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Under Civilian Colonels: Indigenous Political Mobilization in 1920s Ayacucho, Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Jaymie Patricia Heilman
Jaymie Patricia Heilman*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie UniversityHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
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With his television blaring in the corner, Don Isidro Durán spoke of the men whom his neighbors had once chosen as leaders, men those neighbors labeled “colonels.” As Don Isidro described the indigenous political mobilization that rocked his rural Ayacucho community back in 1923, he explained that these colonels led their supporters in military exercises and proclaimed that President Augusto B. Leguía was “bad for the Pueblo.” Although the elderly Durán spoke with the authority of an eyewitness and the eloquence of a local intellectual, the indigenous leaders he described are essentially absent from the extensive literature on indigenous politics during Peru's 1920s. That absence is surprising, for reports of various popularly appointed colonels fill Ayacucho's archival records during Leguia's oncenio (his 1919-1930 presidency). These Ayacuchano civilian colonels were typically literate, indigenous men witxiout formal standing in the Peruvian armed forces. During the first years of the 1920s, Ayacucho peasants embraced rliese indigenous men as leaders because of their profound anger at official government authorities and their agents.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , April 2010 , pp. 501 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2010

References

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for The Americas for their thoughtful suggestions and to Steven Pent for providing me with a copy of his M.A. thesis.

1. Interview with Isidro Durán (Carhuanca, March 14, 2003). Isidro Durán is a pseudonym.

2. This literature has typically focused on either Puno or Cuzco. Key works include Calisto, Marcela, “Peasant Resistance in the Aymara Districts of the Highlands of Peru, 1900-1930: An Attempt at Self-Governance” (PhD dissertation, University of California at San Diego, 1993);Google Scholar Alvarez-Calderón, Annalyda, “Es justicia lo que esperamos de Su Excelencia: Política indígena en Puno (1901–1927),” in Más alia de la dominación y la resistencia: Estudios de historia peruana, siglos xvi-xx, Garofalo, Leo and Drinot, Paulo, eds. (Lima: IEP, 2005), pp. 312–341;Google Scholar Hazen, Dan, “The Awakening of Puno: Government Policy and the Indian Problem in Southern Peru, 1900–1955” (PhD dissertation: Yale University, 1974);Google Scholar Luis Rénique, José, La batalla por Puno: conflicto agrario y nación en los Andes Peruanos, 1866–1995 (Lima: IEP, 2004);Google Scholar Luis Rénique, José, Los sueños de la sierra: Cusco en elsiglo XX (Lima: CEPES, 1991).Google Scholar For a broader national perspective, see Kapsoli, Wilfredo, Los movimientos campesinos en el Perú, 1879–1965 (Lima: Ediciones Atusparia, 1977);Google Scholar Basadrc, Jorge, Historia de la república del Perú, 1822–1933 (Lima: Editorial Universitaria, 1983).Google Scholar Paulo Drinot’s forthcoming edited collection Nuevas perspectivas sobre el oncenio (Lima: IEP, 2010) will greatly advance historiographical discussions of Leguía’s presidency.

3. Archivo Regional de Ayacucho (ARA), Corte Superior de Justicia (CSJ), legajo (leg.) 407, cuaderno (cuad.) 1, fol. 13.

4. Cadena, Marisol de la, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, 1919–1991 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 118.Google Scholar

5. Walker, Charles, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1840 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See Florencia Mallon’s work, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), for a discussion of peasant nationalism.

7. Escudero, Wilfredo Kapsoli, Ayllus del sol: anarquismo y utopa andina (Lima: TAREA, 1984), pp. 197–244;Google Scholar Cadena, de la, Indigenous Mestizos, pp. 86–130;Google Scholar Heilman, Jaymic Patricia, “By Other Means: Politics in Rural Ayacucho before Peru’s Shining Path War, 1879–1980” (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2006), pp. 108–166;Google Scholar Pent, Steven Eric, “Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide: Mobilization and Citizenship of a Peruvian Peasant Organization” (M.A. thesis, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2007).Google Scholar

8. A critique of Hobsbawm appears in Thurner, Mark, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Post-colonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 137–138.Google Scholar

9. Klarén, Peter F. Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 242–244.Google Scholar

10. See, for example, the debate about rural tax protests in Thurner, , From Two Republics, p. 82.Google Scholar

11. Thompson, Sec E.P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (February 1971), pp. 76–136;Google Scholar Scott, James C. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Resistance in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

12. Méndez, Cecilia, “Las paradojas del autoritarismo: ejército, campesinado, y etnícidad en el Perú, siglos XIX al XX,” Iconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 26 (September 2006), pp. 17–34.Google Scholar

13. Details on the fiscal arrangement between the Peruvian State and the Tax Collection Company appear in Contreras, Carlos, “The Tax Man Cometh: Local Authorities and the Battle Over Taxes in Peru, 1885–1906,” in Political Cultures in the Andes, 1750–1950, Jacobsen, Nils and de Losada, Cristóbal Aljovín, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 116–136.Google Scholar

14. ARA, Pref. Oficios de la Compañía Recaudadora de Impuestos (OCRI) leg. 108 (Oficio 690: September 20,1923).

15. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 11.

16. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 35.

17. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 111.

18. Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Pref. Ministerios Paquete 241 (Oficio 1329: September 14, 1923).

19. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Oficio 129, September 27, 1923).

20. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: July 18, 1923).

21. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: July 30, 1925).

22. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 37.

23. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. l,fol. 35.

24. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 36.

25. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: November 20, 1922)

26. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: June 10, 1924).

27. Davies, Thomas M. Indian Integration in Peru: A Half Century of Experience, 1900–1948 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), pp. 82–86.Google Scholar Historian Nelson Pereyra Chavez offers a thoughtful consideration of the Conscripción Vial in Ayacucho, although he understates the scale of rural opposition to the forced labor service. Sec his work, “Los campesinos y la conscripción vial: Aproximaciones al estudio de las relaciones estado-indígenas y las relaciones de mercado en Ayacucho (1919–1930),” in Estado y mercado en la historia del Perú, Carlos Contreras and Manuel Clave, eds. (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2002), pp. 334–350.

28. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Oficio 68: October 9, 1924).

29. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: October 12, 1922).

30. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 19 (Oficio 89: November 25, 1926).

31. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 19 (Unnumbered oficio: November 15, 1926).

32. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24, (Oficio 58: April 25, 1925).

33. ARA, Pref. OSH leg. 13 (Oficio 108: July 17, 1924).

34. ARA, Pref. Oficios de la Subprefecture de Víctor Fajardo (OSVF) leg. 37 (Unnumbered oficio: September 9, 1924).

35. Proyecto Especial de Titulación de Tierras (PETT), Luricocha (January 4, 1925); ARA, Pref. OSH leg. 13 (Oficio 88: May 26, 1924); AGN, Ministerio del Interior (MI) leg. 248, subprefecturas (Oficio 31: June 2, 1924).

36. ARA, Pref. OCRI leg. 108 (Oficio 673: August 9, 1923). For other examples, see ARA, Pref. OCRI leg. 108 (Oficio 803: June 29, 1924; Oficio 673: August 9, 1923; Oficio 674: August 11, 1923).

37. ARA, Pref. OSH leg. 13 (Oficio 108: July 17, 1924); Pref. OSLM (Oficio 8: January 12, 1925); ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficios: November 20, 1922, July 10, 1924).

38. ARA, Pref. Oficios recibidos de diferentes ministerios (ODM) leg. 65 (Oficio 11: January 3, 1924)

39. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Oficio 904: July 13, 1925).

40. Ibid.

41. ARA, Pref. Oficios recibidos de diferentes instituciones (ORDI) leg. Ill (Oficio 117: October 22, 1928).

42. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: October 12, 1922). For other complaints about taxation, see ARA, Pref. ORDI leg. 111 (Oficio 32: October 13, 1924).

43. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 19 (Unnumbered oficio: August 4, 1926).

44. Ibid.

45. ARA, Pref. ODM leg. 65 (Unnumbered oficio: June 16, 1920).

46. ARA, Pref. ODM leg. 65 (Unnumbered oficio: May 5, 1924).

47. ARA, CSI, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 20.

48. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 23.

49. AGN, MI, Camara de senadores (CS), leg. 231 (Telegram 31: December 20, 1922).

50. Ibid.

51. AGN, MI, Cámara de diputados (CD) leg. 249 (Oficio 79: January 8, 1924).

52. AGN, MI, CD, leg. 249 (Unnumbered oficio: January 18, 1924).

53. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 59.

54. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 60.

55. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 58.

56. Discussions of the events in La Mar appear in Kapsoli, , Movimientos Campesinos, pp. 74–76;Google Scholar Mayer, Eric, “State Policy and Community Conflict in Bolivia and Peru, 1900–1980” (PhD dissertation: University of California-Santa Barbara, 1995), pp. 277–315.Google Scholar

57. AGN, MI, Ministerios, paq. 241 (Oficio 139: July 7, 1923).

58. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: July 18, 1923). In “State Policy and Community Conflict,” p. 278, Eric Mayer describes Paulino Romero as a middle-class lawyer, but I have found various documents that label Romero an indigenous peasant. See AGN, MI, Particulares, leg. 250 (Unnumbered oficio: January 31,1924); ARA, CSJ, leg. 409, cuad. 5.

59. ARA, CSJ, leg. 409, cuad. 5.

60. Archivo Histórico Militar (AHM), libro c-296, fol. 304.

61. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 20.

62. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 37.

63. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficios: August 27, 1922, September 5, 1922).

64. Méndez, Cecilia, “The Power of Naming, or the Construction of Ethnic and National Identities in Peru: Myth, History and the Iquichanos,” Past and Present 171 (May 2001), pp. 127–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar My term “Indianize” borrows from Cadena, de la, Indigenous Mestizos, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

65. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Oficio 66: November 22, 1922).

66. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: September 5, 1922).

67. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficios: August 27, 1922, September 5, 1922).

68. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Oficio 129: September 27, 1923).

69. ARA, CSJ, leg. 409, cuad. 21, fol. 3.

70. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: November 20, 1922).

71. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: December 6, 1922).

72. AHM, libro c-296, fol. 304.

73. AGN, MI, Ministerios, leg. 241 (Oficio 466: August 31, 1923).

74. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: January 27, 1923).

75. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: December 13, 1922).

76. ARA, Pref. Oficios recibidos de diferentes gobernaturas distritales (OGD) leg. 40 (Unnumbered oficio: December 6, 1922).

77. Irurozquí, Marta, “El Perú de Lcguía: Derroteros y extravíos hi stori ográficos,” Apuntes 34 (Primer Semestre 1994), p. 86.Google Scholar Irurozqui’s article critiques historiographical discussions of oncenio-era elites, arguing that scholars have too often substituted ideological agendas for careful historical analysis.

78. ARA, Pref. OCRI, leg. 108 (Oficio 644: May 25, 1923).

79. ARA, Pref. OCRI, leg. 108 (Oficio 709: October 1, 1923).

80. ARA, Pref. OSH, leg. 13 (Unnumbered oficios: January 24, 1924, October 14, 1923; Oficio 88: May 26, 1924).

81. ARA, Pref. Oficios Recibidos de Concejos Provinciales (ORCP) (Oficio 432: October 14, 1921). Nelson Pereyra likewise notes opposition to the Conscripción Vial among Ayacucho hacendados. See, “Los campesinos y la conscripción vial,” p. 345.

82. ARA, Pref. OSH, leg. 13 (Unnumbered oficio: January 21, 1924).

83. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 19 (Unnumbered oficio: August 6, 1928).

84. ARA, Subprefectura Cangallo (SC), Caja 23 (Oficios de Carhuanca [OC]: July 21, 1929).

85. ARA, SC, Caja 23 (OC: July 8, 1929).

86. ARA, Pref. OCRI, leg. 108 (Oficio 709: October 11, 1923).

87. ARA, Pref. OSH, leg. 13 (Unnumbered oficio: January 24, 1924).

88. ARA, Pref. OSH, leg. 13 (Oficio 88: May 26, 1924).

89. ARA, Pref. OSH, leg. 13 (Unnumbered oficio: October 14, 1923).

90. ARA, Pref. OSH, leg. 13 (Unnumbered oficio: January 21, 1924; Oficio 20: January 24, 1924).

91. AGN, MI, CD, leg. 249 (Oficio 79: January 8, 1924).

92. AGN, Ministerio de Trabajo, 3.13.2.1 (Fol. 9: September 26, 1930).

93. Pent attributes this militarism to the presence of licenciados (men who have completed their compulsory military service) in the Committee. See “Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide,” pp. 113, 116.

94. AGN, Ml, Subprefecturas, leg. 248 (Oficio 31: June 2, 1924).

95. ARA, Pref. OSLM, leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: July 18, 1923).

96. On obligatory military service, see Nunn, Frederick M. “Professional Militarism in Twentieth-Century Peru: Historical and Theoretical Background to the Golpe de Estado of 1968,” Hispanic American Historical Review 59:3 (August 1979), p. 402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97. Davies, , Indian Integration, p. 72.Google Scholar

98. Méndez, , “Las paradojas del autoritarismo,” pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

99. Thomson, Sinclair, “‘We Alone Will Rule…’: Recovering the Range of Anticolonial Projects among Andean Peasants (La Paz, 1740s-1781),” Colonial Latin American Review 8:2 (1999), p. 283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100. ARA, CSJ leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 2.

101. ARA, CSJ leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol.ll.

102. See Mallon, Peasant and Nation.

103. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: August 13, 1923).

104. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 20.

105. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 37.

106. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 22.

107. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: July 18, 1923).

108. ARA, Pref. OCRI leg. 108 (Oficio 674: August 11, 1923); AHM, c-296 (Oficio 1614: July 12, 1923).

109. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: November 16, 1923).

110. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficios: May 9, 1924, November 15, 1926).

111. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, passim.

112. AGN, MI, Particulares, leg. 250 (Unnumbered oficio: January 31, 1924).

113. ARA, Pref. ODM leg. 65 (Oficio 99: April 24, 1924).

114. ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 18 (Unnumbered oficio: June 10, 1924).

115. AGN, Ml, CD, leg. 249 (Oficio 79: January 8, 1924).

116. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Oficio 51: April 17, 1925).

117. ARA, Pref. OCRI leg. 108 (Oficio 673: August 9, 1923).

118. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: July 22, 1925).

119. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 8.

120. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 34–35.

121. ARA, Pref. OCRI leg. 108 (Oficio 690: September 20, 1923).

122. ARA, CSJ, leg. 407, cuad. 1, fol. 90.

123. ARA, Pref.Oficios recibidos de la Dirección de Gobierno (ODG) leg. 95 (Unnumbered oficio: March 25, 1921).

124. AGN, MI, Subprefecturas, leg. 248 (Oficio 31: June 2, 1924).

125. ARA, Pref. OSLM leg. 24 (Unnumbered oficio: August 9,1926).

126. Recent works stressing modernity include Hiatt, Willie, “Flying “Cholo”: Incas, Airplanes, and the Construction of Andean Modernity in 1920s Cuzco, Peru,” The Americas 63:3 (January, 2007), pp. 327–358;Google Scholar and Krüggcler, Thomas, “Indians, Workers, and the Arrival of‘Modernity’: Cuzco, Peru (1895–1924),” The Americas 56:2 (October 1999), pp. 161–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

127. For an example, see ARA, Pref. OSC leg. 19 (Unnumbered oficio: November 17, 1926).

128. I explore rural Ayacuchano anger toward abusive authorities across the twentieth century in Heilman, “By Other Means.”

129. For an introduction to the rondas campesinas, see Fumerton, Mario, From Victims to Heroes: Peasant Counter-rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980–2000 (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2002).Google Scholar

130. Interview with Isidro Durán.