road_vous_etes_ici
Home
>
Fellows
>
Paola REVILLA

Fellows

Paola REVILLA

Guardianship, Paternalism and Coercive Labor at the Cross-Roads of Afro-Descendant and Indigenous Labor Experience (Charcas / Bolivia, 16th-19th centuries).

Fellowship : January 2023 to june 2023

Discipline(s) : History

Pays : Bolivia

FELLOW FOCUS

Paola Ravilla’s residency seminar will take place on Monday, April 3, 2023:

« Guardianship, paternalism and coercion at the crossroads of the indigenous labor experience in Charcas (16th-18th centuries) »

In this presentation I analyze the intricate articulation between guardianship government, paternalistic logic of colonial administration and the exercise of validation of indigenous labor coercion between the XVIth and XVIIIth centuries in Charcas, present-day Bolivia. With an historical perspective to the forms of relationship generated under the institutionalized legal figure of minority and misery, I first show how the justification of the guardianship is consolidated over most of the population ascribed to the categories “indian”, “woman” and “slave”, linked and intersected to other diverse adscriptions simultaneously. Then, I propose an immersion in the local dynamics of a specific scenario, La Plata, and in a phenomenon: the captivity and enslavement of lowland indigenous people, that, linked to the concepts presented above, allows us to suspect the degree of violence that could be reached in the day to day of colonial labor relations. Precisely, to conclude, I will delve a little deeper into the keys to this violence, both material and symbolic, the reactions it provoked, and the effect it had on the acceleration of social inequality in Charcas. There is no doubt that, although the main interest of this study has been the research and analysis in historical perspective, I have also been moved by the desire to highlight mechanisms of differentiation and discrimination linked to the worlds of work in colonial South America, which are sensitive issues to this day.

 

Suggestions of the week :

Film : Dead Man, Jim Jarmush (2019)

Book : José Solanes, Los nombres del exilio. Monteavila Editores, Caracas, 1993

Image : Juan de la Cruz Sihuana with Víctor Mendivil by Martín Chambi (Cuzco, 1925).

This image has the power to evoke a link (plural and complex) that we explore in the research project.

Research project: Guardianship, Paternalism and Coercive Labor at the Cross-Roads of Afro-Descendant and Indigenous Labor Experience (Charcas / Bolivia, 16th-19th centuries).

In this research project I propose to study the intricate articulation between guardianship as a socio-juridical institution, paternalistic ideology and coercive labor between the 16th and 19th centuries. I want to give historical perspective to the forms of relationship generated under the socio-juridical figure of guardianship in the worlds of work in colonial South America that, in some cases, are sensitive unresolved problems of the present times in the social interaction between Bolivian citizens. My analysis focuses on a joint lecture of children, youth and adults under this situation, in the intersectionality of their multiple categories of identification within the paternalistic logic of administration of colonial society. I pay special attention to the connection between guardianship practices (material and discursive) and the exercise of validation of coercive labor.

Biography

Paola Revilla is PhD in History from the University of Chili and from the EHESS in Paris. She is a member of the Bolivian History Society, the Latin American Work and Workers Network (RedLatt), the Colonial and Modern Worlds Laboratory (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) and the international working group « Rethinking the Margins » (identities, discourses and practices in the face of the power of the Red Columnaria). She earned different scholarships and the last one was the Heinz Heinen Postdoctoral Fellow to work at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) at the University of Bonn in Germany. Revilla’s research gives particular emphasis to the analysis of the experience of captive and enslaved population in colonial cities, more specifically of African and Chiriguano Indians from the Low Lands of Charcas, current Plurinational State of Bolivia. Her reflection is nourished by recent academic work from social and labor history approaches, as well as from legal history and from the history of ideas and social practices. She’s currently a professor at the Bolivian Catholic University of “San Pablo” (UCB-SP) in La Paz, Bolivia. Her most recent book entitled « Entagled coercion. African and Indigenous Labor in Charcas (16th-17th centuries) » is part of the collection Work in Global Perspective edited by Andreas Eckert, Sidney Schaloub, Mahua, Sarkar, Dmitri van den Bersselaar, Christian G. De Vito (Berlín / Boston: The Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021, vol. 9).

Bibliography

2020 Entagled coercion. African and Indigenous Labor in Charcas (16th-17th
centuries) in Andreas Eckert, Sidney Schaloub, Mahua, Sarkar, Dmitri van den
Bersselaar, Christian G. De Vito (eds.). Work in Global Perspective Collection, vol. 9.
Berlín / Boston: The Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021. ISBN 978-3-11-068089-8, e-ISBN
(PDF) 978-3-11-068100-0. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110681000.

2019 “Pacified Indians” and the legal fight against enslavement at the crossroad
between free and unfree labour conditions (Charcas, 16th-18th centuries). Labor
History. United Kingdom, DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2020.1726036. ISSN: 1469-9702.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2020.1726036 .

2019 “Padre, no es nuestra voluntad seguir tolerando sus abusos: Pronunciamiento
afro- indígena para liberar al esclavo Clemente Chavarría (Charcas, siglo XVIII)”.
Dossier Microhistoria de esclavas y esclavos. Vicente Paz Rozalén y Michael Zeuske
(coord.). Barcelona, España: Millars. Espai i historia, pp. 131-146.