Felipe Quispe
Felipe Quispe Huanca "Mallku" is an Aymara historian and political leader in Bolivia. He heads the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement and has been general secretary of the United Union Confederation of Working Peasants of Bolivia.
Quispe founded the Tupak Katari Indian Movement in 1979 and the Tupak Katari Guerrilla Army in 1990. His honorific name, Mallku, refers to the spirit of the mountains that surround and protect the People, and therefore is the source of life. "Mallku" means "peak" both in geography and in hierarchy.
Quispe is a staunch opponent of the neoliberal Washington consensus, and is also strongly against U.S.-led schemes toward coca eradication, which he sees as destroying a critical part of Aymara culture. He was involved heavily in the Bolivian Gas War.
Quispe ran a failed campaign in the 2005 presidential elections, which saw the victory of indigenous Evo Morales, leader of MAS.
Quispe has been a vocal critic of Morales' government, characterising it as representing "neoliberalism with an Indian face".
In 1984, he was one of the leading organisers of the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army, a failed armed insurrection against the government. Quispe was arrested for his involvement in the movement on August 19, 1992. Quispe has worked for the establishment of an Tawantinsuyu republic — which would take the name "Collasuyu" — in the Aymara-majority regions of Bolivia.Footnotes
