En Mi Voz y de Todo el Comun: The Politics of Community Representation in Late Colonial Altiplano

En Mi Voz y de Todo el Comun, The Politics of Community Representation in Late Colonial Altiplano.

The Indigenous communities in late colonial Altiplano reinvented community politics from below. Scholars have mostly agreed that in response to the massive Indigenous insurrections in the second-half of the eighteenth century the colonial government’s power vacuum erased caciques and consequently decapitated the political existence of the communities. These studies focused primarily on the violent confrontations and its dramatic aftermath ignoring the less prominent and slower process of transformations at the community level. Altiplano communities have long questioned the increasing abusive behavior of caciques and colonial interventions on the cacique office. In the second half of the eighteenth century altiplano commoners gradually shifted from questioning the behavior of caciques and colonial intervention towards the erasure of the caciques and direct engagement with colonial authorities.

In this paper I argue that intra-community political transformations in late colonial Altiplano reveal a remarkable process of changing notions of power and authority. Altiplano communities increasingly mobilized collectively and sought to discuss their perceptions and expectations directly with the highest colonial authorities they could reach. In the process they managed to avoid the control of local powers, including their opposing caciques, and adamantly argued for local autonomy and direct relation with royal court judges and the viceroy. Former secondary authorities and some ordinary commoners led the movements yet; most of the commoners were present when they stated “en mi voz y de todo el comun.”