The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

72 Frank Salomon
the discovery of imaginative riches on the native side of the country's
linguistic divide resonated widely among intellectuals. Perhaps most importantly,
it gave the literate public a sense of the country's sociolinguistic
stratification as felt from the viewpoint of those shut out. Condori
Mamani remembers his conscription:
They taught me the alphabet there in the army. I was able to sign my name,
and — a, o, i, p - I could also recognize some letters of the alphabet on paper.
. . . They say that nowadays, whoever enters the army unable to see [i.e., illiterate],
comes out with their eyes open and knowing how to read. And those
unable to speak also come out with Spanish flowing off their tongues.
So it was. You'd enter the army sightless, and sightless you'd leave, because
you'd never really get the alphabet right. And just the same you'd be unable to
speak when you entered and unable to speak when you left, Spanish barely
dribbling off your tongue. There in the army, those lieutenants and captains
didn't want us speaking the runa [indigenous] tongue. They'd say:
"Dammit, Indians! Spanish!"
So the noncommissioned officers would beat Spanish into us. 42
Native memoir literature has also acquired an important place in social
history, above all in Bolivia with its powerful history of labor unionbased
politics. These books are at the same time "Indian histories" —
written in Quechua or Aymara, they usually presuppose such familiarity
with Andean culture that even the Spanish translations are hard for non-
Bolivians to understand — and "histories of Indians" prepared for an
ideologically self-conscious audience. Bolivian "testimonial" autobiographies
— notably those of women — are perhaps the most widely read of
all South American native texts. Most are by underdogs who achieved
important roles in political or labor movements. Probably the most
inclusive collections of testimonial autobiography of rank-and-file people
are those prepared by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's Oral History Workshop,
centering on Bolivian Aymara and Quechua labor and leadership. Let Me
Speak by the tin miner Domitila Barrios de Chungara achieved popularity
in Bolivia (and translation to English) well before the Nobel Prize
recognized /, Rigoberta Menchu. The memoirs of the miner Juan Rojas
are also available in English. Other examples include the autobiography
of Ana Maria Condori, an Aymara-speaking domestic servant turned
jungle "colonist," 43 Juan H. Pevez, a leader of an early Peruvian indigenous
organization, 44 the Bolivian peasant leader Enrique Encinas, 45 and
42 Alejandro Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe Huaman, Andean lives (Austin, 1996), 51—52.
43 Ana Maria Condori, Nayan unatatawi. Mi despertar (La Paz, 1988).
44 Memories de un viejo luchador campesion: Juan H. Pcvez, Teresa Ore, ed. (Lima, 1983).
45 Enrique Encinas, Jinapuni. Testimonio de un dirigente campesino (La Paz, 1989).
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