This chapter provides a survey of relations between indigenous peoples and the successor states to the Spanish empire in lowland regions of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Geographically the survey covers an enormous arc of territory from the Guiana Shield – lower Orinoco Basin of Venezuela and British Guiana – through the llanos of Venezuela and Colombia, and across the headwater regions of the Amazon River’s main tributaries in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia (see Map 24.1). Within this vast region there were, and still are, pockets of remotely situated territory where indigenous peoples live in relative isolation from the independent nation-states that emerged during the nineteenth century. However, it is essential from the outset to assert that indigenous peoples throughout the llanos and headwater forest areas of the Amazon Basin had all adapted, either directly or through the mediation of other indigenous peoples, to long processes of conquest, missionization, and other forms of colonial domination prior to the rise of independent nation-states.

The historical point of departure for this study is the period of waning colonial power during the late eighteenth century. After the expulsion of Jesuit missions in 1767, the Spanish intensified their efforts to develop economically prosperous mission settlements in Guiana, the llanos, and riverine forest areas bordering Portuguese Brazil. In areas such as the llanos and the lower Orinoco Basin, Franciscan missionaries were relatively successful at reviving the Jesuits’ system of production based upon tributary payments by indigenous laborers and the continuation of indigenous subsistence agriculture on communal resguardo lands. However, the Franciscans were far less successful at developing stable, much less growing, mission settlements in riverine forest areas where indigenous populations offered stronger resistance or where Portuguese merchants had established long-term trading relations with indigenous peoples. This contrast between stronger mission settlements in northern areas of agricultural frontier expansion and much weaker ones in forested areas to the south foreshadowed major historical differences in the ways that indigenous peoples became enmeshed in the rise of independent nationstates in the nineteenth century.

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES

Indigenous peoples’ experiences of the rise of independent nation-states were almost diametrically opposed between the riverine forests in southern lowlands and the llanos and Guiana Shield region to the north. The distinction between northern and southern areas became dramatically apparent from the outset of the wars of independence.