The Historiography of Colonial and Modern Bolivia^*

Bolivian historiography is characterized by two basic features. First, true research historians as we understand them—men who use primary sources, who work in archives, who acknowledge these sources in their writings—are extremely few, less than a half dozen. These historiographic rarities rotate around the giant of Bolivian history—indeed of Bolivian letters—Gabriel René-Moreno (1836-1908). Before René-Moreno there was no true historian, and after his death the research historians such as Humberto Vázquez-Machicado (1904-1958), Gunnar Mendoza (1915-), Guillermo Ovando Sanz (1917-), and others, praised and imitated him. But because these true research historians are so few, René-Moreno’s contribution to Bolivia’s history and letters is little known in his own country. The provincially educated Bolivian representing the dying aristocracy, the dynamic middle class, and the economically ever-rising proletariat are all fascinated by either cheap literature or writing of a social nature which includes interpretive history. Because of this Arnold J. Toynbee is far better known and more popular in Bolivia than René-Moreno.¹

This accounts for the second feature, which is a superabundance in Bolivia of interpretive, social history based on secondary historical sources. This is poor history, based on ever-incorrect sources, but it possesses a deep political significance that has shaped a new social and economic structure in Bolivia. For example, the whole movement of indigenismo or indianismo,² which is intimately concerned with Bolivian nationalism and socialism, even with communism, has its roots in historical analyses. As a matter of fact, history is the key to the modern Bolivian Revolution, and this is always recognized by the revolutionary leaders as well as the opposition.³ Unfortunately, this emphasis on historical analysis has one basic shortcoming, because of the absence of well-researched Bolivian history such as had been done by René-Moreno. This lack of trained historians has always existed and goes as far back as the beginnings of the colonial period of Bolivia, then called Charcas, or Upper Peru.

There are strong possibilities that the most competent Upper Peruvian historians have not reached posterity. Manuscripts have been lost. Enrique Finot believed that the works of a Juan de Caxica “have probably disappeared.” It is the Augustinian Father Antonio de la Calancha (1584-1654) who tells us that Caxica “wrote more books than anyone else in the world.” They were written in Spanish, Aymará, Quechua, and Chinchaisuyo. Calancha says that Caxica was born in the village of Pucarani and that he, Calancha, had seen thirty-two books written by Caxica.⁴ Where are they, or was Calancha wrong?

Father Antonio de la Calancha was born in Chuquisaca and he is the leading Upper Peruvian historian. His magnus opus published in 1638 in Spain has survived, although the second volume is a true rarity.⁵ This Augustinian father had a keen mind that captured the realities of his century. His two-volume work is a storehouse of geographic, ethnographic, historical, cultural, and especially religious information. He was accused by the moralists of his time of having “lessened the value of his text with immoral and obscene passages.”⁶ There is also abundant attention to mythology and miracles; his predilection for the supernatural is part of the milieu of the age, but it renders the work somewhat less useful today. In Father Calancha Upper Peru had a most distinguished historian who transmitted to posterity a most diversified work. This cannot be said of the other Upper Peruvian historians.

There is truly a scarcity of known historians in the colonial period. Most of the renowned chroniclers did not come from what is today Bolivia but from the other Peru or from Spain or other regions. Humberto Vázquez-Machicado of La Paz,⁷ just before his death in 1957, wrote a most illuminating study of colonial chroniclers in which he traced their historiographic importance to modern Bolivian thought. Vázquez-Machicado said that “these historical works [of the chroniclers] contain in themselves much informative material which if applied to Bolivia give us the most remote signs of a sociological mentality. If you wish: it is all incipient but it begins to show strength and preciseness from its first beginnings and [this mentality] is already looking for a definition and a personality of its own for this new continent and more so for this piece of land which far later will be called Bolivia.” He was sure that a study of these chroniclers—none from Upper Peru, but many travelers or residents at one time or another in Upper Peru—already showed the basic features of Bolivia and Bolivians. He insisted that a study of Bolivia, Bolivian history and historiography, and Bolivian problems must start with a thorough survey of the chroniclers.⁸

Vázquez-Machicado did not cite in his study such men as Luis Capoche (1547-1613), Orsúa y Vela (1676-1736), Alonso Barba (1569-[at least until 1661]), or Pedro Vicente Cañete (1754-1816). All by right of birth or by nearly life-long residence were Upper Peruvians. They were all connected with Potosí—Capoche is a new discovery by Lewis Hanke. Upper Peru was poor in historians and historical writings but was fabulously rich in silver. Whatever history we have found is related to silver, and silver meant Potosí. A complete listing of colonial writings on Potosí would be extensive although not “the thousand and one histories” claimed by one Bolivian writer.⁹ It is Lewis Hanke of Columbia University who is now searching all over the world for Potosí historiography.¹⁰ Hanke’s Capoche is full of interesting details but is primarily a discussion of mining techniques.¹¹

More exciting is the Orsúa y Vela¹² work, called by Gustavo Adolfo Otero “a journalistic vision of the Villa Imperial of Potosí.” And the Mesa couple of La Paz believe the work “full of sincerity” and that it is “the most complete history of Potosí that we know.”¹³ It is Hanke, too, who is finally getting this monumental work published.¹⁴ Then there is the Cañete book which is a long and detailed history of Potosí. It too is heavy on the technical side, though it does detail the administrative system. There is little detail about the everyday life in Potosí. Due to colorful intrigues Cañete was unable to publish this work until 1952.¹⁵ Far more lucky was Father Barba, who reached nearly a hundred years of age and who saw his best work published. It is still a classic—over ten editions—and it has been translated into many languages. The Barba book is also technical, and it is probably the only Upper Peruvian book, at least the only technical treatise of the Bolivian region, that achieved world attention.¹⁶ Barba is said to be the first one in America to talk about petroleum.¹⁷ In the mid-nineteenth century the editions of Barba became very rare and brought far over 10,000 pesos chilenos per copy. It was rumored that Father Barba had found the magic formula to make gold from all other minerals—the old alchemists’ dream.¹⁸

The historiography of Upper Peru might be very weak, but it is colorful and an amazing reflection of the socio-economic culture of the area.¹⁹ And Victorián de Villava (?-1802) represents either the bridge from colony to the struggle for independence or a mind ahead of the socio-economic prejudices of his time. The War of Independence which lasted in Upper Peru sixteen years, from 1809 to 1825, still remains a fertile field for penetrating research.²⁰ Its most important phase was the local revolts which reflected a deep cleavage between criollo royalists and criollo patriots and which were related to (or the motivating force of) a long and colorful war of guerrillas. While the guerrilla leaders—jefes de montoneras—were mostly criollos, the rank and file were mestizos and Indians whose identities were more as mercenaries or bandidos. Beside this rural revolt stood the urban criollo gentlemen of pseudo-learning who developed more fancy than practical ideas, for or against Spain, for or against union of the Perus or the United Provinces of the River Plate. A few participants in this rural and urban drama showed an interest in history.

Villava was an aristocratic peninsular with a successful university career. By the end of the century he occupied the Audiencia’s fiscalía in Upper Peru. He campaigned for reforms and predicted revolution if no reforms were forthcoming. Ricardo Levene, in his biography of Villava, considered him a precursor, while to others he is the father of South American liberalism.²¹ History and historiography were abundantly used by Villava in his scorching judicial opinions. The peninsular Villava—full of resounding liberalism— found his match in debate with Cañete. The latter was a conservative criollo, a native of Asunción, later a part of the Charcas bureaucracy, and the author of the unpublished Potosí work. Cañete never swayed from his stern loyalty to the king; he opposed any form of liberalism and fought the apostles of independence with his pen.

Villava was a peninsular and a liberal; Cañete was a criollo and an arch-conservative; a third man, difficult to define but who was an Indian of antigua estirpe Amará, is of importance and color. Vicente Pazos Kanki (1779-1851) defies classification. He was a man of conservative ideas who held strongly to Catholicism and Western thought, but wished to recreate an Indian monarchy and was more interested in universalities than in regional nationalism. He traveled widely with many foreign residences.²² Of his many works a few are history—he even composed a history of the United States.²³ Pazos Kanki was not an original researcher and his plagiarisms are abundant.²⁴ Since he still awaits a biographer it is hard to define Pazos Kanki’s position in Bolivian historiography, but since he believed that Spanish and Indian cultures should, must, and could combine, and since he had a tenacious faith in Spanish America, he is a precursor of modern indigenismo. Indeed he had much in common with the modern Mexican José Vasconcelos. Chronologically, this Aymará Indian was Bolivia’s first historian.

Pazos Kanki’s native village was near the small, picturesque village of Sorata that lies before the majestic, ever snow-capped Illampu. A generation after the birth of the aristocratic Aymará another Bolivian globe-trotter was born in Sorata, a criollo, by the name of Villamil de Rada (1804-1880). Was he brilliant or mentally ill? He became a fanatical philologist who criss-crossed the whole world. He was in California during the gold rush and is supposed to have edited a newspaper in four languages and made a fortune not from gold but with his sharp pen. Making fortunes and losing them was a continuous cycle, but during this time Villamil de Rada studied with gusto and zest all kinds of languages, dead and alive. He, too, remembered his native Sorata where Aymará is the spoken language.²⁶

Apparently Villamil de Rada had finished a multi-volume work on Aymará linguistics in which he developed a most fantastic theory based on etymology which stated that man originated in the Titicaca Basin. Sorata was the true Biblical Paradise and Tihuanaco was the Babel of the Bible. From this Andean region the human race expanded all over the world by way of the Pacific Islands and the Bering Strait. Aymará was a universal language and all languages derived from it; for example, Greek mythology originated in Bolivia’s mountains; the same was true of Hindu mythology. The proof of all this was for Villamil de Rada based on a grammatical and etymological study of the Aymará language.²⁶ In 1880 the man from Sorata committed suicide by drowning himself in the ocean near Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps, more an anthropologist than a historian, in the opinion of a Bolivian author, Villamil de Rada, nevertheless imparted a poetic touch to his work.²⁷ Today this second world-traveling son of Sorata is forgotten, but he did captivate the imagination of Fernando Díez de Medina,²⁸ the nationalist writer of the twentieth century whose telluric thesis is based on Villamil’s fantasies. Gustavo Adolfo Otero,²⁹ another modern writer, has also shown evidence of Villamil de Rada’s influence. Díez de Medina and Otero are part of the important indigenismo movement. There is no doubt that Villamil de Rada has inspired recent Bolivian nationalism.

Both men from the Sorata region cannot be classified as veterans of the War of Independence. The heroic guerrillas faded into obscurity since no records of their activities were kept. This was remedied when the energetic Director of Bolivia’s National Library and National Archives, Gunnar Mendoza, located a colorful guerrilla diary. Its author was a drummer from a faraway village nestled in the cordillera, and he wrote in simple folk language without regard to grammar, spelling, syntax, or punctuation. The drummer’s diary has produced an agonizing reappraisal of one phase of Bolivian history,³⁰ for the drummer Vargas (no first name available) destroyed the myth of the sincere and patriotic guerrilla. The guerrillas were unreliable and often little more than bandits.

Duplicity was also prevalent in the urban revolutionaries who have been immortalized as dos carets.³¹ One of them, José María Urcullu (1785-1856), wrote the only history of the sixteen-year war.³² It is enumerative and full of mistakes. It makes the ever-revolving turncoats into true patriots. In Bolivian historiography the Urcullu treatise is important since it served as a source for all subsequent Bolivian history books. Therefore many of the Urcullu mistakes and prejudices have continually made their way into practically all subsequent histories. Only one more man of the War of Independence generation, the patrician Manuel Sánchez de Velasco (1784-1864), wrote his historical memoirs, around 1850, which cover the period 1808-1848. The work remained unpublished until 1938.³³ It is more of an uninspiring history text than a personal memoir, written with a true bureaucratic pen. It, too, lacks documentary sources since the author failed to consult the many manuscripts available to him as an ex-clerk of the Audiencia and an official in the judicial branch of the new republic.

The documents were there but they were unorganized and dispersed. No historical society or journal came into existence in that post-war period. In 1874 Gabriel René-Moreno said that “there was no archives, library nor office which had kept at least one set of all national publications.”³⁴ Even as late as 1883 the Bolivian historian, Luis Mariano Guzmán, complained that there were “no archives and historical documents available.”³⁵ Indeed two weeks before the Declaration of Independence Marshal José Antonio Sucre issued an executive decree establishing an archives and library in Chuquisaca. Nothing came of this, and in 1838 a further decree which required the establishment of provincial (departamento) archives also remained unenforced.³⁶ Sterility is the key word with regard to history, historical research, and archivalia for these first decades of the republic.

At the same time there developed a real interest in history, to be exact, in the past of the new country. Seeing the country in the grips of an endless anarchy, young and old alike turned to history. There was honest doubt about the wisdom of an independent Bolivia and the ability to maintain its sovereignty. A contemporary survey and an intelligent evaluation of the future must have given a pessimistic view as to Bolivia’s independence. History was to be the great rationalizer. A region with such a colorful and moving past and with such a glorious sixteen-year struggle for independence did deserve sovereignty. This sudden interest in history was a two-pronged movement. The older people collected libraries full of rare books and valuable manuscripts. Beautiful private libraries existed. The younger generation was interested in writing. Once in a while collecting and writing went hand in hand. A study of these libraries —some of them of colonial origins—remains a fertile field for investigation. The three foremost modern Bolivian historians have only recently devoted some studies to this type of research and have come up with admirable results.³⁷ Unfortunately, these private collections were restricted in number, and those who engaged in collecting were some of the most distinguished members of Bolivia’s criollo aristocracy.

It was these criollos who dominated the Bolivian scene and who perpetuated the colonial mentality and social structure. Only once, during the rule of Manuel Isidoro Belzú (1848-1855), a talented demagogue, was the aristocracy intimidated. During this same period of political and social transformation the first literary stirring occurred which included the subject of history. In 1852 there appeared in Cochabamba, the principal seat of the landed gentry, the first literary journal.³⁸ Among its contributors were some historians, such as Manuel José Cortés (1811-1865). Born in the small village of Cotagaita near Potosí, Cortés became a leading figure of Chuquisaca’s (now called Sucre) society. He was a typical criollo aristocrat with a bent for poetry and an attraction to refined political positions. He was a combination of refinement, intended universality, and attempted scholarship, but with strains of provincialism and superficiality.³⁹

In 1861 Cortés published the first national history book which was a simple survey describing the story of Bolivia from independence to the government of the weak Jorge Córdova (1855-1857). The last three chapters describe Bolivian letters, laws, and customs, and the first chapter surveyed the country’s geography.⁴⁰ According to modern standards it lacked documentation and reflected inadequate research. Yet it has merits: it is readable and only unintentionally biased since it is not a libro de combate político. But more important than the book is the long book review that a then unknown young man of Bolivian birth wrote from Chile. It was a twenty-eight page review article which although severe admitted that “to Cortés belongs the honor of having written the first history of Bolivia.”⁴¹ The young reviewer—by the name of Gabriel René-Moreno—showed despite his severity a delight that a history of Bolivia had finally been written.

The 1861 René-Moreno review opens the golden age of Bolivian history over which this Bolivian resident in Chile presided with his powerful prose, his disciplined research techniques, his rude critiques, and his bibliographic ability. He, René-Moreno (1836-1908), was born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. His father owned the only adequate library in the town. When René-Moreno had achieved fame he said of his home town that “one lives there anochronistically and in an epicurian way a la Dios and no one gives a guapomó and a pitijaya of what happens in the world.”⁴² It was a town of much play, much food, much gossip, and very much love. When, in 1851, René-Moreno’s father went to a government job in the capital, Sucre, the whole family also moved. Young Gabriel finished school in the capital as an average student. He took a liking to his French teacher, the venerable Daniel Calvo (1832-1880), who was an enthusiastic collector of manuscripts and other historical sources. Teacher Calvo liked the student Gabriel. But instead of learning his daily lessons or pursuing the standard teen-age ways of those days in this town the young René-Moreno spent many hours visiting historical places, the decrepit public libraries, and trying to get access to private collections of the Chuquisaca scions. Often he also slipped off to talk with the elderly veteran woman guerrilla leader—then lonely and forgotten—Juana Azurduy de Padilla.⁴³ She had been one of the few survivors of the War of Independence who had a true fighting record in the best patriotic tradition.

René-Moreno, although uninterested in the traditional studies of law, went to Chile to start his law curriculum, which he finished in 1866. At the University of Chile he came under the influence of Miguel Luis Amunátegui and Diego Barros Arana, who considered the Bolivian student quite promising. Two more men in Chile had a profound influence on René-Moreno. In his early years as a student in Chile he established a respectful but close friendship with the Argentine Gregorio Beéche and the Chilean Ramón Briseño. Beéche from Salta had become a great collector, editor, and bibliographer and had spent twenty years, from 1820 to 1841, in Bolivia. Here he had collected some of the most valuable documents and printed items of Bolivian history. René-Moreno became enthused with Beéche and he later said that the salteño had one of the most valuable libraries. René-Moreno was determined to imitate Beéche’s collecting ability.⁴⁴

While René-Moreno was still a student and earning a living as a high school teacher of Spanish, his teacher and friend, Ramón Briseño, was named editor of a University of Chile bibliographic project to list all Chilean publications from 1812 to 1859.⁴⁵ It was there that René-Moreno received, under the guidance of Briseño, his training in bibilography and literary criticism for which he later distinguished himself so thoroughly. At the same time he continued his teaching profession and distinguished himself as a conscientious Spanish teacher with an amazing knowledge of grammar and style. Later he would not tolerate sloppy composition and style, and his own writings are models of perfection. In 1868 René-Moreno received the coveted directorship of the library of the Instituto Nacional in Santiago. In 1887 René-Moreno achieved a position which he considered the highest honor of his life, the appointment as Professor of Literature of the Instituto, replacing the celebrated Amunátegui. He was now a true part of this great age, this great generation, of Chilean letters. He was to remain in Chile until his death in 1908.⁴⁶ Yet, although he loved and praised Chile, he never gave up his Bolivian citizenship and he never wrote about Chile. His fifteen books and innumerable articles and reviews all deal with Bolivia or her past.⁴⁷ When Bolivia and Chile went to war during the Pacific conflict René-Moreno truly suffered and sincerely tried to bring peace to the two countries. He was savagely accused in Bolivia of treason.⁴⁸ René-Moreno is the crucial, the most important, figure in Bolivian historiography. He is Bolivia’s best historian, one of the best of Latin America, and the only Bolivian other than Argüedas (a far less able historian), who achieved continental fame. There is no doubt that René-Moreno is a Bolivian figure—his library, what was saved, went to Bolivia’s National Library in Sucre. There is also no doubt that his development and training reflect heavily the influence of Chile, especially of Amunátegui.

Not as productive as Amunátegui, this Bolivian historian was a better writer and stylist. He, too, showed diversity. His work can be divided into four distinctive parts. His early work dealt with literature,⁴⁹ and in 1891 he published an excellent but forgotten treatise on grammar.⁵⁰ His second enterprise, which he already began before his university graduation, comprised critical reviews and bibliography. Review and bibliography were combined since he presented his bibliographies with analyses (critiques).⁵¹ This task led him to his third area (and a great love), that of an enthusiastic collector and a forceful librarian with his own system of classification.⁵² Finally, he wrote history based on unpublished documents.⁵³

What is precisely the importance of René-Moreno in Bolivian historiography? First of all, he was Bolivia’s best historian, reviewer, and bibliographer. And although he remains generally forgotten, an impressive number of the better Bolivian scholars are unanimous in putting René-Moreno first.⁵⁴ His historical works are all based on documents. Primary sources were sine qua non for René-Moreno. Patriotism and extreme nationalism he considered obstacles that a good historian must overcome. He must report the history as it happened, but he also must interpret. René-Moreno’s evaluation of Bolivian history was severe; it was so severe that patriotic pressures have opposed attempts to re-edit his rare works or print his unpublished essays. Yet his analyses are acute and truly praiseworthy. Some of René-Moreno’s interpretations, such as on the causes of the War of Independence and the importance of the Junta of Montevideo of 1808, or the importance of the Jesuit rule and expulsion, were only recently found to be sound.⁵⁵ He was also one of the first historians of the world to discover the importance of newspapers as a primary source if used with discretion. By using newspapers he was able to reconstruct—as no one has ever done before or since—in a masterful sketch the cruelty and vicissitudes of Bolivian politics. There is hardly any Latin American historian who has ever recreated an episode in his country’s history with such reality as René-Moreno did when he related the mob killings of 1861.⁵⁶

He was not a facile journalist but he was extremely careful about grammar, ever exasperated with bad style and sloppy punctuation. His historiographic and bibliographic volumes, furthermore, are more than mere printed catalogues. After citing an item with its complete bibilographic data René-Moreno often gave a historical description of the subject matter and of the author. Then he reviewed the item critically, often pointing out where additional documents could have been available to the author. Naturally by this method René-Moreno made himself most unpopular, creating a legion of enemies. These annotated and printed catalogues, however, are a storehouse of historiographic data for Bolivia, Peru, the colonial Audiencia of Charcas, and Lima.

René-Moreno had shortcomings. His greatest flaw was his social ideas. He was a racist who believed in the superiority of the European civilization. He was sure that the Bolivian cholo was worse than the Indian.⁵⁷ René-Moreno oversimplified Bolivia’s problems by blaming the cholo for all the ills. If René-Moreno made himself unpopular with his caustic reviews during his life he has an even lesser chance to be appreciated today, since Bolivia is now a country of cholo supremacy. There are also other imperfections of a minor nature. His style, always correct, was difficult, since it was a colorful prose with an endless vocabulary. Comprehension suffers at the expense of style. He often talked over the heads of his readers, since he assumed that they were well trained in history. Often he rambled and was repetitious. His absolute reliance on primary sources took away certain interpretive freedom. Whereas later Bolivian historians fell prey to long, often useless, discussions full of conjecture, René-Moreno was devoid of historical theories. Julio César Valdez noted in René-Moreno’s writings, especially his histories, a clash between a great artist and a conscientious and dull librarian.⁵⁸

René-Moreno was a solitary man with few friends. He was inspiring in print but unconvincing in speech and he did not inspire pupils. No René-Moreno school appeared even though he laid a solid foundation for Bolivian history. Two trends are noticeable and both developed during his lifetime, but it is difficult to say if these originated because of or despite him. Although he had many enemies and the masses and small, white collar empleadillos and tinteros did not know him, René-Moreno was admired by a restricted circle of scholars and pseudo-scholars.⁵⁹ His influence on them was noticeable, especially his insistence on adequate archives as the basis for history.

In 1871 and 1874-1875 Gabriel René-Moreno was in Chuquisaca making a thorough survey of collections of documents available in the capital. Although there was no national archives, he found some interested individuals who had done much toward preserving records. He immediately lobbeyed with them for improved archival preservation and service. The results were amazing. The congressional archives came under the excellent supervision of a man by the name of Pedro de Entrambasaguas. He was the grandson of a patriot of the 1809 revolt and the son of a Chuquisaqueño lawyer who was appointed oidor in Manila and from there moved to fiscal of the Council of the Indies. Pedro de Entrambasaguas efficiently organized the congressional archives and his “modesty [was] equaled only by his conscientiousness.” René-Moreno, who was sparing with praise, said of Entrambasaguas, “I declare him the flower and the cream of Bolivian archivists.”⁶⁰ The survival of Bolivia’s early congressional records was due to this man, a real pioneer of Bolivian historiography about whom we lack any biographical data, and who has faded into obscurity.

Another genteel Chuquisaqueño enthusiastic about archives was Daniel Calvo, René-Moreno’s former French teacher. He was the savior of the priceless Audiencia of Charcas records which, during the first years of the republic, barely escaped destruction. When Calvo held a ministerial post during the presidency of Adolfo Ballivián (1873-1874) he transferred the archives to a secure room and then employed a conscientious scholar named Francisco d’Avis to organize them. Unknown and forgotten, D ’Avis patiently gathered together over twenty thousand expedientes which became the basis for Bolivia’s National Archives.⁶¹

Only a few years later, in 1884, the Bolivian National Archives was established. After long years of persuasion by such people as Calvo, D’Avis, Entrambasaguas, ex-president Tomás Frías (1804-1884), the potent politician Casimiro Corral (1830-1895), and especially René-Moreno, President Narcisco Campero (1879-1884) created the National Archives.⁶² The Pacific War (1879-1884) had ended in disaster for Bolivia. There had been in the immediate post-war days and years a revulsion against the legion of unscrupulous politicians and caudillos such as Belzú (whose armies in 1848 had used invaluable documents of the government palace, the old congressional records, to make camp fires) or Hilarión Daza (1876-1879), whose ineptitude was responsible for the loss of the Bolivian coast. Frías, Corral, and Campero were politicians who believed in the moral regeneration of Bolivia. A National Archives might be an instrument in this hoped-for national revival. It was also felt that only a dedicated man of means, who did not depend on a salary, should become the first director. This man was found in Ernesto O. Rück (1833-1909).

Ernesto O. Rück is forgotten today, and not even a small biographical essay on him is available. But after René-Moreno, Rück is the most important man in Bolivian historiography. He was a German, born in Prussia, of an aristocratic background. Young Rück studied mining in Prussia. He was fascinated by the stories of his faraway uncle Otto F. Braun (1798-1864), who had joined the Bolivarian army and campaigned with Bolívar. Braun had remained in the new Republic of Bolivia and become a Bolivian marshal. He had praised Bolivia’s untapped mineral resources and suggested that his nephew come to Bolivia to get practical experience. Ernesto Rück arrived in Bolivia in 1854 and soon married a patrician girl of Sucre society. He never returned to Germany but became a Bolivian citizen, accepted and respected by the sophisticated society of Bolivia’s capital. By 1857 Rück had become the chief mining consultant to the President of the Republic. Eight years later Rück published a guide to Bolivia that was a milestone in Bolivian publications. By 1873 he had become the first director of the newly created Commission of National Statistics.

While Rück must be considered an important—if not crucial— figure in the emergence of Bolivia’s important mining industry with its oligarchy of tin, he was also enthusiastically interested in Bolivian history. When President Campero named him the first Director of the National Archives Rück accepted the position with great enthusiasm and remained at the headship until 1889 when he retired from public life. As head, Rück established an efficient and serviceable archives. Whereas so many ventures in Bolivia never get beyond the paper stage or an initial impulse, Rück laid the foundations of an able institution that is widely recognized as one of the best of Latin America.⁶³ Until his death he continued his interest in history and to the end collected books and archival material. Today the Rück collection is one of the best sections of Bolivia’s National Library with important documents.⁶⁴

Rück and his National Archives were the best proof of the effect of René-Moreno’s insistence on Bolivian archivalia. A second contemporary and post-René-Moreno trend emerged in the appearance of a legion of historians, all amateurs and none first rate. But all sought their inspiration in René-Moreno. Some of them were good writers with moving styles, but none understood that the key to solid history was the document, or if they did understand this, they lacked the energy and patience to search for the document. Most of their work was a rehash of secondary sources and historical interpretations, and some was mere plagiarism. All of these men were classical representatives of the nineteenth-century agrarian criollo aristocracy, with its sense of noblesse oblige. Slowly, with the coming of the rule of tin, they turned graciously into twentieth-century paternal capitalists. One can cite over a dozen names and titles, but this would be nothing more than an encyclopedic venture. No town had a monopoly of them, and each of the larger cities—La Paz, Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosí, Oruro, Santa Cruz, and Tarija—had some of these well-intentioned amateur historians.⁶⁵

These men wrote mediocre history but they had their value. First of all, they wrote, and this was an improvement over the earlier period. Second, they made history more readable at the expense of quality. Third, they created an intellectual forum. Out of this grew the beginning of historical societies with their historical journals. The most eminent was the Sociedad Georgráfica of Sucre whose first Boletín was published in 1898 and still continues in existence.⁶⁶ All these mediocre historians were associated with these societies. Finally by the sole law of average one or two men or maybe one or two works by men of this generation of commonplace historians did achieve quality (better men or better works). Alberto Gutiérrez from Sucre wrote a classic, and he is part of this generation that might be classified as stretching from the time of René-Moreno to the emergence of Alcides Argüedas.

Gutiérrez (1862-1927) fell heavily under the influence of René-Moreno and the Chilean (author of books about Bolivia) Ramón Sotomayor Valdés (1830-).⁶⁷ In 1912 Gutiérrez published his study of the Melgarejo era in which he used the tyrant Mariano Melgarejo (1864-1871) as the central figure.⁶⁸ Yet he made a sociological analysis of the periods before, during, and after Melgarejo. With this Gutiérrez inaugurated the vast Melgarejo literature which, instead of being strictly factual and based on original documentation, is nothing other than historical psychology, productive more of myth than truth.⁶⁹ To Gutiérrez, Melgarejo was a typical, ignorant, Bolivian cholo, ever-present in Bolivian history. This cholo, whoever he might be—Melgarejo is his symbol—was motivated by a powerful feeling of inferiority. It was expressed in ignorant militarism— caudillismo, and in Bolivia caudillismo was called Melgarejismo. Gutiérrez did not depart from René-Moreno’s social (racist) theories. Gutiérrez considered Bolivian history a continuous struggle between ignorant militarism and democratic tendencies. Even if Gutiérrez, just as René-Moreno, overemphasized the racial aspect, there is near-unanimous agreement that his book is a brilliant exposé.⁷⁰ It is Bolivia’s best interpretive historical work and it is the link between the research historian René-Moreno and the later social historian of a psychological bent, Alcides Argüedas.

Gutiérrez, René-Moreno, Alcides Argüedas, and the latter’s high school history teacher, Pedro Kramer (1869-1899),⁷¹ and all their friends were of the same class, the Bolivian landed aristocracy, the newly formed business oligarchy of urban centers, the forthcoming mining magnates, and a rising select middle class of small but prosperous merchants and speculators. Most of them looked to Paris as their Mecca and to France as the proper place to educate their children. These people were curious mixtures of the narrow Bolivian provincialism and true French intellectualism. They were sincerely interested in the humanities, and by the end of the century they were fascinated by such new fields as sociology, psychology, and all kinds of new ventures in medicine, especially the work of Freud. At the same time these Bolivian pseudo-scholars failed to understand the grave social problems of their own nation arising from the total disenfranchisement of Bolivia’s Indian majority. They failed to see that these new subjects which were fascinating them were future tools for the revolt of the Bolivian masses. The tin scholars were too much interested in pursuing their pseudo-intellectual activities for the sake of status.⁷²

Two men of this group would become proficient and would use the new social sciences in analyzing Bolivia. They were honest scholars but could not free themselves of the beliefs of the criollo society. They did not realize—for both died too soon, 1939 and 1946—that they had initiated a chain of thought leading to revolution. They were the precursors of Bolivia’s revolt of the masses. Both men used history profusely as the key to their analyses. They also used sociology, medicine, geography, and other disciplines in their discussions. As a matter of fact one of these two was a medical doctor with training in psychiatry, and he was the first director of Bolivia’s insane asylum.

Jaime Mendoza (1874-1939) was born of the ultra-conservative society of Sucre, then Bolivia’s capital. He was a patrician with all the qualities and features of the criollo noblesse, a direct descendant of a Spanish noble. He studied medicine and became an able physician with a brilliant service record in the Acre campaign of 1903. He went to the barren tin mines of Uncia and Llallagua to practice medicine, and there he came into contact with Bolivia’s masses.⁷³ Jaime Mendoza’s mother was killed by roving bandits at their finca. The war, the mines, the mother’s death all caused deep impressions, and at one time he became an alcoholic. With tremendous willpower and his love for the new discipline of psychiatry he cured himself. He still was a restless man with abundant curiosity and a flair for writing prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction.⁷⁴ Jaime Mendoza emerges as Bolivia’s most versatile scholar of this century, a “professor, physician, poet, explorer, musician, novelist, geographer and historian.” Jaime Mendoza did not know René-Moreno’s works until 1907, when after reading one of them in Santiago he was so impressed by the narrative that he rushed unintroduced to the historian’s house. He became a fervent admirer of René-Moreno but also a severe judge, when as a doctor he announced that René-Moreno was “neurasténico.” Mendoza felt that this condition influenced the writings of René-Moreno which were so pessimistic of Bolivia’s future, but which cried for the recognition they never received; René-Moreno was hurt by this lack of recognition.

Jaime Mendoza, afraid of becoming an even greater victim of “neurastenia,” disciplined himself to become a boundless enthusiast. The Bolivian Eduardo Ocampo Moscoso, in a study of his country’s historiography, says that Mendoza is the only Bolivian writer who represents constructive traits; Jaime Mendoza is the spiritual builder of the Bolivian nation who looked with faith and enthusiasm toward the nation’s future.⁷⁵ Enrique Finot, the celebrated modern Bolivian historian, said that Jaime Mendoza, who wrote in many different disciplines, was especially fond of geography and history. He “considered that the destiny [of a country] was marked by the imperativo geográfico and by the antecedentes históricos.”⁷⁶ It should be added that besides these two supporting methods (or disciplines) Mendoza also considered vital (and related to the other two) the knowledge of the positive values of the very people who inhabited the geographical unit with its history. This meant especially in Bolivia the inhabitants with an Indian way of life.

Bolivia, according to Mendoza, is not a geographical error as foreign authors have claimed. It is made up of many diverse regions which complement each other. Bolivia, wrote Jaime Mendoza, “is not a simple conglomeration, but to the contrary constitutes an admirable synthesis of physical factors which make of its territory a land most suited to live as a great nation.” But Mendoza also used history as a means to justify his optimism. He came to the conclusion that Bolivian history proves eminently that Bolivia is a true nation. Bolivian history, said Jaime Mendoza, is a “process of regression, repetition and renovation. Tihuanaco, Kollasuyo, the Inca Empire, the Audiencia of Charcas, Upper Peru, Bolivia are great stages in the millenium beat of the great massive unit.” This “Bolivian massive unit”⁷⁷ of Jaime Mendoza was a distinct geographical unit with an admirable historical identity. It was Bolivia which occupied the heart of South America and which was a true regeneration of traditional and brilliant past political sovereign or semi-sovereign units.

Jaime Mendoza was neither nationalist nor chauvinist. His son, Gunnar Mendoza—today the Director of Bolivia’s National Archives and the National Library, and an excellent historian— believes that his father developed “an interpretation of Bolivian history that is integral; it is a philosophy of Bolivian history.”⁷⁸ Although, Mendoza was not a liberal, he realized the importance of the Indian—the crucial man of Bolivia and her past—in any philosophy of Bolivian history. He did not ignore the Indian issue as so many scholars had done. Mendoza admitted that the Indian is the most “enigmatic” force in Bolivia. He said that some people (for example the celebrated Las Casas) believe the Indian a man full of vitality and promise, while others (for example René-Moreno) affirm that he is an inferior being. “Where is the truth?” asked Mendoza. He answered with an almost childish sincerity, “I do not know.” But immediately his scientific mind came into action when he justified his hesitation because the Indian had not been studied from a a scientific point of view.

Yet to Mendoza the Bolivian Indian was the greatest force in Bolivian history, and upon the Indian depended Bolivia’s future. The Indian was the materia prima of Bolivia and an integral part of the nation and consequently Mendoza thought that he, the Indian, must share in all rights. Jaime Mendoza was the first patrician who without hesitation and without demagogic intentions proclaimed the potential equality of the Indian. He was interested in developing this potentiality to its fullest extent. This should not be an Europeanization but the conservation of the Indian as an “autochthonous” man. Mendoza was opposed to changing the Indian way of life and mores. This would be going against the current of history. What he wanted was to eliminate the pathological features of the Indian which he understood so well as a physician, and which he had observed in the miners.⁷⁹ Jaime Mendoza was little known outside Bolivia, but Rubén Darío called him the American Gorki.⁸⁰ He gave Bolivian history a sense of respectful depth and he was the voice of optimism and inadvertently one of the originators of modern Bolivian indianismo. Today’s radicalism of Bolivian indianismo stands in contrast to Mendoza’s traditionalism.

The same traditionalism, the same energy, the same restlessness, the same late acquaintance with but immediate enthusiasm for René-Moreno, and the same courageous awareness of an Indian problem also belonged to a contemporary of Mendoza, the celebrated Aleides Argüedas (1879-1946). Mendoza met Argüedas in Paris in 1911 and urged him to read Réne-Moreno. Both men liked and respected each other.⁸¹ Both, so similar in everything including age, were of a different bent or direction in Bolivian historiography but in the end both achieved similar results—that of becoming inadvertently the precursors of indigenismo. While Mendoza never achieved fame beyond the borders of Bolivia, Argüedas was the only Bolivian to achieve international fame. He achieved this recognition precisely because he was the antithesis of Mendoza.⁸² He was the pessimist while Mendoza was the optimist. Both loved, understood, and worried about Bolivia. Both knew that Bolivia was enfermo, but they used different ways of announcing their diagnoses and proposed to the patient. Mendoza used the gentle optimism of a trained psychiatrist, while Argüedas was brutally frank and ready to use shock. Argüedas’ method was sensational and brought international fame, something he did not seek, and a tremendous reaction which today is rising rather than abating and which has resulted in an Argüedas literature. This literature ranges from harsh to hateful sentiments toward Argüedas. There is, however, a foreign appraisal that is nearly unanimous in praise of Argüedas.⁸³ Few have understood and correctly evaluated Argüedas. Whatever else he was, he was not a first-rate historian.

Alcides Argüedas was born in La Paz and he received his law license in 1903. As a student he had participated in the 1893 revolution, the first blossoming of the age of tin with its multi-millionaires. Argüedas was always conservative. In his student days he composed two historical novels dealing with Indian customs, sharply critical of the Indian way of life and outlining his future theme. Both works received little notice; a third book had a similar fate. Argüedas’ efforts seemed failures and a sure road to obscurity, inside and outside Bolivia. But he had an iron will, self control, discipline, and the courage of self-evaluation, as well as personal satisfaction from hard work. He rewrote two of his novels in 1912 and 1919 and they proved successful.⁸⁴ In them Argüedas sketched as no one had ever done before the suffering of the Indians. Rosendo Villalobos called the second work “an apostolic novel in favor of the Indian.”⁸⁵ The novels were celebrated but their author was ignored, and the barrage of criticism of Argüedas continued. Not only did it come from the conservatives, who may have felt hurt by his truthful picture of the Indian in his novels, but also by the liberal and surging radicals, who should have celebrated him as the literary apostle of indianismo.

Argüedas moved to Paris, where he lived for twenty years. He became a Francophile and fell under the spell of the new school of sociology and psychology of such men as LeBon, Lacombe, Guyan, Gobineau, Vacher and Lapuge. He established a social theory and applied it to Bolivia. He expressed it in a new book even before the revision of his earlier novels, and it brought him immediate fame in the Americas and in Europe. Argüedas diagnosed Bolivia.⁸⁶ Gabriela Mistral called it a “temerariously just book.”⁸⁷ With daring frankness Argüedas enumerated the multiple defects of Bolivia and the Bolivians, sparing no one—Indian, mestizo, or white. He recognized that Bolivia was an indigenous country and the whites lived in an artificial, doomed environment. He refused to accept an indigenous romanticism. The Indian and those leading an Indian way of life were sick, but he did not blame the Indian for this sickness. Centuries of subserviency were the cause. History was to blame.

Alcides Argüedas understood that to diagnose the ills of Bolivia he needed to know Bolivian history. He realized that Bolivia had no worthwhile histories—the texts were inadequate and the specialized monographs were few.⁸⁸ Argüedas himself wrote a history of Bolivia in several volumes, hut he failed to cover the whole sweep of Bolivia’s past.⁸⁹ He also summarized the several written and projected volumes into a survey which remains the best-known history of Bolivia.⁹⁰ Fernando Díez de Medina rightly says, “This is the first effort on a greater scale to systematize the study of our past.”⁹¹ Alcides Argüedas ’ history of Bolivia was forceful and readable.

It is not a research history, for Argüedas was not a research historian. He lacked specialized monographs, and he was not a man enchanted by dusty documents. He had no historical methodology, and his work contained many errors. The meticulous Bolivian historian, Macedonio Urquidi (1881-) from Cochabamba, has combed two of Argüedas’ books and annotated the errors, and it took Urquidi 192 pages to discuss Argüedas’ errors of facts and misinterpretations.⁹² It is possible that Urquidi was often guided by an emotional patriotism, but even the most enthusiastic Argüedas partisan could not fail to be impressed by the abundant corrections of facts which Urquidi proposed.

Not only did Argüedas fail to use primary sources but his selection of secondary material was unsatisfactory. Another Bolivian historian from Oruro, Marcos Beltrán Avila, has checked Argüedas’ citations and discovered some embarrassing errors and omissions. Beltrán Ávila concludes that Argüedas “is intelligent, serious and a hard worker but he lacks feeling for the past.”⁹³ Argüedas did have a feeling for history, but merely as a means to interpret Bolivia’s dismal present. He was a historian because history was to him a diagnostic tool of modern society and because history was the materia prima for a literature of social impact. To Argüedas sociology and literature should emphasize the negative in order to produce a revaluation. And the most prominent negative features could be found in history. In sum, to Argüedas the negative would eventually produce the positive through an awareness of history.

There is little need to point out that this process would produce a multitude of enemies. Although Argüedas died in 1946 he continues to be as controversial as ever. Argüedas knew this and at his death left twelve volumes of unpublished material which he forbade to be opened until 1996.⁹⁴ While the stature of Argüedas will grow, the name of Jaime Mendoza will disappear. There is no doubt that Argüedas, with the daring presentation that Benjamín Carrion called “patriotic because of its rude sincerity,”⁹⁵ and Jaime Mendoza, with his gentle persuasion, used history to create awareness in a whole new generation, a new generation that was radical, leftist, and indigenista, semi-demagogic but romantic. It would revolutionize Bolivia and demand a new interpretation of Bolivian history to justify social revolution.

Imitators of Argüedas and Mendoza arose, but all were mediocre. Those who copied Argüedas did not have the master’s forcefulness or color.⁹⁶ And those who followed in Mendoza’s footsteps engaged in exaggerated patriotism.⁹⁷ These mediocre historians, many of them well intentioned, produced defective books because they did not use primary sources and lacked the philosophical depth of Mendoza and Argüedas.⁹⁸ A few men emerged who, although lacking the support of documents, did achieve interpretive brilliance and forcefully presented the need for social and political changes. The Indian, along with his past, present, and future, was the key element in this socio-historic literature of indigenismo. This movement coincided or is intimately connected with the rise of various leftist, nationalist, and pseudo-fascist political parties and personalities. It achieved its high-point in the 1952 MNR revolution and the ensuing social reforms which meant that the nationalistic movement had won over the communistic indigenismo.

No one can say with precision who was the real founder of Bolivian indianismo with its political and social overtones. One thing is sure : two men, Gustavo Adolfo Navarro (1896-) and Franz Tamayo (1879-1956), must be cited as potent architects of this movement.⁹⁹ Both men were of a revolutionary make-up because of their disdain for the established order. Navarro and Tamayo were thoroughly interested in history without being thorough historians. Interpretive history was the key to their writings.

Navarro, a member of Sucre society, is better known by his pseudonym of Tristán Marof. He wrote a satire ridiculing the Sucre society which he hated.¹⁰⁰ Between 1920 and 1926 Navarro lived in Europe, holding consular posts and coming in contact with communist leaders and organizations. Later he became a devoted fellow-traveler, living in New York, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina, usually in hiding from the police. During the Chaco War he engaged in active pacifist propaganda and was expelled from Bolivia. After the War he returned and continued his efforts to organize a Marxist party. As a political agitator and organizer Navarro was soon overshadowed by more shrewd and accommodating leftist politicians.¹⁰¹ He retired from public life and for more than a decade has remained unapproachable. His early writings and activities remain important in any study of Bolivian historiography and thought.

Navarro’s multiple writings on varied subjects include a critical analysis of Bolivian history as had not been done before. He developed a fascination for the Inca Empire and a profound distaste for everything that followed its collapse. He summarized his philosophy of Bolivian history by saying, “The fatherland is sick because of a negative history.” He wrote that “during the Inca domination the nation which today is called Bolivia unquestionably was better off than today under republican rule. In those far but happy times politics were unknown and bloody factions which destroyed each other did not exist.” His praise of Inca life is full of ridiculous adjectives, while he attributed meanness only to Spaniards and Europeans. To Navarro the War of Independence was a conservative movement by which the criollos “perpetuated their privileges.” The republican period has produced either rotten militarism or “an abstract and useless ideology of false liberalism” which thoroughly exploited the Indian. Some men such as Bolívar, Navarro wrote, were of “a liberal spirit and had liberal intentions” but this was all in name only because they never “distributed the land.” Some of Bolívar’s lieutenants in Bolivia received thousands of acres of land and became seignorial lords. In 1926 Navarro used the slogan “Land to the people and mines to the state.”¹⁰²

Bolivian history to Navarro proved the need for radical reform, and he reduced his country’s history to one slogan: “Melgarejo is the history of Bolivia.” Later he explained that the Bolivian tyrant Mariano Melgarejo was “the structure and superstructure” of Bolivia’s past. This is because “the ignorant militarism is the only framework in which the old feudal society, which has not been destroyed by the creation of the Republic, finds its support . . . militarism protects the privileges of the feudality.” And Melgarejo is the best example of this militarism. Melgarejo reigned over a feudal country. Those before Melgarejo and those after him, continued Navarro, were all of the same type and all ruled over the same structure. They exploited the Indian. They, wrote Navarro in 1934, were the vicious alliance: “doctor, military man and cura.”¹⁰³ Not only did this alliance own the land but also the subsoil, which it either neglected or exploited.

Navarro declared since ancient times Bolivia had been a mining country, and the richness of the subsoil continued after independence. Yet the criollo aristocracy failed to appreciate this, because possession of land and Indians was the measure of prestige. Mining declined. After Bolivia’s defeat by Chile in 1879 the landed aristocracy realized its total bankruptcy which had led to this defeat, but it refused to relinquish total power. In haste to correct errors of omission, the masters of Bolivia turned over the country to foreign capitalists. The criollo aristocracy sold the country to these foreign investors and “the imperialistic capital entered triumphantly into Bolivia.” The great age of the “mining superestate had started.” This superstructure did not change the system of feudal land tenure but integrated it into its orbit. Bolivia to Navarro had now become a capitalistic feudalism, a pawn of world imperialism. Bolivia’s cure, therefore, was “land to the people and the mines to the state.”¹⁰⁴

Navarro is not a genuine historian nor a successful revolutionary. He lacked the sort of snobbish dignity that is appealing to the Bolivian intelligentsia, and never won their respect. But in a study of Bolivian historiography he is important because his chronology, forcefulness, and simplicity of expression inaugurated the period of historical indigenismo. Other men of more dignified stature and of greater political or literary impact would simply echo the same historical philosophy. They, too, would use history as the main support for demanding a social revolution. Whatever history they wrote was interpretive, and not the product of painstaking research. All of them, with some minor variations, would show a dubious respect for René-Moreno, and all would loudly condemn Alcides Argüedas.

Of these men Franz Tamayo is the best known and respected.¹⁰⁵ Tamayo (1879-1956) was born and raised in La Paz. He was a mestizo from a well-to-do family, and his father Isaac (1856-1914) exercised considerable influence on the intellectual training of his son. Isaac was a feudal lord and an administrative bureaucrat;¹⁰⁶ Franz Tamayo became a rabid Indian racist,¹⁰⁷ and loathed everything that was Spanish. He also debated the value of history “because it has never been a science.” He maintained that history cannot ever be reconstructed, and that what is classified as history is fiction. Bolivian history from the time the Spaniards arrived deserved no attention, because it is the history of pervert Spaniards and the Spanish-corrupted mestizo and cholo. To Tamayo the Inca Empire was far superior “to the republics of Plato and Roosevelt.”¹⁰⁸ The able Guillermo Francovich writes that “Tamayo proposed for the Indian race in Bolivia what the Germans wanted to give in their country to the Aryan race.”¹⁰⁹

Navarro’s ideas were more tolerant than those of Tamayo but he often acted the clown. Tamayo was a power of scornful dignity whose haughtiness inspired fear but whose ideas were useless. Augusto Céspedes (1904-), on the other hand, was practical and realistic, as was his colleague, fellow townsman, and childhood friend Carlos Montenegro (1903-1953). Both of these men of Cochabamba,¹¹⁰ a town that distinguishes itself by its bourgeois practicality and is surrounded by Indians, realized with an unphilosophical coldness that Bolivia must undertake a social revolution. The alliance of the feudal elite and the foreign investors must be destroyed and Bolivia must become a country of a controlled bourgeoisie which would include the Indians. Mexico was their model.

Both men wrote several books and essays, mostly interpretive history.¹¹¹ Two of their books together became the intellectual fountain for the ideology of the MNR.¹¹² In a word, Céspedes and Montenegro are the philosophical fathers of Bolivia’s National Revolution. Both also were among the original founders and active fighters of the MNR. In 1946 Céspedes published his influential book in which the mining oligarch, Simón Patiño, is the central figure. Céspedes chastizes the ruling criollos and he hits hard at Bolivian histories written by these corrupt aristocrats who have sold Bolivia to “the transcendental millionaire eurasiaticosudamericano.” As a footnote to all this he adds that “the most infamous history of Bolivia is written by Alcides Argüedas . . . who was subsidized by Simón Patiño.”¹¹³ Augusto Guzmán says that the Céspedes book “was not only the precursor but the inducer of the nationalization of the mines in 1952.”¹¹⁴

Montenegro’s ideology and style resemble those of Céspedes. Both were facile journalists and they produced readable works with short catchy clichés that were easily appropriated by the masses. Men like Navarro, Tamayo, Mendoza and others lacked this ability. Montenegro used profusely the phrase “imperialismo yanqui.” At the same time he was no friend of the Soviet Union and Communism. He preached neutralism long before the term became fashionable. In 1943 he won the first prize in a national competition for his book on the history of Bolivian journalism.¹¹⁵ It is now a modern classic and is far more than the title would imply. Although not based on original documentation the Montenegro work views Bolivian history realistically. Its clarity and organization made it far superior to previous works of the same historical philosophy. For example, the violent anti-indigenist (and anti-MNR) writer, Jorge Siles Salinas, praises the Montenegro book and calls it “a contribution to [Bolivian] political theory.”¹¹⁶ Augusto Guzmán says that it is an “obra medular which rose to lonely heights in the historiographic literature of the country.”¹¹⁷

Montenegro was not an extreme indigenist and he did not praise extensively the Indian past. He considered the War of Independence a step backwards since it shifted the rule from the more or less benevolent Spanish bureaucrats to the exploitive criollo. As a matter of fact, Montenegro opposed the idea that Bolivia was a feudalistic country with feudal institutions from Spain. He thought that Spanish colonial institutions such as the repartimiento and the encomienda were institutions peculiar to Spain but not feudal. To Montenegro the road to feudalism began in the national period “because the metropolitan monarchy disappeared and the owner of the land was invested with jurisdictional authority or he simply usurped it.”¹¹⁸ Montenegro demanded a revolution and said history justified such a radical change.

Céspedes and Montenegro saw the fulfillment of their desires: the Revolution came. By 1955 the Revolution had committed many errors and abuses but Céspedes did not write about these. Instead he wrote a pseudo-history, a sketch of forty-one years with President Germán Busch (1937-1939) as the central figure.¹¹⁹ The forty-one years are from 1900 to 1941. The great merit of this work is that Céspedes, using only forty sources for a history of forty years, has captured the feeling of the period. It is a vital book in modern Bolivian historiography, but suddenly Céspedes found himself attacked by a nationalistic colleague. This man was a shifting character with a shining intellectual façade, a fanatical ambition, and a lust for exaggerated praise and also for exaggerated attacks. He is the celebrated Fernando Díez de Medina (1908-), unquestionably an excellent stylist, whose beautiful prose has no scholarly content. His father, Eduardo Díez de Medina (1881-1955), was the embodiment of the criollo nobility and represented the best of the nostalgic past.¹²⁰ The father more than the son, comprehended the reasons for the emergence of the new Bolivia. He understood the need for this radical change without blindly condemning the past. He explained it with dignity pointing out its merits as well as its shortcomings.

The son, Fernando, lacks this maturity and historical perspective, and is the best example of the instability and superficiality, coupled with an admirable dynamism (absent in the old days), of the new generation.¹²¹ As a young man he bestowed silly praise upon Tamayo and, when Tamayo ignored him, wrote a whole book full of insults.¹²² This book established Fernando Díez de Medina’s reputation because it contained his chauvinistic fantasies which later reappeared in his studies under different titles. Bolivia to Díez de Medina has the world’s greatest past. Bolivia is “a complete synthesis” of the world’s fantastic history. Bolivians do not know Bolivia because Bolivians have not written their own history ; those who have written national histories have committed near treason. Bolivian historians and their books are trash.¹²³

When Céspedes wrote his forty-one year analysis Fernando Díez de Medina accused his nationalistic colleague of continuing the unscientific tendency of Alcides Argüedas. He ended his sharp attack with the sweeping statement that Bolivia had no historians and no written history. Céspedes replied, and the debate continued for one and a half years.¹²⁴ These polemics are the clearest expressions of Bolivian historiography written by two men who thought they were historians but who lacked historical training and discipline. They represent clear statements of militant indianismo and proof that Bolivian history had been absorbed by indianismo. Díez de Medina sweeps away all historians and Céspedes sweeps away all history prior to the 1952 National Revolution. Everything written before 1952 was heavily tainted by foreign ideas, thoughts, and money. Bolivian history must be rewritten within the framework of party ideology. Céspedes scorns Díez de Medina’s request to better the archival study of Bolivia. It is not documents that provide the key to history, but the revolutionary spirit of the people. He demands monumental studies of presidents Germán Busch (1938-1939) and Gualberto Villarroel (1942-1945) because they were the only heroes who passed the historical test of the revolutionary spirit. Why did they pass the test? Because all the revolutionary people know that Busch and Villarroel “did not resign themselves to be the mayordomos of the mining oligarchy and preferred to die a bala as presidents in rebellion against the foreign masters.”

History as a serious research venture had faded out. It served as the tool of a philosophy and a revolution. One nationalistic author, Fausto Reinaga, used it for the most extreme blasphemies such as making the demagogue Manuel Isidoro Belzú (1848-1855) the forerunner of Karl Marx and the precursor of the Paris Commune.¹²⁵ He directed the most disparaging insults against reputed historians and other scholars.¹²⁶ Even such famous men as Gustavo Adolfo Otero (1896-1958) failed to balance his thoughts, and his history works are mediocre and full of errors.¹²⁷ Only one man of the indigenistas— who did not profess to be a historian—showed a candid and scholarly appraisal and a profound sense and appreciation of history. Carlos Medinaceli (1899-1949) is probably one of the most distinguished and most honest thinkers of modern Bolivia. His ability to separate the true idea from a maze of distortions was his greatest gift. Added to this was a genuine desire for reform and reinterpretation without ever rejecting the wisdom of the past.¹²⁸ But his career represents too short a life of economic sorrows and grave health problems.

Medinaceli is little known in Bolivia and not at all outside of the country. To place Medinaceli within the proper context of Bolivian historiography is not easy. He was not a productive author but one of a rare quality. All his work, mostly essays and fiction which included historical themes,¹²⁹ has one overriding thought: respect for man of whatever race, religion, or social status. While René-Moreno and Argüedas scorned the indigenous element, while Tamayo fumed against everyone who had even one drop of European blood, and while Mendoza wanted to rationalize Bolivia’s precarious existence, Carlos Medinaceli wanted only to detect the good elements in the history of Western man and in the history of the Indian. While everyone including Navarro and Mendoza scorned the cholo, Medinaceli thought of him as the best of both civilizations. And it was the beautiful chola who became the protagonist of his delightful novel.¹³⁰ Medinaceli represented indianismo at its best. He announced that to insult the European element in Bolivian civilization is "absurd.” What he wanted was to “imprint [imprimir] the American seal [sello] over the European.”¹³¹ This to Medinaceli was the only genuine indianismo.

To Medinaceli history was the most important discipline of all the social sciences and of the humanities. But the historian must understand the real value of history; if not, he was not a historian. He must not solely collect “dates, facts, anecdotes, hyperboles” but he must develop “ideas, orientations, initiatives, trends.” Medinaceli sharply criticized those who had written too much history of only local value, stimulating a narrow provincial chauvinism. He took as an example a senior friend and mentor of Potosí, Luis Subieta Sagárnaga (1875-) who wrote more than thirty works about Potosí and whom Medinaceli called “doctor in Potosínología.”¹³² Medinaceli stated categorically that Bolivia has produced only two genuine historians, René-Moreno and Argüedas. He criticized Tamayo for his dislike of René-Moreno and Argüedas. Medinaceli stated that in Bolivia “we do not like to see our faces in the mirror of truth. We do what the old woman of the Quevedo tale did: break the mirror.”¹³³ Argüedas and René-Moreno were builders of mirrors, and everyone in Bolivia tries to smash these mirrors.

Medinaceli’s most caustic remarks—and he was a most gentle man—were directed against Federico Ávila (1904-), a teacher from Tarija.¹³⁴ Ávila was a man who exemplified the pseudo-scholarship of the Bolivian intelligentsia. Ill prepared, he published in 1936 the only historiographic study of Bolivia.¹³⁵ It is a poor book, more an encyclopedia with many errors and omissions than a volume of ideas and evaluations. Ávila demanded a complete revision of Bolivian history. He charged all Bolivian historians of the past and present with failing to understand the true value of Bolivia’s past. He even accused René-Moreno of “not understanding our reality.” In the Ávila historiography Bolivian history is divided into six periods: pre-Columbian; colonial chroniclers, 1555-1825; memoirs of the War of Independence; historians describing military and political events; social and critical historians (including René-Moreno, Alberto Gutiérrez and Argüedas); the andinista period (whose precursor was Pazos Kanki and including Franz Tamayo, Mendoza, and Ávila himself).

Besides too great an emphasis on his own merit, Ávila’s study lacks depth and originality. While Díez de Medina, Céspedes, and Montenegro present a partial interpretation, their works have influenced modern Bolivian thought. Ávila’s book does not achieve this distinction.¹³⁶ It failed to receive recognition and created no new philosophy, no following nor pupils.¹³⁷ This distinction goes rather to Roberto Prudencio (1908-), four years Ávila’s junior, who has written little.

Prudencio was from La Paz of a distinguished family background. He himself had a careful and selective education, well grounded in Western thought. He became chairman of the faculty of philosophy of the University of San Andrés of La Paz. He is a devoted patriot and a stern but inspiring teacher. In the early days he joined the MNR party and was an appreciative but restless colleague of the Bolivian indigenista writers. He was the editor, and in every issue a contributor, of a thoughtful journal which was his creation and which died with his exile.¹³⁸ In 1946 Prudencio broke with the party and its philosophy. He left Bolivia and was appointed professor of philosophy at the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile.¹³⁹ He and his ardent student, Jorge Siles Salinas (1926-), are forcefully fighting the accepted version of indianismo, and have established what might be called a neo-indianismo. The key to this reaction is a different interpretation of history than that of the orthodox Bolivian indigenistas. Siles Salinas, son of ex-President Hernando Siles (1925-1930) and stepbrother of the militant MNRist, ex-President Hernán Siles Zuazo (1956-1960), takes a more conservative, even reactionary stand than Prudencio.

Prudencio and Siles Salinas believe that the pre-Columbian period of Bolivia has been eulogized too much. Prudencio is heavily under the influence of Mendoza and he believes that geography and environment make the man. Bolivia’s cordillera and altiplano produced, long before the Spaniards arrived, an admirable man who was practical and vigilant, rebellious but thoughtful. Prudencio and Siles Salinas respect both Indian and Spaniard. The colonial period is the key to the neo-indigenista school. Prudencio wrote that “Our historians have erred, they have seen in the colonial period only oppression and despotism.”¹⁴⁰ Siles Salinas said that the Indian achieved a position of respect during the colonial period because of the “paternalistic system of the Spanish state [and the] protection and vigilance of the Church.”¹⁴¹ Prudencio called attention to the recent trend in world history of taking a new look at the Middle Ages and considering this period full of dynamism and the very basis for modern progress. To him the colonial period is similar to the Middle Ages. Prudencio was especially attentive to the dynamics of the colonial institutions and colonial law, and he was impressed by the originality and beauty of colonial culture and art.¹⁴²

Prudencio and Siles Salinas are most critical of the national period. Prudencio is brief but states,

Siles Salinas is more elaborate about the republican period. To him

At the same time Siles Salinas states that the Marxian dialectic interpretation of history, the basis for Bolivian indianismo, is a myth and it is absurd to apply it to Bolivia. To him “the consistency of Melgarejismo [in Bolivian history] is exclusively and purely Bolivian.” The Bolivian Revolution of 1952, led by his step-brother, is not a social upheaval but the twentieth-century blossoming of true Melgarejismo. This in turn is nothing other than an absolute “social disintegration.” To call the Revolution the fulfillment of indianismo is to pervert values. Whatever the Bolivian revolutionaries preach, it is nothing more than “the Marxist indianismo” and this is really “a flagrant unilateral approach” to the complicated Bolivian problems. It is all economic and it means a rejection of the colony, which in turn means a complete negation of Hispanic and Catholic values and this leads to social disintegration.¹⁴³

To Prudencio and Siles Salinas nationalism is patriotism and patriotism is a respect for history. And Bolivian history has been molded by the Indian, the key figure whose basic values have been sharpened by paternal colonial institutions and by the all-benevolent Church. Both men show far greater respect for some Bolivian historians than the traditional indianistas, whom Prudencio and Siles Salinas call Marxist indianistas. Prudencio is more severe. Having written essays about past historians, he reluctantly says that Bolivia “is a country without historians.” To him René-Moreno is the best but he is an antiquarian; Argüedas was not a historian but a writer of “ugly novels of history.” The third great man, Jaime Mendoza, was to Prudencio someone “who composed beautiful myths.”¹⁴⁴ He admired Tamayo whom he classified as Bolivia’s greatest figure because he was a “complete humanist.” At the same time Prudencio calls attention to Tamayo senior as a precursor of Bolivia’s twentieth-century thought and whose influence on his son was vital.¹⁴⁵

Siles Salinas cites seven historians (or semi-historians) whom he considers important. First, René-Moreno because he accurately contrasted the colony with the Republic. Second, the Chilean Ramón Sotomayor Valdés¹⁴⁶ whose work is the first to describe the corrosion of traditional values. Third, Alberto Gutiérrez who coined the phrase “Melgarejismo” and then described it admirably. Fourth, Alcides Argüedas who took advantage of the “terrible weapons” at the disposal of the historian (just as a secretary knows the office files, the historian knows the national inventory) and who created despair and panic and a deep feeling of pessimism which is truly anti-patriotic. These four are to Siles Salinas the traditionalists. The remaining three are the so-called nationalists of the Revolution. The worst of these is Fernando Diéz de Medina whose writings are all “superficial.” He only details the nice things and “the realities of our country only merit dithyrambs and lyric invocations.” Yet to Siles Salinas the man and his books are important because they counterbalance Argüedas’ pessimism. The second nationalist, whom Siles Salinas admires, is Montenegro whose book is a monument in Bolivian historiography. But Montenegro made one mistake and that was to ignore “the elemental historical fact: that Bolivia, as all nations of America, is fortunately a part of Western civilization.” The seventh man is the greatest but the most difficult to evaluate: Franz Tamayo. He produced an indianismo which is not Marxian but he believed in “historical fatality.” Tamayo is Platonian, a firm believer in Plato’s theory of ideas and permanent ideals, but he is obsessed with the Black Legend.¹⁴⁷

When Siles Salinas had published his work another book by Gonzalo Romero of similar thought came into print, seven years too late because it was written seven years earlier, in 1953.¹⁴⁸ In these seven years, 1953-1960, Bolivia had changed. Yet Romero, a member of the same political party, FSB, as Prudencio and Siles Salinas, has nearly the same ideas as his two colleagues. He is far more critical of the pre-Columbian civilizations, which he considers inferior to Christian Europe. They had no “wheels, no ideas of columns, arches or vaults,” writes Romero. The Spanish rule elevated the Indian but the national period made the position of the Indian intolerable. Therefore the Indian and mestizo are the keys to Bolivian history. And Bolivian history can be understood only in terms of the theory of Max Scheier, Gustavo Le Bon (who influenced Argüedas strongly) and Ortega y Gasset (the hero of Siles Salinas), which is that of “resentment.”

This resentment is the key to the dynamics of Bolivian history and it can be divided into three types: racial, social, and psychological. These three resentments, writes Romero, “have been weaving the historical cloth of Bolivia.” For example, the War of Independence was nothing other than the resentment of the criollos. Today’s deep troubles of Bolivia are the historical accumulation of all resentments clothed in Marxism of the indigenista type. To Romero “Marxism is the escape valve of the psychological dynamite of resentment.” Romero fails to evaluate Bolivian historians because they are unimportant to him. He takes issue with Tamayo for his praise of the Indian. He lauds Mendoza for his patriotism and his geographic common sense.¹⁴⁹ The Romero book is thoughtful but it does not evaluate the last decade of Bolivia and it lacks a comprehension of detailed historical events of the nation’s history. It lacks an evaluation of René-Moreno who understood the value of this minuteness as a guide to a well-balanced historical philosophy.

The thoughtfulness of such authors as Navarro, Mendoza, Tamayo, Céspedes, Montenegro, Prudencio, Siles Salinas, Romero, and even Argüedas is no substitute for thorough research history as practiced by René-Moreno. It simply was no longer undertaken in Bolivia; this was the the period of speculative or interpretive history. Even here no well-balanced, impartial author emerged, with the possible exception of Guillermo Francovich (1901-); but it is doubtful whether Francovich, like Romero, should be considered in a study of Bolivian historiography. He is more a philosopher than a historian. He has, however, evaluated Bolivian historians, and outside of Bolivia he is the best-known Bolivian critic. His residence is away from Bolivia. Francovich more than any other Bolivian has transcended national topics. He is not a profound theoretician or original thinker. What characterizes Francovich is “a natural modesty,” a feeling of optimism, balanced ideas, and a distate for sensational interpretations. He has a deep respect for history.¹⁵⁰

Francovich believes the pre-Columbian period to be of admirable value but nothing revolutionary in the evolution of human civilization. He gives the colonial period circumspect admiration, but says little about the national period. Francovich rejects the monopolization of the Indian. He is opposed to the absurd fixation of Bolivian historiography about the Indian and his civilization.¹⁵¹ He says, “We should not become drunk with the convenient discipline called folklore and with admiration of our regional peculiarities. The essence of [Bolivia’s] culture cannot be reduced to such secondary things. It must have as its unbreakable foundation the notion of the universality of the individual, the concept of free personalities as an expression of the spirit, and the beliefs in the superiority of human reason over instinct and irrationality.”¹⁵² By this Francovich rejects both Marxism and the exaggerated indianismo.

Francovich’s 1956 study of Bolivian thought lacks a sound analysis of Bolivian historiography. He failed to understand that history was the key to all twentieth-century Bolivian thought, and for this reason he does not evaluate historians. He does say that René-Moreno “was Bolivia’s greatest writer of the nineteenth century.” He compared the latter-day Humberto Váquez-Machicado to René-Moreno.¹⁵³ By 1956 Bolivia had again developed research historians who began to overshadow the speculative historians in the field of history. But who represents the bridge from the interpretive historians to the research historians? The difference is great; the gulf is wide. Enrique Finot (1891-1952) more than anyone else was a blending of both schools. He more than anyone else fits the statement of Abelardo Villalpando when he writes in 1961 that “the science of Bolivian history is in the process of formation. This process is naturally slow. But since 1930 there have emerged historians and historiographers of a new type.”¹⁵⁴ Finot represented the transformation, and Humberto Vázquez-Machicado and a few others are the newly-emerged research historians.

Of the possible factors responsible for the emergence of research historians were educational reforms inspired by the able Bolivian scholar, Daniel Sánchez Bustamante (1870-1933), and implemented by the Belgian, Georges Rouma (1881-).¹⁵⁵ In 1909 the Teachers College in Sucre was founded, based on academic competence; and history became a central subject in the curriculum.¹⁵⁶ Rouma himself was an enthusiastic historian and an admirer of Bolivia’s past.¹⁵⁷ A second cause is of equal or greater importance. Bolivia had been plagued with border disputes since her creation and some of these erupted into wars, all of them disastrous to Bolivia. The Chaco dispute had great influence on Bolivian historiography. To justify her claim Bolivia, as well as Paraguay, needed historical proof. The literatura de límites, since Bolivia’s creation considerable, now became formidable.¹⁵⁸ There was a need for original documentation, and archival organization was clearly necessary. For the first time the raw document became genuinely appreciated.

A third factor is also important. Many scholars realized that interpretive history led into the stream of politics. There are in Bolivia, though not often mentioned, people of the middle class who want to stay away from politics. Historical research offered respectable isolation. As time went on the stature of René-Moreno achieved more luster in the minds of the small Bolivian intelligentsia. When the birthplace of René-Moreno, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, inaugurated a university it was called Universidad Gabriel Réne-Moreno.¹⁵⁹ And it is precisely from Santa Cruz and its embryonic university that three good historians came.¹⁶⁰ One of them was Enrique Finot and the other two were the Vázquez-Machieado brothers, José and Humberto.

Today these three Cruceños are already dead. But Gunnar Mendoza of Sucre (1915-), Guillermo Ovando Sanz (1917-) from Potosí, and the Mesa couple, José de Mesa (1925-) and Teresa Gisbert de Mesa (1926-) at the University of La Paz, are continuing the exacting historical tradition of the three Cruceños. None of these have preconceived ideas nor a historiographic philosophy and all of them have covered and are covering a broad field of research topics.

Finot, after Argüedas, remains the best-known Bolivian historian outside of Bolivia. He is not the best of the technical historians, since he was the one least dedicated to research and the one most associated with government. Finot was from an early age a devotee of René-Moreno. He was one of the first graduates of the new teachers college in Sucre and after graduation became an instructor of geography at the same college. He then joined the government educational apparatus in La Paz and soon was executive secretary of the Ministry of Education. In 1917 he left the field of education and entered the diplomatic service, in which he remained the rest of his life, being stationed all over the world. At the time of his death, nevertheless, he had written or edited more than ten books and monographs in the fields of education, literature, and history. All of these are from secondary sources, but they are characterized by clarity, accuracy, and moderation.¹⁶¹ His book sketching the Spanish conquest of eastern Bolivia is factual and well organized.¹⁶² Finot’s 1946 book, a one-volume history of Bolivia, is the best survey of the nation’s history. It is factual and well written, a sincere search for the truth.¹⁶³ This teacher and diplomat from Santa Cruz won recognition for his impartiality; even Navarro emerged from his isolation in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and mourned Finot’s death.¹⁶⁴

There was also mourning among the serious Bolivians at the untimely deaths of the Vázquez-Machicado brothers, even though they had not avoided controversies and had corrected historical errors even at the expense of being called enemies of Bolivia. José, the younger brother (1898-1944), studied at the new Santa Cruz University. He then joined the government service as a research delegate of Bolivia to the Spanish archives in order to search for documents to support the Bolivian claim to the Chaco. He developed into a proficient archivist and researcher, but because of his heavy public duties he was not a productive writer. He preferred to search for important documents rather than to write.¹⁶⁵ His unpublished catalogue of documents dealing with Upper Peru and Bolivia, in Seville, would be a great contribution if published.¹⁶⁶

The elder brother, Humberto (1904-1958), was a prolific writer but less scholarly. Prudencio writes that Humberto “was a better author [than José] and was more skilled in commentary and criticism.”¹⁶⁷ His writings cover a vast field—education, literature, sociology, philosophy.¹⁶⁸ They were all within the framework of history, which Humberto Váquez-Machicado considered the heart of human knowledge. His monographs and articles all had one purpose, to reconstruct accurately Bolivia’s past. He was at his best in his specialized monographs or articles in which he tried to correct erroneous concepts of Bolivian history. He was devoted to René-Moreno, and praised or cited him in almost every article or monograph. At the same time, he criticized René-Moreno’s social beliefs, but he reminded his readers that this merely reflected the prevalent attitude of the age.

The Vázquez-Machicado brothers did not engage in speculative history nor did they survey Bolivian historiography. Humberto declared that “Bolivia still does not have a true history in accordance with the true historical concept.” He did not blame Bolivian historians but the conditions that did not favor the development of historians. Only René-Moreno and, to a lesser extent, Argüedas were able to devote most of their time and resources to their avocation. To all other Bolivian historians “history in Bolivia has been nothing else than supplementary work.”¹⁶⁹ Humberto Vázquez-Machicado and possibly his brother José came the closest to achieving stature equal to that of René-Moreno. Death prevented a full development of their historical talents.

The quality of René-Moreno’s work has been nearly equaled in the few monographs¹⁷⁰ of Gunnar Mendoza. Born and educated in Sucre, he represents Sucre culture at its best. He was unenthusiastic about the traditional professions, and he was not interested in the accumulation of real estate or businesses. In 1944, he accepted the directorship of the long-neglected National Library and National Archives in Sucre. In a few years he had made these joint institutions into one of Latin America’s best national depositories. Without previous archival experience and training Mendoza has emerged in the view of experts as Latin America’s most capable archivist.¹⁷¹ He has organized and catalogued the René-Moreno documents and books in the library and archives. While he has not been a productive writer, his few articles and monographs are models of good writing, of careful research, and of sound critical judgment. Some consider his work superior to that of René-Moreno. Mendoza’s bio-bibliographic sketch of René-Moreno is the best profile of the Santa Cruz historian. He may well become Bolivia’s greatest historian.

The René-Moreno-Gunnar Mendoza example has inspired a dynamic man without historical training to dedicate himself to the writing of sound history. Guillermo Ovando Sanz was born in 1917 in Oruro and educated in Cochabamba. He studied architecture in Chile, where he also developed a fondness for René-Moreno and for history. It was in Chile that he published his first historical article of a historiographic nature.¹⁷² He then met Gunnar Mendoza and Lewis Hanke. In 1954 Ovando Sanz joined the faculty of the University Tomás Frías of Potosí under the leadership of the Communist theoretician, Abelardo Villalpando.¹⁷³ Even though Ovando Sanz was professor of architecture and later vice rector, in 1956 he founded the Institute of Historical Research of the Potosí University. Its single purpose is to promote research from primary sources and to publish monographs.¹⁷⁴ The Institute’s funds and facilities, are limited, but it has managed to publish excellent studies that are models of thorough research.¹⁷⁵ Professor Ovando Sanz himself has produced some first rate works, and his assistant, Mario Chacón (1929-), has written some excellent brochures from unpublished documents.¹⁷⁶ They also have published research monographs by the Mesa couple of La Paz.

José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert de Mesa of La Paz are products of recent close cultural ties between Bolivia and Spain. On a Spanish scholarship available to many young Bolivians, the Mesas studied in Spain from 1950 to 1953.¹⁷⁷ They had some of the best art historians of Europe as their professors, and since 1951 they have published articles and monographs of a superior quality.¹⁷⁸ All of them deal primarily with colonial art. The Mesas have opened a whole vast area, and they more than anyone else have steered Bolivian history away from its political slant. Because of their wide research, furthermore, they have gone beyond the confines of Bolivian history¹⁷⁹ and they are rapidly becoming the best-known and most able scholars of Bolivia.

The Mesas, Gunnar Mendoza, the Vázquez-Machicados, and Enrique Finot represent an encouraging trend of research historians. It is beginning to be complemented by new names and ventures. There is the enterprising Hernando Sanabria Fernandez (1912-), also of Santa Cruz, who writes in the excellent tradition of the Santa Cruz historians.¹⁸⁰ There is also Armando Alba (1901-), the dynamic director of the publishing house, Editorial Potosí. Alba is a dedicated and biased nationalist, but he is also a great admirer of René-Moreno and he was a schoolmate and lifelong friend of Medinaceli. Alba’s promotional activities have been most helpful to Bolivian history and historiography.¹⁸¹ In La Paz the Alcaldía Municipal in the last decade has done much editorial work in history and has published an excellent journal. This was due mostly to the efforts and enthusiasm of an MNRist official, Jacobo Libermann Z. (1922-). Starting out as a rural teacher, Libermann rose by hard work, his pleasant personality, and intelligence, to the rank of a leading writer and promoter of the arts, including history.¹⁸² Another able figure is the Jesuit Juan Quirós (1914-) from La Paz, who is a leading literary critic with a strong interest in history.¹⁸³ Father Quirós was also responsible for the creation of a scholarly journal that publishes excellent historical articles.¹⁸⁴

In Cochabamba the heavily leftist law faculty of the University San Simón (called Simón Bolívar by the Communists) has since the 1930’s produced a stimulating journal which, besides being vital to the study of modern Bolivia, has some notable history articles. Also in Cochabamba is the Argentine-born archaeologist, Dick Ibarra Grasso (1914-), who has risen rapidly as Bolivia’s outstanding anthropologist and whose professional ability and studies contrast sharply with the fantasies of the late Arthur Posnansky (1874-1946).¹⁸⁵ The influence on Bolivian historiography of the pseudo-scholar Posnansky is difficult to assess.¹⁸⁶ A scholarly evaluation of Posnansky remains a valid and necessary topic of research. Ibarra Grasso’s excellent work is of historiographic value even though it is archaeology. At the same time, Posnansky’s fantasies might have had some effect on the emergence of indianismo, since he made Tiahuanaco the birthplace of humanity. Posnansky was a part of the pre-1952 conservative society which dominated Bolivia.¹⁸⁷

Posnansky was a foreigner, a German. Other foreigners have written Bolivian history, and most of it is good. Among these are Lewis Hanke (U.S.), Harold E. Wethy (U.S.), Rubén Vargas Ugarte (Peru), Roberto Levillier (Argentina), Vicente Lecuna (Venezuela), Harold Osborne (England), Robert Alexander (U.S.), Marie Helmer (France).¹⁸⁸ These writers have had a moderate influence on the development of Bolivian research historians. At the same time it must be stated that history, the study of history, the interest in history and historical research, are still in a rudimentary state. There is still no Bolivian university-trained historian. Bolivia continues to have a number of intellectuals who write history. This is the case of the dynamic Porfirio Díaz Machicao (1909-) of Cochabamba, a journalist, successor to Humberto Vázquez-Machicado’s library directorship at the University of La Paz. Díaz Machicao’s multi-volume study of modern Bolivia is good journalism but defective history.¹⁸⁹ There is also August Guzmán (1903-), a lawyer, teacher of Spanish and literature, and a first-rate writer and literary critic. He has also written history, biography, and historical novels.¹⁹⁰ He does not use documentation.

There are literally tons of historical documents in Bolivia, and there are endless opportunities for basic historical research and writing. Even without many first-rate historians or histories, the self-perpetuating dynamics of history has had profound influence on modern political thought (transferred into political events) in recent Bolivia. Many of the problems encountered in the field of historiography are well exemplified in Bolivia, a country with a long and colorful history but with few historians.

Author notes