Political Conflict in the Indigenous and Urban Worlds in the Late Colonial Andes

This chapter deals with social conflict in Upper Peru, today’s Bolivia, during the second half of the eighteenth century. It aims to provide an overview of the political processes that were unleashed in the Indigenous communities and the urban world following the implementation of the sweeping fiscal and political-administrative reforms promoted by Charles III and his ministers. Taken together, the processes of rural and urban social mobilization allow us to appreciate the articulation between the two aspects of the concept of resistance that animates this volume. On the one hand, the repertoire of collective actions aimed at securing the material living conditions of the subjects, their access to state institutions, and the recognition of their social status. On the other hand, the formation of a public political sphere that tended to undermine the foundations of monarchical absolutism and Ancient Régime societies.