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Peru Indigenous Peoples
The word indio, as applied to native highland
people
of Quechua and Aymara origin, carries strong negative
meanings
and stereotypes among non-native Peruvians. For that
reason, the
ardently populist Velasco regime attempted with some
success to
substitute the term peasant (campesino) to accompany the
many
far-reaching changes his government directed at improving
the
socioeconomic conditions in the highlands. Nevertheless,
traditional usage has prevailed in many areas in reference
to
those who speak native languages, dress in native styles,
and
engage in activities defined as native. Peruvian society
ascribes
to them a caste status to which no one else aspires.
The ingrained attitudes and stereotypes held by the
mistikuna (the Quechua term for mestizo people)
toward the
runakuna (native people--the Quechua term for
themselves)
in most highland towns have led to a variety of
discriminatory
behaviors, from mocking references to "brute" or "savage"
to
obliging native Americans to step aside, sit in the back
of
vehicles, and in general humble themselves in the presence
of
persons of higher status. The pattern of ethnoracist
denigration
has continued despite all of the protests and reports,
official
policies, and compelling accounts of discrimination
described in
Peruvian novels published since the beginning of the
twentieth
century.
The regions and departments with the largest
populations of
native peoples are construed to be the most backward,
being the
poorest, least educated, and less developed. They are also
the
ones with the highest percentages of Quechua and Aymara
speakers.
The reasons for the perpetuation of colonial values with
respect
to autochthonous peoples is complex, being more than a
simple
perseverance of custom. The social condition of the
population
owes its form to the kinds of expectations embedded in the
premises and workings of the nation's institutions. These
are not
easily altered. Spanish institutions of conquest were
implanted
into colonial life as part of the strategy for ruling
conquered
peoples: the indigenous people were defeated and captured
and
thus, as spoils of war, were as exploitable as mineral
wealth or
land. In the minds of many highland mestizos as well as
betteroff urbanites, they still are.
Although the Spanish crown attempted to take stern
control
over civic affairs, including the treatment, role, and
conditions
of native Americans who were officially protected, the
well-intended regulations were neither effective nor
accepted by
creole and immigrant interests. Power and status derived
from
wealth and position, considered not only to be in the form
of
money and property, but also coming from the authority to
exercise control over others. Functionaries of the
colonial
regime paid for their positions so that they could exact
the
price of rule from their constituent populations.
Encomenderos, corregidores, and the numerous
bureaucrats all held dominion over segments of the native
population and other castes, which were obliged to pay
various
forms of tribute. With the decline of the colonial
administration
and the failure of the many attempts at reform to control
the
abuses of the native peoples, Peru's political
independence saw a
transfer of power into the hands of Creoles and mestizos,
the
latter of whom comprised the majority of Peru's citizens
in the
early 1990s.
The growth of large estates with resident serf
populations
was an important feature of this transition period. The
process
benefited from the new constitutional policies decreeing
the
termination of the Indian community (Comunidad Indio)--the
corporate units formerly protected by the crown. The
subsequent
breakup of hundreds of communities into individually owned
properties led directly to these lands being purchased,
stolen,
or usurped by eager opportunists in the new society. The
most
critical native American franchise was thus lost as entire
communities passed from a relatively free corporate status
to one
of high vulnerability, subject to the whims of absentee
landlords. Although the development of haciendas occurred
rapidly
after the demise of the colonial regime, the system had
long been
in place, established through the assignment of property
and
people to benefit particular individuals for their service
to the
crown, to institutions such as the church, and to public
welfare
societies intended to offer succor to the poor by
maintaining
hospitals and orphanages. Debt peonage constituted the
basic
labor arrangement by which landlords of all types operated
their
properties nationwide. The system endured until it was
abolished
by the land reform of 1969.
Data as of September 1992
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