From mediation without interpreters to bilingual scribes. Diglossia, bilingualism and writing in the province of Chayanta (Potosí) during Bolivian Republic (1830-1950)

Abstract

Bilingualism made interpreters unnecessary in early Republican
Bolivia. Citizen judges of the Peace functioned as Spanish-Aymara
bilingual scribes in Chayanta Province (Potosí), while new bilingual
Citizen tribute-collectors (recaudadores) replaced hereditary
Aymara-speaking moiety Curacas. In Peru and Ecuador tribute
was abolished in the 1850s, but in Bolivia it continued till the 21st
century. By the 20th century, Quechua had become the language of
the Macha Ayllu, and the moieties took back the Curacazgos. This
article examines the resurgence of the moiety Curaca Recaudadores,
and their persistence as tribute’collectors for most of the 20th
century. Macha moiety Curacas were illiterate, and monolingual
in Quechua, but had Ayllu support, and could administer using
bilingual mestizo scribes. They formed a Spanish-language Archive,
an invaluable source for building a Republican ethnohistory of 20th
century rural literacy, Ayllu organization, social movements and
Ayllu-State relations. Among its 740 documents the Archive contains
three Aymara-influenced circulars from La Paz, written in a
Spanish-derived linguistic amalgam between 1936 and 1946. They
shed light on indian political thought in a period when the Ayllu-
State pact and «indian law» were being recovered, before and after
the Revolution of 1952.