Nationalism and revolution in Fausto Reinaga’s Bolivia: Indianism, decolonization, and ‘Two Bolivias’

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fausto Reinaga was one of the most controversial writers in the twentieth-century Bolivia. He is known as ‘the father of Indianism’ (indianismo) in Bolivia, which is an ideology of Indian self-emancipation. This article analyzes his works in the 1950s and 1960s, showing how Bolivia’s National Revolution in 1952 indelibly impacted his thinking. It sheds light on how his Indianism resulted from his search for an ideological solution to the contradictions and limits of the Revolution, which he initially supported and later criticized for imposing a fictious mestizo homogeneity upon Indians. It argues that Indianism was a nationalist ideology to redefine the Bolivian nation in racial terms of Indian power. Reinaga theorized Indian power based on his critical relations to the revolutionary process of the 1940s-1950s. It examines how his notion of Indian power relates to his utopian view of Indian-ness and anticolonial insurgency, which promotes an alternative version of national homogeneity. It concludes with remarks on his relations to the Aymara and Quechua movements in the 1970s-1980s and to contemporary debates on decolonization and race in Bolivia.