Anthropos 80.
1985: 53-65
State, Ayllu, and Ethnicity in Northern
Potosí, Bolivia
Ricardo A. Godoy
Despite or because of its ambiguity and
incredible complexity, ethnicity has attracted
the attention of Andean students for decades.
From the time of the indigenistas at the turn of
the century until the present, scholars have
raised (and avoided) a surprisingly broad array
of questions in the field of ethnic studies. The
issues most commonly/ discussed include:
mestizo-Indian relations (Van den Berghe and
Primov 1977); interface of ethnicity and class
(Barstow 1979; Van den Berghe 1974); extent
of passing between racial, social, and cultural
groups or categories (Fuenzalida 1970; Villavi-
cencio 1973); ambiguity (Van den Berghe 1974)
and appropriateness (Stein 1977) of ethnic
labels; and reaffirmation, modification, and dis-
appearance of ethnic identity (Bourque and
Warren 1978, 1980).
Yet, surprisingly, little has been said of how
Andean ethnies 1 actually interact with one an-
Ricardo A. Godoy, Ph.D. in Anthropology (Colum-
bia Univ. 1983), MA (Univ. of Chicago, 1975), BA (Tufts
Univ., 1972). - Specialties: Latín American social anthro-
pology, Andean rural communities, cultural ecology,
history of anthropology, small-scale mining, rural develop-
ment, economic anthropology. - Fieldwork: small-scale
mining among the Jukumani Indians of Northern Potosí,
Bolivia, 1979-1981. - Since 1981 Research Associate at
Harvard Inst. for Intern. Development and Duke
Univ. - Publications include: "Fiscal, Financial, and Relat-
ed Provisions in Petroleum Contracts in Fourteen Coun-
tries" and "Ecuador and the Multinational OH Compa-
nies" (Cambridge, MA, 1982; with M. Gillis and M.
Mescher).
1
Following Van den Berghe (1981: 22), I use the
term ethny to desígnate an Andean social group with the
following characteristics: territorial base extending over
diverse climatic floors; múltiple settlements; distinctive
apparel, music, and language; separate, though perhaps
subordínate, political system; and self-consciousness of
belonging to an inclusive series of social groups (Sahlins
other, the state, or of how and why the bounda-
ries of ethnic groups in the Andes change over
time. 2 This neglect stems, in part, from the
relative absence of distinctive ethnies in the
area. The majority of anthropological studies
have been focussed on villages (Isbell 1978;
Brush 1977; Mayer 1974; Bastien 1978), towns
(Barstow 1979), or regions (Orlove 1977;
Appleby 1976), not on self-consciously organ-
ized, territorially-based, culturally-distinctive
social groups (Harris 1978a: 55; 1978b: 23;
1980: 7 4 - 7 5 ; Platt 1976). In this article I
attempt to remedy this imbalance by examining
ethnicity in one such self-consciously organized
group, the Jukumanis of Northern Potosí, Boli-
via.
As Salomon (1982: 86) has recently observ-
ed, "two of the most intriguing aspects of
ethnicity" include how Andean people define
their ethnic membership and how an ethnic
group is subdivided. Regarding membership,
Andean students have tended to focus on lin-
guistic, racial, or social categories such as
Aymara, Indian, or cholo and then spelled out
the cultural and racial underpinnings of each
label. If the nominal unity of such categories is
questioned at all, it has been to stress how some
people begin to move out and up (or down) of
their groups. The variation in the group or
category is thus largely cultural or economic,
and this, as some have argued (Young 1977),
precludes the consolidation of a corporate social
identity.
1968: 15). Were it not for its pejorative connotation I
would be tempted to use the term tribe.
2
Another gap is the study of belief and cultural
systems underlying Andean ethnic groups (Barstow 1979).
Warren's (1978) symbolic study of ethnicity in San Andrés
Semetabaj, a bi-ethnic highland Guatemalan town, pro-
vides an excellent model for a line of research that is
comparatively undeveloped in the Andes.
 The two questions raised by Salomon have
thus far been examined from the broad perspec-
tive of social categories. So far they have not
been examined in the context of ethnies or
ayllus. Unlike a category such as Indian or Ay-
mara, an ayllu is a corporate cell with strict rules
of membership, a fiction of common descent, a
land base, and a common cultural denominator.
Salomon's questions can thus be rephrased:
how do Andean people living in an ayllu actual-
ly define their ethnic membership and to what
extent are there ethnic/social variations within
the ayllu?
The need to begin ethnic analysis with
people's perception of their own ethnicity stems
from the failure of sociobiological (Van den
Berghe 1978, 1980, 1981; Reynolds 1980) and
primordialist (Francis 1976; Keyes 1976; Scher-
merhorn 1970) approaches to account for the
variation in the intensity of ethnicity across
different cultures and periods of time. Ethnicity
cannot be reduced to genetically-based nepo-
tism or to "sentimental associations of persons
sharing a primordial tie" (Light 1981: 55),
because ethnies are also interest groups whose
boundaries change according to personal consi-
derations and intergroup competition (Barth
1969). As van den Berghe observes,
In numerous situations, individuáis are
found consciously to manipúlate ethnic
boundaries to their advantage. The way
they dress, talk, and behave shifts abruptly
and predictably depending on the context.
Many people literally "commute" culturally
between ethnies, presenting an assimilated
front in one situation, but being "tradition-
al" in another (Van den Berghe 1981:
254).
Stressing intergroup competition as a factor
affecting ethnicity, Bell likewise notes,
At particular times - but usually in relation
to an adversary, which gives it its political
character - one specific identification .be-
comes primary and overriding and prompts
one to join a particular group*,or, one is
forced into a group by the actions of others
(Bell 1975: 159; emphasis in original).
If ethnicity is manipulated, it is situational, and
if it is contextual, it fractures the homogeneity
of the ethny. This is why Salomon's plea to
question the "internal unity" of ethnic groups
must be heard.
But to focus on people's perceptions of
ethnicity, the shifting cultural content and social
boundaries of ethnic groups, and the internal
subdivisions of ethnies still leaves much unan-
swered about the dynamics of ethnicity. Lodged
in economic regions, ethnic groups interact and
compete in, and are shaped by, a broader
context; the analysis of the ayllu cannot end at
the limit of the ethnic boundary, for ayllus are
embedded in hierarchical polities. This has been
appreciated by cultural ecologists working in
Mesoamerica (Aguirre Beltran 1979; Colby and
Van den Berghe 1969; Collier 1975) and in the
Andes (Villavicencio 1973; Burgos Guevara
1970; Van den Berghe and Primov 1977). And
yet, despite the lip service paid to the impor-
tance of the political and economic canvas in
which ethnicity is played out, there is a strong
tendency to view ethnicity as an adaptation to
marginality and isolation (Collier 1975; Isbell
1978: 135, 165; Bastien 1978: 191), not as an
imposition stemming from its role in the region-
al economy (Wasserstrom 1977: 461; Stein
1980). Furthermore, the effectiveness of ethnic-
ity as a political strategy is rarely questioned
(Smith 1977: 53). In the works of such cultural
ecologists as Van den Berghe and Primov
(1977) ethnicity is equated with a cultural
system; henee, more effort is spent discussing
passing or individual social mobility than the
historical processes which structure contempo-
rary ethnic relations.
The following analysis begins with subjecti-
ve definitions of ethnicity among Jukumanis, it
proceeds to examine the segmentary meanings
of ethnicity, and then places these issues in the
broader context of the regional political and
economic system. The essay that follows is thus
as concerned with spelling out the internal
variations of the ethnic phenomenon as it is
with analysing the way in which ethnies interact
with the state and the regional economy.
The northern tip of the department of
Potosí, Bolivia, is composed of numerous ayl-
lus, of which the Jukumanis are one. Ayllus
possess a number of properties which allows us
to characterize them as corporate social groups
or ethnies. First, the 8,000 Jukumanis share a
"past oriented group identification" (Royce
1982: 24). The present legal landholding, tax-
paying, peasantry are the real or putative des-
cendants of tax-payers registered in the nine-
teenth century censuses known as padrones;
they are the true insiders. In addition, a group
of landless peasants, kantu runas ("people of
the margin" in Quechua), are also considered
Jukumanis for having worked the land and
served as servants of specific landed peasant
lineages. Though outsiders may be recruited
into the ayllu, their surnames change to preser-
ve the legal fiction of common descent.
Second, Jukumanis, like other ethnies in
Northern Potosí, have a territorial base. Span-
ning several vertical ecological belts, the territo-
ry of the Jukumanis gives peasants access to a
multiplicity of ecological zones and agricultural
products. In the highlands, Jukumanis live in
about 20 villages. Three to five days away by
walking, in the valley, they have an assortment
of plots interdigitating with the lands of other
ethnies. The ayllu is thus larger than a kinship
group, a settlement, or an ecological región.
Finally, Jukumanis differentiate themselves
and are differentiated from neighboring ethnies
by a distinctive style of dress and music, by
subtle dialectical variations in Aymara and
Quechua, and by their own repertoire and
schedule of festivities. These emblematic diffe-
rences are reinforced by a native political
system that is at once distinct from, but depen-
dent upon, the regional and national power
structure.
The above characterization, cursory as it is,
glosses over internal subdivisions that are
important to Jukumanis. Upon closer inspec-
tions one notes Jukumanis group themselves
into four smaller or minor ayllus: Mitma, Kulla-
na, Kuyku, and Sarakara 3 (figure). Each minor
ayllu, in turn, is subdivided into moieties or
sayas: patasaya or upper división and manja-
saya or lower half. Moietal divisions are com-
3 Peaceful political processes, such as the
I am, of course, following Platt's (1976) nomencla-
ture when I cali the four principal subdivisions of the
Jukumani ayllu minor ayllus.
posed of a variable number of cabildos or
villages, some of which have a valley outpost.
Villages are formed of families that bond as
casfas-kindred, or people sharing a súmame.
In anthropological jargon we are dealing
here with a segmentary organization: the largest
unit (the maximal ayllu or ethny) is composed
of "inclusive series" of smaller groups (Harris
1982: 94; Sahlins 1968: 15). Households are
segments of castas, castas are segments of
villages, villages of moieties, moieties of minor
ayllus, and minor ayllus of ethnies. And it thus
follows that membership in smaller, lower units
implies membership in the larger "sectors of
social relations" in which these blocks are
embedded.
Spatially, the hierarchy of ethnic and social
groups represents a complex picture of interdig-
itation. At the broadest level, the territory of
the Jukumanis is composed of a highland block
and a multiplicity of small pareéis in the valley.
One step down, at the level of the minor ayllu,
one is dealing with a number of scattered
highland villages. Thus, for example, the minor
ayllu of Kuyku is composed of the cabildos of
Belen and Katarpaya, but these two villages do
not lie adjacent to each other. And the same
applies to the moiety. At the simplest level, a
moiety is formed of those villages lying at the
same altitudinal level, yet the villages of a
moiety do not necessarily form a contiguous
territory.
Ethnicity and self-identification are thus
highly contextual. During rebellions, Jukuma-
nis, like other Aymara/Quechua speaking
peasants in Bolivia, cali themselves jaqi or runas
and differentiate themselves from the outsiders
dubbed mistis (Albo 1977b; 8). During ritual
fights or tinkus they may be members of the
Charcas federation or, at a lower level, of the
Aymaya supra moiety against, say, Chayantas;
when they fight over land with the neighbors they
coalesce as Jukumanis; when they fight against
neighboring Jukumani villages they bond as
Mitmas, Kullanas, Kuykus, or Sarakaras; and
when they fight during drunken brawls in the
village, they often do so as members of castas.
election of the maximal political officer or
Segunda Mayor, also bring segmentary distinc-
Ayllu, ethnic group Minor ayllus Moiety or sayas Cabildo or village Minor cabildo

Political head: Political head: No political Cobrador No political

Segunda Mayor Jilanku officer (tax collector) 4 officer

Tojoria (9) Irpa Irpa

Patasaya Saroqa (1) Choqo Choqo
Kuyakachi (4) Phiñuri

Sarakara Qala Qala

Pairumani
Vila Vila (6) Qochi Qochi
Pachachapi
Manjasaya Wataria (8) Aqoparaya
Pisuata
Q'añupacha (7) Wayrojo

Jukumanis Kuyku Patasaya Katarpaya (5) Ch'ikaqawa

Manjasaya Belen (11) Uyuni

Patasaya Luluni (2)

Mitma
Irpa Irpa (14)
Manjasaya Aymaya (15)

Patasaya Chiruya (3) Markhawi

Kullana Pujrallapu (10) Machaqamarka
Manjasaya Chukiuta (13) Ankayo
Mik'ani (12) Wakuta

tions into focus. Elected every year from a
different minor ayllu, the post naturally rotates
on a yearly, predictable, basis among the four
major segments of Jukumani society. The
incumbency starts at Mitma, proceeds to Kulla-
na, then goes to Kuyku, and, on the fourth
year, ends in Sarakara, at which point the cycle
begins afresh with Mitma. As people talk about
where the post should go, the first significant
level of ethnic identification is the minor ayllu.
"Next year," they may say, "it is Kuyku's turn
to provide a Segunda." But for Kuykus, provi-
ding an incumbent elicits different and more
fine-grained loyalties. Since the post travels on
a yearly basis among the four minor ayllus, but
within each minor ayllu it alternates on a
*
4
Numbers indicate the order in which the Segunda
Mayor visits 15 major cabildos during tax collections.
moietal basis, for Kuykus the important distinc-
tion to bear in mind as they think of providing
an incumbent is that between manjasaya and
patasaya villages. Four years ago Kuyku pata-
saya provided an incumbent; this time, then,
the responsibility must fall on Kuyku manjasaya
or the village of Belen. The above example
highlights an interesting aspect of ethnicity,
namely, the collapse of ethnic identities at
certain Ievels. Cabildos such as Chiruya, Lulu-
ni, and Katarpaya are synonymous with upper
moieties, just as the village of Belen is equated
with the lower moiety.
Turning to a second question: how rigid and
permanent are ethnic boundaries? Mythology
and reality suggest ethnic markers change sur-
prisingly fast. According to legend, the territory
presently occupied by Jukumanis was inhabited
in the past by people from the Laymi, Pukwata,
and Panakachi ayllus. These people fought
much among themselves, until a group of them
seceded and formed an independent ayllu, the
Jukumanis. Although the myth underscores the
marginality of Jukumani society, it also high-
lights the ease with which ethnicity changes at
the margins.
Ethnicity erodes at the borders because the
contours of the social group are flexible. For
example, the highland section of the Jukumani
ayllu is divided from the land of neighboring
ethnies by mojones, piles of stone that can be
easily assembled or disassembled. Borders,
however, are not solid lines, but vaguely demar-
cated regions in which ayllus have mutual graz-
ing and farming rights. In the borders, people
from different ayllus "live like brothers" -
borrowing and renting land from one another,
helping each other in the fields, attending each
other's festivities. Borders thus expand and
contract in accordance to the pasturing, farm-
ing, and social needs of contiguous villages.
Like borders, ethnic emblems also change
in brief periods of time. Only 15 years ago, for
example, when Laymis and Jukumanis were
fighting over land, their apparel differences
were marked. Now that peace reigns between
these ethnies, they trade with each other, copy
each other's weaving motifs and befriend each
other in tinkus and the markets. Jukumanis
admire, buy, and trade Laymi weavings and
bring valley woods to Laymi musical craftsmen
to have flutes made. On the other hand, Juku-
manis and Kakachakas are fighting over land at
present, and trade between them has stopped.
Kakachaka alpaca and llama wool and weaving
motifs, which were greatly admired in the past,
are no longer entering the Jukumani ayllu.
Jukumanis now say they prefer Laymi weavings
and motifs because they are aesthetically more
pleasing.
Moving beyond the perimeters of the Juku-
mani ayllu, how are Jukumanis related to the
state and the regional economy? From the time
of the Spanish Conquest until the present, the
state recognized existing ethnic divisions in
Northern Potosí and thus incorporated Andean
people as members of ayllus, rather than as
members of villages or individuáis. Tributes in
cash (tasa), labor (mit'a), and produce were
levied at the ayllu level. Since the "mode of
incorporating'J. (Kuper and Smith 1969) Indians
in Northern Potosí generally respected pre-
hispanic vertical land tenure patterns (Murra
1972), ayllus were able to preserve the basic
organizaron of their society and to successfully
deepen their involvement in the non-local eco-
nomy to meet fiscal duties (Platt 1982a: 34-35).
Observers during the Colonial era regarded the
people of Northern Potosí as the wealthiest
Indians of Bolivia (Pino Manrique 1787).
The nineteenth century witnessed many
attempts by Republican governments to destroy
the ayllu (Urquidi 1970: 57-66). The need to
generate revenues to defray the expenses of the
War of the Pacific against Chile and a desire to
commercialize and modernize the rural sector
lead to fiscal policy changes designed to trans-
form both communal land tenure patterns and
the structure of rural taxation. Individual prop-
erty titles were to be issued by the government
to peasant families, thus legalizing their usufruct
rights to sections of the commons. Further-
more, the fiscal duty levied on the ayllu was to
be replaced by an output-based property tax
levied directly on the individual property hold-
er.
Attempts to privatize land tenure gained
new vigor at the turn of the century as tin
mining and haciendas began growing. The
expansión of these two interdependent econom-
ic sectors was facilitated by the increasing
penetration of the state into the countryside to
enforce the privatization of land-holding
units. 5
In many areas of the nation the efforts to
turn land into a commercial commodity suc-
ceeded, but in more remote, less accessible and
valuable regions, such as Northern Potosí, these
attempts met with resistance from the peasant-
ry. The reasons for a commitment to a commu-
nally-based way of life remain unclear. Platt
(1982a) has argued that ayllus in Northern
Potosí framed a moral contract (or "pact of
reciprocity") with the state in which the state
guaranteed ayllu citizens the rights of access to
5
In many parts of the Bolivian altiplano, haciendas
were acquired by successful miners (Rivera 1978).
 natural resources in exchange for various forms
of tribute payments. Attempts by the govern-
ment to privatize land met with peasant resist-
ance because such attempts violated the sanctity
of a contract having pre-hispanic roots, and
were thus perceived as a threat to security. In
contrast to Platt's symbolic explanation of pro-
test stands an ecological interpretation. Argued
most eloquently by Orlove (1976) and Guillet
(1981, 1983), this view holds that cooperative
activities and strong sentiments of communality
are likely to arise out of constraints imposed by
mixed agro-pastoral productive regimes. It fol-
lows that any attempt to privatize land in the
highlands would constitute a direct threat to the
integrity of the subsistence base. Regardless of
the reason, peasants in Northern Potosí, includ-
ing the Jukumanis, engaged in numerous rebel-
lions during the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth century as a protest to plans to privatize
land.
Against the background of increasing
peasant uprisings, messianic movements, and
inter ayllu conflicts (Flores 1979; Condarco
1966; Albo 1979: 24-28; Bracamonte 1976:
35-46; Lupa 1979) mestizo provincial lawyers
dubbed tinterillos began to play key roles in
settling real estáte transactions, land disputes,
and other rural conflicts. As a broker group
serving the interests of latifundistas, miners,
merchants, and pueblo-dwelling mestizos, these
"shady" lawyers (Metraux 1959: 235), at least
in Northern Potosí, fed and nurtured intermi-
nable inter-ethnic conflicts and facilitated the
process of capitalist expansión into the country-
side.
The Laymi/Jukumani land litigation of the
1910s provides an example of an inter-ethnic
conflict arising from new forms of state penetra-
tion into the rural sector (Uncia 1916). When
the actual fighting broke out in 1916, Jukumani
authorities noted that land conflicts with the
Laymis in the disputed areas had began "some
time ago." Unlike the past, when native officers
of the contending villages or ayllus settled the
dispute themselves as representatives of their
respective groups, at the turn of the century the
structure of legal proceedings was unclear.
Lawyers indicated that legislation of the late
nineteenth century had abolished communal
land tenure; henee, only families directly affect-
ed by interlopers had a right to litigate.
Peasants saw things differently. For said laws
to have taken effect, farmers should have receiv-
ed the physical titles to their land holdings.
Since rural revolts hampered the latter in many
parts of Northern Potosí, peasants stressed the
legal status of their ayllu despite the existence of
laws ordering the individualizaron of land.
Henee, it followed in the moral understanding of
peasants, that the land dispute had to be settled
at the level of the ayllu or ethnic groups, not at
the level of the individual families actually
implicated in the argument. As the Segunda
Mayor of the Jukumani ayllu explained,
Said laws (of individual tenure) . . . are still
not in effect in our lands for the simple
reason that the Comisión Revisitadora
(government ageney) has still not visited
our lands, and consequently no peasant
taxpayer has legal deed to his land and
because the entire community owns the
land . . . according to said laws we the
Segunda Mayores have the legal right to
argüe in court . . . we are recognized by the
constitution and by custom . . . we are
always the legal representatives of our com-
munity (Uncia 1916).
But if ayllu officers succeeded in convincing
the court the dispute had to be settled by the
contending ethnic groups, they were less suc-
cessful in resolving the dispute in their own
terms. In the past, conflicts over highland terri-
tory were (are) endemic to the system of secto-
rial fallowing. A village one year would en-
croach on the land of another, but such en-
croachment was temporary, for highland agri-
cultural production decomposes fast after three
or four years of continuous cultivation. Long-
term, continuous exploitation of the same land
is rare in the Andean highlands owing to a
fragüe ecosystem (Guillet 1981). A few years
later the village whose lands were encroached
the first time might expand temporarily on the
fallow lands of another village. Yet, again, such
transgressions, endemic as they were (are),
were eyelieal because the fallowing eyele places
constraints on continuous cultivation.
 When neighboring ayllus each simultan-
eously brought under cultivation formerly fal-
low plots, which lay adjacent to each other,
land trespassing could culminate in a ch'ajwa.
Boundary settlements were argued and settled
by bringing oíd men as expert witnesses. Rigid
boundaries between ayllus were not set up.
Borders were and continué to be small piles of
stone because peasants realize that temporary
land transgressions are necessary and inevitable
with a system of sectorial fallowing; ambiguous
borders constitute a flexible mechanism for
adapting to shifts in human and animal popula-
tions. More importantly, land encroachments
among ethnic groups or villages are viewed as
reciprocal and extend over time, and though
these transgressions sometimes culminate in
battles, the solution to them does not consist in
defining the boundaries with more precisión,
but rather in ignoring the transgression or
fighting it out until the next agricultural chore
pulís people from both sides back to their
respective plots again.
From the turn of the century onward,
however, ch'ajwas were no longer settled at the
grass-root, local level, but had to be resolved in
courts. Despite the desire of Jukumani and
Laymi ayllu officers to end this conflict soon,
the ch'ajwa escalated for the next decade owing
to the role of tinterillos. With little understan-
ding of peasant agricultural systems, they tried
to resolve the conflict by resurrecting ancient
land titles given to ayllus by the Crown in the
sixteenth century. Their logic can be summed
up thus: find the oldest title specifying the
borders of each ayllu and use that document as
a yardstick for measuring the amount of en-
croachment. Written titles, unfortunately, rath-
er than facilitating the arbitration process, com-
plicated it, for tinterillos duplicated such docu-
ments changing on purpose the location of
sixteenth century mojones.
The lawyers for this conflict were mestizos
from the pueblo of Chayanta and the city of
Llallagua who often had blood connections to
the district judges. They acted as defendant and
plaintiff lawers for the ayllus, but charged high
fees, were inefficient, stole each other's court
files, and one year the same lawer simultaneous-
ly acted as both defendant and plaintiff for the
Jukumanis and the Laymis. Since they commu-
nicated with ayllu officers through memorán-
dums written in Spanish and were inaccurate
about the times of hearings, native officers often
failed to understand the content of messages or
else arrived at the wrong time. Officers were
often late for subpoenas and were fined accord-
ingly, or worse still, the case was decided in
favor of the party that happened to be present.
Due to their geographical mobility, there was a
high turnover of tinterillos during the ch'ajwa.
Each time a tinterillo left, he took with him the
case file or sold it to his successor, making the
entire court procedure costly, inefficient, and
time-consuming. Since the case stagnated in the
lower courts, it was taken up by a higher level
court in Uncia (a few miles away from Llallagua)
and eventually it reached the Supreme Court of
the Department of Potosí. This did not imply
that the matter was handled more efficiently; it
simply meant that the case was simultaneously
argued in Uncia, Chayanta, and the city of
Potosí. Complaining of the large sums of money
and waste of time necessary to resolve small
conflicts, the Segunda Mayor of the Jukumanis,
Vicente Huanca, would justly complain of the
wealth made by «los abogados poco escrupulo-
sos, que son el escarnio de nuestra desdichada y
pobre raza indígena» (Uncia 1916).
After the 1952 Revolution, the links be-
tween the Jukumani ayllu and the state chan-
ged. The state continued to incorpórate
peasants in Northern Potosí as members of
ayllus due to the unsuccessful attempts to privat-
ize land tenure. To this day, for instance, land
taxes are levied first and foremost at the level of
the ayllu. Two gross sums are paid twice each
year to the state by the Segunda Mayor. Only
after cancelling this fiscal obligation does the
head of the ayllu collect smaller gross sums
from heads of minor ayllus, who, in turn,
supervise Jukumani tax collectors (cobradores)
at the village level. The ayllu as a corporate
entity is responsible for clearing the major
roadway bisecting the highland territory. The
ayllu as a group is responsible for providing
mail carriers known as posta and postillones.
And, finally, the ayllu as a corporate, legal,
land-holding unit is summoned to court when
land encroachments arise.
 Nevertheless, governments since the revo-
lution begun to use ayllu divisions in Northern
Potosí to curb the rising militancy and power of
the miners in Llallagua, the largest and most
important mining center in Bolivia. Miners, in
turn, allied themselves with other ayllus to
combat the govemment (Harris and Albo
1975). Government and miners provided differ-
ent ayllus with modern weapons, thereby esca-
lating the level of battles into long, violent
confrontations. This is not to suggest that ch'aj-
was were absent before the intrusión of the
state, but that their intensity and character has
been fundamentally transformed. 6
The various military governments of the
1970s and 1980s have struck new bargains with
Jukumanis. In exchange for providing arms and
ammunitions, the military governments of
recent years expect to receive a share of the
crops grown in land taken by Jukumanis from
Laymis, traditional allies of the miners. Ironi-
cally, the military has also supplied the neigh-
boring Kakachakas with arms with the under-
standing that Kakachakas will return the favor
by planting and harvesting a section of the
terrain taken from Jukumanis for the army.
Owing to the perpetual state of inter-ay77u
warfare, the military can legitímate the mainte-
nance of an army garrison in the doorsteps of
Llallagua. To control the political leadership of
the ayllus, the more aggressive military govern-
ments have elected Jukumani individuáis with
strong sympathies to the government for ayllu
posts. In 1981, for example, the military appo-
inted a young, unmarried Jukumani to the post
of Segunda Mayor. Although custom specifies
that a Segunda Mayor must be a married
taxpayer and former sponsor of an important
festivity, the puppet officer was neither.
6
Ch 'ajwas have been prevalent since pre-contact days
(Harris and Albo 1975: 23; Browman 1974: 193). In the
Jukumani ayllu fights with neighbors over crop and pasture
land have been especially common since the turn of the
century. Owing, in part, to population pressure and land
scarcity, Jukumanis have been fighting more to increase
their productive acreage. Traditional ch'ajwas, have been
short-term, periodic affairs done, mainly, between agricul-
tural seasons. The point here is not that the$tate has caused
ch'ajwas, but that it has capitalized on a peasant conflict and
escalated the intensity of the encounters.
Little wonder, then, that ethnicity is gaining
saliency. If Jukumanis need a school, legal title
to land, hospitals, soccer uniforms, and the like,
let the leader and his entourage change into
their best native regalia and travel to the city of
La Paz or Llallagua to strike a bargain with
military officials there, remembering to speak
only in an Indian language and suppress any
Spanish they might know. The practice has
worked well in the past to achieve minor ends.
But have Jukumanis as a group benefited
from their pacts with military governments?
How successful have their ethnic strategies
been? The answer to the first question is no; to
the second, disastrous. Political pacts have been
transacted by individual Jukumani leaders, and
though part of the wealth received as gifts from
the government trickels down to the ruck of the
peasantry in the form of alcohol, coca, and
bread, most remains in the hands of the offi-
cers. Astute Jukumani politicians have made
handsome profits and bought trucks in North-
ern Potosí and houses in urban centers. Arms
and ammunitions have not constituted secure
means of obtaining land, for agrieved neigh-
bors, such as the Laymis and Kakachakas, have
struck back with equal, if not greater, ferocity
under the protection of miners and the armed
forces. The net effect, in terms of acreage, is
difficult to assess, but overall, Jukumanis claim,
they are really treading in water - with no more
land (perhaps even less) than they had before
fighting escalated.
We have argued that the ayllu constitutes
an adaptive form of social organization with
pre-hispanic roots, but that ethnicity has been
used to foment litigations and justify the pre-
sence of the military cióse to the mining city of
Llallagua. 7 We have already stressed how the
state form of incorporation recognizes and per-
petuates the corporate character of the ayllu,
but to what extent does the regional economy
7
There is a sense in which ethnicity is an imposition.
Until the 1952 Revolution priests in the pueblos of
Aymaya and Chayanta and hacendados in the valley
proscribed Jukumanis (and one assumed other peasants as
well) from speaking in either Spanish or Quechua - the
languages of power associated with mines, markets, and
mestizos - and obligated them to speak in Aymara.
structure and shape the character of inter-ethnic
relations in Northern Potosí?
Although the subsistence base of peasants
in Northern Potosí includes an agro-pastoral
mixture, the sale of labor forcé on a seasonal or
permanent basis constitutes an essential supple-
ment to family income, at least for some of the
poorer ayllus such as Jukumanis, Chullpa,
Aymaya, and Sikuya (Platt 1982b: 53; Harris
1982:91). 8 Owing to the demand for rural
producís, employment opportunities, and avail-
ability of commercial goods, Llallagua has be-
come the most important marketing city for
many peasants in Northern Potosí, or the center
of the standard marketing area (Skinner 1975).
Here peasants sell surplus, buy manufactured
goods, and work in a variéty of marginal pur-
suits: spaling, reprocessing tailraces, concen-
trating ore, making candies, peddling.
Ethnicity acquires a new hue in this mining
center. Once there Jukumanis cease being
Jukumanis (in the miners' eyes) and become
peasants along with Sikuyas, Quillpas, Aymay-
as, Kakachakas, and members of countless
other ayllus. Peasants tell each other apart on
the basis of apparel, but miners lump the
peasantry into a broad category - campesinos.
In the mining camp ethnic differences thus
become blurred and subsumed under class rela-
tions. This should not be surprising, for Gluck-
man (1961) long ago stressed the primacy of
class over ethnicity in African mining com-
pounds:
. . .the African newly arrived from his rural
home to work in a mine, is first of all a
miner (and possibly resembles miners ev-
erywhere). Secondarily he is a tribesman;
and his adherence to tribalism has to be
interpreted in an urban setting (quoted in
Gordon 1978: 213).
The role of peasants in the regional mining
and agricultural economy is essential in under-
standing this dual ethnic división. The labor
8 better wages and have exclusive rights of access to privi-
Due to the inadequacy of the land base and
population pressure entire Jukumani villages (e.g., Katar-
paya, Irpa Irpa) have been depopulated since the early
1960s; the people from these overpopulated villages have
migrated mainly to Llallagua.
structure in state-owned mining centers such as
Llallagua is best conceptualized as a truncated
pyramid. The missing apex is formed by politi-
cal officers and bureaucrats residing in La Paz,
Oruro, or other urban centers. The top layer of
the remaining structure is formed by salaried
wage laborers. They are a labor aristocracy,
receiving premium wages and having access to
schools, medical care, housing, commissaries,
and other fringe benefits denied to the lower
strata of the working forcé. 9 Entrance into this
exclusive corporate group is restricted by blood
- only legal offsprings of miners are elegible to
fill vacancies.
Below this group lies a less affluent sector.
Known variously as locatarios, makipuras, vene-
ristas, these people lease sub-commercial under-
ground work sites, alluvial deposits, tailraces,
and dumps from the state-owned Corporation.
They employ labor-intensive, rustic technology,
and work on a piecerate basis, by the amount of
tin they put out. This sector, in turn, employs
peasants to help them concéntrate ore at the end
of each month before making deliveries to the
state-owned mining firm.
The lower and broadest echelon of the
mining industry is thus formed of peasants who,
in the main, live and reproduce in rural villages
and come to the mining camps seasonally to
supplement their inadequate farm income.
While permanent movement out of the peasan-
try into the mining sector is possible, it is made
difficult by the absence of permanent employ-
ment opportunities in the mines. Peasants are
thus condemned to commute between marginal
mining pursuits in Llallagua and their villages.
Although the peasant/miner relationship
has a small coefficient of symbiosis and cooper-
ation, it is marked by deep conflicts. Owing to
the pauperization of the state-owned mining
firm (Burke 1978) and the resultant poor wages
of miners, mechanisms for the extraction of
rural surplus have been developed over the
9
By labor aristocracy I mean a strata of the laboring
class that is privileged relative to the rest; they receive
leges denied to the rest of the laboring forcé, etc. In
Bolivian mining, the labor aristocracy is neither more
moderate (politically speaking) ñor more skilled than the
rest (Hobsbawm 1968: 316; Waterman 1975: 58-59).
years by miners and merchants. Each year, for
instance, as the harvest season approaches,
people in Llallagua question peasants who come
to that mining center about the location of
villages with good upcoming crops. With the
advent of harvest, women from the mining
camps known as chaparas travel throughout the
countryside, especially through agriculturally
rich areas, to exchange commissary goods for
newly picked crops. Each transaction is small: a
plateful of peas, for instance, for a loaf of
bread. Yet, by engaging in a multiplicity of such
transactions, traders glean substantial bulk and
suplus from scattered regions. Though part of
the producís collected this way feed the miners'
family, much of it is also sold in the market a
few months after harvest when agricultural
prices rise. More forceful means of extracting
agricultural products include usurpation in
either the markets of the mining camp or in the
countryside and defective weights and mea-
sures.
In this context, it is surprising that neither
of the two recent popular tomes on Bolivian
mining (Nash 1979; Taussig 1980) discusses the
exploitative relations and deep antagonism be-
tween the mining and peasant sector. Nash,
preoccupied with the politics of dependence,
and Taussig, obsessed with ritual, have missed
one of the most important pilars and backward
linkages of the mining sector: subsidized food
from the countryside.
When the army in the 1980 coup seized and
entered Llallagua, Jukumanis and other
peasants from the surrounding countryside did
not mobilize in defense of miners. "They have
mistreated us for long," said one campesino.
During the coup of 1979, when ayllu leaders,
including the Jukumanis', gathered in Llallagua
to iron out a political alliance among themselves
with possible links to the miners, ayllu officers
agreed that in the future it was essential to set
up independent markets throughout the coun-
tryside of Northern Potosí to avoid abuses from
miners. There would be no municipal gen-
darmes there, no taxes; miners and traders
could come to purchase directly from peasants.
And if middlemen began to bulk products for
later resale in the mining center, why that
would be a miner's problem.
Conclusión
Studies of the contení, boundaries and causes of
ayllu ethnicity are still in a formative stage.
Although part of this essay was a response to
Salomon's plea to question the internal unity of
ethnic groups, it also attempted to transcend a
culturological perspective by viewing ethnicity
as a product of the state policy of incorporation
and as the outcome of the labor market in the
mining industry.
Contrary to the claim of cultural ecologists,
ethnicity in Northern Potosí is not an effective
strategy for achieving important political and
economic ends. On the contrary, ethnic antago-
nisms are the partial cause and consequence of
deeper penetration by the state into the coun-
tryside to control the mining sector. At the
highest level, the ethnic divisions of Northern
Potosí are those between mining camp and
countryside, between miner and peasant, be-
tween wage laborers and spaliers, between mer-
chants and loaders. Though there are cultural
continuities and bicultural hingemen between
the two sectors, there are also deep cleavages.
Abstract. - This essay contains a discussion of the
segmentary meanings of ethnicity in the Jukumani ayllu of
Northern Potosí, Bolivia. Subjective meanings and defini-
tions of ethnicity are used as a starting point for examining
broader political, economic, and social factors constraining
and coloríng ethnicity. State policies of incorporation have
recognized, perpetuated, and accentuated ethnic cleavages
among ethnic groups (ayllus) in the región. Regional
economic structures also exert powerful influences in
shaping the character of inter-ethnic relations in Northern
Potosí. [South America, Bolivia, Ethnicity, ayllus,
Miners]
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