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Peru Landlords and Peasant Revolts in the Highlands
In the great majority of highland provinces, political
and
economic leadership and power were based on traditional
social
elites, a landlord class that controlled the haciendas
and, thus,
very large proportions of the rural poor. In these
contexts,
powerful landlords (terratenientes) manipulated
political
affairs, either by themselves holding positions of
authority,
such as the prefectures, municipal offices, and key
government
posts, or influencing those who did. A tradition of
ruthlessness,
greed, and abuse is associated with this system
(gamonalismo) throughout Peru. A gamonal is
a
person to be feared because he has extraordinary and
extralegal
powers to protect his interests and act against others.
Although
the agrarian reform of 1969 did much to cut this power,
local
affairs in many districts and provinces have remained
under such
domination, to the deep resentment of the rural poor, who
most
directly feel its consequences.
Since the late nineteenth century, various regional
movements
have arisen to address abuse. Historian Wilfredo Kápsoli
Escudero
had documented thirty-two peasant revolts and movements
from 1879
to 1965, a number that is not exhaustive but which
contradicts
the view that Peru's native peasantry was passive in
accepting
its serfdom. Characteristically, virtually all of these
efforts
were specifically directed against the abuses of
gamonales
and hacendados, at least in their initial phases. The
forces in
the 1885 Ancash uprising, led by Pedro Pablo Atusparía, an
alcalde pedáneo from a village near Huaraz,
eventually
captured and held the Callejón de Huaylas Valley for
several
months before federal troops reclaimed it.
Most peasant revolts were not as dramatic, but all
testified
to the burgeoning feelings of frustration, anger, and
alienation
that had built up over the centuries. In part, this anger
and
frustration stemmed from the fact that native American
communities had been deprived of their communal holdings
after
national independence, which meant that extensive holdings
passed
from community control to private elite interests. Demands
for
redress of this situation led to the reestablishment of
the
official Indian Community in 1920 during the second
presidency of
Augusto B. Leguía (1919-30). Subsequently, communities
that could
prove they at one time had held colonial title to land
were
permitted to repossess it, a long and arduous bureaucratic
process in which the most successful communities were
those with
active migrants in Lima who could lobby the government.
Another response was President Manuel A. Odría's
(1948-56)
sanctioning of the Cornell-Peru project in which the
Ministry of
Labor and Indian Affairs, in collaboration with Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, would conduct a
demonstration of
community development and land reform at Hacienda Vicos in
Ancash
Department, starting in 1952. It was Peru's first such
development program and received extensive publicity
around the
country. This situation provoked consternation among
landlords
and elite interests, which purposefully delayed the
conclusion of
the project. The colonos of Vicos became an
independent
community in 1962, when they were finally permitted to
purchase
the estate they and their ancestors had cultivated for
others for
368 years.
With its widespread publicity, the Vicos project helped
to
whet appetites for change. At that time, several hundred
hacienda
communities like Vicos were requesting similar projects
and the
freedom to purchase their lands. When the reluctant
government of
oligarch Manuel Prado y Ugarteche (1939-45, 1956-62) and
the slow
and corrupt mechanisms of the bureaucracy could not meet
these
rising demands, an explosive situation developed. Peasant
invasions of hacienda lands began a few days after
Fernando
Belaúnde assumed office as president in 1963. He had
promised to
organize a land reform, and the native communities, in
their
words, were "helping" him keep his word. Hundreds of
estates were
taken over by peasants, provoking a national crisis that
eventually subsided when Belaúnde convinced communities
that his
administration would fulfill its promises. It did not
happen.
However, on the "Day of the Indian" (Día de la
Raza--Race
Day), June 24, 1969, General Juan Velasco Alvarado
(president,
1968-75), head of the populist "Revolutionary Government
of the
Armed Forces," decreed a sweeping and immediate land
reform,
ending serfdom and private
latifundios (see Glossary) that
included the sacrosanct coastal plantations. Hope and
expectations of the peasantry had never been higher, but
the
succeeding years brought back the frustration; serious
problems
resulted from natural disasters, the withdrawal of
significant
international credit and support from the United States
for
reform programs, bureaucratic failures, and a lack of
welltrained personnel. After the Velasco government gave way
to more
conservative forces within the army in 1975, a
retrenchment
began. In this phase of the process, some haciendas,
including
several in Ayacucho Department, were returned to their
former
owners, provoking bitter disappointment and further
alienation
among the peasants.
Data as of September 1992
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