Estrategias indígenas ante la constitución de una sociedad de frontera en la Bolivia republicana. Los trinitarios y la construcción de un espacio de libertad en el Beni, 1880-1930

Abstract

The socio-economic project of an emerging elite in Beni, since the mid-nineteenth century, had a negative impact on several of the indigenous peoples that lived in the old missions. In order to secure their survival, these groups developed various strategies. Focusing on the Moxeño Trinitario, located mainly in the capital, Trinidad, we will observe the group's strategy, developed by its corregidor José Santos Noco Guaji, before the advancement of the internal frontier and the progressive formation of the Bolivian nation-state. Santos Noco reformulated the elements of mission culture inherited from the Jesuits –social, economic and political practice and the Catholic world view- with the civil rights granted by Bolivian legislation -citizenship and property- in order to create a space on the banks of the Sécure and Mamore Rivers, where Trinitarios lived in relative autonomy between the 1880’s and 1930.