Cochabamba : 1550-1900 : colonialism and agrarian transformation in Bolivia

Winner of the 1990 Best Book Award from the New England Council on Latin American Studies This study of Bolivia uses Cochabamba as a laboratory to examine the long-term transformation of native Andean society into a vibrant Quechua-Spanish-mestizo region of haciendas and smallholdings, towns and villages, peasant markets and migratory networks caught in the web of Spanish imperial politics and economics. Combining economic, social, and ethnohistory, Brooke Larson shows how the contradictions of class and colonialism eventually gave rise to new peasant, artisan, and laboring groups that challenged the evolving structures of colonial domination. Originally published in 1988, this expanded edition includes a new final chapter that explores the book’s implications for understanding the formation of a distinctive peasant political culture in the Cochabamba valleys over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This study of Bolivia uses Cochabamba as a laboratory to examine the long-term transformation of native Andean society into a vibrant Quechua-Spanish-mestizo region of haciendas and smallholdings, towns and villages, peasant markets and migratory networks, all caught in the web of Spanish imperial politics and economics. Combining ethnohistory and economic and social history, Brooke Larson shows how the contradictions of class and colonialism eventually gave rise to new peasant, artisan, and laboring groups that challenged the evolving structures of colonial domination. This expanded edition includes a new final chapter that explores the book's implications for understanding the formation of a distinctive peasant and political culture in the Cochabamba valleys over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. -- From publisher's description Frontmatter LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (page ix) LIST OF TABLES (page xi) FOREWORD (William Roseberry, page xiii) PREFACE TO THE DUKE EDITION (page xix) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page xxiii) ABBREVIATIONS (page xxvii) INTRODUCTION (page 3) 1 Along the Inca Frontier (page 13) 2 The Emergence of a Market Economy (page 51) 3 Declining State Power and the Struggle over Labor (page 92) 4 Andean Village Society (page 133) 5 Haciendas and the Rival Peasant Economy (page 171) 6 The Landowning Class: Hard Times and Windfall Profits (page 210) 7 The Spirit and Limits of Enterprise (page 242) 8 The Ebb Tide of Colonial Rule (page 270) 9 Colonial Legacies and Class Formation (page 295) 10 Cochabamba: (Re)constructing a History (page 322) APPENDIX (page 391) GLOSSARY (page 401) ARCHIVAL MATERIAL (page 407) INDEX (page 413)