The Power of Dissent: Urban Political Culture and the Fall of Spanish Rule in Charcas

The Power of Dissent examines the crisis of Spanish rule through the changing political culture of Chuquisaca (Bolivia), the most important city in the southern Andes. Sergio Serulnikov argues that in the four decades preceding the nineteenth-century wars of independence, a vibrant political public sphere emerged, both patrician and plebeian. It manifested itself in a variety of social domains: protracted legal battles, collective petitions, popular revolts, the culture of manly honor, disp...