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Republicanos’ and ‘la Communidad de Peruanos’: Unimagined Political Communities in Postcolonial Andean Peru*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Mark Thurner
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History at theUniversity of Florida.

Abstract

Although unimagined and unanticipated within the Creole nationalist ‘discursive frameworks’ of the liberal-republican state, nineteenth-century Andean peasant communities sought mediated re-insertion in the postcolonial Peruvian Republic. Key to peasant political engagement in the Andean region of Huaylas-Ancash was the tactical deployment of ‘Indian rights’ of colonial origin to make moral and material claims on the postcolonial caudillo state. In Huaylas-Ancash peasant claims and political practices destabilised liberal notions of ‘republic’ and ‘republican’ citizenship, and eventually challenged the teleogical historicity of Creole nation-building itself.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Archivo Departamental de Ancash, Huaraz (ADA), Fondo Notarial Valerio, Legajo 3, Autos seguidos por Gregoria Gonzáles contra el Peruano Manuel Jesús Barreto sobre el cobro de arrendamiento de las tierras trigueras de Marcac, 1823.

2 ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Civiles, Legajo 12, Expediente que le pertenece a José María Chacpi, Manuel Aniceto y María Sevastian Chacpi de los terrenos de repartición que se le ha adjudicado de orden Superior, folios 28–29, May 12–16, 1846.

3 On ‘inca nationalism’ see Rowe, John H., ‘El movimiento nacional inca del siglo XVIII’, Revista Universitaria (Cuzco), no. 107, (1954), pp. 1747Google Scholar. On the ‘aristocratic Andean Utopia’ see Burga, Manuel, Nacimiento de una Utopia: Muerte y Resurrectión de los Incas (Lima, 1988)Google Scholar, and Galindo, Alberto Flores, Buscando un Inca: Utopía y ldentidad en los Andes (Lima, 1987)Google Scholar.

4 See Méndez, Cecilia, ‘República sin Indios: La Comunidad Imaginada del Perú’, in Urbano, Henrique (ed.), Tradiciíny Modernidad en los Andes (Lima, 1993), pp. 1541Google Scholar.

5 Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), p. 158Google Scholar.

6 On ‘discursive frameworks’ and ‘the grammar of politics’ see Roseberry, William, ‘Hegemony and the Language of Contention’, in Joseph, Gilbert M. and Nugents, Daniel (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, 1994), pp. 355–66Google Scholar; and Philip Corrigan, ‘State Formation’, in Ibid., pp. xvii–xix.

7 The major shortcoming of this and other archival studies of the postcolonial Andean experience is the paucity of documentary sources written in Quechua. The official language was Spanish, and court bilinguals most probably strategised their translations to make them more intelligible and acceptable to the scribe and judge. Yet the Quechua of Huaylas was also laden with hispanisms by the nineteenth century, especially where there were no clear Quechua equivalents for Spanish juridical and political concepts. One such Spanish term without a precise Quechua equivalent appears to have been república.

8 Sabean, David Warren, Property, Production, and Family in Neckerhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 79Google Scholar.

9 Guha, Ranajit, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983)Google Scholar.

10 Hobsbawm, E., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 1415Google Scholar.

11 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 14, 18–19.

12 The notion of a political-territorial nation – rather than an ancestral or ethnolinguistic one – was clearly manifested in early Latin American constitutions. In the founding Peruvian Constitution of 1822, we find ‘all the Provinces of Peru reunited in one body form the Peruvian Nation’ (todas las provincias del Perú reunidas en un sólo cuerpo forman la Nación Peruana), and that ‘the Nation shall be named the Peruvian Republic’ (La Nación se denominará República Peruana). Although at first glance this rings of a Tawantinsuyo-style union of provincial social spaces, the territorial emphasis actually reflected the pressing conjunctural need to incorporate by constitutional fiat those provinces (Junín, Huamanga) still occupied by Loyalist forces. By the Constitution of 1827–28 the Independence Wars were over, however, and it is then that the ‘Peruvian Nation’ takes on its characteristic ‘citizen-state’ definition. Thus, in 1827–28 ‘the Peruvian Nation is the political association of all the citizens of Peru“ (la nación peruana es la asociación político de todos los ciudadanos del Peru). This unmistakably political definition of nation is repeated in subsequent constitutions until 1867 when a renewed, but brief, war with the Spanish Fleet off the coast of Peru occasioned the return of additional territorial language in the definition of nation. The next Peruvian constitution, composed in 1920, resumed the 1828 ‘citizen-state’ notion. See Dancuart, Emilio, Crónicas Parlamentarias del Peru, 13 vols. (Lima, 19061955)Google Scholar; also dePino, J. V. Ugarte, Historia de las Constituciones del Perú (Lima, 1978)Google Scholar.

13 Biblioteca National del Perú, Sala de Investigaciones (BNP/SI), D6183, Expediente y providencias para la creación de alcaldes [de españoles] en las Doctrinas del Partido de Huaylas, Lima, 22 June 1820.

14 BNP/SI #C3493, Autos seguidos de oficio por la real justicia contra la sedición de varios individuos vecinos del pueblo de Huaraz, Caraz, 1 April 1797.

15 BNP/SI #D6183, Expediente… para la creación de alcaldes en las Doctrinas del Partido de Huaylas. The words are Yrigoyen's, dated Lima, 22 June 1820.

16 On the ceremonial attire of Republican officials in the provinces – prefects, subprefects, and governors – see Dancuart, Anales, vol. 5, pp. 143–48.

17 For detailed discussion of colonial transformations see Thurner, Mark, ‘From Two Nations to One Divided: The Contradictions of Nation-Building in Andean Peru’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Ann Arbor, 1993Google Scholar, Chapter 2.

18 Delivered in Lima, 27 August 1821. For the text of San Martín's decree, see Dancuart, Anales, vol. 1, p. 239.

19 Given in Cuzco on 4 July 1825. For the text see Dancuart, Anales, vol. 1, p. 272.

20 For Gregoria's full name and lineage, see ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Civiles, Legajo 5, Testamento de Gregoria Palma Gonzáles y Rimaicochachin, 27 March 1830.

21 ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Legajo 3, Autos sequidos por Gregoria Gonzáles contra el Peruano Manuel Jesús Barreto sobre el cobro de arrendamiento de las tierras trigueras de Marcac, 1823.

22 The Constitution of 1812, drawn up by the liberal Cortes de Cádiz, was approbated in public assemblies throughout Huaylas. See Alvarez-Brun, Félix, Ancash: Una historia regional peruana (Lima, 1970)Google Scholar.

23 Luzurriaga, who like San Martín was also from La Plata or Argentina, was the first President of the liberated Department of Huaylas, which then included most of the north-central highlands and coast, including Huanuco. See Alvarez-Brun, Ancash.

24 ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Legajo 3, Autos seguidos por Gregoria Gonzáles contra el Peruano Manuel Jesús Barreto sobre el cobro de arrendamiento de las tierras trigueras de Marcac, 1823.

25 The ex-cacica Doña Gregoria found ways to retain considerable influence in postcolonial Huaylas. In her Last Will and Testament of 1830, she explained that she had donated ‘some quantities’ of pesos to the bankrupt department treasury, and ‘in compensation’ the authorities had, in classical colonial style, granted her continued dominion over half of the cacicazgo lands of Huaraz. Thus, although stripped of colonial titles, in this case the diminished post-Independence leverage of a kuraka was accommodated in the fiscal pressures of the early Republican moment. The ex-cacica's Testament revealed that she and her mestizo husband still held considerable properties.

26 The term indígenas remains the contemporary emblem of progressive consciousness about ‘native americans’ (yet another historical oxymoron). Its origins, however, lie in the Creole nationalist distaste for terms colonial. But in many ways indio or Indian was more generous, since it recognised cultural origins and national identity distinct from Europe and prior to the newly invented nation-state. As the Peruvian congressman and political economist Redro de Rojas y Briones (1828) observed in his peculiarly nationalist way: ‘To change their title from Indian to Peruvian, and after that to Indigene, seems like a great injury to so heroic a nation; do they think it honourable to change the proper title of one's origin, when he who is born in Spain, France, or England considers it an honour to be called Spanish, French, or English?’ The unequal exchange of ‘Indian’ nationhood for dubious ‘native’ or ‘indigene’ status at the bottom of the national racial hierarchy only marked the distance over which any Indian had to travel to reach the apex occupied by the Creole elite.

27 See Thurner, ‘From Two Nations’, Chapter 2.

28 ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Civiles, Legajo 12, Expediente que le pertenece a José María Chacpi, Manuel Aniceto y Maria Sevastián Chacpi de los terrenos de repartitión que se le ha adjudicado de orden Superior, 12–16 May 1846.

29 In late colonial Huaylas, the waranka (Quechua = thousand) was not an Inca censal ‘thousand’, but rather a multi-community (communities or peasant hamlets were grouped in pachacas, which were also not ‘hundreds’ in the same way that warankas were not ‘thousands’) moiety which was a functioning political and tributary unit under a chief and, increasingly after 1812, under alcalde vara authorities. In the postcolonial period warankas are officially renamed and reconstituted as distritos under non-Indian officials called gobernadores.

30 Twentieth-century ethnographies indicate that la república had the dual meaning of both community labour (minka) and corvée labour service. Paul Doughty notes, however, that usage of republicano was more widespread in the district of Atun Huaylas than elsewhere in the Callejón when he did fieldwork there in the 1960s (personal communication).See Doughty, Paul, Huaylas: An Andean District in Search of Progress (Ithaca, 1968)Google Scholar, and Stein, William, Hualcan: Life in the Highlands of Peru (Ithaca, 1961)Google Scholar.

31 This and following passages are all taken from ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Civiles, Legajo 15, Estéban Ramírez con María Santos y otros sobre las tierras de Cuyuc-Rumi en la estancia de Llactas, 1850–51.

32 Platt, Tristan, Estado Boliviano y Ayllu Andino: Tierra y Tribute en el Norte de Potosí (Lima, 1982)Google Scholar.

33 Piel, Jean, ‘The Place of the Peasantry in the National Life of Peru in the Nineteenth Century’, Past and Present, vol. 46 (1970), pp. 108–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 On the tangled history of Indian taxation in nineteenth-century Peru, see Thurner, ‘From Two Nations’, Chapters 3–5.

35 See Kubler, George, The Indian Caste of Peru, 1795–1940 (Washington, D.C., 1952)Google Scholar; and Contreras, Carlos, ‘estado republicano y tributo indígena en la sierra central en la post-independencia’, HISTORICA, vol. XIII, no. 1 (1989), pp. 944Google Scholar.

36 For one such case see ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Juicios Civiles Republicanos, Legajo 6, Autos criminates seguidos contra Don Gabriel Gomero sobre estorciones que hizo en Jangas en el año de 1836. On the general trend see Bonilla, Heraclio, ‘Continuidad y cambio en la organización política del estado en el Perú Independiente’, in Galindo, Alberto Flores (ed.), Independencia y revolución, 1780–1840 (Lima, 1987), pp. 269–94Google Scholar.

37 AGN O.L. 357–66. Prefecto Joaquín Gonzáles al Señor Ministro de Estado en el Despacho de Gobierno, Huaraz, 18 February 1850. Gonzáles wrote that the Alcaldes de campo were named by the Gobernadores to collect tribute in the hamlets or estancias, and that they did this ‘by custom, without pay’. When in 1849 a law was passed making such unpaid service illegal, the Prefect saw that without the Alcaldes it might be very difficult to find ‘volunteers’ who could collect the tribute for a premio of a mere two percent. The solution was to name the Alcaldes as collectors when a paid ‘volunteer’ could not be found.

38 Polylepis was the major source of cooking fuel until the eucalyptus tree was imported and propagated in sufficient numbers, which appears not to have occurred in Huaylas until the twentieth century. Eucalyptus, however, is a lower elevation, planted tree which is usually privately owned.

39 Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) H–4–1832, Sección Contribuciones, Matrícula de Yndígenas de la Provincia de Huaylas, Tomo II, Observaciones generales, 1842.

40 Of course, identical arguments were made by colonial officials in defence of the reparto de mercancías and other tributary obligations.

41 Thurner, ‘From Two Nations’, Chapter 2.

42 Spalding, Karen, ‘Hacienda-Village Relations in Andean Society to 1830’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 4 (1975), pp. 107–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 ADA, Fondo Notarial Valerio, Civiles, Legajo 20, Benito Vincenti vecino de Huaraz y hacendado de Lucma, contra indígenas de la estancia de Pampa Huahin, ff. 19–19V, 1855–56.

44 See Kapsoli, Wilfredo, Los Movimientos Campesinos en el Perú (Lima, 1977)Google Scholar, and Stein, William, El Levantamiento de Atusparia (Lima, 1988)Google Scholar.

45 For more detailed discussion of the Atusparia Rebellion and its legacy, see Thurner, ‘From Two Nations’, Chapters 4–6.

46 El Comercio, 2 June 1886.

47 See Thurner, ‘From Two Nations’, Chapter 5.

48 AGN, Archivo del Ministerio del Interior, Legajo 95, Mesa de Partes No. 73.

49 AGN, Ministerio del Interior, Legajo 95, Mesa de Partes No. 424.

50 AGN O.L. 571–240, Expediente iniciado por los Alcaldes Ordinarios de los Distritos de Restauración y Independencia de Huaraz, 1 June 1887.

51 Brading, David, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 213–27Google Scholar.

52 BNP/SI #D8075, Petición de los Alcaldes Ordinarios de Huaraz al Sor General Cáceres, Presidente de la Republica, Huaraz, 24 March 1887.

53 On the ‘indianisation’ of Huaylas see Thurner, ‘From Two Nations’, Chapter 5. The percentage of Huaylas's total population declared ‘indigenous’ on census and tax records rose from about 50% in 1820 to 66% in 1940. This trend raised the so-called ‘Indian Problem’ to new heights in provincial politics. Indeed, there is some inconclusive evidence that suggests that an attempt to reinvent the ‘Republic of Indians’ was repressed in Huaylas in the 1920s (C. A. Alba Herrera, personal communication).

54 Kundera, Milan, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Heim, M.Henry (New York, 1980)Google Scholar, cited in Alonso, Ana Maria, ‘Gender, Power, and Historical Memory: Discourses of Serrano Resistance’, in Butler, Judith and Scott, Joan W. (eds.), Feminists Theorize the Political (New York, 1992), p. 418Google Scholar.

55 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York, 1991)Google Scholar; and Chatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London, 1986)Google Scholar, and The Nation and Its Fragments.

56 Alonso, ‘Gender, Power, and Historical Memory’, p. 418.

57 See Mallon, Florencia, ‘Nationalist and Anti-State Coalitions in the War of the Pacific: Junín and Cajamarca’, in Stern, Steve J. (ed.), Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison, 1987), pp. 232–79Google Scholar, and her Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley, 1995). Also see pathbreaking, Nelson Manrique'sCampesinado y Nación: Las guerrillas indígenas en la guerra con Chile (Lima, 1981)Google Scholar.