THE TOBA INDIANS OF BOLIVIA by Sasrver Suapmo SUMARIO Desde hace dos afios el Gobierno de Bolivia ha empren- dido un programa para solucionar los problemas de los indi. genas Toba, que durante mucho tiempo tuvieron que ir a la Argentina a trabajar en Jos ingenios de aziicar, en Ia cosecha de algod6n y en Ia recoleccién de la yerba mate. Por medio de tratados, contratos de trabajo y dotacion de tierra, cl Gobierno de Bolivia ha creado condiciones favorables de trabajo para los indigenas Toba a tal grado que practicamente la emigracion ha terminado, y todos ellos quedan ya en su pais ocupados en labores agricolas que mejoran su condicién y ayudan a su des- arrollo. Todo esto se analiza en el presente trabajo y ademas en forma clara y breve se da a conocer las condiciones de vida de los indigenas Toba, su papel dentro de la vida del pais y el Progreso lento pero seguro en sus condiciones econémicas, For the past thirty years much of the labor on the yerba mate, Sagar, and cotton plantations of Argentina’s Far North has been done Sy Indians recruited in the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Formosa, and she Chaco, or brought from across the border in Bolivia and Para- seay. The six ingenios in the area employ about 150,000 transient workers cach year, and their estates are a polyglot mixture of Churupi, Ghahuanco, Toba, Chorote, Mataco, Chiriguano, and other tribes, The spectrum of culture represented stretches all the way from those "ho have settled down as permanent workers, and own bicycles, ra- dios, and read newspapers, to tribesmen fresh from the forest who sil tatoo their faces and are just beginning to wear shoes, shirts, 2d trousers, and to cut their hair. ‘Tis life conditions For a long time conditions on these vast feudal estates, separated = they are from the rest of Argentina by hundreds of miles of wild- sss, was one of the nation’s hidden scandals. White farm laborers Pewhere lived poorly enough, but at least had political defenders §28 trade union leaders; hardly anybody knew about, or was troubled © 2e callousness and brutality so common in the North. Argentine ans are legally declared to be second-class citizens; they cannot J xrve in the Army without special permission, join labor unions, Sppear in Court. Those from across the border in Paraguay and aa were of interest to their home governments only as earners Srcign exchange, and as likely subjects for graft and bribery. The ; whose labor is indispensable for these plantations, were Indigena.—Vol. XXII, N° 3.—Julio, 1962242 América Indigena regularly cheated by low wage rates, dishonest scales, and crooked book-keeping; in 1943, one plantation was paying its workers 80 cen- tavos a day. Prices of food and clothing at the company stores were often exhorbitant, and sometimes mill-owners yielded to the tempta- tion of paying the men off with raw alcohol, which is produced in millions of gallons as a by product of sugar refining. Social revolutions in both Bolivia and Argentina during the 1950's have brought about some long overdue improvements. The Bolivian government of Paz Estenssoro demanded and got some guarantees of fairer treatment for the many thousands of Toba who cross the border each year looking for work and a warmer climate in which to escape the terrible winter winds of the altiflano. More important still, the Toba were given hundreds of thousands of acres of land, so that they are no longer so completely dependent on the wages at the mills. And Argentina’s President Juan Perén, for all his economic mistakes, considered the Indians as kind of ex-officto “descamisados”; his labor legislation indirectly benefitted them somewhat, and the Inspectores de Indigenas who were sent up to the Northern canefields reformed some of the more flagrant abuses. The role of the Toba Indians The Toba of Bolivia have played a particularly important role in the struggle for decent wages and better working conditions. Their higher level of culture, their relative independence, and the backing of the Bolivian consuls in the area make their complaints hard te ignore; in the past four years they have led five strikes, and several times simply packed up their belongins and went home. If it were not for Bolivia’s rocketing inflation, and the favorable exchange rate they got for their money when home, many of them would not have come to Argentina at all. The mill owners, who remember the days when an Indian could easily be brow-beaten, frightened, or cheated out of his just wages, naturally consider the Toba “quarrelsome”, and “agitators”. But they are the swiftest and most intelligent laborers available in the area; native white Argentines will not come te work in the tropics, and the other tribes are not such good workers so the Toba cannot be dismissed. During the 1959 harvest, the Toba were particulary “troub- lesome”. As an aftermath of the Perén regime, the Argentine peso experienced a disastrous slide, from 14 to the dollar, all the way down to 86.The Toba Indians of Bolivia 243) As part of an austerity program President Frondizi abolished price controls in December, 1958; within a week meat prices doubled, and the cost of living rose an average of 10 percent a month during the first half of 1959. Relatively backward tribes like the Churupi and the Mataco, who are hardly able to count beyond twenty, were only dimly aware of the economic significance of inflation. They do not receive their pay until the end of the season, and so did not realize how badly the purchasing power of their wages was being cut. But the Toba, who are sophisticated enough to speculate in differential exchange rates, soon informed them. In June, when the white sugar workers’ union further south went on strike, the Northern mills hoped to keep on grinding; it was the Toba who took the lead in downing their tools and persuading the other Indians to do likewise. They led an orderly and peaceful strike, and they won a pay increase of 70% for themselves and the other tribes, so that they were able to earn rather more than the average Argentine farm worker elsewhere. The increase, however, did not nearly match the continuing infla- tion. At the new rate of $1.50 per metric of cane cut, stripped of leaves, and loaded, the men could not save very much beyond what they had to spend for food; with the Bolivian inflation temporarily halted, it no longer paid to work in Argentina so as to profit by the exchange differential. Another serious grievance was the terribly uns- anitary conditions under wich the migrant workers are forced to live. The ingenio does not provide clean water for drinking or washing; the Indians must use the filthy waters of the irrigation ditches ins- tead, and diseases spread by polluted water are endemic. ‘The only reason there is no epidemic, one exasperated but helpless Govern= ment inspector explained, is because “Dios es grande’. At the Tabacal ingenio, to care for 20,000 people doing dangerous work under ex tremely unhealthy conditions, the management has provided only thirty-five hospital beds, four doctors, and one ambulance. In August, 1959, such conditions, and a long record of police mistreatment and brutality, produced an actual uprising among the Indians at the ingenio Juarez in Formosa. After a confused struggle in a pulferia, a Mataco Indian was wounded by a policeman, and taken off to the local jail. Two days later, as he was about to be sent off for trial, his tribemen and others attacked the railroad station and released him. Many of the Indians in the region have guns left over from the Chaco War of 1932-1938, and know how to use them. When the millowners nervously asked that troops be sent in, all the tribes banded together to protect themselves. An agent8 América Indigena sent to arrest the Toba leader of the uprising was shot and killed with own rifle, and the suspect fled to safety across the Pilcomayo. After hurried conferences among tribal capitanes, government of ficials, and the millowners, an uneasy peace was restored, and the work of the harvest went on the Toba were recognized as unofficial spokesmen for all the other tribesmen working in the region. In the future, it seems likely that the Toba will no longer be available to help guide less advanced tribes toward a fuller realization of their sights. With the feso so low, and the boliviano temporarily stabilized, they no longer profit from the exchange rate as much as they once did; the complaint is that they no longer have anyth- ing to bring back home after the sugar harvest is over. More impor tant still, the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) has given them land in their own district, around Tarija; they wish to work their own fields, rather than harvest other people’s crops. Government's Protection ‘The Bolivian gobernment has, in fact, acted as vigorously as pos- sible to protect the well-being of those of its citizens who do migrant labor across the border. It has negotiated formal treaties and working agreements with the Argentine authorities which are similar to those in force between the United States and Mexico for migrant labor in the American southwest; but these rules are very often ignored by the local authorities and plantation-owners. Last year, in a number of cases, migrant workers from Bolivia were not paid at all at the end of the season; the employers claimed that they could not get the bank credit to meet their payrolls, and gave the Indians non-nego- tiable promissory notes instead. The Inspectores de Indigenas could do nothing, and the white labor union leaders said that Indian wor- kers were not within their jurisdiction; the Toba had no recourse but to go to their Consuls and borrow enough money for their train fare home. It is partly with such developements in mind that the Bolivian government has put into effect in the last two years a program that will provide employment for its people within their own country. The Bolivian province of Santa Cruz, lying well to the East of the altiplano, is splendidly adapted for the production of tropical products, and especially of sugar cane. Its resources have never been used because Bolivia’s mining economy made it uneconomic to build the roads and railways needed to open up the area. But in the last four years, aided by funds from Brazil, Argentine, and the Point IV:The Toba Indians of Bolivia 245, program of the United States, the province has been opened up at Jast; and in 1958, the most modern sugar refinery in South America was opened at Guabira. This has already provided work for a large number of Bolivian Indians who formerly crossed the border to Ar- gentina every year, and will make Bolivia for the first time in history independent of foreign sugar supplies. As its operations continue to expand, and other plantations growing cotton, rice, and cereal crops come into production, the Toba will be increasingly independent of the jobs available to them under such unsatisfactory conditions south of the border.