Bolivian Education Policy and the ‘Indian Question’

In the Bolivia of the early 1900s, politicians and intellectuals expressed an unconditional faith in the power of education to transform society and guide it to a new era of progress. At the time, most Bolivians did not have access to schooling, a situation particularly acute in rural areas predominantly inhabited by indigenous people. To ensure schooling for the entire population, educational authorities advocated the implementation of a system aimed at the professionalization of the teaching staff and the extension of education for indigenous people. An educational system inherently tied to positivist thought had attained national roots in the previous decades and would be in force throughout the first half of the twentieth century.Footnote ¹⁶ Consequently, Bolivian education policy was based on a relationship of domination in which white-mestizo society identified itself as responsible for resolving the ‘Indian question’.

In the 1910s and 1920s, Bolivian teachers were trained according to a new pedagogy—the so-called ‘new school.’ Its aim was to offer a comprehensive education that would prepare the students for modern life. This required intellectual and moral education, as well as physical education—with handicrafts, sports, and gymnastics—that would stimulate students’ abilities and discipline their bodies and minds.Footnote ¹⁷ At the same time, the idea that the state should educate everyone—but not in the same way—was firmly established. Hence, education for indigenous people was differentiated from education for the rest of the country's population. While a standardized syllabus was to be taught in all schools, the syllabus for indigenous education would emphasize literacy in Spanish and moral and civic values—understood to be universal—and modern practices. In addition, this education was to be undertaken in the students’ natural, rural environment to stimulate their abilities, which were perceived as innate. Hence, indigenous education was more practical, focused on agriculture and manual work, and adapted to the customs and geographical specificities of the school's location.Footnote ¹⁸ Its goal was to turn Indians into useful members of the Bolivian community, that is, into farmers or craftsmen whose work force would ensure national progress.

One of the first state efforts to provide instruction to indigenous people was the creation of ambulant schools across the Andes. These schools were run by single teachers assigned to several communities separated by few miles, teaching for a time in one location and then continuing on to the next. This type of school, however, had little success, partly due to a shortage of qualified teachers willing to leave the comforts of urban life and partly due to opposition from landowners.Footnote ¹⁹ Its place was taken by the rural normal schools. These were training centers for future Indian teachers focusing—in addition to theory—on agricultural expertise, new methods of land use, and new craft techniques. It was expected that rural teachers would spread this knowledge back to their communities.Footnote ²⁰ This ambition, however, did not succeed: most of the graduates later taught in urban schools. As a result, the rural normal schools were all closed in early 1920s.Footnote ²¹ In a parallel process, Andean communities deprived of schooling due to the collapse of the ambulant school system began the establishment of their own schools. This practice intensified when the rural normal schools were closed, resulting in a system of schools run, financed, and maintained by the communities themselves.Footnote ²²

In the early 1930s, the collected experience of all these types of schools was expressed in new educational legislation, which consolidated the differential guidance of the national public education. The legislation recognized three types of schools: elementary schools, in which “indispensable notions for civilized life” including Spanish and manual skills would be taught; labor schools, in which Indians’ capacity for work would be stimulated, “turning them into a factor of progress and collective wealth”; and training schools that would graduate indigenous elementary school teachers.Footnote ²³ At the same time, Bolivian educators adopted an educational policy closer to the ideals of Peruvian indigenismo and addressed the ‘Indian question’ from a new perspective: the insertion of the educational experience into the very heart of the community.Footnote ²⁴ It was no longer the eradication of native culture and traditions, but rather their modification, that constituted a substantial change in Bolivian educators and intellectuals’ mentalities.Footnote ²⁵

The first school center in following these ideals was organized among the Aymara population of the village of Warisata, in the Bolivian highlands. It was promoted by Elizardo Pérez, former head teacher of the Miraflores indigenous normal school in La Paz, and Avelino Siñani, an Aymara who ran a private school there. Warisata was envisioned as an experimental center for the education of the Andean natives and aimed to break with social practices of colonial origin by complementing Western technique and knowledge with the indigenous cooperative and reciprocal forms of interaction.Footnote ²⁶ The attainment of this vision required the application of the new school doctrine and the distribution of students into the three types of schools provided for in the new public education regulations. Along with the studies that were standard for all schools, education at Warisata included training in agriculture, bricklaying, and craft trades.Footnote ²⁷ Its originality lay in the combination of labor and study and the adaptation of native institutions to the experience of the school. It advocated the direct involvement of indigenous families in the cooperative work and the decisions concerning the execution of the school project. Giving voice to the community and considering their traditions and organization, the schools were expected to foster socioeconomic emancipation and active contribution to the development of the country, as peasants, as producers, as labor force.Footnote ²⁸

Social and political acceptance of the educational model implemented in Warisata led to the foundation of similar schools throughout the country. The process accelerated under the reformist military regimes of presidents David Toro (1936–37) and Germán Busch (1937–39), who envisioned education as the cornerstone for turning the Indian into a factor of the long-desired national progress.Footnote ²⁹ The promulgation of a new regulation for public education and Elizardo Pérez's appointment as chairman of the Board of Indigenous Education resulted in the institutionalization of Warisata's pedagogical experience. In the second half of the 1930s, the unification of indigenous education under a single system was promoted, with the creation of a system of school centers across the national territory.Footnote ³⁰ Most of these centers were established on the high plateau and in sub-Andean valleys. Nevertheless, there were also experiences in the lowlands, particularly in the Amazon Basin. The ethnic characteristics of that region's inhabitants were quite different from those of the Andean populations with whom the Bolivian Ministry of Education had interacted up to then, compelling the design of an educational model tailored both to the region's particularities and to the national interest.

Variations of the Warisateño Model for the Bolivian Amazon

The pedagogical project rehearsed at Warisata—and later spread all over the country—sought the cultural “improvement” of indigenous people. The principles of what I call the Warisateño model were the end of the illiteracy of the ‘Indians’ with bilingual alphabetization—in Spanish and in students’ mother tongue—and their education in the rules of work, discipline, and order, as well as moral and civic values. Both adults and children would be trained in modern agricultural techniques and artisan trades, in accordance with their skills and vocations and without relinquishing the forms of collective production based on the principle of reciprocity, which were distinctive of the Andean indigenous cultures. The community's cooperation in the construction and maintenance of the school center through land, production, and labor was also expected. It was not in vain that Warisateño pedagogy appealed to work and effort.Footnote ³¹

Warisata championed an education geared towards the autonomous economic productivity of the indigenous people. For its ideologues, the betterment of the latter inevitably meant the suppression of the plight of deprivation, oppression, and servitude in which they lived, subjugated to the power and interests of the landowners. This meant an education that would lead to the restoration of their personal dignity and group fulfillment.Footnote ³² Its ultimate goal was the instruction of indigenous teachers among members of the community and the organization of their authorities in a government body, a sort of council that would eventually be capable of taking charge of the administration of the center without the participation of the educators.Footnote ³³ This educational project aimed to resolve the ‘Indian question’ by providing indigenous peoples the necessary tools for their mental, social, economic, and labor emancipation while remaining closely connected to their sociocultural, economic and geographical environment.

The ideal pursued by the Warisateño model was the formation of an Indo-American culture, which would be born of Western progress and indigenous peoples’ own traditions and culture.Footnote ³⁴ This ideal, however, collided with prejudices, stereotypes, categories, and practices that were deeply internalized by the different segments of Bolivian society, including the educators who promoted the model itself. That is, the persistence of hierarchical relations and mechanisms of domination articulated in different ways, with a long-term colonial horizon—what has been called “internal colonialism.”Footnote ³⁵ Despite considering themselves as defenders of the Indian cause, the intellectuals who devised this model of education placed themselves on a higher level than the groups they would interact with. Although their “beneficial” intentions aspired to the improvement and emancipation of indigenous people, the intellectuals approached them from a discourse of domination.Footnote ³⁶

Characteristics of domination became more evident with the spread of the school centers throughout the country from 1936 onward. Thenceforth, contrary to prior experience, official education policy also considered the societies still living in what the Bolivian elite viewed as a wild state. The interest of Bolivian elites in intervening in these Amazonian groups would give rise to a new category of centers. From then on, there would be two types of schools: núcleos escolares campesinos, school centers for peasants who would work in the high plateau and valleys; and núcleos escolares selvícolas, school centers dedicated specifically to the selvícolas of the Amazon Basin. It should be noted that ‘selvícola’ included two inseparable meanings to people of those times. A simple reading could be interpreted as the designation of those who lived in the rainforest, in the middle of nature itself. However, in terms of positivist thought, the assimilation of nature into culture favored the understanding that the wilder the nature was, the wilder the culture of its inhabitants would be. Thus, the concept of selvícola refers to individuals who are in “the stage of savagery” because “the forest itself lives in them, as it is their natural environment.”Footnote ³⁷

Indeed, the culture of these ‘non-subjected’ societies of the Amazon, conceptualized as primitive and wild by their contemporaries, compelled the design of an education plan that was substantially different from the one implemented by Pérez and Siñani on the high plateau. This task was entrusted to educator Carlos Loaiza Beltrán. A native of the high plateau, he had been appointed a teacher in a rural school in the Andean foothills. There he came into contact with indigenous peoples of the area (Yuracaré, Chimane, Mojeño) and learned about the “wildest” ones living in the hinterlands, the Sirionó. In 1936, the Ministry of Education commissioned him to organize the first school center in the Amazon area, as a reward for “his pedagogical skills.” Loaiza Beltrán's knowledge of the ethnic reality of the region led him to devise an ambitious plan to introduce education to those populations not yet controlled by the state. This plan would lead to the formation of the first núcleo escolar selvícola in the country, at the department of Beni. Loaiza was later joined by Luis Leigue Castedo, who was chosen by Elizardo Pérez himself to carry out his interest in the expansion of the selvícola variation of the Warisateño model to the borderlands. Leigue had been trained as a teacher under the ideals of the new school and had concerns regarding the education of the indigenous peoples of the region.Footnote ³⁸ While Loaiza was the mastermind behind the plan, both professors were responsible for implementing it.

The aim of this novel education plan was the “recovery” for society of the so-called “savages” to ensure their full insertion into the nation, that is, their “civilization” and “modernization,” as well as the acquisition of the same cultural references as the rest of Bolivians. In accordance with the new law on indigenous education, and following as far as possible the ideals of the Warisateño model, this plan would take shape from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, from experience gained in the rainforest over the years. The concept and general organization of this educational plan were an integral part of Bolivia's indigenous education policy under reformist military regimes.Footnote ³⁹

The intention was to provide education to those who the state now designated selvícolas, with no interference from any private individual or religious institution. According to the advocates of this plan, the former thought only of the economic benefits that this free labor could offer them, while the latter restricted themselves to winning souls for service to God.Footnote ⁴⁰ Nevertheless, the lack of an educational tradition for and with these societies resulted in a pedagogy that mixed indigenismo and the newest educational trends with the methods employed by Catholic missionaries. The educator was referred to as a “converting” or “catechist teacher” and was envisioned as “the first link between the civilized society and the society to be reduced by civilization.”

The effort was also directed at getting indigenous students to abandon what the educators called “savagery,” and that required some actions that were carefully outlined. The distribution of food and iron tools would transform these groups “from rebellious to submissive, from rough to soft, and from adventurous to quiet.” The clothing supply was intended to hide their nakedness and remove the vegetable rags they used, since “the savage clad in breeches and covered with a jacket is already an Indian close to civilization and an aspirant of it.” The building of “solid and non-transportable houses” was intended to “attract them to the land” and lead them to renounce their nomadic practices. This new lifestyle was expected to provide “spiritual order,” an essential base for generating “culture.”Footnote ⁴¹

This “culture” would be the result of the holistic formation of individuals through intellectual, moral, and physical education on the Western pattern. Educators held a clear consciousness of cultural superiority and inferiority in terms of law, order, morality, government, and labor that led them to attribute most native practices “savagery.” In this vein, indigenous peoples should reject their customs and traditions to embrace “modernity” and “civilization.” The acquisition of basic knowledge and civic habits would allow the internalization of the norms and rules guiding the broader society. The training in manual activities—using modern and “civilized” techniques—and the provision of workshops, crops, and cattle in the school centers would “teach creative and fruitful work to the savages.” All of this would be brought together through literacy in Spanish: to “establish the indestructible bond of language between them and us, the civilized ones.” The Spanish language would provide “the spiritual vehicle par excellence and the element of social union and affinity.” Also to be integrated into this educational plan was the Catholic religion—deviating here from the laicism of the Warisateño model—under the notion that only by indoctrination could these societies be interested “in the transformation of their destiny,” abandoning the wild and embracing social life.Footnote ⁴² In essence, this cultural enhancement pursued the transformation of the “useless savage of yesterday” into a “man of great qualities.”Footnote ⁴³ That is, it would be the forge of new individuals who would feel part of the nation, identify with its interests, and work for its progress.

The last ambition of the educators was to create a new type of Indian who would build a new future for America. According to Loaiza Beltrán, that future could exist in Bolivia only on the basis of real coexistence of the white-mestizo society and its other, that is, the coexistence of populations that in greater or lesser degree participated in the national life, and, especially, the societies that had hitherto avoided involvement in it. These “new Indians” would acquire autonomy and dignity through the work carried out in the schools. They would thus contribute actively and voluntarily to the economy as producers and could insert themselves more positively into society and modern life.Footnote ⁴⁴

In summary, the education designed for the Amazonian societies aimed to combine within the Warisateño pedagogy the interests of the Bolivian elites with the aspirations of indigenismo. However, the allegedly wild nature of the individuals with whom it was to be conducted forced its promoters to reconcile emancipatory ideals with “civilizing” actions towards their socialization.

The School Centers of Casarabe and Moré

The ‘Indian question’ in the Amazon was centered on those ethnic groups that still refused any dealing with republican society, the most worrisome to regional elites and the statesmen being the Sirionó and the Moré.Footnote ⁴⁵ The Sirionó, members of the Guaraní linguistic family, were well known and had been dreaded in the region since colonial times. The identity of the Moré was submerged in some degree of haze from the beginning of the republican era, and it would be only in the first decades of the twentieth century that they were recognized as such, belonging to the Chapacura linguistic family.Footnote ⁴⁶ From the 1930s onward, anthropologists concurred in seeing both groups as archetypes of the ‘wild man.’ According to them, this was evidenced by their fondness for nudity and body ornamentation, their complete adaptation to the rainforest they inhabited, the importance of hunting, fishing, and gathering in their occupations, and the development of incipient agriculture. Hence, in general terms, their culture was conceptualized as ‘primitive,’ because members used only rudimentary technology (wood weapons and tools, utensils made of palm leaves) and had a very basic form of social organization, formed by bands or extensive kinship groups.Footnote ⁴⁷ The concern of their Bolivian contemporaries with their lack of control over these populations, and the adoption of the school centers system as the official educational policy of Bolivia from 1936 onward, favored creating such centers among them.

Establishing the centers was not an easy task. The dispersion of the groups to be ‘educated’ meant that there was neither an obvious location to build them, nor existing schools that could be turned into centers, as was the case in the high plateau.Footnote ⁴⁸ In May 1937, Carlos Loaiza Beltrán founded the center of Casarabe in the Sirionó area of influence. It was located nearly 50 miles from Trinidad, the capital of the department of Beni, and near the road from Beni to the department of Santa Cruz. It was an elevated site, isolated in the savannah and surrounded by lush forests and several lagoons, yet relatively far from the main rivers that flow through the region. Months later, at the beginning of 1938, the center of Moré was constructed on the left bank of the Iténez River, on the border with Brazil, with Luis Leigue Castedo as the teacher responsible for its organization. The chosen site was on the main waterway of the region, with fertile land and a great variety of wild fruits, at a great distance from the few urban centers of the northern Amazon. Reaching the Moré center took about five hours of steam navigation from the confluence of the Iténez River with the Mamoré River; over the years, it came to be reachable by light aircraft.Footnote ⁴⁹

In fact, both schools operated in the heart of the wilderness. However, while Casarabe was in a relatively accessible area of interest to cattle ranchers, the inaccessibility of Moré kept it in almost perpetual isolation (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Locations of Casarabe and Moré

Source: Author's elaboration.

In these two school centers, both teachers implemented the education plan devoted to “ethnic restoration,” that is, to the transformation of the Sirionó and Moré into Bolivians who would live peacefully with the rest of the members of society.Footnote ⁵⁰ This action began with the tasks of “penetration” and “conquest”—following the terminology used by both teachers—which consisted in establishing a relationship with each band or family, contacting them through gifting beads, food, or tools. The team of educators sought to gain their trust, learn their language, come to know their customs, and, finally, to persuade their leaders of the convenience of moving to the school center. This approximation policy was followed by a set of measures that, according to the plan, aimed to promote their sedentariness. Initially, the Sirionó and the Moré received baptism and first notions of catechesis; not incidentally, they were also vaccinated. The use of clothing and a haircut ‘appropriate’ to their sex—short for males, long for females—was also emphasized. Spanish (and Catholic) names were given to them, transforming the vernacular names into surnames.Footnote ⁵¹

At the same time, trees, brush, and weeds were cleared. Once this task was finished, the buildings of the center were constructed, and an area was set up in the surrounding lands for carrying out agricultural and livestock activities.Footnote ⁵² The goal was to create a “civilized” space in the place now occupied by “savagery.” This process is depicted in Figure 2, which shows “recently recovered” individuals of different ages, some dressed and others naked, on either side of a “catechist teacher” (Loaiza Beltrán's wife), with men and children on the left and women and infants on the right. They stand in a forest clearing in front of one of their traditional dwellings—“authentically wild, where the Indians lived in their nomadic state”—according to Casarabe's head teacher, who took the photograph. Figure 2 also illustrates the “condition” that all of them would begin to abandon by taking part (as shown in Figure 3) in the construction of “non-transportable” buildings that would be used for teaching, healing, and shelter—all aspects associated with the “civilization” to which they would be introduced by the teaching staff.

Figure 2 Founders of Casarabe

Source: Photo album of Casarabe, ACCB, no doc. code, sheet 9.

Figure 3 Constructing the School Building at Casarabe

Source: Photo album of Casarabe, ACCB, no doc. code, sheet 9

The ‘creation’ of a new place to live was not a novelty for the Sirionó and Moré. However, the dimensions of that task they acquired in the school centers certainly was. While the students’ house-rooms measured about 25 square meters, the buildings used for the school's activities (school classrooms, boarding school, workshops, teachers’ houses, chapel, kitchen, warehouses) ranged from 50 to 200 square meters, all distributed around a large central plaza. The exact extent of the urbanized space is unclear, but it is known that in Casarabe the cultivated lands reached 20 hectares (nearly 50 acres), and a little more than 150 heads of cattle grazed on the ranch in the mid 1940s.Footnote ⁵³ No wonder the centers were destined to become villages once the “civilizing” work among their inhabitants was over.

Once settled in their respective centers, the Moré and the Sirionó were socialized through an educational strategy whose purpose, as already outlined, was threefold: emancipatory, economic and civic. First, a sociopolitical structure was organized with the indigenous chiefs playing a relevant role within the centers. Among the Moré, an existing conflict between family groups was appeased, and an attempt was made to maintain the existing native leadership by distinguishing two of the family leaders. Among the Sirionó, a kind of school council was formed, comprising the most prominent adult men and women from all the reduced bands. For both the Moré and the Sirionó, the new leaders were chosen from among those individuals willing to collaborate with the center's educational project and who also had influence over a significant number of families.

This is the case of Tontau and Utíp in Moré, and Butamingue and Taicundo in Casarabe, the only chiefs who were identified and photographed alongside educational authorities (see Figures 4 and 5). Both images are intended to depict the transition toward “civilization” made by these leaders under the beneficial effects of the school: they pose with their bows and arrows or feather ornaments, but in shirts and pants in the case of the Sirionó and short hair in the case of the Moré. Furthermore, the photographs highlight the fact that the chiefs’ leadership was always exerted alongside the teaching authorities. These leaders were the mediators between school staff and the rest of the community, dealing with conflict resolution and the equitable distribution of work and products.Footnote ⁵⁴

Figure 4 Marcos Tontau y Samuel Utíp, Leaders of Moré, Next to the Head Teacher

Source: Photo album of Moré, ALLC, no doc. code, sheet 3.

Figure 5 Butamingue and Taicundo, Founding Leaders of Casarabe, with a Mexican teacher

Source: Photo album of Casarabe, ACCB, no doc. code, sheet 10.

Ideally, this incipient governing body was to provide the elements necessary for self-government (within national interests) and enable their groups “within their wise laws of respect,” to become autonomous “with legal representation and rights of their own.” Ultimately, they would emancipate themselves from state tutelage and participate in republican life as the rest of Bolivians were doing.Footnote ⁵⁵ Nevertheless, the real role played by these leaders in the development of the educational project is unknown. According to the information from the sources, it seems that their role was not very significant but rather testimonial.Footnote ⁵⁶ The chiefs, along with the rest of the community, were conceived as subjects under the tutelage of the teaching staff, who dictated the steps to be followed for running the center.

Second, such participation required the transmission of work habits that were pursued by the educational policy of the time. These work habits were intended to make them productive, socially and economically organized people. In the case of men, this required apprenticeship in artisan trades such as carpentry, blacksmithing, pottery, leatherwork, and shoemaking; for women, the requirement was for cooking, sewing, and tailoring; and children were to learn to make pottery and to cultivate and harvest plants, according to their age and regardless of their sex. Other tasks were cooperation in the maintenance of the buildings, the clearing of roads, and the construction of docks.

Raising livestock on nearby ranches was an important task in Casarabe, while the exploitation of tropical products (rubber, Brazil nuts) found in the surrounding forests was essential in Moré. In both centers, a core activity was the care of fruit trees and the cultivation of various crops (rice, manioc, sugarcane, bananas). The gathering of the harvest and its transport to the warehouses is illustrated in Figure 6, which shows the students learning these working habits, as well as their progressive transformation into peasants.

Figure 6 First Harvest at Casarabe

Source: Photo album of Casarabe, ACCB, no doc. code, sheet 17.

Also, through such images, the headteachers sought to emphasize the economic success of these centers. All of the fields of work mentioned above included the use of modern techniques and mechanized equipment, such as motorized saws, fumigators, sewing machines, lighting equipment, and water pumps. The production that resulted from this work supplied each of the centers, and the surplus was sold to regional and Brazilian merchants in exchange for goods that could not be produced at the centers, such as salt.Footnote ⁵⁷ It is also worth mentioning that Western gender discrimination in some of these activities made changes to the ‘traditional’ labor division among these ethnic groups.Footnote ⁵⁸

Third, the ‘social’ work efforts of the center sought the entry of the Sirionó and Moré into a republican civility. This socialization demanded the acquisition of Western cultural elements through instruction with textbooks (prepared in situ by the teachers); civic education; and physical education that included music, dance, games, and combined exercises. Catechesis was also included.Footnote ⁵⁹ Friendship with white-mestizo people was promoted, since that was presumed to meant the end of the violence that had characterized the encounters of these groups in the past. Moreover, such friendships evidenced not only the abandonment of “savagery” but also the transition to belonging to the Bolivian nation. For this reason, ethnologists, clergy, educators, politicians, and members of the military spent days, and even weeks, visiting each of the school centers on several occasions.Footnote ⁶⁰ In addition, indigenous children attended school along with teachers’ children—and, in Casarabe, children of the neighboring settlers who lived in the vicinity of the center—“to erase class differences,” as was expected in the Warisateño model.Footnote ⁶¹ Furthermore, mixed marriages between Moré and the white-mestizo population were encouraged in Moré.Footnote ⁶²

Adult students were distributed according to sex, “date of recovery” from the woods, and “state of catechization.” They received literacy classes early in the morning and again in late afternoon, once they had completed their work training. Children were organized in courses according to their age. They received literacy education, were instructed in work habits, hygiene, morals and civility, and were introduced to agriculture and manual work, as previously mentioned.Footnote ⁶³ Likewise, the strict schedule that regulated these activities was intended to teach order and discipline. These activities were led by teaching staff composed of the head teacher, teachers with handicraft and other manual skills, and teacher-explorers, whose mission was to locate groups interned in the rainforest and persuade them to relocate. There was also a health worker and a cook.Footnote ⁶⁴

The final Warisata goal for the socializing of the Sirionó and the Moré was their nationalization. The head teachers of both centers encouraged participation in the various activities organized to commemorate civic celebrations such as the Fiesta Nacional or Día del Indio, which were also attended by political and educational authorities.Footnote ⁶⁵ On these dates, a civic program was prepared, which included the hoisting of the national flag, singing of the national anthem, participation in civic parades and processions, and recitation of patriotic and indigenist poems in front of the national altar.

Figures 7 and 8 show groups of children fully dressed, smiling, and standing at attention before the national emblems (flag and coat-of-arms) in front of the head teacher's office (Casarabe), and across the Brazilian border on the banks of the Iténez River (Moré). On these occasions, there were also athletic demonstrations (races, gymnastics, football or basketball games) and artistic representations where plays and “civilized” dances (waltzes) were combined with the performance of native dances and traditional songs, with the students’ traditional adornments and clothing exhibited as an ancestral sociocultural value.Footnote ⁶⁶ These acts, along with the pictures taken during their celebration, were meant to demonstrate the conversion of these stateless “savage” peoples into individuals who felt part of the nation by showing their knowledge of the Spanish language, their interiorization of the value of patriotic symbols, and their assumption of national interests—that is, economic progress—as well as the safeguarding of sovereignty at the frontiers.

Figure 7 Sirionó Children in Front of the Altar to the Nation

Source: Photo album of Casarabe, ACCB, no doc. code, sheet 24.

Figure 8 Moré Honoring the National Flag

Source: Photo album of Moré, ALLC, no doc. code, sheet 12.

Many of these school policies were reminiscent of those employed by Jesuit missionaries in colonial Mojos and Chiquitos, as well as the Franciscans in Cordillera and Guarayos in republican times. This is shown by the transformation of the “wild” space into an ordered one with the implementation of crops, huts, schoolhouse, and workshops; the indoctrination of the Catholic religion; the discipline of a schedule that controlled school activities; and the “recovery” of new individuals by the neophytes already gathered in the center. Moreover, these practices included terms that clearly constituted a secular version of those used by the clergy in their projects: “catechist teacher” or “catechizing team” or the use of the terms “conquest” or “reduction” to refer to the recruitment of Sirionós and Moré. Hence, the pedagogical model applied to selvícolas blended the “modern spirit of education and social organization” with missionary methods of attraction and settlement.Footnote ⁶⁷

Under the direction of founding teachers, up to 360 Sirionó gathered in Casarabe and around 150 Moré settled in Moré.Footnote ⁶⁸ If any violence or coercion was used in this process, it was not recorded in the reports submitted to the central government. However, the existence of firearms was registered. They were requested to cope with life in the middle of the rainforest, and they proved to be useful in retaining in the center the neophytes who—in teachers’ words—were “reluctant to civilize” and only gave in “to a strong and very controlling influence.”Footnote ⁶⁹ In any case, this did not prevent fleeing to the woods from being a common event. Some went hunting and returned after several weeks; others never came back, either because they had joined (voluntarily or forcibly) neighboring properties or because they went back to their nomadic life and their own practices.Footnote ⁷⁰ Most, however, remained in the centers. There are no testimonies from the people who lived this process, and those collected years later intermingle with events that occurred afterward.Footnote ⁷¹ The protection the school centers offered against famine, epidemics, and hunting and capture by local landowners appears to have been the main factor that led the Sirionó and Moré to continue living in them.Footnote ⁷²

The families that formed each of the two centers came from different and distant locations—several hours’ distance in the case of the Moré, and days’ to weeks’ distance in the case of the Sirionó. In Casarabe, some families were brought in by the school center staff, such as those under the leadership of Eremasindo, Mañareca, or Ricareo; others arrived there of their own will, as was the case of the Tural and Silvestre bands. In Moré, several families moved to the school after constant pressure and, finally, the persuasion of the family chiefs, including the above-mentioned Utíp and Tontau, as well as Carinto or Maram-maram-assím, among others. The data collected by both teachers give us their arrival dates, places of origin, and the bands or extended families to which they belonged.

The data also allows a characterization of the people who participated in the educational project on a more or less long-term basis.Footnote ⁷³ Sources show that several of them continued practicing some of their “wild habits” (smoking a pipe, drinking chicha, hunting for several days at a time).Footnote ⁷⁴ Apparently, these activities were allowed in exchange for the abandonment of polygyny, submission to the authority exercised by the teachers, learning Spanish, and participating in the economic activities of the center. Some men and women showed such “adaptation to civilization” that they were selected to be trained either as advisers to the teacher, taking advantage of their knowledge of the environment and their own culture—or as teachers themselves, due to their learning and communication skills and their influence among the members of each ethnic group.

Such is the case of the Sirionó Eoque Erubaiti, Eresaqui, and Siray Güete, who assisted in teaching the crafts of carpentry, farming, and weaving, respectively. Or, Justita Ato-ritam, raised in Moré since childhood and who, to quote the head teacher, gave “edifying social lectures” to girls and young women, praising motherhood and the chores considered proper to their sex. Moreover, in Casarabe, some of the most skilled, trustworthy, and long-standing students also served as “Indian catechists,” that is, men and women willing to join the exploratory commissions sent into the forest in pursuit of new bands and encourage their members to settle at the school. All of these catechists had taken part in the activities of both centers almost since their organization, which might indicate their willing conformity with the education project carried out by the two founding teachers.Footnote ⁷⁵

In short, the teachers of Casarabe and Moré developed hierarchical—although somewhat reciprocal—relationships with their students as a result of their interaction in the daily activities of field preparation, building construction, economic and productive adaptation to the environment, and dissemination of knowledge, all aimed at ensuring the triad of qualities—rootedness, usefulness, civilization—desired by the Bolivian leading groups, and with which they hoped the future new Bolivian society would be constituted.

The Rupture with the Warisateño Model

The conservative military regimes that followed the governments of David Toro and Germán Busch made some adjustments to the orientation of the indigenous educational policy developed to date. The National Education Council prepared a detailed report on the state of indigenous education throughout the country. The document denounced the lack of curricula and work programs, the lack of a defined and scientific educational organization, and the shortage of qualified personnel among the teaching staff.Footnote ⁷⁶ While the Warisateño model was being replicated in different parts of the country and celebrated on the international stage, the Ministry of Education began to advocate for an education for indigenous people based on “inclusive” principles but dissociated from their own cultural practices.Footnote ⁷⁷ The result was the abandonment of Warisata's ideals.

From the 1940s onward, the new educational authorities maintained the school center system but opted to return to an education program focused on simple literacy, the adoption of hygienic values, and training in agricultural work.Footnote ⁷⁸ The goal was now the emergence of a “peasant Indian,” to be attained by stimulating students’ skills and knowledge in agricultural and handicraft techniques and guiding them toward the market and notions of personal and private property—that is, the assimilation of the indigenous people into a project of economic progress, social control, and cultural mestizaje.Footnote ⁷⁹ This idea would be strengthened in the following decades with the spreading of integrationist and homogenizing notions, according to which indigenous Bolivians were bound to disappear with “modernization,” basing their survival on complete “integration” into the nation. The centers founded in the Amazon area were not exempt from such reordering, nor from the political change that had caused it.

From its very inception, the educational activity developed in the centers had not been free of detractors. However, the controversy escalated in the early 1940s. According to the Indigenous Education Code, recruitment of non-subjected indigenous people was “the private and primary function of the State, through the School for selvícolas,” and other institutions and individuals were forbidden from doing so.Footnote ⁸⁰ The will to enforce this rule—or hinder its implementation—generated unease among the different actors involved. On one hand, there was the distrust of local economic agents—farmers, ranchers, rubber traders—who saw their free access to the indigenous workforce for their properties limited overnight. On the other hand, there was resentment of those individuals who had demonstrated their lack of commitment to the project by conniving with local entrepreneurs to provide them with Sirionó and Moré workers.

Another factor was the school centers’ rivalry for control of the Sirionó with the evangelical mission of Ibiato, located a few leagues from Casarabe, which had obtained permission to seek out ‘non-subjected’ groups in the area in 1932.Footnote ⁸¹ Local agents connected to the mission launched a smear campaign against the school centers, and their head teachers in particular. The latter were accused of misappropriation of wealth, abusing authority, exceeding the limits of their functions, and neglecting their pedagogical duties with the indigenous people to take advantage of their work.Footnote ⁸²

These accusations resulted in the dismissal of Casarabe's headteacher, Carlos Loaiza Beltrán, in 1944.Footnote ⁸³ The new management oriented the activities of the center toward greater production, more in accordance with the educational policy of the moment. The new teaching staff held agreements with the Administration of the department of Beni and local businessmen, the fulfilment of which intensified the Sirionós’ work. This meant that their dedication to the production of manufactured articles and the harvesting of the center's different crops—as well as those of its white-mestizo neighbors—was increased, and it was at this time that the exploitation of the resinous trees growing in the surroundings began.Footnote ⁸⁴ The objective was to “place this indigenous center at a higher level of industrialization” so that it would end up “becoming a true work center of great proportions.”

This rearrangement of the activities of the school was to the detriment of the social goals of education promoted by its founder in the spirit of the Warisateño model. As a result, adult literacy classes aimed at promoting the Sironós’ autonomy and citizenship participation were interrupted. Also, indigenous leaders were undermed in their influence and authority.Footnote ⁸⁵ In December 1947, Loaiza Beltrán, now inspector of the school centers in the lowlands, received the visit of several infuriated Sirionó. After escaping from Casarabe because of the punishments unjustly inflicted by the personnel in charge, they threatened the educational authorities with leaving the school and “going back to the forest.”Footnote ⁸⁶ This was no small thing. The escapes from the centers had multiplied under the new management: many students did return to the forest, where they were captured by neighboring landowners; others went to the mission of Ibiato.Footnote ⁸⁷ By then, only 64 Sirionó remained, and when the inquiry committee sent by Loaiza Beltrán arrived, there were none left.Footnote ⁸⁸

Educational authorities decided to definitively end the center's operations since “the authentic sense of recovery of the indigenous people, who in the past had fulfilled their social function of incorporating land and men into the national heritage, had disappeared.”Footnote ⁸⁹ In 1948, Casarabe became an agricultural settlement inhabited only by white-mestizo settlers, and the Sirionó were transferred to the Ibiato mission, which operated under the management of the Ministry of Education.Footnote ⁹⁰

In Moré, none of the accusations of using indigenous labor for headteacher benefit, regardless of the interests of the nation were successful.Footnote ⁹¹ The center functioned during its entire existence under the direction of Leigue Castedo, who left office only once, temporarily, due to the political changes that the 1952 National Revolution entailed.Footnote ⁹² Under his management, the adherence of the teaching staff to the new education policy started in the 1940s meant that productive aspects became more important in the following decades.Footnote ⁹³ The management of Moré encouraged the expansion of activities to move towards “super-production.” They also encouraged the mechanization and industrialization of the school, so Moré could become an economically autonomous urban center. At the same time, along with the agrarian reform of 1953, notions of patrimony and individual property, along with work, became fundamental principles to be transmitted to the Moré to ensure their transformation into peasant or laborer.Footnote ⁹⁴

The school center system for “peasant Indians” was maintained well into the 1960s, despite the profound social changes that occurred after the 1952 National Revolution. A new education code, enacted in 1955, reinforced the belief that indigenous people should receive an education appropriate to their environment, in addition to instruction in the fundamentals of their local rural industries and handicrafts and the love of national traditions and folklore. The native practices and customs that the Warisateño model wanted to re-value and bring forward were no longer even mentioned. What mattered now was campesinación, that is, to make the inhabitants of the countryside productive. To this end, the integration into national life of the “wandering tribes of the forest through the núcleo selvícola” was entrusted to “missionary-type institutions” with prior authorization and under the control of the state.Footnote ⁹⁵ That same year, the Bolivian government signed an agreement with evangelical missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics to initiate linguistic studies, evangelize and, ultimately, convert these populations into productive citizens.Footnote ⁹⁶ This meant the definitive rupture with the Warisateño model implemented in the Amazon, which advocated an education exclusively provided by state bodies, through a national teaching staff.

In 1963, the teachers declared their educational work finished and left the school center of Moré. The following year, the missionary of Ibiato also retired from his functions.Footnote ⁹⁷ With the departure of its administrators, Moré was composed of indigenous and mixed families, and Ibiato became a community inhabited exclusively by indigenous people. Casarabe was now nothing more—and nothing less—than a mestizo village.