This article is about the relationship between the early labor movement of the Andean town of Cuzco and a local student movement that emerged during the first two decades of the twentieth century and which produced some of Peru's most distinguished indigenistas. At the turn of the century signs of “progress” and “modernity” made their appearance in the city of Cuzco and both indigenistas and labor leaders were fascinated by these vague liberal concepts. The article seeks to explore the role these two groups played in local urban society and to analyze forms of cooperation and conflicts that characterized relations between them. Indigenistas of the earlytwentieth century did not invent what frequently has been called Peru's “Indian Question,” but they pushed the issue to the forefront of regional and even national debates contending that solving this key problem could help unify the country and develop a more solid sense of national identity.

On 15 August 1880, the Venezuelan military governor of the Venezuelan Territorio Federal de la Guajira complained to the president of the state of Zulia that a woman from the town of Sinamaica had recently taken a young Indian woman to Maracaibo for a visit. She then sold the girl to the owner of an hacienda south of Lake Maracaibo. The girl turned out to be the niece of a powerful leader of the Uriana lineage or clan of the Guayú, or Guajiro Indians, known to Creoles as “Jullachipar” or “Juya Chipara.” He threatened to attack nearby Venezuelan settlements unless she was returned. State authorities undertook an urgent search for the girl. She eventually reappeared on an hacienda near Encontrados, south of Lake Maracaibo. She was returned to her family. The man who purchased her was jailed in Maracaibo, as was her abductor, but the ultimate disposition of the case remains obscure.

The participants in the festivals of the rosary in Minas Gerais tell a story about the beginning of the devotion of the blacks to Our Lady of the Rosary. In the story, a black slave sees Our Lady of the Rosary out in the sea rocking on top of the waves. When he tells his master, the master and the priests rush down to the water, but are unable to coax her to come to shore. In frustration, they leave the task to the blacks. Blacks from different African nations, or different groups of congados in the vernacular, go one by one to the edge of the sea (or a river) and play their instruments, dance and sing to try to convince Our Lady of the Rosary to come ashore. Their efforts only become successful when the most traditional group goes to the shore and begins to play their music. Even this most traditional group has no success, however, until all the other groups return and join them to sing together. Only then does Our Lady of the Rosary come to the shore and sit on the largest drum, showing her acceptance of the devotion of the blacks. Even when the whites take her to their own chapel and lock the door, she escapes and returns to the sea, waiting for the blacks to call her out again and put her in their own chapel.

Perhaps the most enduring image of the Zapatista uprising, which began in Chiapas on 1 January 1994, is the masked figure of Subcomandante Marcos. Running a close second, however, would be the sight of this makeshift army filing past delegates at the opening of the Conventión Nacional Democrática in the Lancandona later the same year. Men, women and youths with their wooden rifles for weapons, dignity and silent determination as ammunition. They were not the first, and I dare say will not be the last, indigenous movement in Mexico to be driven to violence in defense of their rights. The state's firm response to the uprising was predictable and illustrates the most common reaction to the specter of an Indian with a gun in his hand. Ironically, the Mexican army has carried out such repression with a rank and file comprised largely of youths from indigenous backgrounds. These young men see enlistment as one of the few escapes from the rural poverty that did much to foster the Zapatista rebellion in the first place. Thus, an armed Indian per se is not a problem; it is merely when this person acts autonomously that the trouble begins.