Agregado | Subtenant who rented land to a tributary Indian in the reducción. |
Alcalde de campo | Traditional ayllu authority and cabildo member. |
Altiplano | Flat highland area between the eastern and western Bolivian Andes. |
Arrendero | Temporary tenant who cultivated land in the hacienda and paid rent in labor, kind, or money. |
Arrimante | Subtenant who rented land to the temporary tenant or arrendero in the hacienda. |
Ayllu | A kin basic unit of highland Andean society that held common land title and performed collective labor and other activities. |
Cabildo | Municipal council. |
Cacique | Indian chieftain. After 1952 a strong man who controlled peasant unions. |
Campesino | Peasant. A countryside person. |
Caudillismo | Personality cult in politics. |
Caudillo | National, regional, or local leader who ruled through a combination of charisma and brute force. After 1952 a peasant boss. |
Champa Guerra | Brushwood War, which alludes to an extremely confused conflict where it seemed that everyone fought against everyone else. |
Chicha | Maize beer. An alcoholic beverage usually brewed in family units. |
Chichería | A tavern where chicha is consumed. |
Cholo(a) | Citified Indian. A cultural or biological mestizo(a) that rejects his/her Indian identity. |
Colono | Permanent hacienda tenant. |
Comunario | Indigenous community member. |
Corregidor | Rural town mayor. |
Curaca | Ethnic communal authority. |
Demesne | Hacienda lands worked for the direct benefit of the hacienda owner. |
Encomendero | People granted by the Spanish crown with an encomienda. |
Encomienda | The right to collect tribute from some native communities and the duty of protecting their population. |
Forastero | Foreigner who rented land to the hacienda or the reducción. |
Gamonal | A powerful person. |
Hacendado | Hacienda owner. |
Hacienda | Estate. In Bolivia, larger haciendas were located in the altiplano, while smaller ones existed in the valleys. |
Intendente | Police provincial authority. |
Lari | Its colloquial use in a Quechua-speaking area has to do with the idea that those who speak Aymara come from remote upland areas and so are more ignorant than local folks who are more urbanized. |
Latifundia | Large unproductive estates. |
Mayordomo | Person in charge of running the absentee landlord hacienda. |
Mestizaje | A process of shifting ethnic identities or mixing cultures. |
Mestizo | Person of mixed biological or cultural Andean and European ancestry. |
Miliciano | Militiamen. A member of an armed gang usually under the command of union bosses. |
Minifundio | A minute, low-yielding, landholding. |
Mit’a | A Quechua language term which means turn at some tasks; community labor, rendering services or goods to the ethnic lords in the precolonial era. |
Mita | Forced labor draft in the colonial era. |
Mitayo | Indian worker serving the mita in the colonial era. |
Mitimaes | Highland colonizers to the valleys or lowlands in the precolonial era. |
Mote | Boiled maize grains. |
Padrón | Demographic record in the hacienda. |
Patrón | Landlord. |
Pegujalero | Colono who occupied a pegujal in the hacienda lands. |
Pegujal | Generally, it means an independent smallholding, but it also refers to the plot occupied in temporary terms by the labor tenant of the hacienda (colono) in which the tenant had usufruct rights, in return for the free labor he or she provided on the estate’s lands. |
Piquero | Owner of a smallholding or pegujal. |
Pongo | A colono who is fulfilling his labor mita in the manor house or the city house of the landlord. |
Pongueaje | Personal services rendered by colonos to their landlords. |
Q’ara | White or mestizo person who usually lived in the town or the city and spoke Spanish. |
Q’atera | Market woman or small trader. |
Rama | Forced monetary contribution. |
Reducción | Colonial Indian territory. |
Rosca | Clique. An exclusive group of powerful people. |
Señoríos | Pre-colonial and colonial altiplano ethnic kingdoms. |
T’ara | Indian person who usually lived in the countryside and spoke Quechua or Aymara. |
Tinterillo | Literally ‘little inkwell’. They were people who have not formally studied law, but by dint of practice have got to know how the courts function and give legal advice or intervene in court cases for others. |
Tocuyo | Homespun cotton cloth. |
Tributary | Abled man of 18 to 50 years of age. |
Vecino | Town or city dweller. |
Yanacona | Pre-colonial quechua term. An artisan, miner or agriculturalist native servant removed from his original ayllu and bound to the Inca. |
Yungas | An Aymara word meaning “warm lands.” Humid, subtropical region in the eastern slopes of the Andean Cordillera Real. |