Altiplano

Altiplano, the largest plateau in the Andes mountains. This historically important region lies in contemporary southern Peru and Bolivia. Starting in the region of Lake Titicaca, the altiplano extends southward in an opening between two branches of the southern Andes, at an average altitude of about 12,500 feet. Most of the area is Bolivian national territory and includes the cities of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosí. The altiplano contains important agriculture lands, pasturage, and mineral deposits and, according to Herbert Klein, was the site of "the domestication of the staple products of Andean civilization," particularly the potato, and of "the American cameloids: the llama, alpaca, and vicuña."

The altiplano was home to a number of indigenous societies, most notably the Aymara, who were incorporated into the Inca empire in the fifteenth century. Under Spanish rule, the altiplano's indigenous peoples were forced into settlements that were subject to heavy tribute and labor obligations to the colonial state, in particular labor for the mita de minas for the silver mines at Potosí, the most profitable mining area in the sixteenth-century empire. The altiplano communities resisted these demands, most overtly in a series of eighteenth-century uprisings. Although silver production declined in the late colonial period, the altiplano remained an important economic zone, particularly after the rise of tin mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The altiplano's mining unions and agricultural communities have played major roles in contemporary Bolivian politics.

See alsoSilver Industry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herbert S. Klein, Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society (1982) especially pp. 3-26.

Additional Bibliography

Bergman, Roland W. Tierras del altiplano y economía campesina: Agricultura en los limítes más altos de Los Andes del Sur del Perú. Cuzco, Perú: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 2000.

Bleiwas, Donald I. and Christiansen, Robert G. Geology and Mineral Resources of the Altiplano and Cordillera Occidental, Bolivia. Denver, CO: Survey, 1992.

Brownman, David L. "Titicaca Basin Archaeolinguistics: Uru, Pukina and Aymara." World Archaeology 26, no. 2 (October 1994): 235-251.

Del Pozo-Vergnes, Ethel. De la hacienda a la mundialización: Sociedad, pastores y cambios en el altiplano peruano. Lima: Instituto de estudios peruanos, 2004.

McFarren, Peter. Ayllu: El altiplano boliviano. La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial los Amigos del Libro, 1984.

                                     Ann M. Wightman