PRESENT TENDENCIES 27 



partment of La Paz, in the far-eastern foothills province of 

 Tomina of the Department of Chuquisaca, and in the Cerecado 

 (and Chapare) of Cochabamba. 



The Indian well understands how his white neighbors covet 

 his lands. He is always suspicious of any visitor in the neighbor- 

 hood of the community. Occasionally he enters an emphatic 

 protest against the persistent pressure of whites upon the border 

 of his inherited domain, and the Bolivian people live in ill- 

 concealed fear of a general uprising. Only a few years ago alarm- 

 ing rumors were circulated throughout the highlands of a care- 

 fully prepared insurrection by which the Indians hoped to regain 

 their lost lands. There was ground for the rumor, for the owners 

 of many farms were either threatened or actually attacked by 

 their own tenants, and a considerable army of Indians gathered 

 on the hills overlooking the city of La Paz. Troops were required 

 to quell the uprising, and some hundred or so of the most auda- 

 cious spirits were rounded up for a few months of prison life, 

 which proved sufficient to smother the threatened outbreak. 



But the unrest still exists both among the communities and 

 on the large farms where the Indian lives attached to the estate 

 as a kind of serf. For there is no matter that so vitally concerns 

 the aborigine of these highlands as the little parcel of soil which 

 has come down to him, either as an individual or as a member of 

 the clan, from uncounted generations of his fathers. 



