Exploring kinship in anthropology and history: Surnames and social transformations in the Bolivian Andes

This research note assesses how surnames in a Bolivian Quechua-speaking pea sant community were transmitted and distributed from the early nineteenth c entury to the mid-twentieth to show that parish register data can allow ant hropologists to uncover the impact and significance of larger political, ec onomic, and historical processes at the local level. I argue that patterns of surname transmission underwent a momentous shift between the early 1800s and the mid-1900s, from high percentages of illegitimate infants carrying their fathers' surname to virtually none doing so, an upshot of sweeping ch anges in sociocultural practices spawned by the revolution and agrarian ref orm in 1952 and 1953. This transformation in the allocation of patronyms to baptized infants reflected a new importance attached by both peasants and church officials to legitimate birth status and its coupling with genealogi cal reckoning via surname transmission. Such a coupling ions important for peasants in order to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity in the midst of sh ifting and uncertain contexts structuring access to land and resources. It was also important for parish church officials, who probably thought it nec essary to adhere move closely to national legal codes in a revolutionary se tting.