This chapter delves into further demonstrations of dissent arising from the growing politicization of government affairs. It was an escalating process of public contention instigated by the increase in royal taxes, the magistrates’ attempt to suppress the 1781 city council’s elections, the audiencia’s handling of the mass indigenous uprising led by Tomas Katari in the Charcas region in the late 1780 and the subsequent rebel siege of Chuquisaca in February 1781, and the imposition of tobacco monopoly that raised retail prices. The first section of the chapter deals with the circulation of anonymous pasquinades. In societies where publicity was deemed a privilege granted by the monarch and freedom of expression was subject to strict censorship, libels emerged as a major political tool. The chapter analyzes a large number of pasquinades that criticized royal magistrates and government policies. Other topics include the successful of resistance of the city council officials to the Crown authorities’ attempt to invalidate the 1781 municipal elections, the role of the urban militias in defeating the rebel siege of the city, and popular opposition the royal tobacco monopoly established in early 1781.

The concluding chapter discusses the ideological underpinnings of the Chuquisaca movement. It reappraises a recurring idea throughout the book: that appealing to ancient Hispanic constitutional doctrines did not make the political process more moderate and backward-looking, less intransigent and corrosive than other revolutionary movements in Spanish America at the time. It is a concept defined as the radicalism of tradition. Beyond formal political proclamations, routines of obedience to authority broke down; traditional social classifications were no longer associated with a particular kind of participation in public life; and the barriers between the urban popular sectors and the creole elites grew increasingly porous as the local communities asserted themselves as the primary loci of collective identity and their traditional place in the imperial order came under public scrutiny. The growing weight of the general will in state affairs favored a practical exercise of sovereign rights that, couched in the contractual character of the monarchy, made submission to the metropolis and its overseas agents a matter of opinion, an object of consent. A brief assessment of the reception of the liberal Constitution of Cadiz of 1812 highlights the pervasive effects of these shifts in the inner workings of politics and social representations.

This chapter examines a series of events that occurred in Chuquisaca in mid-1781 following the spread of rumors of an alleged popular revolt against rising royal taxes. While there was no compelling evidence of such a conspiracy, the focal point of discord became the origin and intent of the false rumors, which the urban resident, both patricians and plebeians, attributed the peninsular audiencia ministers and a newly arrived company of Spanish soldiers dispatched from Buenos Aires to suppress the pan-Andean rebellion led by Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari. At the root of the public conflict was a dispute over the status of the Chuquisaca people within the monarchy following their victory over the indigenous insurgents. Fears of a popular uprising ended up giving rise to novel forms of group representation, political rituals that underscored the sudden relevance acquired by the opinions of the local population, and public ceremonies that exposed the construction of the city as a subject of history and a political actor. In the customary language of monarchical legitimism, the collective practices both invoked and subverted the axiomatic loyalty to the Crown.

This chapter explores a riot that erupted in 1782 against a permanent garrison of Spanish troops from the Savoy regiment, marking the Chuquisaca’s first popular revolt since its founding. Although violence was primarily executed by the lower classes, particularly militia members, it stemmed from tensions affecting the entire population and therefore garnered strong support from the patriciate through the cabildo. Sparked by the death of a patrician in a brawl with a soldier, the underlying cause of the unrest was the troops’ sexual misconduct and other acts of violence in the urban space. The advances made on the wives, sisters, and daughters of patricians and plebeians alike raised the question of whether European soldiers of low social status were deemed superior to noble creoles, and it placed the vindication of the masculine reputation of patricians and plebeians on the same footing. The assaults on the local population’s claims to honor thus undermined the self-representation of urban society as courtly society divided into Hispanic and non-Hispanic sectors. Without losing their distinctive group identities, the residents began to conceive of themselves as members of the same polity defined in opposition to metropolitan policies and their agents. They saw themselves as part of a full-fledged colonial society.

This chapter analyzes the general uprising of Chuquisaca. On May 25, 1809, a coalition of audiencia ministers, town council officials, the university senate, and residents in general, backed by the mobilization of popular sectors that engaged in bloody clashes with the military garrison and then organized themselves into standing militia units, seized power after deposing the intendant of Charcas and forcing the archbishop to flee the city. The chapter maintains that these events represented a drastic break with all established Hispanic traditions of governance, both Bourbon and Habsburg. It possessed deep revolutionary overtones. While generic allegiance to the Crown may still have been solid, the political foundations of that allegiance came under widespread criticism, threatening the viability of the entire system. On the other hand, this rupture was the outcome of a cumulative erosion of the structures of command and obedience stretching back to the late 1770s. Notwithstanding its momentous impact, the French invasion served as a catalyst rather than as a causal factor in the demise of colonial rule. For it was those discrete historical experiences that equipped local actors with a guide for action, a sense of collective belonging, and a horizon of political intelligibility.

This chapter focuses on a key occurrence leading up to the general uprising of Chuquisaca on May 25, 1809. In January 1809, the University of Charcas’s academic senate publicly and forcefully condemned Princess Carlota Joaquina’s claim to Spain’s regency during her brother Ferdinand VII’s captivity. This momentous political event, known as the “Acta de los Doctores,” has often been interpreted as a forthright expression of royalism and evidence that the movement was more anti-Portuguese than anti Spanish. A close reading of the text reveals that the faculty had a more cunning political aim in disparaging the Portuguese maneuvers: to vilify the Spanish magistrates who had allowed the Carlota papers to be disseminated. Often misinterpreted as a mere pro-Spanish manifesto, the “Acta de los Doctores” crowned and epitomized a by then ingrained culture of political dissension. The last section examines another clash between the university and the audiencia that served as a direct prelude to the May 25 uprising. In this case, it was a clash over the rector’s right to use a cushion during a mass attended by the ministers. At a time when all power hierarchies were being challenged, struggles over ceremonial prominence took on a highly consequential resonance.

The Introduction presents a historiographical discussion of the main topics analyzed throughout the book. It begins by offering a summary of the history of the city of Chuquisaca during the period under study (1777–1809). Then, it examines the crisis of the Spanish-American order in historical perspective. It is argued that, taken together, the study provides an alternative narrative to a growing historiographical consensus that American territories were kingdoms ‒ like the European ones ‒ rather than colonies; that “imperial collapse” (the French invasion of Spain), not “revolution”, was the starting point of independence; and that in their opposition to Bourbon absolutism, the creole elite looked backward, seeking to restore an ancient Hispanic monarchical order. It is my contention that absolutism and colonialism were indistinguishable, that the demise of Spanish rule in the Andes was rooted in a longstanding historical process, and that the traditional language of monarchical legitimism couched modern, utterly subversive, concepts of representative government, free speech, elections, public opinion, and sovereignty. In addition, the Introduction focuses on two large historical themes: the conformation of a culture of dissent and the place of Chuquisaca in the age of Andean insurrection in terms of issues of race, honor, and coloniality.

This chapter examines a second uprising that erupted in July 1785 against a company of the Spanish Regiment of Extremadura that arrived in Chuquisaca to replace the Savoy company. Although the violence was perpetrated mainly by the lower classes, especially by members of the militia, it stemmed from tensions that affected the entire population. Sparked by the death of a patrician in a brawl with a soldier, as in 1782, the underlying cause of the unrest this time was the order to disarm the salaried urban militias that had remained active since the great rebellion of 1780–1781. The disbanding of the militias deprived the mestizos and cholos who comprised them, as well as the creole officers who commanded them, of an important means of livelihood (the daily pay they received) and of what they considered a rightful privilege and symbol of social prestige earned through their service to the king. The chapter examines the violent clashes between the rioters and the Spanish army as well as the ensuing political conflicts between the city council, as the representative body of both patricians and plebeians, with the highest colonial authorities in Chuquisaca and the viceregal court in Buenos Aires.

This chapter explores how the gradual deterioration of monarchical institutions at the local level both intensified and diversified in the early nineteenth century, especially in the wake of the irreparable erosion of viceregal authority caused by the British invasions of Buenos Aires in 1806–1807. I contend that the effect of the fall of the Spanish monarchy that followed the French occupation of Spain in 1808 was to open up an unprecedented array of questions and uncertainties that endowed those medium- and short-term antagonisms with far-reaching resonances: the tutelage of royal sovereignty, the source of the colonial magistrates’ authority, the relationship between capital and subordinate cities, and the proper handling of alternative dynastic claims. Two overarching conclusions emerge from the analysis: first, the imperial crisis was preceded by a crisis of governance that undermined the most basic routines of obedience to superiors; second, the raucous power struggles between high-ranking royal and ecclesiastical officials constituted only one facet, and by no means the most significant, of a politicization that cut across the entire social body. The conflicts leading up to the events of May 1809 involved a variety of actors with a distinct set of interests, values, and repertoires of collective action.

This chapter examines the attempts of the high Spanish officials in Chuquisaca and Buenos Aires to suppress Chuquisaca’s vibrant political sphere in the aftermath of years of open confrontation, both violent and through the courts. Royal magistrates came to believe that the city’s public life posed formidable challenges to the colonial administration. This was not necessarily due to prevailing feelings of outright opposition to Spanish rule or even because the urban lower classes had violently clashed with the military garrison. The problem lay in the unyielding refusal to submit to authority. While some grievances, such as the suppression of the tobacco monopoly or the rejection of Spanish troops, were more radical than others, such as ceremonial controversies or the endowment of chairs, the greatest threat came not from the demands themselves but from the systematic act of demanding, from the continuous collective assertion of views about governmental affairs through an interwoven array of legal and extralegal, violent and nonviolent political practices. If the legitimacy of the Spanish rule was not strictly speaking in question, the governance certainly was. Without directly challenging the colonial regime, the routines of political contestation undermined its basic operating principles.

This chapter analyzes the participation of the University of Charcas in public affairs. It shows that following the Jesuit expulsion in the 1760s, the claustro (academic senate) became a center of university life. This body held annual elections to appoint the rector and allocated academic chairs on the basis of public tenders. The faculty forcefully defended its newly acquired autonomy from ecclesiastical and royal authorities, and its representative practices were instrumental in consolidating a culture of dissent that helped destabilize the unanimity principle underlying the monarchical imaginary, a principle that deemed nonconforming opinions a social pathology incompatible with the sovereign’s will and the common good. The chapter delves into the highly acrimonious election of the main local leader Juan Jose ́Segovia as university rector in 1785. The dispute stemmed from two sources of conflict that had been engulfing the university and the city at large. The first was a contest between religious and secular sectors vying for control of the university. The second was the political conflicts between the city council and the audiencia of Charcas and the Buenos Aires viceroy that followed the July 1785 riot. The chapter shows that there was an inextricable connection between the two confrontations.

This chapter explores a fresh wave of conflicts in the 1790s. These clashes revolved around the relationship of the University of Charcas and the cabildo to the intendant, the audiencia, and the ecclesiastical hierarchies. This process reveals the blatant inability of the higher colonial officials to dictate the terms of public life. The first section deals with the contentious approval of new university statutes. In a society where tradition was the source of law, the university’s faculty created its governing rules at its own discretion, selectively drawing on the regulations of other universities. The second section turns to numerous disputes over municipal matters, which the urban elites treated as a single confrontation over the preservation of municipal freedom and independence, which in turn hinged on the unwavering respect for the majority vote of the cabildo officials. By the turn of the century, open disobedience had become routine, direct, and ideological. The final section shows that it is no coincidence that one of the most penetrating critics of late Spanish colonialism, the Aragonese jurist Victorián de Villava, wrote his devastating treatises on the state of the empire while serving as fiscal (prosecutor) of the audiencia of Charcas.

The first part of this chapter reviews the social, demographic, institutional, and economic characteristics of Chuquisaca in the late colonial period. It shows the role of royal and corporate government institutions like the audiencia of Charcas and the town council (cabildo), as well as educational institutions like the University of Charcas and the Academia Carolina. It addresses then an intense cycle of strife precipitated by appointment of new peninsular ministers in the audiencia of Charcas in the late 1770s. It shows how this measure reinforced the sense of political subordination and marginalization among the creole elites. Besides this ideological repercussion, two issues took center stage: the jurisdictional competences of the city council and its ceremonial privileges. The new royal ministers sought to strengthen their authority over the municipal body by curtailing their traditional political and symbolic prerogatives and aggressively interfering in the appointment of their officials. These policies ushered in a series of political practices that resulted in open challenges to their decrees, public questioning of their governing principles, and politically charged demonstrations of protest, such as the resignation of council positions. The chapter focuses on the manifold expressions of collective opposition between 1777 and 1780.