Memoria en la sangre y en la tierra. Liderazgo, sucesión y territorialidad en el sur andino (corregimiento de Pacajes, 1570-1650)

Abstract

During the last quarter of the 16th century, the effective establishment of Hispanic colonial domain in the southern Andes implied the restructuring of socioeconomical, political, demographical and territorial patterns of organization of subjected native groups. These ethnic collectives were compelled to reconfigurate their standards of social reproduction to the new context. From the government of viceroy don Francisco de Toledo (1569-1581), ethnic leaders (kuraka or mallku, caciques in general) were placed in a mediating position between the agents of colonial rule and their ayllu (kin groups). In the following decades, several practices (some old, some new) were displayed; through them, native elites sought to reproduce themselves in that intermediate position, granting them privileges while exempting colonial charges. Patterns of access and succession to chiefly office and land tenure systems were two instances in which ethnic leaders appealed to social and genealogical memory to support their claims to colonial justice. Both in lawsuits over succession to chieftainship and in composición de tierras (land purchase trials), memory updated ‘convenient pasts’ in order to legitimate (or contest) present situations. Focusing on the corregimiento of Pacajes (administrative jurisdiction in the current Departamento de La Paz, Bolivia), this article proposes an overall picture on mnemonic displays activated by ethnic leaders in order to support their claims and to legitimate access to land, both proper and collective.