Acedia

Acedia: apathy or boredom.

According to many Latin American scholars, such as Sarmiento, social conflicts can be boiled down to a simple argument: civilización contra la barbarie, or civilization versus barbarism. This is an incorrect assumption; however, it allows us to frame many of the conflicts in Latin America, such as La Pacificación or the conflict in Bolivia between the indigenous and the mestizos. A more modern interpretation of this conflict can be considered as indigenous versus Western Civilization.

The indigenous peoples of Latin America have often been misconstrued as being lazy, apathetic, and unproductive. I hope to prove in this post that this belief is entirely unfounded.

When discussing Latin America, agrarian reform has been the most pertinent issue since colonization. This is because many of the indigenous people were unfairly pushed off their communal lands or outright conquered, by wealthy, usually white or mestizo, elites of their countries. This process has occurred in virtually every country in Latin America. I will not be covering the Conquistador robbing of their lands; instead, I will cover the expropriation of their lands by Liberal thinkers.

In many places in Latin America, much of the indigenous population existed as sustenance farmers living on ejidos, or communal lands. During the late 19th century, much of this land was expropriated from them in order to give it away to the following groups:

1. Rich agriculturalists who could produce a higher yield for market consumption through technology and capital.

2. Land for colonizing Europeans. You may ask yourself, isn't the colonial period over by the 19th century? Yes and no. Many Latin American governments, spurned by a belief in eugenics, thought that by mixing whites with indigenous people that they would "improve" the indigenous races, "curing" them of their laziness. This may sound far fetched, but read a few passages of Facundo, and you will see that this was quite a common belief at the time.

One thing that I find interesting about Sarmiento and his treatment of the indigenous peoples was that he was a student of Marx. It should have been obvious to him that they were resisting the process of proletariatization. Why would someone want to leave their idyllic life as a sustenance farmer in order to work in a factory 12-15 hours a day, 6 days a week? Also, according to Marx, these people were living in a man's traditional state: villages that shared responsibilities and leadership amongst the group.

Another interesting thing about the myth of the "lazy Indian" is in the context of Mexico during the Revolution of 1910. The picture/stereotype of the campesino taking his siesta is commonplace in this country. This idea stems from the mass starvation that the Mexican people experienced during the years of the Revolution; the campesino did not nap because he was lazy, rather because he was malnourished. Many Mexicans received 1/3 of the daily caloric intake necessary to sustain an active man.

Isn't it obvious that the stereotype of the lazy Indian/Mexican comes from a western interpretation of malnutrition? Or that the campesino did not want to give up his communal lands because he did not wish to be a member of the proletariat?