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 in
Bolivia and Ecuador in the Nineteenth Century, and it also wrangles the idea that
indigenous people were excluded from their already formed ‘nations’ to show the
ways these groups were articulated to the independence Creole Nation project, as well
as for the Liberals Nation-formation project in the second half of the XIX century. It
also addresses the ways in which the Indians attempted to participate in their nationsbuilding
project. Both Nation-building projects articulated indigenous groups
passively. The Creole national project intended to integrate them through turning
these indigenous groups into ‘citizens’ but just giving this merely status, while the
Liberal Project aimed to ‘civilize’ banishing their communal life social practices and
depriving them from their landholding. One of the arguments in this article is the one
that states Indians were not passive agents and they deployed collective actions, from
violent uprisings to access to justice, and demanded an active place in the process of
nation building.