Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2022
Jauja, rinconcito de mi valle.
Andean folk song, Juan Bolvar
The military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975) coined the phrase, Campesino, el patrn no comer ms de tu pobreza! (Peasant, the patrn will feed no more on your poverty). Clearly a favorite slogan of the self-described Peruvian Revolution, this saying appeared frequently on posters and in newspaper notices. Although linked to Velasco's agrarian reform program and peasant organizations like the Confederacin Nacional Agraria (CNA), which emerged from the plan, this aphorism was said to have originated with Jos Ga-Meja, La reforma agraria en el Per (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1980). I take the agrarian reform process into consideration because of its impact on my generation, which experienced all of its effects intensely.
This article grew out of a doctoral thesis recently defended at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. I am grateful to Professors Nathan Wachtel and Frdric Mauro and to my thesis adviser, Ruggiero Romano, for their comments. In the United States, I would like to thank Dauril Alden, Charles Bergquist, Susan Stokes, Enrique Tandeter, and the anonymous LARR reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Any errors that remain are entirely my responsibility. Ken Maffit helped me translate the first version of this article.