The Forasteros of Lípez: Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Peoples of Bolivia?s Southern Altiplano (thirteenth to eighteenth centuries)

GIL MONTERO, RAQUEL Y NIELSEN, AXEL

Colonial Latin American Review

Routledge

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2010 vol. 19 p. 437 - 459

1060-9164

Combining historical and archaeological data concerning the Lípez region (the southern Bolivian plateau) between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, we undertake a critical analysis of the meanings of the colonial tributary category of forastero. We argue that the indigenous peoples of Lípez were not included in the early reducciones because they were considered poor and inhabited a frontier with ?war-like Indians.? Given this initial classification, the local peoples were incorporated into the records of the Bourbon period as ?landless forasteros,? a category that usually refers in the literature to migrants seeking to escape colonial tax obligations. The ?invisibility? of the local population in the written sources was enhanced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the presence of many immigrants, who came to the region attracted by the economic opportunities created by the mining centre of San Antonio de Lípez. It was only during the Republican period that native populations were granted rights to the land.