1 My appreciation to University of California, Davis history professors Walker, Charles and Holloway, Thomas, anthropology professor Marisol de la Cadena, and Carey, Mark, S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley Google Scholar, for their insights, suggestions, and willingness to read various drafts of this project.

2 I take the liberty of interchanging “modernization” and “progress,” although the latter term is most frequently used on the ground in 1920s Cuzco. “Modernity” nonetheless helps convey the notion of “perpetual disintegration and renewal” that leaves society in an unsettling state of flux. See Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Historiographical debates for this paper come from Chocano, Magdalena, “Ucronía y frustración en la consciencia histórica peruana,” Márgenes 1:2 (October 1987), pp. 43–60 Google Scholar; Drinot, Paulo, “Historiography, Historiographic Identity, and Historical Consciousness in Peru,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 15:1 (January-June 2004)Google Scholar; Méndez, Cecilia G., “Incas Sí, Indios No: Notes on Peruvian Creole Nationalism and Its Contemporary Crisis,” Journal of Latin American Studies 28:1 (February 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galindo, Alberto Flores, Buscando un Inca: Identidad y utopía en los Andes (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1988)Google Scholar, and “La imagen y el espejo: La historiografía peruana (1910-1986),” Márgens 4 (1986), pp. 55-83.

4 El Sol (Cuzco), 9 October 1925, p. 3.

5 El Sol (Cuzco), 2 September 1925, p. 5.

6 El Sol (Cuzco), 3 September 1925, p. 2.

7 El Sol (Cuzco), 2 September 1925, p. 5.

8 El Comercio (Cuzco), date unavailable.

9 El Sol (Cuzco), 28 September 1925, p. 2.

10 El Sol (Cuzco), 2 October 1925, p. 2.

11 El Sol (Cuzco), 3 October 1925, p. 3.

12 El Sol (Cuzco), 24 September 1920, p. 2. El Sol began addressing how Cuzco would present itself during the centennial as early as 1917. See 12 December 1917, p. 2. Two years later, the newspaper compared the state of the nation to that of the independence period: “As in the first years of the republic, we are working hard to find the form and path that our nationality will take.” See 28 July 1919, p. 5. The newspaper editorialized that Indians had only exchanged owners and executioners with independence. See 28 July 1923, p. 11.

13 El Sol (Cuzco), 24 September 1920, p. 2. In a column a year later, El Sol stated, “The city of Cuzco, the Rome of Peru, the Mecca of South America … has to this date no decorations, no galas, nothing that shows economic prosperity, cultural development, or efficiency.” See El Sol (Cuzco), 20 January 1921, p. 2.

14 El Sol (Cuzco), 7 September 1925, p. 2.

15 la Cadena, Marisol de, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 22.Google Scholar

16 José, Historian; Tamayo Herrera devotes only a few pages to the pilot in otherwise important works such as El Cusco del Oncenio: un ensayo de historia regional a través de la fuente de la revista ‘Kosko’ (Lima: Universidad de Lima, 1989)Google Scholar, and Historia social de Cuzco republicano (Lima:Editorial Universo S.A., 1981). Miguel Luis Yépez Sánchez treats Velasco Astete and two other aviators in thirty pages in his pamphlet-style Los tres primeros viajes aéros a Cuzco (Lima: Editorial Gráfica Pacifica Press, S.A., 1974). In a straightforward journalistic account, Gen. José Zlatar Stambuk tells the pilot’s story and includes important primary sources in Alejandro Velasco Astete: Trasvolador de los Andes (Lima: IMPRI S.A., 1997).

17 de la Jara, Carlos A., Historia Aeronáutica del Peru, vol. 2 (Lima: Editoriales Unidas S.A., 1977), p. 245.Google Scholar

18 Giesecke, Alberto, “Memoria leída por el rector de la universidad, en el año académico de 1920: La aeronavegación en el Perú,” Revista Universitaria 34 (December 1920), pp. 77–93.Google Scholar

19 Giesecke, Alberto A., “Informe sobre el censo levantado en la provincia del Cuzco el 10 de setiembre de 1912,” Revista Universitaria 2:4 (March 1913), p. 50 Google Scholar. Of 18,617 city residents, 9,813 identified as mestizo, 4,433 as white, and 4,462 as Indian. The surrounding countryside was predominantly indigenous.

20 Gade, Daniel W., “Regional Isolation in the High Provinces of Cusco and Apurímac,” in Unruly Order: Violence, Power, and Cultural Identity in the High Provinces of Southern Peru, ed. Poole, Deborah (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 31, 41.Google Scholar

21 Tschiffely, A.F., Tschiffely’s Ride: Ten Thousand Miles in the Saddle from Southern Cross to Pole Star (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1933), pp. 93–106 Google Scholar. In this compelling traveler’s account from the 1920s, Tschiffely describes treacherous mountain paths in which pack animals had to walk near the edge to avoid bumping against rocky walls. He writes, “I have been told of incidents in the Andes when two riders happened to have met in such narrow places, and when the man who shot first was the one who saved himself, for neither turning back nor crossing each other would have been possible in these traps.”

22 Herrera, Tamayo, El Cusco del Oncenio, p. 131.Google Scholar

23 Valcárcel, Luis E., Memorias, ed. Mar, José Matos, C, José Deustua, and Rénique, José Luis (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1981), p. 49.Google Scholar

24 Among others, see Assadourian, Carlos Sempat, El sistema de la economía colonial: el mercado interior, regiones y espacio económico (Mexico: Nueva Imágen, 1983)Google Scholar; Larson, Brooke, Harris, Olivia, and Tandeter, Enrique, Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Stern, Steve, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest (Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Jacobsen, Nils, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larson, Brooke, Colonialism and Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia: Cochabamba, 1550-1900 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Glave Testino, Luis Miguel and Remy, María Isabel, Estructura agraria y vida rural en una región andina: Ollantaytambo entre los siglos XVI-XIX (Cusco, Peru: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1983).Google Scholar

25 Rama, Angel, The Lettered City, ed. and trans. Chasteen, John Charles (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 24.Google Scholar

26 Thurner, Mark, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 16–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Herrera, José Tamayo, Liberalismo, indigenismo y violencia en los países andinos (1850-1995) (Lima: Fondo de Desarrollo Editorial, Universidad de Lima, 1998), p. 38.Google Scholar

28 Rénique, José Luis, “De la fe en el progreso al mito andino: los intelectuales cusqueños,” Márgenes: Encuentro y debate 1:1 (March 1987), pp. 13–15.Google Scholar

29 Although exact circulation figures for Cuzco newspapers are not available, a house ad in El Sol stated that it would print 8,000 copies for its July 28, 1921, centennial special section. See El Sol, 9 July 1921, p. 3. For its independence day special section two years later, however, 2,500 were printed. See El Sol, 26 July 1923, p. 1. I assume press runs for a regular daily section were considerably smaller. In the newspapers’ early years, circulations were less than a thousand each. In 1903, El Comercio had a circulation of 900 and El Sol 370. Cited in José Tamayo Herrera, Historia social de Cuzco republicano, p. 129.

30 El Comercio (Cuzco), 13 September 1920, p. 2.

31 This thoughtful letter, by Augusto Durand Luna of Hacienda Paucarpata, was dated July 28. See El Sol (Cuzco), 14 September 1921, p. 2.

32 Histórico, Archivo, Municipal de Cuzco, Legajo 65, 1915 Google Scholar; and Legajo 64, 1915.

33 Histórico, Archivo, Municipal de Cuzco, Legajo 67, 1916.Google Scholar

34 El Comercio (Cuzco), 5 October 1904, p. 1. The article, which appears to be a wire-service report, trumpeted the unlimited possibility of airplanes and their superiority over dirigibles. It envisioned the installation of aerial “public service stations” on terrace roofs and the day the airplane was as common as the automobile or carriage.

35 El Comercio (Cuzco), 3 April 1906, p. 1.

36 Fritzsche, Peter, A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 59–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fritzsche writes, “Europe’s warriors were modern-day conquistadors, discovering and making a New World.… The new face that war had given to Europe was represented perhaps most faithfully by the pilot aviator.”

37 Giesecke, “Memoria leída por el rector de la universidad, en el año académico de 1920: La aeronavegación en el Perú,” pp. 78-80.

38 Ibid., pp. 89-92.

39 De la Jara, p. 88.

40 El Sol (Cuzco), 9 September 1925, p. 3.

41 De la Jara, p. 88.

42 Yépez Sánchez, Los tres primeros viajes aéros a Cuzco, p. 18.

43 Histórico, Archivo, Municipal de Cuzco, Legajo 75, 1920.Google Scholar

44 El Comercio (Cuzco), 27 October 1920, p. 2.

45 El Sol (Cuzco), 24 May 1921, p. 2.

46 El Sol (Cuzco), 27 May 1921, p. 1.

47 El Sol (Cuzco), 30 May 1921, p. 1.

48 Gyan Prakash explores a similar idea in his examination of India’s attempt to recover ancient Hindu science as legitimation for the modern nation. Prakash concludes that the modern nation as a “return of the archaic introduces a sharp break between the past and the present.” The modern nation is thus “estranged.” See Prakash, Gyan, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1999), p. 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The difference in 1920s Cuzco, as my discussion of the tenor of the centennial celebration shows, was that there was no pretense of an uninterrupted Inca past.

49 Three weeks before Rolandi arrived, Juan Leguía, the director of Peruvian aviation, declined Cuzco’s request for an airplane for military use. The commander said planes of such little power could not function in the high-altitude Andes and that more powerful planes had little duration in the altitude and required expert pilots. Besides, because Cuzco was defensible militarily because of the mountains, it did not need war planes. The reporter was elated that Rolandi’s flight had proven Leguia wrong on the capability of airplanes. See El Sol (Cuzco), 30 May 1921, p. 1.

50 El Sol (Cuzco), 25 May 1921, p. 3.

51 Account by Baltazar Montoya, cited in De la Jara, p. 268.

52 Rolandi’s departure demonstrates how uncertain flight was. Destined for Puno, Rolandi ran out of gas and was forced to land in a field near Pucará. Residents received him warmly. Cusqueños sent gas from Cuzco by train. See El Sol (Cuzco), 8 June 1921, p. 1. The misadventure did not end there: Upon landing in Puno, an accident damaged the propeller and one wing, but the aviator was not harmed. See El Sol (Cuzco), 4 July 1921, p. 2.

53 Giesecke, Alberto, “My History,” Giesecke family archive, Lima, Peru, 1954.Google Scholar

54 De la Jara, pp. 265-69.

55 Prakash, p. 7.

56 El Comercio (Cuzco), 13 September 1908, p. 2.

57 Ibid., p. 1.

58 La Prensa (Lima), 29 September 1925. A collection owned by Velasco Astete’s daughter, Angelica Velasco Astete de Rossi, and housed in Lima supplied this and several ensuing newspaper citations. I have done my best to confirm sources and dates, but they are not always available.

59 Valcárcel, p. 28. The intellectual recalled that a family ancestor was an orejón, the name given by the Spanish to Inca nobility because of distended earlobes in which they inserted earspools.

60 La Crónica (Lima), 30 September 1925.

61 Zlatar Stambuk, p. 40.

62 Ibid., pp. 53-54, 59. Although in today’s usage “cholo” is often a derogatory term, it was an expression of pride in 1920s Cuzco. See Poole, Deborah, Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 230 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, note 33, and De la Cadena, p. 147. Constantin von Barloewen argues that in colonial times “the term cholo referred to a half-breed who possessed the physical traits of an indio but lived in the cities under the influence of Western culture. … The traditional cholo grew up bilingually with an indio mother tongue and a rudimentary command of Spanish.” The author underscores the optimism and space for mobility embodied by the term. “Indios who become cholos in a process of acculturation can abandon their traditional subservience and take up a role in a changing society with new economic structures. They could overcome the disadvantages of their ethnic status and grow into the new tasks they are seeking to assume.” See History and Modernity in Latin America: Technology and Culture in the Andes Region (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn Books, 1995), pp. 136-37.

63 Stambuk, pp. 55, 66-68.

64 Ibid., pp. 79-83.

65 Ibid., pp. 247-48. In 1920 Leguía passed a law requiring men ages 18 to 60 to contribute up to 12 days a year to the national road project. During the Leguía administration, Peru’s road system nearly doubled to 19,465 kilometers in 1930. See Klaren, Peter Flindell, Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 242.Google Scholar

66 De la Jara, p. 250. Other planned flights of interest were Lima-Puno-Juliaca-Arequipa-Lima (Baltazar Montoya), Lima-Arequipa (Carlos Guardi), and Arequipa-Lima (Carlos Alvarillo).

67 Ibid., pp. 268-70. The model SVA was derived from the last names of the engineers—Savoia, Verduzio, and Ansaldo. See Stambuk, pp. 85-89.

68 De la Jara, p. 270.

69 Ibid., pp. 270-72.

70 La Prensa (Lima), 29 September 1925, reprint of an article from El Comercio (Cuzco).

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 El Sol (Cuzco) 7 October 1925, p.4, reprint of an article from El Pueblo (Arequipa).

75 El Comercio (Cuzco), 1 September 1925.

76 El Comercio (Cuzco), 30 September 1925.

77 El Sol (Cuzco) 2 September 1925, p. 5.

78 Ibid.

79 El Comercio (Cuzco), 1 September 1925.

80 El Sol (Cuzco), 2 September 1925, p.5.

81 Ibid.

82 El Comercio (Cuzco), 1 September 1925.

83 Ibid. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the Quechua-speaking abilities of Cuzco’s indigenistas, Valcárcel lends some insight. For example, the brothers Cosio, academics José Gabriel and Félix, were from an old Cuzco family from Paruro with a Quechua-speaking tradition. They worked to establish grammatical rules for Quechua. Valcárcel himself claimed never to speak perfect Quechua but could carry on daily conversations. See Valcárcel, pp. 145-46. In 1922 a Cuzco newspaper conducted intriguing question-and-answer interviews with Indians in Quechua but published them in Spanish. See El Comercio (Cuzco), 27 March 1922, p. 2; and El Comercio (Cuzco), 1 December 1922, p. 2.

84 Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca, p. 22.

85 See Galindo, Flores, “La imagen y el espejo: La historiografía peruana (1910-1986),” p. 58.Google Scholar

86 Enríquez, Angel Vega, “El reciente prodigio de la aviación nacional,” Kosko, 15 September 1925, p. 8.Google Scholar

87 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

88 See Poole, pp. 184-87, and De la Cadena, pp. 145-52.

89 El Comercio (Cuzco), 1 September 1925.

90 El Sol (Cuzco), 3 September 1925, p. 3.

91 El Sol (Cuzco) 1925, 3 September 1921, p. 2.

92 Garmendia, Roberto F., El Progreso del Cuzco (Lima, 1968), p. 80.Google Scholar

93 El Sol (Cuzco), 9 September 1925, p. 3.

94 Manuel Jesús Aparicio, cited in De la Cadena, p. 147.

95 De la Cadena, p. 147.

96 El Comercio (Cuzco), 5 September 1925.

97 El Sol (Cuzco), 7 September 1925, p. 2.

98 El Comercio (Cuzco), 18 September 1925.

99 Fritzsche, pp. 62-64.

100 El Sol (Cuzco), 8 September 1925, p. 2.

101 El Comercio (Cuzco), 25 September 1925.

102 El Comercio (Cuzco), 29 October 1925.

103 El Comercio (Cuzco), 5 September 1925.

104 Chang-Rodriguez, Raquel and Filer, Malva E., Voces de Hispanoamérica: antología literaria (Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 1996), p. 122.Google Scholar

105 Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 4–8.Google Scholar

106 El Comercio (Cuzco), 5 September 1925.

107 Corn, Joseph J., The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation, 19009-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 34.Google Scholar

108 Archivo Histórico, Municipal de Cuzco, Legajo 67.

109 El Comercio (Cuzco), 25 September 1925.

110 El Comercio (Cuzco), 30 September 1925.

111 El Comercio (Cuzco), date unavailable.

112 Early aviation and nationalism were closely linked. Fritzsche writes about Germany, “The histories of modern nationalism and modern technology are inexorably intertwined. … Aviation, perhaps better than any other field of technology, clarifies the links between national dreams and modernist visions” (p. 3). Soviet officials also employed aviation to educate Russian peasants on the virtues of socialism. See Palmer, Scott, “Peasants into Pilots: Soviet Airmindedness as an Ideology of Dominance,” Technology and Culture 41:1 (January 2000), pp. 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

113 Klaren, p. 187.

114 El Sol (Cuzco), 3 September 1921, p. 2.

115 El Comercio (Cuzco), 1 September 1925. For a complete account of the diplomatic drama between Peru and Chile, see Skuban, William Eugene, “Nationalism and National Identity on the Peruvian-Chilean Frontier: The Case of Tacna and Arica, 1880–1930” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 2000).Google Scholar

116 El Comercio (Cuzco), 12 September 1925. Friedrich Nietzsche’s “superman” was part of Cuzco intellectual discourse. José Frisancho penned a poem entitled “¡Super Hombres!” dedicated to Mexican indigenista José Vasconcelos in which he referenced Nietzsche. Kosko, 15 March 1925, p. 9.

117 El Sol (Cuzco), 3 September 1925, p. 3.

118 El Comercio (Cuzco), 3 September 1925.

119 What I know of indigenous engagement with aviation in Peru comes primarily from elite sources. In his autobiography, for example, Alberto Giesecke recalled that in 1921 the Italian aviator Enrique Rolandi landed safely in Cuzco but rolled past the intended stopping point, where waiting to embrace him was an Indian. See Giesecke, “My History.” In the description of his flight to Puno, pilot Baltazar Montoya emphasized the clash of the modern and traditional when he recalled seeing llamas herded by Indians on mules. The sound of the airplane caused the llamas to bolt and the mules to throw their mounts. From the ground the Indians shook their fists in anger at Montoya. Cited in De la Jara, p. 275. On another occasion, a reporter argued that Velasco Astete’s death profoundly grieved the Indian community: “It is the Indians, the poor pariahs, the misunderstood and inscrutable inkanos who manifest most intensely, most sincerely, most inconsolably, their pain.” See El Sol (Cuzco), 28 September 1926, p. 2. Finally, artist Francisco Olazo sketched a mother in traditional Andean dress and a child peering toward the airplane above the clouds. A written account accompanying the newspaper illustration stated that an Indian mother comforted hej child after AVA’s death by saying: “My son, don’t be afraid! We have triumphed!” See El Sol (Cuzco), 2 October 1925, p. 1.

120 El Sol (Cuzco), 12 September 1925.

121 El Comercio (Cuzco), 16 September 1925.

122 El Comercio (Cuzco), 7 September 1925. Cusqueños appeared genuinely conflicted about how to recognize the pilot. Those opposed to the massive banquet argued that earning a living during a dire economic period demanded a more practical response that would benefit the pilot. Others suggested that since the government was sure to give the pilot a monetary award, the banquet would “leave lasting and deep impressions” on the pilot and those who attended. A reporter suggested that the two options were not mutually exclusive and both should be pursued for this “representative of the Andean race, of the iron race.” See El Comercio (Cuzco), 5 September 1925.

123 Tamayo Herrera, El Cusco del Oncenio, pp. 99-102. For more on communism in Cuzco, see Gutiérrez L., Julio G., Así nació el Cuzco rojo (Lima 1986).Google Scholar

124 El Comercio (Cuzco), 16 September 1925.

125 “Nuestros Filántropos,” Kosko, 22 October 1925, p. 5.

126 Van Riper, A. Bowdoin, imagining Flight: Aviation and Popular Culture (College Station: Texas A&M, 2004), p. 34.Google Scholar

127 El Comercio (Cuzco), 3 September 1925.

128 El Comercio (Cuzco), 16 September 1925.

129 El Sol (Cuzco), 14 September 1925, p. 3.

130 Wagner, Peter, “Sociological Reflections: The Technology Question during the First Crisis of Modernity,” in The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology: Discourses on Modernity, 1900-1939, ed. Hard, Mikael and Jamison, Andrew (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), p. 236.Google Scholar

131 Yépez Sánchez, p. 21.

132 El Sol (Cuzco) 29 September 1925, p. 2.

133 El Comercio (Cuzco), date unavailable.

134 El Sol (Cuzco) 1 October 1925, p. 2.

135 El Sol (Cuzco) 1 October 1925, p. 2.

136 El Comercio (Cuzco), date unavailable.

137 El Sol (Cuzco) 1 October 1925, p. 2.

138 El Comercio (Cuzco), date unavailable.

139 El Sol (Cuzco) 28 September 1925, p. 2.

140 El Comercio (Cuzco), 28 September 1925.

141 El Comercio (Cuzco), 29 September 1925.

142 El Comercio (Cuzco), 28 September 1925.

143 El Sol (Cuzco), 28 September 1925, p. 2.

144 El Sol (Cuzco), 3 October 1925, p. 3.

145 Simpson, Lorenzo C., Technology, Time, and the Conversations of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 53.Google Scholar

146 El Sol (Cuzco) 5 October 1925, p. 3.

147 El Sol (Cuzco), 7 October 1925, p. 2.

148 Tamayo Herrera employs the phrase in El Cusco del Oncenio.

149 Grácián, José, “El sendero secreto,” Kosko, 7 October 1925, p. 8.Google Scholar

150 Méndez, p. 220.

151 Tamayo Herrera, Historia social del Cuzco republicano, p. 146.

152 El Sol (Cuzco), 6 August 1928, p. 1.