The “Long Memory” of Ethnicity in Bolivia and Some Temporary Oscillations

This chapter highlights the persistence of ethnicity in Bolivian politics and society when viewed over the long term, intertwined with such other key factors as the development of a national state and class conflict. The 2001 census provides the most recent data on how Bolivians classify themselves ethnically. This census asked people over the age of fifteen to state which ethnic group they thought they belonged to. Around 31 percent considered themselves to be Quechua, 25 percent Aymara (the largest populations of both groups found in the western Andean region of the country), and a further 6 percent identified themselves as belonging to one of thirty-one smaller indigenous (originario) groups, distributed mainly through the lowlands.1 Of these, the three largest were Chiquitanos (2.4 percent), Guaranís (1.6 percent), and Mojeños (0.9 percent). In other words, nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of the population said they belonged to one or another of these ethnic groups. It is worth pointing out that the 1900 census (Bolivia 1901) included a fairly similar question, although it did not specify particular ethnic groups. It concluded that the population was 13 percent white, 51 percent indigenous and 27 percent mestizo. This was the last time that a census used this last category; at the time, the office which carried out the census remarked, “In a short space of time, in view of the progressive laws of statistics, the indigenous race will be, if not removed entirely from the scene, at least reduced to a small fraction” (ibid., vol. 2, 36; cf. pp. 31–32). When we established CIPCA (the Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado) in 1971, we chose the term campesinado (peasantry), as opposed to any reference to indigenous peoples. From the time of the MNR (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario) revolution in 1952, this had been the expression in common usage. But thirty years after the founding of CIPCA, fifty years after the revolution, and fully one hundred years after the census