This study will examine how five writers portray the role of the poor indigenous peasantry in the changing sociopolitical structure of Latin American nations in the postcolonial era. In general, the authors agree that while the indigenous peasantry did see some betterment of their sociopolitical positions, whatever improvement or reform came was far from what they might have hoped would come with liberation from colonial power. For the most part, the poor were more free, but with little opportunity economically or sociopolitically to take advantage if that freedom. This concern of each of the authors will be the central focus of this study: the changes in the economic and sociopolitical situations of the poor indigenous peasantry, and the nature of their integration as colonialism fell away as the dominant force holding society together and defining the relationships between the poor and the elites of the different states.
Thurner describes the difficulties the nations of Latin America confronted as they moved away from colonial control toward a more free and egalitarian reality: "This contradiction meant that 'the great challenge facing [Creole patriots] was to obtain independence without unleashing a revolution'" (Thurner 3). In other words, in the Andean lands the major concern was finding that balance between postcolonial liberalization and social control.
The postcolonial powers would never opt for a freedom which could bring revolution, for to do so would be suicidal. At the same time, those powers recognized that they would have to allow the poor indigenous masses some measure of freedom more than they had experienced under colonialism. The end of colonialism was in part a result of the unrest of those masses, and such unrest would boil over if the postcolonial elites clamped down too tightly:
One social result of this contradiction was . . . that after Spanish rule the . . . Latin American republics could look ra...