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The Past and Present Society

The Place of the Peasantry in the National Life of Peru in the Nineteenth CenturyAuthor(s): Jean PielSource: Past & Present, No. 46 (Feb., 1970), pp. 108-133Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society

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THE PLACE OF THE PEASANTRY IN THENATIONAL LIFE OF PERU IN THENINETEENTH CENTURY *UNTIL VERY RECENTLY,THE PEASANTRY HAS BEEN NOTABLY ABSENTfrombookson modernPeru, andits historystill remains to be written.Yet at least until about 1950 the majorityof the Peruvianpopulationwas still rural. Could it be that, in contrastto Mexico for example,the peasantryhas not played any activer1le in the life of independentPeru? Or are we rather faced with a deliberate and persistentcensorship - by an official school of historical scholarship of the"Indian" peasantry1- in a history that is written by creoles forcreoles?In fact, neither abroad nor in Peru has there been a systematicstudy of the Peruvian peasantry. All that one can find in theliterature concerning contemporary peasant movements in thiscountry are a few incomplete chapters, diffused among the generalworks on the historyof the Republic;some pagesin localmonographs,long since forgotten;a few books on the native anti-colonialrebellionsof the eighteenth century; lastly, a few articles or essays by socio-logists and political commentatorswritten around 1930, and one ortwo more since 1956. There is hardly anything written on thehistory of modern agriculture. To help us reconstructthe legal andsociological structure of the Peruvian countryside there are merelya few dozen superficial and repetitive papers on rural or "native"law. In all, some few hundred pages that are useful. Takentogether, these works are certainlynot negligible, but it is still verylittle when we consider the importance of the subject in a countrywhose national economy, apart from a few extractive industries(saltpetre, guano), was built up throughout the nineteenth centuryessentiallyon a basis of agricultureand cattlerearing.

* Translation from the French prepared by J. Reis, J. Israel and T. W. Mason(Oxford).1"Indian": a concept created by the dominant classes in Peru to cover inone word the rural and partially autochthonous mass of the population, whichwas dominated by a "white", creole or mestizo elite under a system of social,fiscal and juridical values of a racist and colonial type, inherited from the time ofSpanish rule. In no circumstances is the word of any use for describinga racial or ethnic reality; it does not exist and has never existed at any time inthe history of Peru. The word is used here with these structures in mind andonly for the sake of simplicity.

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 109Under such conditions, it may appearsomewhat presumptuousto

try to give an account of the relationshipbetween the peasantryandthe nation as a whole within the bounds of an article. It is nonethe-less both necessary and possible to make a first effort. Thehistorian is of course not neutral. In the presence of the lie-by-omission perpetratedby urban creole historiography,and by inter-national historiography n its wake, concerningthe peasants of Peru,it is not unreasonableto hope that this article may be the first ofa series of reparationsmade by historians to the Peruvianpeasantsofthe last century and to their descendantstoday. Moreover, startingfrom the bibliographicalbases alreadymentioned and from researchconducted over the past five years on the agrarianhistoryof modernPeru, the author now believes it possible to make certainelementaryobservations and to producean interpretativeessay on the peasantry.The originalsourcesconsulted in Peru consist of judicialor notarialarchives, which throw light on the evolution of landed propertyandthe legal aspects of agrarianconflicts. They also include the officialpapers and reports of the different ministries during the nineteenthcentury; the reports by the provincialauthorities(governors,prefects,et al.); the records of the congressionaldebates; and articles in thenewspapersof the capitalandprovinces. All of thesegiveinformationon the judicial, egislativeandpoliticalsituationof the peasantsof Peruin the nineteenthcentury. On the economicaspectsof this study, thePeruviancustoms and treasuryarchivesprovide only incomplete andcomparativelyrecent series of statistics which must be treated withcaution. It is therefore necessary to consult also the sources onPeruvian history which are available in Europe: the French andBritish Consular reports of the past century; the tables with thecommercialreturns of overseas countries, to be found in Paris; andalso in London, the Accounts and Papersin ParliamentaryPapersandthe Customs and Excise series in the Public Record Office. For hiscommunication to the Stuttgart Historical Congress in 1968, "LaCoyunturaComercialdel Siglo XIX en elPeru",the PeruvianhistorianHeraclio Bonilla used the latter in conjunctionwith the French andPeruvian materials in a more systematic fashion.2 The author isheavily indebted to Sefior Bonilla's work for most of the statisticalevidence presented below (see Graphs, between pp. 132 and 133).Finally, concerning demographicevolution, a study of the Peruvianpeasantrycan make cautious use of the fiscal census at the end of thecolonial period and, under the Republic, of the national censuses of

2 H. Bonilla, "La Coyuntura Comercial del Siglo XIX en el Peru"(unpublished).

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IIO PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 461876, 1940 and 1961. This first contribution to the recent history ofthe Peruvian peasantry is made therefore within these limits ofinformation.

At the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, towards the end of theperiod of Spanish colonial domination, rural Peru was essentiallycomposed of three distinct regions:- the oases of irrigationon the desert-likecoast of the Pacific;- the cold or temperate valleys and plateaux of the Andeanmountains at altitudes between 2,500 and 4,500 metres;- the low-lying tropical valleys at the foot of the eastern slopesof the Andes, in the Amazonbasin.The Peruviancoastalregion is a long strip of desert land, wedgedbetween the Pacific and the Andes. At a very early date, sedentarycivilizations,which had mastered techniques of irrigation,settled inthe deltas of the torrentialrivers that descend from the mountains,where they left some of the most beautiful archaeologicalremains inpre-ColumbanAmerica (the Mochica, Nazca, Chancayand Paracascivilizations, the Chimu empire, and so on). When the Spaniardsconquered this area they confiscated,for the benefit of the Churchand of private persons, the lands which had been devoted within theInca empire to the Sun, the local gods and the Inca, though withoutmaking any substantialchanges in their irrigationpatterns. Mean-while the rural Indian communities, which had been deprived ofthese lands and decimated by new epidemic diseases, were beingsubjected to the rule of trustees of the colonial administration(encomenderos),or "reduced" to smaller holdings and villages(reducciones),established around 1570 by Viceroy Toledo accordingto Spanish administrative and fiscal requirements. Beside thesere-structured communal lands, there was a rapid growth of large-scale estates (haciendas)and - thanks to the proximity of ports, tothe subjectionof Indian labourandto the importationof Negro slavesfrom Africa - these were soon developing speculative crops forexport, such as cotton, sugarcane, food crops and dye-woods.A certain degree of mobility in the coastal agrariansociety of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries was brought about by thisintegrationinto the internationalmarketeconomy and by the growthof a regional urban consumer market: the latter derived from thefact that the great landownersand their clienteles lived in the towns,close to the vice-regal authorities. Thus at the beginning of the

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERUVIAN PEASANTRY III

nineteenth centurythe coastalpeasantrywas quite a mixture of races.Side by side with the Indians, who still survivedin the old reducciones,there were black slaves, a number of Asians who had immigratedduring the eighteenth century as a result of trade with Manila andthe Far East, and, of course, every possible mixture between theseraces and the dominant white race, including mestizos, mulattos,zambos,quarterousandothers. Againstsuch abackdropof racialandethnic heterogeneity, colonial law sanctioned the diversity of thissociety with a system of castes, established accordingto apparentlyracial criteria; it distinguished between blacks, Indians, mestizos,creoles and Spaniards, but in fact the distinctions were fiscal andsociological. Each caste was subject to particularrestrictions andtaxes. The Indianspaida tribute,the mestizospaid a caste contribu-tion and so on. With such a variety of personal status, one canunderstandwhy the peasantsof the coastplayed hardlyany partin thetroubles which shook the vice-royalty in the eighteenth century.Moreover,the social controlassertedby the all-powerfularistocracyofgreatlandownersover these peasants, throughthe vice-regaladminis-tration at Lima, the provincialcityin whichtheylived, andthroughthelarge propertieswhich they owned and exploited, made it impossiblefor the coastal peasantryto appearas an independent force. Negroslaves, apartfrom their moments of desperaterebellion,neverthoughtof challenging the world in any way other than running away fromtheir forced labour, or killing their owner, or his overseer. Theirhorizon never extended beyond the estate where they worked fromsunriseto sundownandwhere,whilst waitingfor death,they werefed,housed (in very bad conditions, either in a straw hut for families,or in a rancho - a sort of collective dormitory hangar - forbachelors),clothed,andwhippedorimprisoned f theywereconsidered"lazy" or disobedient. The Indian peasants from the reductionswere in theory more free. In fact, they were enclosed within amarginaland autarkiceconomy, on an amputated territorycomposedof excessively small plots of land; they continued the traditions ofculture and folk-lore which were no longer more than the shadow orparody of the ancient pre-Columbansocieties. Here too, there wasno possibility of interfering in the dominant society that excludedthem. The share-croppersormestizosmallholderscould alsohave nopretensions to an active historical r61e. They depended directly orindirectly on important creole landowners, either by renting theirpiece of land from them, or because their patronageand protectioninvolved them in one of the contending networks of local clients ofthe hispaniccreoleelite. In such a society the only formsof agrarian

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I I2 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46strife were the escapes of slaves, the revolts by individuals, and, intimes of unrest,ruralbanditryor enrolmentin the regularor irregulararmed bands.For the enormous mass of Andean peasants matters were quiteotherwise. If one can estimatethat in 1800-20 the peasantrymadeupmore than90percentof the populationofPeru-the officialcensusgavethe total population as being 1,249,723 in 1795 - it is clear that theIndian peasantry, particularlythat of the Andes, was some three-quarters of this total. This percentage was to diminish slightlyduring the nineteenth century. The main characteristicsof theAndeanpeasantrywere its massivenessandits "Indianness". Never-theless, beneath the surface of its juridicalunity one can find manydivisions in it at the beginning of the nineteenth century, above allethnic divisions. The Spaniardswere able to make the most of therivalries that were endemic in the Inca empire at the time of theConquest. This empire had just succeeded in bringingoverseventydifferent kingdoms, principalities, tribal confederations and ethnicgroupings under a single authority. Three centuries later thesedivisions still remained, despite the unifying effort of Church andCrown- for instance between the Quechua who were the majority,and the Aymaraswho were the pastoral population of the very highplateaux of Southern Peru and of Bolivia. But there were otherstoo: between regions, between villages and between valleys. Thedominant features of the colonial Andean economy, its autarkyandregionalism,in conjunctionwith the naturalisolation of the areasofthe high mountains, explain this parochialspirit. Even within eachvillage, each agrarianand territorialcommunity (ayllu), there wereold rivalries of tribal origin. Very often a village or a communitywould be divided into two rivalthough complementaryparties,whichfought to control each other and which neutralizedeach other when-ever a conflictarose. This trait was a remnantfrom at least the Inca,if not the pre-Inca period.But the really great divide was between the "free" communitiesand the communitiesof serfs. The Andean haciendaarose,generallyspeaking, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries out of theneeds of the mines. Its purpose was to provide the mines withlabour, provisions, meat, hides and beasts of burden. Later, in thecourse of the eighteenth century, the contraction of the miningeconomy led to the decline of more than one great estate andoccasionallya relaxationof its hold on the ruralsociety of the Andes,thus enablingthe Indian communityto regain a degreeof autonomyunder the direction of its traditional leadership (curaca). In any

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THENINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 113case, within a great Andean estate the relations of production contin-ued to be quasi-servile. Colonos,yanaconas, gente propria, peones,arrendireswere all obliged to perform unpaid duties in exchange fora piece of land; they lived under different forms of debt-peonagewithout security of tenure. Thus the servile ruralcommunityof thehacienda,under a strict subjection to the landlord who was the solelegal authorityon his own land, is clearlydistinguishedfrom the freeIndian community which, led by its caciqueand its curaca, enjoyedconsiderable independence from the Spanish colonizers. On theone hand there was the serf, tied to the land and to the person of hismaster;on the other, the peasantwho, within his community, enjoyedthe use and the co-ownershipof his land, in the name of his ancestorssince "time immemorial"according to the official formula.The differencesbetween these two categoriesof peasantsmust notbe exaggeratedhowever: the technology in both sectors of peasantsociety was rudimentary. They worked usuallyin groups, and useda sort of hoe of Inca design (chaquitaccla) for breaking up thesoil. The sole innovations brought by the Spanish conquestwere the iron blade attachedto this autochthonoustool, the mediter-raneanswing plough and, above all, the acclimatizationof new plants(Europeancereals)and new animals(oxen, sheep, horses, mules, pigsand fowl, the latter two from the seventeenth century on). Theagriculturalproductivity of the Andean peasantry,whether free orservile, was therefore extremely low and living conditions were nobetter. Outsidethe areaswith a high incidenceof mestizos,wherethetypical house was of mestizo abode(crude brickwork)with a mediter-ranean round-tiled roof as in Cajamarca,the characteristicIndianresidencethroughoutthe Andes was a poorone, with the walls madeofstone and the roof of thatch. It had one roomonly withoutwindowsor chimney, and appearedas a greyorbrownbuilding againstthe greyor brown backgroundof the scenery. This was the environmentofthe annual cycle of agriculturalwork, in which the monotony of theIndian family's life was only broken by the bad years caused byscarcities, amines andepidemicsamongbothmenand livestock. Lifeexpectancy was extremely low and infant mortality, in a populationwhich had a seriousproteindeficiencydue to an essentiallyvegetariandiet, was also extremely high. Under the veneer of Christianityimposed by the Spanish clergy, the pre-Columban cycle of paganreligiousfestivals was the only thing to enliven villagelife occasionally.It gave a special emphasis to the rhythm of agriculturalwork and,through the great expense that the wealthierpeasantshad to bear inorganizingthe festivals and paying for them, helped to restore someeconomic equality within the rural community.

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114 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46Furthermore,even when "free",an Indiancommunitywas subjectnot to the hacendadobut to the district governor appointed by the

Crown, the corregidor. As descendants of those defeated in theConquest, the Indian peasants in the communities had to pay thetribute, a heavy capitation tax in money or in kind. In additionthere was the mita, or forced labourin the mines of Huancavelica orPotosi. This meant that one part of the population had to travelthousands of kilometres from its village to go and work like galley-slaves, more or less without payment, in the silver or mercurymines.For those staying behind in the village, there was the obligation towork in the pottery or weaving workshops owned by the Crown(obrajes),where conditions were particularlybad - and again therewas no pay. To all these should be added the several corvdesandthe obligationto work for the corregidors a servant,driver or carrier;andfinally,when the Bourbonscame to powerin Spain,the unbearablereparto,by which the corregidores ere allowed to force the purchaseof Spanish merchandiseon the peasantsat monopoly prices. Giventhese conditions, it comes as no surprisethat the eighteenth centurywas shaken by some terrible peasant revolts against the tax system.The most famous took place in 1780. It was led by Tupac Amaruand it set alight the whole of the regionwhich today forms SouthernPeru, most of the Bolivian highlands, and had repercussionsas farafieldas Argentina,Ecuador and Columbia.Two further distinct groups within the Peruvianpeasantryin thenineteenthcenturywere the QuechuaIndiancolonizers who hadcomedown from the highlands,and the Amazon Indiansregroupedaroundthe christian missions on the eastern side of the Andes. Here onefinds two sorts of economy: that of the haciendas of the tropicalvalleys where servile colonists grew cocoa, sugar cane (for makingalcoholic drinks) and several kinds of food crops; and that of thesemi-nomadic forest Indians, drawn to Franciscan or Dominicanmissions, who gatheredfeathers,the barkof quina, exotic goods andso on, andsold them in local markets. The rise of this veryparticulartype of "peasantry"goes back only to the late seventeenth century,more especially to the eighteenth century. It was productive ofconflicts: between 1750 and 1760, as a result of the contact betweenthese two types of agriculturaleconomy, a messianic leader, JuanSantos Atahualpa, attempted to reconstitute the Inca empire in theTarma region and expel the exploiting whites. After resistingseveral Spanish armies for more than twenty years, he died,unvanquished.Divided, dominated, but of great potential force - such was the

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THENINETEENTH-CENTURYERUVIANPEASANTRY 115peasantry inherited by nineteenth-century Peru. The "Indian"element was by far the largest; from it was raised the main bulk ofthe fiscal revenue on which the hispano-creoleadministrationdepen-ded. At least until 1790-18oo, the Indians, along with the Negroslaves, were the basis for the flowering economy of the vice-royaltyof Peru, as its agriculturalproducersand its forced labourers. Theyfed the local population,producedfor the exportmarketand extractedthe silver that made Spain rich. The prosperity of the creoleplanterswas founded on the labourof Negro slaves and on the leviesmade on the Indian share-croppersor serfs (yanaconas,colonos)whohad to pay their landlord a rent that could be as much as 50o-8opercent of their crops in addition to the free services rendered. Themestizofarmers, or "associates",paid for their part a rent of 30-50per cent of the value of their harvestto the middle-sized landowners,white or mestizo, n the villages. All of Peru's legendarywealth wasthus based on this extreme exploitationof the peasants. If only forthis reason, the Peruvian peasantry had a place of fundamentalimportancein the history of the emergingnation.But this is not all. When the question of achievingindependencefor Peru was posed, the Libertadoreswho fought for it turned to thepeasantry, particularlyto the Indians, for the recruitment of theirtroops.Already in the eighteenth century, Gabriel Condorcanqui, caciqueof Tungasuca, raised from among the tax-paying Indian peasantsthe vast mass of his rebels againstthe hardeningof the fiscal systemin the colonies by the Spanish Bourbons. Despite its undertonesofanti-white racialwar, this was basicallya movement directed againstthe "bad government"of the colonial system, rather than againsttheSpanish. In this sense, althoughit was not explicitlyan anti-SpanishPeruvian nationalism, it was perhaps much more significant thanlater creole nationalism in that it stated the demand for an end to thecolonial system itself. In 1780, this great revolutionary leadercrystallized the demands of a peasantrythat was doubly colonized:victim of the colonialismof the Spaniards n Peru, and of the internalcolonialism of the creoles over the Indian peasantry. Under theseconditions it was impossible for the Indian revolt to form an alliancewith the creoles. On the other hand, forty years later, the creolenationalistswere able to mobilize the peasantrycontrolled by themagainstthe first-degreecolonialexploitationof which they, the creoles,were the victims. They achieved this mobilization by playing offtheir clienteles against one other and by using their dominationover partof the peasantry;thus the r1le to be played by the peasantry

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116 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46in the War of Independence was settled in advance: whether undercreole or mestizoleaders, or under loyalist or Spanish leaders, it wascannon-fodder,sacrificedon the battle-fields for the cause arbitrarilydetermined by the loyalties of the local elites, by the marches andcounter-marches of the armies and their recruiting sergeants, bylast-minute changes of heart of local caudillos. In short, the Per-uvian peasantry provided a supply of food and cavalry soldiers forbattles that were not its own, since the militarychiefs of the Indepen-dence period neverthought of presentingan agrarianprogramme hatwould produce an independent rising of peasants; this they did notwant at all. At Junin and Ayacucho, the Peruvian soldiers on thetwo sides, that of the Crown and that of Independence, killed eachother without a thought. To the majority he idea of an independentPeru meantnothing. But at the end of the battle,when the deadandthe wounded had been counted, they, and hardly anyone else, werethe ones who made the "contribution of blood" to the saga of eman-cipation.Yet where was their gain? In the first place they bore a burdenof war heavier than that of any other social class in Latin America(Peru was the last Spanish bastion to succumb, in 1823) - at firston behalf of the Spanish then of the Libertadores. Theirs was theprivilege of providing horses and food for the armies, and of payingthe taxes out of which these armieswere equipped. Havingdone thisthey had then to endure the period of instability in the countrysidewhich resulted from the operationsof regulararmies,insurgentbandsandgroupsof bandits whose activitieseverywheredisruptedthe tradit-ional social order. Finally, it was their land which was turned intobattlefields, their products which suffered from the rupture of war-time connections with Europe. Those sectors of agriculture pro-ducing for the export marketunderwenta severe crisis. To give anidea of the extent of this recession, it is sufficient to say that thevalue of exports from Callao to Cadiz lay between one and twomillion pounds sterling per annum during the period 1785 to 1795,whereasbetween1809and1823,when commercial inks withSpainwerealmost completely broken owing to the Napoleonic wars in Europeand Bolivar's war in America,the exportsfrom Peru to Great Britain- which in part replaced Spain as Peru's market- varied betweennothingand ?7o,ooo sterling.3 The cost of the Warof Independencewas thus heavy for the Peruvian peasantry, and the creole stateproclaimed by San Martin at Lima in 1823 owed everything to it.

3Annals of the Treasury of Peru (Lima, 1902). Customs and Excise files,Public Record Office, vol. I, sect. 4; vols. 4 and 94.

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THENINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 117It is true that the peasantry alone would never have been able toconceive an independent Peruvian nation. But it is also the casethat without it, the creoleelite would havebeen incapableof breakingout of the political impasse, into which the break with NapoleonicSpain had thrown it, simply by proclaiming political independence.Did the new masters of Peru recognize this debt towards theirpeasants, or did they simply retain them as a colonized people?What was their agrarianprogrammein 1823?For the period from 1823 to I830, there is clear evidence on thismatterin the decrees and legislativedecisions. Peru had been ruinedby fifteen years of uninterruptedwarfareand was heavily indebtedto European merchants (particularlythe English); the mines andthe technically backward plantations were run right down, andthe creole mercantilebourgeoisie had become utterly unenterprisingas a result of the facilities conferred by a colonial commercialmonopoly. The land was the country's only wealth, and - once ithad been freed from juridicalconstraints and made productive- itwas the sole possible basis for capital formation. San Martin likeBolivar, therefore, decided to "free" the land by decree, abolishingentailmentto buy it up or to suppressthe variouslegal and customaryrelationships censos ndcapellanias) ywhichit wasmortgaged orthreegenerations, or in some cases in perpetuity, and to secularize theproperty of all convents where there was not a minimum of sevenmembers. But whereasthe Spanish Crownhad alwaysprotectedtheIndian communities (they were the basis of the tax and mita system)against the expansionist tendencies of the latifundia, the liberalspiritof the Libertadores emanded the end of the collectiveownershipof inalienable lands. Here were in fact enormous reserves of land,often under-utilizedin consequenceof the small size of the populationat the time, and which, in the view of the creoles who made theconstitution, ought either to become a part of the public domain, orto come under private ownershipand thus assist the economic revivalof the independent Republic.From another point of view, it was a scandal that the coloniallegislation on personal status was retained under the new liberalorder. From 1823, San Martin began moving forward to theprogressiveextinction of black slavery, by limiting or forbiddingtheimportation of slaves and by the automatic emancipationof all thechildren born of slaves in Peru. In the same spirit, he proclaimedthat all inhabitants of Peru were "Peruvians", whether Indian orcreole. It only remained to eradicatethe Indian communities, thesole support of the special social and legal status of the Andean

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I18 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46peasants, in order to translate this ideology into fact. Bolivartherefore decreed the dissolution of these communities and of theircredit organizationssuch as the Caja de censos de Indios. Withineach community he ordered the distributionof plots of land to eachfamily as its private property, the surplus to become part of thepublic domain. The new creole state was thus creating for itselfa largefund of landedwealthwhich, in the absenceof money, it usedto reward its best servants, who received concessions or outrightgifts of land, in some cases very large. (O'Higgins received severallarge haciendason the coast in return for his services in the war ofPeruvianLiberation.) The new state devised in this way a means ofassuringitself of the supportof a new landed creoleelite, in the placeof the old Spanishone. At the same time it hoped to base the youngrepublic on the support of the Indian ex-communal peasants, nowturned into independent smallholders. By eradicatingthe hispanic-colonial servitudes that had formerly precluded their economic andjuridicalexistence, the liberalagrarianprogrammeof the Libertadoresproduced both the new creole latifundiaand the new Indian small-holdings. In principle, it obviouslyaimed at decolonizing the landsof Peru and ending the ancient political and legal domination of themetropolis. The contradiction in its intentions, however, was thatit made no provisionfor the Indian occupationof the greatestates ofthe creoles. In fact, it is strikingthat in all this legislationthere is nomention of the Indian peasants who were serfs on the haciendas.Their only gain was that they were freed, in principle only,from having to perform services gratis; this would have beenfeasible if the money economy had simultaneouslybeen extended,butthis did not occur at the time of Independence. In addition theconflict between the immense estates being handed out to militarycaudillosor to the members of their followings, and the minusculeholdings of the Indians, whether private or collective, was a veryunequal one. In their credultity, passivity and ignorance, thepeasants of the communities were in a weak defensive position whenit came to the redistribution of land. Those in charge of theoperation,the surveyors,the lawyers,the caciques,he villagenotables,the mestizosand the tax officers,madesure they secured the best plotsand in this way they built up for themselves overnight estates ofthousands of hectares at the expense of the communal lands. Thisprocessreached such a point of excess that in 1828 and againin 1830,several decreesand circularswere sent out to localauthorities, nstruc-ting them to limit the disastrous effects of these redistributionsbymaking sure that the contractingIndians at least knew how to read

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERUVIAN PEASANTRY II19and write. A decree was finally issued ordering the suspension ofall redistribution of communal lands until 1850, revealing therebythe contradictionsin the legislation. This decree was not properlyapplied of course, but it bearseloquenttestimonyto the difficultythatthe independent republic was having in definingits relationswith thepeasantry.After 1823, the liberal ideology spawned three conflictingagrarianprogrammes,on which depended the fate and the place insociety of the Peruvian peasantryfor the remainder of the century.There is ampleevidence of the first in the press and the congressionaldebates until 1830, after which it was discarded. One might call itthe liberal-nationalistprogrammeand its first assumption was thatreal independence meant economic independence. To this end itsought a national Peruvianmarket,defended from the outside worldby tariffs,and with a free marketwithin. In agriculture his requiredmodernization, investment, and especially the transformationof theIndians and the other peasants into a class of independent small-holders who would be producers and consumers within the newlydeveloping market. Unfortunately neither the social structure- a national commercialbourgeoisiedid not exist - nor the economicsituation(see Graphs,betweenpp. 132and133)favoured he realizationof these ideas until after 1846 and they have not been takenup againto this day, aside from a few abortive attempts at the regional level.The other two directions in agrarianpolicy started from the fact ofPeru's economic dependence on the foreign commercial housesassociated with the exporting creole elite. Economic conditions inPeru were good or bad according to the fluctuations of the foreignmarketprices of cheaply produced goods such as saltpetre, guano andthe cinchona bark (quinine). If conditions were good, there wouldafter some time be an accumulationof capitalin the hands of the mainlandowner-exporters (foreign or creole) who would then invest inimprovingtheir landedpropertywith a view to increasingthe flow ofexports. At this point the new speculative latifundism of therepublicans would move forward: agriculturewould evolve, at theexpense of the Indian communities and of tenants with no securityoftenure, towards a wider and more direct utilization of increasinglyhighly capitalized large estates. On the other hand, during a badperiod, decapitalizationwould occur, speculativeagriculture(that isthe latifundia)would contractand the sectorof communalagricultureand share-cropping would be stabilized; the export-oriented elitewould then renounce the unpredictable gains of agriculturalproduction and would turn preferablyto compradorismo,uying up

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120 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46at low prices the surpluses produced by smallholders who wouldotherwise live outside any marketeconomy and produce on a house-hold scale for their own subsistence.By 1830 the legal structure of agrarianliberalism had been fullydefined and the place of the peasantry n Peru was to remain until theend of the century a function of political crises and of the social andeconomic fluctuations within the creole elite - a pattern modifiedonly by regionalvariations. Their neo-colonial status was ultimatelyto provokethe symptoms of an awakeningof the post-Independencepeasantry.

The proclamationof Independenceusheredin a periodof politicaland economic difficulties for Peru which only ended in 1854 with theriseto powerof the caudilloRamonCastilla. Until 1846the balanceoftrade with GreatBritain,easilyPeru's largesttradingpartner,showeda large deficit (see Graphs, between pp. 132 and 133). IndependentPeru started off with substantial debts in London resultingfrom thecosts of the Warof Independence,andthese debts grew continuallyinsize duringthe following twenty years. There was no agriculturalormining sector capable of producing a flow of exports to compensatefor the financialand commercialdependenceof Peruon the European- mainlyEnglish- agentsat work in its territory. With neither thewill nor the way to promote economic protection, the creole leadersresorted instead to free tradeand to the use of the money borrowedinEnglandfor the purchaseof Europeanor Britishgoods at high prices- as a form of "repayment" of their foreign debts. During theshort period between 1823 and 1825 some latifundists and mine-owners tried to invest their money by purchasingBritish equipmentfor their enterprises. Soon, however, the flow of imports was cutdown to luxuries and semi-luxuries such as clothing, French andEnglish textiles, books, haberdashery, hardware, Parisian goods.At the same time there was a stagnation or a collapse of mineralexports, the output of products gathered from the Amazon forests(selva) fell seriously until 1842, and the export of cotton fromthe coastal region remained persistently at a low level until 1850-2.Only the export of wool, a typical Andean product of the centre andsouth of Peru (derived from sheep, lamas, alpacas and vicunas)started to improve after 1836, and then advanced far more rapidlythan the remainderof the agriculturalsector, reachinghigh points in1842, 1848 and 1852. These differences in the evolution of the

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THENINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 121

component parts of the national economy were constitutive of thecrisis that the economy and its agriculturewere undergoing at thetime (see Graphs, between pp. 132 and 133).The general characteristicsof the economic system which thenbecameestablished n Peruare those of the well-knowncompradorismo.The creole leadership was in debt; it was diplomatically dependentupon other countries; its political legitimacyat home and abroadwasstill weak. In these conditionsit literallyturned over the economy ofthe country to the export/importbusinesses controlledby foreigners,who operatedvia the ports where their creoleagents had their offices.The sole concern of these commercialagents was to maximize theirprofits from trade, without a thought to investment in the actualproductive processes. After 1836, wherever a form of productionexisted thatrequiredlittle or no investmentat all, therewas a prospectof economic improvement. Such was the case of the wool exportsfrom the sierra,produced by haciendaswhich were created either byBolivar'sdecrees at the expense of the Indian communities, or - inthose areas which had escapedthe depredationsof the new latifundia- by the Indian communities themselves. The Puno region,on thesouthern limits of the PeruvianAndes, was one such area. In bothcases, the servileor free Indian labourforce entirelymet its own needfor food, and anysurplusproduced,generallyfrom sheep-rearing,wasavailablefor the market. The surplus was either levied as land rentpaid to the hacendado n kind, or was sold direct by the free Indianproducers to commercial agents who travelled through the Andeanhinterland. The bales of wool thus acquiredwould be accumulatedby commercialhouses, in the south at Arequipa and in the centre atLima, prior to being exported. After a while, this started thecirculation of money in the Andes again. Not only did the newlatifundiabeginto prosper by combiningarable arming n the Andeanvalleys, which supplied local or regional demand, with extensivesheep-rearingin the Puna highlands, but some Indian communitiesprosperedby bringingtheir produceinto the regionalIndian fairsandmarkets. For instance, the extraordinarydegree of activity at theannual fair of Vilque, near Puno, around 1840, is known to us:thousandsof mules used to go there from Tucuman (Argentina),andwool, driedmeat, cheese,butter, lard,potteryand home-woven woollencloth were broughtthere from the communities and haciendason thePeruvianand Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca. On the other hand,one could also find Swiss watches, almanacks from Bristol, cottoncloth from Liverpool, Parisian handkerchiefs and suchlike beingbroughtthereby mulefrom the stores in Tacna orArequipaby mestizo

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 123desperatelyopposedthe decree of San Martinfor the freeingof slaves,since to retainthe latter was to retain at least that little of their capitaland their productive capacitywhich they still had.In 1840a new economic erabeganfor the countrywith the exploita-tion in the coastalareas of the depositsof guano (bird-droppingsusedas a fertilizer),a new speculative export venture. But the benefitwasnot yet to be felt by the nationaleconomy, as the activity fell into thehands of a few creoleagentswho were in close associationwith Britishcommercial houses. Despite the quick rise in the export of thisproduct to Europe up to 1850, the resulting capital accumulationinPeruvian hands was insufficient for its investment in agriculturalproductionto have asignificanteffect.These economic and agrarianconditions only served to reinforcethe defects of the economic and social structure of independentPeru.In the absence of any opportunitiesfor highly capitalizedproduction,exports were left entirely to the low-productivity agricultureof thesierra. With commercialprofits being of a more certainnaturethanthose from mining or agriculture,the entrepreneurial pirit tended todisappear. With compradorismon certain branches of the exporttrade - products such as wool and guano - the development ofagriculturewas inhibited, and this in turn led the creole elites moreand more into compradorismo.At the political level, the creole elitealso put its relations with the peasantry on a neo-colonial footing,particularly in the fiscal and legal spheres. According to adecree of San Martin, every inhabitant of Peru was in theory aPeruvian. Faced with financial difficulties, the state in fact soonrevived the colonial tax system. In 1829 the Contribucion e castaswas re-introduced for the mestizopopulationon the coast. At aboutthe same time, the Indian communities in the Andes were obliged topay a new type of colonial tax, the Contribucion e indigenas. Notcontent with having brought back in this way the juridicalfigure ofthe "native" (Indian), which the Libertadores ad sought to abolish,the legislators ordered that this new imposition be raised accordingto the regulations contained in the vice-regal circularof 1784. Wefind here a contradiction in creole legal thinking: while Bolivar hadwanted to eradicate the collective ownership of land by the Indiancommunities, this new arrangement was re-establishing collectiveresponsibilityfor tax payment, in the spirit of the 1784 circular.

To get an idea of what these peasantcontributionsmeant to the newstate it is enough to say that they were practicallythe only realsourceof revenue upon which it could count; the revenue from the customshad been given as a guaranteeto foreignersfor the loans made to the

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124 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46state. It is therefore worth studying the evolution of the new taxesduring this period. From the Contribucion e castas which existedbetween 1829 and 1840, the state received in 1830 approximately431,000 pesos; this was the time when the small mestizoproducersonthe coast were paying for government. But in 1847, when thisimpost no longer existed, 1,326,931 of the 1,569,084 pesos receivedby the state came from the Andean Indian peasants in the shapeof the Contribucion e indigenas. In this one can see the emergenceof a characteristicof the Peruvian social order that was to remainunchanged: the reduction to colonial status of the Andean peasantryin the heart of the country. Its fate until the end of the nineteenthcentury was quite different from that of the coastalpeasantry,whichwas rapidly de-colonized. Its status was defined by three traits:intensive commercial exploitation through compradorismo,ntensivefiscalexploitationby the state,and the special personalstatus accordedto the "Indian" as a captiveof the autarkichacienda n the sierraor ofthe native community.When in 1846 one sector of the export trade began to enjoy a newand more stable prosperity- the guano trade of the creole agentsassociated with foreign interests - the task of extracting Peruvianagriculturefrom the impasse of its own contradictionsfell to RamonCastilla. To dothis, he had to freethepeasantry rompartof the heavycolonial burden. In fact, after 1840 the mestizo peasants were nolonger included in the fiscal and juridical system of the "castes".When he rose to power in 1854, Castillafreed all slaves, gave stateindemnitiesto their owners, andput an end to the Contribucionf thenatives. This policywas madepossibleby the accumulationof capitalduringthe previousdecadeof profitableguanoextraction. Profitsandthe number of those making them both started to grow and a newwealthybourgeoisiefinallyappeared. Its originswent back to the oldcreole families or to the recipients of land concessions at the time ofIndependence; a large part of the guano producerswere also land-owners on the coast. Having acquiredthe capitalthat the Peruvianlanded elite did not have, they were able to deal with other problemssuch as technical equipment and labour. In 1849 one of the mainguano magnates, a man called Elias, imported a steam plant for hisplantations and started a new trade in human cattle which was toenjoy an enormousgrowth until 1878: the Negro slaveson the coastalplantationswere replacedby Chinesecoolies from Macaoand Canton.The dreadfulway in which they were recruitedand transportedfromChina to Peru has been fully described elsewhere.4 What should

4 See especiallyJ. Stewart, ChineseBondage n Peru(Duke U.P., Durham,1951).

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THENINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 125be considered here is the connection between this new and profitabletraffic,associated with the beginnings of mechanizedagriculture,andthe possibilityof abolishingNegro slavery;andfurther,the changesinthe relations of production on the cotton, sugar-caneand food-crophaciendasof the coastal area. The slaves were followed by a sort ofwretched Asian proletariat, over-exploited and tied to the land bya refined system of debts, which presented these unfortunate coolieswith a choice between corporalpunishment and imprisonment,andthe indefinite renewal of their contracts. From the point of view ofthe landedaristocracy, t was an extremelyprofitablebusiness. Theysuddenly found themselves with large sums of money received fromthe state as indemnity for the loss of their freed slaves, and werethus able to purchase seed, plants and Chinese labour. As forthe freed slaves who were often attached to the master's clientele,they were made intoyanaconas, ived on the marginsof the haciendas,and provided a convenient unpaid labour force at harvest time anda not insignificantsourceof revenuein the form of rent. Everythingtherefore conspired to promote the rapid growth of a speculativeagricultureon the coast which would be able to add its own exportproductsto the existingtradein guanoand saltpetre. An atmosphereof economic euphoria developed and persisted until I866, then againuntil 1876. Meanwhile, in the sierra the rise of extensive cattlebreeding, a low-yield activity requiring little capital investment,became more and more noticeable. The ruralsociety of the Andeswas increasinglypenetratedby the marketeconomyand this producedin it a subtle but profound change from which the main advantagewent to the latifundia associated with the wool, leather and skinexporting houses of Lima and Arequipa. Suddenly, in 1866, thecontradictions innate in the economic development since Castilla'spresidency came to a head. For the first time the Indian peasantrywasgoing to playa realpart.Spain had not entirely given up its imperialambitions abroad andwanted to get hold of the Peruvianguanoislands. A shortwar ensuedin which Peru was victorious. In the same year on the domesticfront, the new civilian aristocracyof latifundia-owning exporters inthe "Civilist" party started their movement against the power of themilitary caudillos. As the struggle expanded, some of them calledfor provincial risings to support the movement in the capital. InCuzco, the liberals made a vain attempt to raise the Indians butfurther south their call was takenup in the Puno region by the Indiancommunities led by Juan Bustamante.Juan Bustamante is a little-known but very attractive figure in

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126 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46Peruvianhistory. He was a liberal and a merchant. In Cabanillas,near Puno, where he did his business in wool, he had become notedfor his philanthropic and progressive spirit. In his concern forimprovingthe communications of his district, he had a public bridgebuilt at his own expense. He was spotted by the centralauthoritieswho made him Prefect of Lima where he inaugurateda large-scalepolicy of public works, also at his own expense. It is also known ofhim that he travelledin WesternEuropeand in Russia, that he madecontact with several currents of European romantic and socialistthought, and that under the Republic he producedthe first Peruvianbook to describe the scandalousplight of the Indian peasantry.5 Hewas elected to Congressandin the yearsbefore 1866 drewattentiontohimself by his campaignson behalf of the Indians. To this end, heand some highly placedcreolesfounded in Lima in 1867 "The Societyof the Friends of the Indians", the first organizedmanifestation ofpolitical nativism in independent Peru. Among his many causeswas his defence in Congress and in public of his neighbours in theIndian communities of Cabanillaswho were being ruthlesslyexploitedby the local gobernadores. The latter combined their administrativeduties with their commercial interests as agents of the exportbusinesses in Arequipa, and had imposed on the Indian shepherdsa veritablewool levy by forcibly exchanging manufacturedgoods ofpoor quality at vastly inflated prices for huge quantities of wool.There is no doubt that it was this issue, in which he denounced theexcesses and crimes of compradorismon the sierra,and which mergedwith the factional struggles between liberals and conservatives inPuno, that led him to give up the legal struggle and to take on theleadershipof a great Indian uprising. In December 1867they tookPuno and were soon threateningCuzco, but in the end this precursorof militantnativismwas defeated and takenprisoner. He and dozensof his followers were massacred in horrible circumstances. InCongress the matter was quickly buried, but this did not alter thefact that the rebellion had impressed on creole society the politicalpower that the Indian peasantrycould exert if it found a leader anda voice to defend it.This crisis once past, the new commercial-landedelite enjoyedup to 1876 a remarkable period of development, expansion andprosperity. After 1870, Peru was the Latin American countrywhich received the largest amount of European investments; alsoagriculturebecame for the first time the principaleconomic activity.

5 Juan Bustamante, Los Indios del Perzi (Lima, 1867).

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THENINETEENTH-CENTURYERUVIANPEASANTRY 127Due to the dislocationof the cotton economy of the southern UnitedStates through the War of Secession, there was a considerable cottonboom in Peru between 1864 and 1872, with the help of capitalobtained in Liverpool. Following 1868-70 and the signing of theFranco-PeruvianDreyfus contract on the guano trade, French andBritish capitaland technicians began to play a part in the large-scaleproduction of sugar-cane, the export of which grew very rapidlybetween 1868 and1876. One of the most brilliantperiodsfor the newlatifundism of the coast was beginning. It spreadat the expense ofthe holdings of the yanaconasand colonoswho were expelled withouta thought, and at the expense of the irrigated lands belonging toIndian villages and communities. There was modernization andmechanization,not only of the fixed plant (such as cotton gins, boilersand refineryequipment for sugar) but even of the agriculturalworkitself (steam-driven tractors). These developments tended to turnthe labourforceof Chinese,Indians,mulattos and mestizos nto a land-less proletariat. Here and there, savage conflicts between ethnicminorities broke out, involving Chinese against mestizos, Spanishagainst autochthonousworkers,and so on.In 1876 the exports of the agriculturalsector reached their peak.This trade had been responsiblefor the prosperityof the bankswhichhad multiplied after 1864; and it had enabled the ruling landed andcommercialaristrocracy o satisfy its taste for Europeanculture andluxury goods. Important changes were also occurring at deeperlevels, affectingthe relationsof productionin agricultureand the verystructure of the Peruvian peasantry. At this moment the worldeconomiccrisis came anddrasticallyalteredeverything.In Peru it started with a complete financial collapse. In a fewmonths all the banks had to close down, owing to a rapid inflationbrought on by economic euphoria and commercial and financialdependence on foreign countries. Meanwhile Chile's old territorialambitions began to stir again, sharpened by the exploitation in thedisputed areas of saltpetre which, along with guano, had been ofsuch great economic advantage to Peru. There were, of course,Europeanfinancial interests behind these Latin American rivalries,and in 1879 the frivolous aristocracyof the nouveauxrichesand theold Lima families imprudently got Peru involved in the War ofthe Pacific without having made sufficient preparations. It wasa nationalcatastrophe. Despite a heroic militaryeffort,the Peruviancoast was soon occupiedfrom the sea by the Chileansand in the trainof this came the collapse of the political system established between1866 and 1876. For four years the economically most advanced

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128 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46areas were occupied and ravaged by the Chileans, who engaged ina systematic destruction of the Peruvian agriculturaland economicpotential built up in the preceding period. The occupiers exactedtaxes from the largerlandlords and dismantled the equipmentof thehaciendasand sent it to Chile;thosehacendados hoprovedrecalcitranthad their homes dynamited. At the same time armed bands weresent into the sierra to exact punitive levies from the hacendados,communities, towns and villages- these were ultimatelypaid eitherdirectly or indirectly by the Indian population, the eternal victim ofall such exactions. Meanwhile the legitimacy of the centralauthorities had melted away and a "collaborationist"president hadtried to save what he could from the disasterby agreeingto accepttheChilean occupation forces. In the south, however, Nicolas dePierola was disputing his authority and in the central Andes thestruggleknownas "the campaignof la Brena"wastakenup. A leaderappeared for the latter, and, drawing on the exasperation of theIndians at the excesses of the invaders and at the treason of most ofthe local authorities,he conducted a long-drawn-outand bitter waragainstthe enemy. It was a war of attritionfought by a smallregulararmy of Indian peasants from Ayacucho, which was supported bya multitude of peasant guerrillaswho rallied spontaneously againstthe oppressionsof the invaders. Thus, when a treatyfinallycame in1883, it was thanks to Caceres and his Indian guerrillas - oftendefeated but never vanquished- that Peruvian nationalhonour waspreserved.In Peru, desolatedby the debts and ruin caused by the war, every-thing had to be started from the beginning again. The state wasdiscredited by defeat, collaborationand the inter-partystruggles; itcould not face the peasantrywhich was by now in partarmed,and wasstill called upon, though not without risk, to take part in the conflictsbetween different creole factions in Lima and in the provinces. Inthe fight between Caceres and President Iglesias in 1885-6, the use ofthe peasantry as an ultimate political reserve force (now that thesuperstructureof the state had disintegrated)was taken up again -by Caceres. Some years later, Nicolas de Pierola used the samestrategy: raising, equipping and directing the efforts of severalrebellionsby groups of bandits (montoneras)n the provincesin orderto get rid of the quarrelsomeclique of militaryrulers then in power inLima. After two years of fighting, the convergenceof their separatestruggles enabled him to enter the presidentialpalace on horseback.This processwas accompanied by such a decentralizationof initiativethat the families of the regional caciqueswereableto settle old accounts

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURYERUVIANPEASANTRY 129among themselves in the course of conflicts which only appearedtohave a national political character. It is now necessaryto illustratethese generaltrends with accounts of particular nstances of each one.All of them show that a call to the peasantry for its political andmilitary support stirred seeds of revolt and sedition which were inthe end a threatto the very authors of such calls.The first case is that of a rebellion in 1886 in the Callejon deHuaylas, in the department of Ancash, which became known as"Atusparia'srevolt". It started off as a conflict between PresidentIglesias, in power since the evacuationof Peru by the Chileans, andGeneral Caceres who accused him of treason and wanted toreplace him in the presidency. A mestizo local agent of Caceresbecameawareof the benefit to be derivedfrom the discontent whichhadbeen endemicin the Indian communities around the departmentalcapital, since the prefect had obliged them to provide free labour forthe state andhad levied anarbitrary apitation axof two soles. On theday afterAtusparia,the mayorof one of these communities,had beenpublicly humiliated for daring to present a petition, the Indiansattacked the prefect's office and freed the prisoners there, killingseveral soldiers in the process. This might have had no furtherconsequences had not Atusparia (advised and doubtless armed byCaceres'sagent)set himselfup as the Indianprefectof the department.With the support of a redoubtableguerrilla eader,Uchcu Pedro, anIndian miner, he managed to gain control of the entire mountainarea of the department. It took several months for the troops sentfrom Lima to recover the region, and an importantconcession had tobe made: the terminationof the fiscalexcesses of the original prefect.In the courseof this pacificationthe mestizosabandonedthe rebellionandralliedto the centralauthority,albeit with some reluctance.

The second example is taken from the troubles at Huanta, in thedepartment of Ayacucho, between 189o and 1896. The situationwas defined by Pierola's struggle for power and the activities of hislocal supporters and enemies, each side being led by traditionallyhostile families of latifundists. After Pierola's final victory inLima, his man in Huanta became prefect, with the support of agroup of bandits composed of his "clients" and armed with severalheavy machine guns and a mountain cannon. In 1896 Nicolas dePierola, being short of money to buy back from the Chileans theprovinces which they had occupied, decided to raise a new tax: thissalt tax fell mainlyon the mestizoand Indian peasantry. In Huantathe man in charge of exacting this unpopulartax was obviously thePierolista prefect whose old enemies finally got their chance of

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130 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46revenge. They caused a rising of two thousand Indians opposed tothe salt tax and marchedthem to the prefect'soffice. The officewastaken and the prefect killed, and thus ended a classic "feudal"vendetta. At this point the movement jettisoned its authors, forinstead of laying down their weapons, the Indian peasantsraised theentireprovinceandstartedto threatenthe whitepopulation. It took aheavily armed column of eight hundred soldiers from Lima severalmonths of cruel fighting to breakthe rebellion; scorched earth tacticswere employed, from which the region was still sufferinga long timeafterwards.These were not, however, the only outbreaksof what was a generalagrarianand political crisis. In the northern and central PeruvianAndes similar violent conflicts occurred, managed at the outset byold local families who then lost the initiative to the Indians as theconflicts spread. Real caudillos, half-bandit, half-guerrillero, huscameto the fore at a provinciallevel, as for example Augusto Durandin Huanuco and Benel in Cajamarca. On the coast, particularly nwhat is today the department of Lambayaque, there were violentstrugglesamong bands armedby largelandownersor their agents forthe control of irrigationcanalsor over propertyboundaries. To thenorth, in Piurathere was an endemic state of agrarianbanditrywhichwas denounced each year by the prefects in their reports tothe centralgovernment. The causeslay in the economic crisis of themedium-sizedand rather old-fashioned haciendaswhich raisedcattle,and in the crisis of the contrabandtrade with neighbouringEcuador.The insoluble nature of the agrarianproblems and the deep state offerment of the peasantrywere embodied in the multitude of varioustypes of bandits (montoneros, uerrilleros,bandoleros)who infestedthe Andes and the coast even after 19oo.

The fact is that the political and economic collapse of the periodfollowing the War of the Pacific worsened the contradictionsof thepreceding period, rather than solved them. The picture is madequite clearby an examinationof the data for the years between 188oand 1896. In the first instance there was the final ruin of thetraditionalcollecting economy of the Amazonianforest, as shown bythe total disappearanceof the export of quina in 189o. Then camethe drop in the export of cotton and sugar; however this decline wasnot of such catastrophicproportionsand demonstratesthat the newlatifundism consolidatedin the earlierperiod had resisted the crisisand was able to survive. Finally wool exports remained at theirprevious level - the Andean sheep-farming economy failed toprogress but succeeded in maintainingits position. Looking at the

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ERUVIANPEASANTRY 131figures for these exports at the turn of the century, there are clearsigns of recoveryto be seen, correspondingto Pierola'srise to powerand to the period known in Peruvianhistory as the "Reconstruction"(see Graphs,betweenpp. 132and 133). Slowlybut surely agriculturein Perubeganto recoveragainaround1896-8. On the coastthis meantthe absorptionof small haciendas nd of the last of the communal landsby the great landed estates, particularlythe sugar plantationswhichwere then undergoinga process of modernization. In the Andes, itmeant an unprecedented offensive by the new latifundia againstcommunal lands, which extended even to those regions hithertorelatively untouched by the enclosures, such as Puno. A decree of1893 in effect re-enactedBolivar'sdecree concerningthe division anddistribution of communal lands. Just as in the years 1823-30 thismarkedthe beginningof an onslaughtagainstthe communities- thistime, however, under economic conditions infinitelymore favourableto the latifundia thanthosewhich had obtained at the time of Indepen-dence.At the end of the century the source of Chinese labour had driedup and the coastal haciendas had to consider for the first timethe problems of obtaining a labour force and the food to feed itfrom the sierra; a system known as the enganchewas introduced,a traffic n Indian labour which gave the spuriousimpressionof beingbased on free contract. Thus started a current of migrationwhichled to the "re-Indianization"of the coast by this embryonic ruralproletariatof Andean origin. The first modern strikes were carriedout by this emerging Indian proletariat, that had been suddenlytransplantedfrom the Andes to the coast and from a communal to awage-based economy. These strikes were, however, still veryprimitive and largely spontaneous.

The end of the nineteenth century in Peru was therefore a periodof tension and agrarian nsecurity resulting from the restructuringoflandownershipand the relationsof productionand from the develop-ment of agriculture.The history of the relations between the peasantryand the nationas a whole in the nineteenth century shows the great importance ofthepeasantry n theperiod. In the firstinstance this was demographic:the Indianpeasantry ormed the largest single socialgroupand, thanksto the slow but effective expansion of the market economy, olddemographicpatternswere changedin wayswhich led to anet increase

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132 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 46in the size of the peasantry owardsthe end of the century. Secondly,the peasantry was of central economic mportance, since the entireexportof Peruvianprimaryproductsrested on its laboursparticularlyduring the periods 1866-76 and 1883-1902, in which the mineralresources of the countrydeclined in relativesignificanceand the bulkof exports was agricultural. Their importance was also fiscal: theerection of the creolestate between 1825and 1864was paid for by thespecial taxes levied on the mestizoand Indianpeasantry. From 1883to 19oo the capitationtax and such indirect taxes as the salt tax wereburdens laid exclusively on them. Politically and militarilytoo thepeasantryplayeda centralr61eduringtimes of nationalcrisis. In theforeign wars - the Warof Independence and the Warof the Pacific- only the peasantswere conscripted,the Indian peasantsas well asthose who had been uprooted or lived a marginal existence on thecoast. Moreover,peasantsoccasionallyrosespontaneously o becomeguerrillasin support of the regular army or of the parties during thecivil wars. Finally, the impact was also social in that by paying aheavy rent for land, in renderingfree services or in workingas slaves,coolies or peons, from sunrise to sunset, peasantsof all races createdthe conditions of incredibleluxuryand refinementfor a creole societywhose eyes were continuallyturnedtowardsEurope.In return, this creole society gave the peasantry very little.Throughout the century they assigned it the status of a colonizedmass within the nation. The Indian peasantryhad neither the rightto vote nor the ability to do so, because it was kept ignorant ofSpanish, the nationallanguage. From one end of the Andes to theother, the peasantry existed in the confinement of the autarkichaciendasor in communities threatenedby the new latifundia, andin only slight and irregularcontact with larger markets:each ruralcommunityin a similar state of isolation, abandonmentand technicalbackwardness. On the coast,to be sure,the situationof the peasantryprogressed further. Slavery and the caste system were abolished;the emergence of a proletariat and the consolidation of moreadvanced forms of share-cropping suggested the possible beginningsof a "nationalization"of the peasantry. In the samewayin the sierra,at the end of the century, certain communities evolved towards avillage economy of small proprietorsthat presagedthe rise of a trulyindependentpeasantry. It was not until 1930 that such an evolutionwas able to overcome the constant opposition of the new latifundia.In fact the peasantry remained largely excluded from the nationallanguage, from common law, from direct access to the markets;

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VALUE OF AGRICULTURALEXPORTSFROM PERU 1826-1900(atconstantprices, alculatedn the basisof theaveragesor 1854-60)10o,000,000

: guano

,'" :?sugarcane

(coast)cotton

- , ? ":wool(sierra)

: cinchona ark quinine selva)

1,000,000

-0I

II I81J, ,8

'01 \ 1 1I II II II \, IA I I100,000 \ I I

13 1 I1 18- I

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THE

: Peru'sexportsto Britain

?:Peru'simportsfrom Britain

10,000,000

I

r/ _

II

188 89019001830I 8 I

_9r0

\ I

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THE BALANCEOF TRADEBETWEENPERU AND BRITAIN1820-1900

ritain1Britain

I\\i

'"

1\"/ \1

IfI I'1qI

1/ 1 10

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THE NINETEENTH-CENTURYERUVIANPEASANTRY 133over-exploitedandgenerallydeceived, it thereforeremaineda "colonyinside the country".Nevertheless, in conjunction with the economic and agrarianproblems of the last decades of the century, the political misfortunesresulting from the War of the Pacific brought about a serious crisisof conscience for the creoles with respect to the peasant problem.As earlyas the I86os JuanBustamantehadshowngreatconcern aboutthe fate of the Indians. Following the War of the Pacific and itstrain of surrenders and betrayals by a creole elite which claimedhispanic culturaldescent, some brave souls denounced the failure asthat of a false system of values and startedto turn to the peasantry,who might become the bearers of a national regeneration. In thiscategory one may include several "Indianist" deputies and juristssuch as Capello and Maguina, and particularlythe great radicalthinker GonzalezPrada,who called for a real "Indianism"in politicsand in agrarianmatters and condemned the hypocrisyof claimingtoredeem the Indian population with schools and patience alone.6 Itwas not by chance that his powerful words later influenced the twogreatsocial critics of the twentieth centuryin Peru: Haya de la Torreand Jose CarlosMaristegui.CentreNational de la RechercheScientifique,Paris Jean Piel

Manuel Gonzalez Horas de lucha: nuestros Indios