Andean Altiplano

This research investigates labor, law, freedom, and rebellion in the Central Andes between the Bourbon reforms and the age of independence, roughly from 1760 to 1830. Based on wills, inventories, lawsuits, administrative records, and narratives of revolt, it analyzes the strategies of Indigenous people, mestizos, free workers, and subjects exposed to multiple forms of coercion.

The focus falls especially on Charcas, Potosí, Chayanta, and La Plata, in a period marked by fiscal conflicts, imperial reforms, racialized social hierarchies, and large-scale Indigenous insurgencies. The research follows both the major uprisings associated with Túpac Amaru, Túpac Katari, and the Catari brothers, and the more discreet forms of negotiation, refusal, debt, inheritance, circulation of goods, and legal dispute inscribed in everyday documents. Its central aim is to understand how subaltern subjects produced political language, forms of freedom, and practices of resistance within the colonial order.