A peripheral country: north-south internal conflicts in Bolivia

on the eve of the civil war that pitted the new elites in la paz, representing the liberal party, against the conservative mining elites of the south, based in the departments of chuquisaca, potosí and tarija and in power since the war of the pacific (1880), other conflicts were also latent in the peripheral regions of bolivia: in the amazonian region, to the north-east, as well as in the chaco, to the south. the indigenous inhabitants of those regions, which did not fit the model of the "productive indian," were regarded as obstacles to progress. the exploitation of rubber, in the north, and the development of cattle-breeding in the south promoted incursions of non-indigenous peoples into those territories in which state control was virtually non-existent. during this process, criollos, traders and cattlemen ran into franciscan missionaries who were not exempt from attacks on the part of civilians.