Hommes d'eau : le problème uru (XVIe-XVIle siècle) - article ; n°5 ; vol.33, pg 1127-1159

Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations - Année 1978 - Volume 33 - Numéro 5 - Pages 1127-1159
Almost extinguished today, in the XVIth century the Urus occupied and exceptionally vast area running the length of the aquatic axis which traverses the high plateau (rio Azangaro, lake Titicaca, desaguadero, lake Poopo ; rio Lacajahuira lake Coipasa), where they constituted a quarter of the indigenous population. According to the traditional image left by the chroniclers and taken over by travellers and ethnologists, the Uru were primitive Indians, purely fishers, hunters, and gatherers.
Actually, in the XVIth century the picture was more complex : these Indians then constituted a heterogenous group to which the term uru, rich in various connotations (ethnic, social, and economic) confers a false unity. They formed highly differentiated groups, and certain among them, already aymarized (while preserving a lacustrian character), possessed land and troops of animals ; still, the majority of the Urus furnished the Aymaras with a work force of inferior status.
The XVIth and XVIIth centuries witnessed three opposite and correlative movements : 1. the majority of the Urus followed the path of aymarization, which in large part was completed by the 1680s; 2. the Indians who left the lakes and became integrated in the colonial system guaranteed a constant, although numerically limited supply which renewed the composition of the group ; 3. those who Urus (whether tributary or unsubjugated) were all the more marginalized in that the bulk of the group merged with the Aymaras, while the intermediary categories disappeared.
Henceforth, all the conditions existed to produce a veritable ethnographic myth. In reality, what we find is a particular type of acculturation within the world of the indigenous population.
33 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.