seven decades of neglect and the ravages of the La Paz environment. The monolith was in a sorry state as wind, sun, extreme temperatures, bird droppings, and pollution (automobile emissions are among the worst culprits) in the highland city had all taken their toll. Furthermore, the great statue sported a bullet wound on one of its cheeks, from one of the city’s many fracases during military coups, as well as lesser knocks and scrapes. A commission was formed comprised of government authorities, archaeologists and art historians who supervised restoration of the sculpture, as the monolith once again became the topic of a heated debate, vented in the press, over whether it should be moved to Tiwanaku or kept in La Paz’s Miraflores neighborhood (Rivera 2002).
What tipped the balance in favor of repatriation to the archaeological site was a public claim to the monolith presented by the Aymara villagers of the town of Tiwanaku, near the ruins (Miranda 2001). The reasons given by the Tiwanaku villagers and other Aymara leaders were that by returning the monolith, considered to be a “sacred ancestor” and symbolic of their “indigenous roots,” the government would be giving the Aymara peoples some compensation for the many wrongs inflicted on their race by colonialism. In this way, the Aymaras at Tiwanaku appropriated and deployed the symbols and discourse of an emerging indigenous nationalism that would radically modify Bolivia’s social and political structure in the new millennium.
World History
