33 pages, paperback
14,8 x 21,0, 2021
Based on the critical analysis of historiographic assertions focused on the study of Yanaconazgo as a long-standing labor institution, this text proposes various key factors to broaden the historical perspective. It is supported by concrete data from the context of the jurisdiction of La Plata in Charcas (Bolivia) between the sixteen and eighteenth centuries, which provides a glimpse into the complexity of this labor system, as well as the diversity of situations of both free and unfree servitude in which workers of different origins, genders and ages were immersed. The study encourages a breaking away from methodological attachments or other constraints that may lead to uncritical repetition of certain terms of a proscribing nature. At the same time, it gives an approach to the daily functions that gradually molded this labor institution and that remind us that history is engineered by people’s actions.
The Author:
Paola Revilla Orías holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chile and the EHESS in Paris. She is a member of the Bolivian History Society (SBH) and the Latin American Work and Workers Network (RedLatt). She is interested in social, juridical and labor history studies. Her research focuses on analyzing the experience of captive populations in colonial cities, more specifically of African and Chiriguano Indians from the lowlands of Charcas (Bolivia). She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) in 2021 and is currently a lecturer at the Bolivian Catholic University of San Pablo in La Paz, Bolivia.
