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Patterns of Violence in the Andes

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PODER Y VIOLENCIA EN LOS ANDES. Edited by UrbanoHenrique. (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos, Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1991. Pp. 419.)
HOUSEHOLD AND CLASS RELATIONS: PEASANTS AND LANDLORDS IN NORTHERN PERU. By DeereCarmen Diana. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. Pp. 368. $40.00.)
PEASANTS ON THE EDGE: CROP, CULT, AND CRISIS IN THE ANDES. By MitchellWilliam P. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. Pp. 264. $30.00.)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Enrique Mayer
Enrique Mayer*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Type
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Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 1994 , pp. 141 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. According to Robin Kirk, chacqua “refers to something confused, disorganized; the literal dismantling of the universal order between two diametrically opposed forces.” See the book jacket of Kirk's The Decade of Chaqwa: Peru's Internal Refugees (Washington D.C.: U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1991).

2. In 1990 the Comisión Especial del Senado sobre las Causas de la Violencia y Alternativas de Pacificación en el Perú devoted three chapters to analyzing “structural violence” in Peruvian society. See Violencia y pacificación (Lima: DESCO and the Comisión Andina de Juristas, 1990). The commission perceived structural violence as a historical, cumulative, and ingrained process “to the extent that the very constituted order of things, its legality, and the organization of power become expressions of a structural violence that accumulates, replicates itself, and tends to perpetuate itself, impelling under certain circumstances actual violent behavior in its diverse manifestations” (p. 34). Two general trends were cited as causes of structural violence: a gradual buildup from historical discontinuities, displacement of people, disintegration, marginalization, lack of communication, authoritarianism, centrism, and the absence of a national project; second, the patterns of social relations between groups, including unequal status, domination, racism, and gender domination (pp. 120–30).

3. Ernest V. Siracusa, Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Lima in 1966, also makes this argument: “The failure of Peru to address long-term social grievances helped to provide the breeding ground for discontent and promote the opportunity for continuous exploitation by communism” (cited in Brown and Fernández, War of Shadows, p. 189).

4. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, translated by Alfred McAdam (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1986), 109.

5. This point has been noted by Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987); and by Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Taussig shows that the image of the “wild Indian” is believed to be a powerful source of healing in mestizo popular culture.

6. According to Deborah Poole, “The term gamonal derives from the name of a virtually indestructible perennial plant of the lily family, the gamón (asphodel)…. As a metaphor for the particular class of bilingual, bicultural and horrendously abusive landlords it describes, this name could not be more precise.” See Poole, “Landscape of Power in a Cattle-Rustling Culture of Southern Andean Peru,” Dialectical Anthropology 12 (1988):372.

7. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

8. Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, edited by Steve Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

9. This tactic was also employed by U.S. invaders in Panama when they set up deafening rock and roll music outside Manuel Noriega's bunker.

10. This information was originally reported by Jorge Basadre in La multitud, la ciudad y el campo en la historia del Perú, 2d ed. (Lima: Editorial Huascarán, 1947). He thus established the stereotypical view of the Iquichanos as “particularly barbarous residents of Huanta and La Mar provinces, descendants of the Pokras, tribes of the Chanca race” (p. 226).

11. Enrique Mayer, “Peru in Deep Trouble: Mario Vargas Llosa's ‘Inquest in the Andes’ Reexamined,” Cultural Anthropology 6, no. 4 (1992):466–504.

12. Another case in the Central Highlands in the aftermath of the war with Chile has been reported by Florencia Mallon in The Defense of Community in Peru's Central Highlands (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).

13. In the twentieth century, similar roles have been assumed by guerrillas of the MRTA and Sendero Luminoso in the coca-growing areas.

14. See also Susan C. Bourque and Kay B. Warren, “Democracy without Peace: The Cultural Politics of Terror in Peru,” LARR 24, no. 1 (1989):7–34.

15. These points are also stressed in Orin Starn, “Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru,” Cultural Anthropology 6, no. 1 (1991):63–91; and Enrique Mayer, “Peru in Deep Trouble.”

16. Juan Ansión and Eudosio Sifuentes, “La imagen popular de la violencia, a través de los relatos de degolladores,” in Pishtacos: de verdugos a sacaojos, edited by Juan Ansión, 61–105 (Lima: Edición Tarea, 1989).

17. Wesley Craig, “Peru: The Peasant Movement of La Convención,” in Latin American Peasant Movements, edited by Henry Landsberger, 274–96 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969).

18. Gavin Smith, Livelihood and Resistance: Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989); and Rodrigo Sánchez, Toma de tierras y conciencia política campesina: las lecciones de Andahuaylas (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1981).

19. Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

20. For a more detailed discussion of other issues raised by Mitchell in Peasants on the Edge, see my forthcoming review in Peasant Studies.

21. The sectorial fallow system in Andean communities is an aspect of communally managed patterns of land use. It is associated with higher lands (3,400 to 4,000 meters in altitude), no irrigation, cultivation of tubers and hardy European grains, and use of the foot plow as the main tool. Crop rotation and fallow sequences are organized by the community and managed by the enforcement of communal rules and controls over many production decisions. In fallow years, the land is used for pasture with free access, but when it is under cultivation, farmers have the right to exclusive use of their plots. See Enrique Mayer, “Production Zones,” in An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity, edited by Craig Morris and Shozo Masuda, 45–84 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985); Benjamin S. Orlove and Ricardo Godoy, “Sectorial Fallow Systems in the Central Andes,” Journal of Ethnobiology 6, no. 1 (1986):169–204; and Comprendre l'agriculture paysanne dans les Andes centrales (Pérou-Bolivie): Ecologie et aménagement rural, edited by Pierre Morion (Paris: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, 1992).

22. See Enrique Mayer and Manuel Glave, “Rentabilidad, costos e inversión en el cultivo de papa,” in La chacra de papas: economía y ecología, edited by Enrique Mayer (Lima: Centro Peruano de Investigación Social, 1992), chaps. 1 through 5. Similar findings are reported in the works under review here by Deere (p. 280) and Mitchell (p. 95).

23. Successful agriculture in the Yanamarca area may be due to the fact that peasants in this area had successfully taken over haciendas two decades before the agrarian reform of 1969. See F. LaMond Tullis, Lord and Peasant in Peru (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).

24. See John Gitlitz and Telmo Rojas, “Peasant Vigilante Committees in Northern Peru,” Journal of Latin American Studies 15, pt. 1 (1983):163–97; Orin Starn, “I Dreamed of Foxes and Hawks: Reflections on Peasant Protest, New Social Movements, and the Rondas Campesinas of Northern Peru,” in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America, edited by Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez, 89–111 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992); and Hans Jürgen Brandt, “Legalidad, derecho consuetudinario y administración de justicia en comunidades campesinas y zonas rurales andinas,” in Justicia popular, edited by Hans Jürgen Brandt, 101–66 (Lima: Centro de Investigaciones Judiciales de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la República, 1987).

25. Robin Kirk offers a figure of at least 150,000 refugees by 1986, but it is extremely difficult to estimate the outmigration with any accuracy See Kirk, Decade of Chaqwa.

26. Brown and Fernández note (as I did in 1991) that in Latin America, the intransitive verb disappear has become a transitive one as well, as in “to disappear a person.” An example of how this process works was given by an army officer describing what happened to one woman guerrilla: “She didn't talk. What happened is that they put her into a helicopter, flew away, and came back empty a half-hour later. That is why I think they took them up in the helicopters to make them talk. And if they didn't, they were pushed out” (War of Shadows, p. 182).

27. See “Coca, the Real Green Revolution,” NACLA Report on the Americas 17, no. 6 (1989); and Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear (New York: Monthly Review Press, Latin America Bureau, 1992), chap. 6.

28. See Margarita Benavides, “Los Ashaninka y la violencia política en la selva central del Perú,” paper presented to the Congress of Americanists, 7–11 July 1991, New Orleans.

29. Gustavo Gorriti, “Terror in the Andes: The Flight of the Ashaninkas,” New York Times Magazine, 2 Dec. 1990, 40–48, 68–72.

30. Gustavo Gorriti, Historia de la guerra milenaria en el Perú (Lima: Apoyo, 1990), 174.

31. Abimael Guzmán, “Presidente Gonzalo rompe el silencio: entrevista en la clandestinidad,” originally published in El Diario, 24 July 1988. An English version, “Interview with Chairman Gonzalo,” was published by Red Banner in 1988.

32. Denís Chávez de Paz, Juventud y terrorismo: características sociales de los condenados por terrorismo y otros delitos (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989).

33. See Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear. María Elena Moyano, the popular leader of Lima's Villa el Salvador, was assassinated by Sendero Luminoso because she organized opposition to its infiltration. In response to the outrage against this brutal killing (she was blown up in front of her children), Sendero Luminoso has embarked on a campaign to smear her reputation. The U.S.-based Maoist International Movement that supports Sendero echoed this perspective in justifying her elimination because she was the vice mayor of Villa el Salvador, ran government programs to distribute food, and organized patrols to defend the area against Sendero. See MIM Notes, 13 Jan. 1993 (published in Ann Arbor, Michigan).

34. One U.S.-based academic who propagandizes pro-Sendero stances that accord with her personal political agenda is Carol Andreas. See When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru (Westport, Ct.: L. Hill, 1985).

35. In the department of Puno, Sendero Luminoso led a frontal attack against the Partido Unificado Mariateguista (PUM) to dislodge it among peasant villages and town councils. See José Luis Rénique, “La batalla por Puno: violencia y democracia en la sierra sur,” Debate Agrario 10 (1991):83–108.

36. See Amnesty International, Peru: Human Rights in a Climate of Terror (New York: Amnesty International, 1991); and Peru: Human Rights during the Government of President Alberto Fujimori (New York: Amnesty International, 1992).

37. See Alma Guillermoprieto, “Letter from Lima: Down the Shining Path,” The New Yorker, 8 Feb. 1993, pp. 64–75.

38. The latest published works include Simon Strong, Shining Path: The World's Deadliest Revolutionary Force (London: Harper Collins, 1992); Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear; and The Shining Path of Peru, edited by David Scott Palmer (New York: St. Martin's, 1992). For two reviews of current literature, see Carlos Iván Degregori, “Campesinado andino y violencia: balance de una década de estudios,” in Perú: el problema agrario en debate SEPIA IV, edited by Degregori, Javier Escobal, and Benjamín Marticorena, 413–40 (Lima: Universidad Nacional de la Amazonia Peruana y Seminario Permanente de Investigación Agraria, 1992); and Orin Starn, “New Literature on Peru's Sendero Luminoso,” LARR 27, no. 2 (1992):212–26.