We Alone Will Rule

Book excerpt: Previous studies of the insurrection have centered on the initial stage of the movement in Cuzco and tended to misrepresent the phase in La Paz as an atavistic "race war" against whites. By focusing on La Paz, Thomson shows that a process of struggle at the local level, combined with transformations within Aymara indigenous communities over a period of decades, contributed to the overall breakdown of Spanish colonial order and shaped the dynamics of the insurgency. As peasant commoners increasingly challenged their traditional ethnic lords (caciques), they upset the established apparatus of colonial rule in the Andean countryside, and they brought about a democratization of power relations within their communities. These local struggles converged with more ambitious designs for Indian government and self-determination, as the insurgents envisioned the possibility of Indian-white equality, Indian hegemony over other peoples in the Andes, or outright elimination of the colonial enemy. This experience in the late colonial period continued to shape peasant community organization and influence national political life in the Andes into the present.