The k'ajchas and the projects of industry and nation in Bolivia (1935-1940)

Abstract

The 1938 Convention took place under the presidential administration of “Military Socialists”, as a result of the political crisis generated by the Chaco War (1932-1935), proclaiming political measures that would be implemented during the rest of the twentieth century (an increased role of the state in the economy, land distribution, public policies on natural resources, and indigenous and women citizenships). One of the topics considered was weather to rent Potosi's abandoned mines to the so called K’ajchas. Who were they? Were they small bosses and mine owners? Were they proletarian workers or primitive miners? Would they have to be favored even though they possessed obsolete and backward system of exploitation or create an industrial system under state control? The study reconstructs, based on newspapers of that period and on Reports of the Convention, the situation of the K’ajchas in a context of the tin economic crisis and the country`s political upheaval. Also is analyzed the diferent interpretations and projects that were debated around topics such as the presence of large mining enterprises like Mauricio Hothchilds’s mines, mining proletarians or small scale mining owners. One of the central arguments discussed was weather the industrialization development plan that emerged from the Convention should consider small miners enterprises or state controlled workers.

Keywords

• mining
• k’ajchas
• small-scale mining
• mining cooperatives