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The Politics of Schooling in the Nonliterate Third World: The Case of Highland Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Dan C. Hazen
Dan C. Hazen*
Affiliation:
Ithaca, New York
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Extract

Evaluations of both literacy and education have tended to focus on their ostensibly revolutionary consequences. Urbanization, industrial growth, the rise of a middle class and a more democratic society, and a world view attuned to the need for and inevitability of change, are classed among the results. No matter which effect is seen as most critical, education and literacy are interpreted primarily in terms of their impact over the medium- to long-term.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Winter 1978 , pp. 419 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1 See, for instance, Cipolla, Carlo M., Literacy and Development in the West (Baltimore, 1969), pp. 87–88; or Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40 (March, 1968).Google Scholar

2 “Altiplano,” a geographic term meaning “high plain,” is used to describe the region surrounding Lake Titicaca in both Bolivia, and Peru, . It is here used to identify the political division of the Department of Puno, most of which falls within the geographic Altiplano. Puno was Peru's most heavily populated department in the early twentieth century.Google Scholar

3 Diverse export figures are collated in chart 1 (p. 19) of Hazen, Dan C., The Awakening of Puno: Government Policy and the Indian Problem in Southern Peru, 1900–1955 (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1974). The current value of Peruvian wool exports increased from about three million soles in 1900 to about 27,000,000 soles in 1918. This figure, reflecting wartime demand, was the highest until the late 1940's. Exports by volume peaked during World War I and again in 1924, after which stagnation set in.Google Scholar

4 See, for instance, Giraldo, Santiago, ed., La raza indìgena en los albores del siglo XX. II Opusculo (Lima, 1903); or Moisés Sáenz, Sobre el indio peruano y su incorporacion al medio nacional (Mexico, 1933).Google Scholar

5 This sequence, as well as more general accounts of contemporary social conditions, are found in Giraldo, Santiago, ed., La raza indìgena… (Op. Cit.). Also see the report of Maguiña, Alejandrino, the government commissioner, which was reproduced in Memoria que el Ministro de Gobierno y Policia, Sr. Leonidas Cardenas, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1902. Anexos. (Lima, 1902). Indians here drew upon a long tradition of petition; what was new was directing these pleas to Lima.Google Scholar

6 Giraldo, Santiago, op. cit. Interview with Julián Palacios Rìos, a mestizo indigenista who pioneered Indian education on the Altiplano, further substantiated these observations. The interviews were conducted in Puno in October, 1972, and May/June, 1973.Google Scholar

7 An early-century compilation by Manuel Quiroga indicated an overall jump from 703 to 3,699 estates on the Altiplano as a whole between 1876 and 1915. These figures are reproduced in Flores-Galindo, Alberto, Arequipa y el sur andino: ensayo de historia regional (siglos XVIII–XX) (Lima, 1977), p. 153.Google Scholar

8 Puno counted 140 elementary schools in 1906 and 155 in in 1908. Budget cutbacks dropped the total to 93 in 1910. See Hazen, Dan C., op. cit. , p. 372.Google Scholar

9 Biographies include an article appearing in Platerìa , No. 5 (set. 3, 1961), and Gallegos, Luìs, Manuel Z. Camacho, el campesino rebelde del altiplano (Puno, 1974).Google Scholar

10 Indian private schools are described in Marcos Ari, Miranda, Autobiografia (Puno, 1941); Plateria, No. 5 (set. 3, 1961); and numerous newspaper accounts. The first private schools were concentrated near Lake Titicaca in Chucuito and Puno Provinces, an area characterized by intense external contacts and relatively equitable patterns of land tunure.Google Scholar

11 de Gobierno, Ministerio, Informe que presenta el doctor Pedro C. Villena, Comisionado por el Supremo Gobierno para investigar las que jas de los indìgenas de la Provincia de Lampa, en el Departamento de Puno (Lima, 1913). For suspension of the Puno Superior Court, see El Eco de Puno, Año XVIII, No. 4047 (14 de mayo de 1917), and XVIII–4059 (30-V-19).Google Scholar

12 Prada, Manuel González, Prosa menuda (Buenos Aires, 1941), p. 80.Google Scholar

13 See, for instance, El Eco de Puno VII–984 (27-VII-1906). El Eco de Puno VII–1090 (19-XII-1906) reported the jailing of an Indian teacher from Pasiri, Chucuito Province, whose school had been organized under a reformist Prefect. El Indio, No. 4 (julio, 1907), noted that Andrés Mayta of Pomata (Chucuito Province) had been in prison twenty months, reportedly for his role in initiating eleven Indian schools.Google Scholar

14 Stark, A.R., “The Awakening in Peru,” Regions Beyond: Monthly Organ of the R.B.M.U., New Series, No. 3 (April, 1903), p. 143.Google Scholar

15 Works describing the early days of Adventist operations on the Altiplano include Stahl, F. A., In the Land of the Incas (Mountain View, Cal., 1920); Kalbermatter, Pedro, 20 anos como misionero entre los indios del Peru (apuntes autobiograficos) (Paraná, 1950); Wilcox, E.H., In Perils Oft (Nashville, 1961); and Pablo Apaza, T., Los adventistas y la educacion del indio en el Departamento de Puno (unpublished thesis, Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, 1948).Google Scholar

16 Westphal, Barbara, These Fords Still Run (Mountain View, 1962), p. 25.Google Scholar

17 Erasmo, P., Roca, S., Por la close indigena (Lima, 1935), p. 203.Google Scholar

18 This figure is derived from the Statistical Report of the Seventh-day Adventist Conferences, Missions, and Institutions, 1918–1960 (title varies). Puno counted 130 official primary schools in 1928.Google Scholar

19 Yearbook of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination, 1940; Ministerio de Hacienda y Comercio, Dirección Nacional de Estadística, Censo nacional de poblacion y ocupacion, 1940, Vol. VIII (Lima, 1940).Google Scholar

20 See historical articles in the journal Plateria, or such newspaper notices as El Eco de Puno XXI–7695 (15-V-20). See also Erasmo, P. Roca, S., Op. Cit. , pp. 208–212.Google Scholar

21 Most important among these bodies was the Asociación Pro-Indìgena, formed in 1912 and lasting until its scandal-ridden demise in 1917. El Deber Pro-Indigena, the group's journal, lasted from 1912 to 1916. its 45 issues constitute the best record of Association accomplishments.Google Scholar

22 See such newspaper notes as El Siglo (Puno), No. 3263 (11-XII-1923) on guarantees for Huancané schools, or XI–3501 (22-X-1924) concerning facilities in Vilque-Mañazo. Materials on the 1924–25 revolt which affected the Huancané area, including the information transcribed in El Heraldo (Puno) III–157 (1-IX-1927), provide estimates as high as several hundreds of Indian schools before combat began.Google Scholar

23 See, for example, Pozo's, Hildebrando Castro Nuestra comunidad indigena (Lima, 1924), and his Del ayllu al cooperativismo socialista (Lima, 1936).Google Scholar

24 Relatively accessible materials dealing with the unrest purportedly promulgated by Indian societies include Wilfredo Kapsoli and Wilson Reàtegui, El campesinado peruano 1919–1930 (Lima, 1972), and Bedregal, Florencio Dìaz, Los levantamientos de indigenas en la provincia de Huancane (Thesis, Universidad Nacional del Cuzco, 1950).Google Scholar

25 For the Salcedo school, see Memorial relativo a la cuestion indigena que la Liga de Hacendados eleva al Supremo Gobierno… (Arequipa, 1922); de Noriega, Pedro J., La Granja Taller Escolar de Puno; Algunas piezas del proceso parlamentario… (Arequipa, 1926); and such official reports as Ministerio de Fomento, Dirección, de Agricultura y Ganaderìa, Inspección General de Experimentación, Granja Taller Escolar de Puno (Lima, 1933).Google Scholar

26 The Adventist decline was both reinforced and abetted by a less tolerant official stance. Nonetheless, a mission-sponsored review of all communicants indicated widespread backsliding. This suggested reduced interest in conformity to the foreign tenets and, quite probably, less need for the benefits thus forthcoming.Google Scholar

27 The entire process has been captured in novelistic form in Arguedas, José Marìa, Today las sangres (Buenos Aires, 1964).Google Scholar

28 República del Perú, Dirección Nacional de Estadìstica y Censos, VI Censo nacional de población, 2 de julio de 1961. Tomo III: Idioma, alfabetismo, asistencia escolar, nivel de educación (Lima, 1966), pp. 53, 64.Google Scholar

29 For the movement in general see Frisancho, David, Jatun Rijchary: Dr. Manuel Nunez Butron, Precursor de la sandidad rural en el Peru (Puno, 1958); and, most importantly, the ten numbers of Runa Soncco, the movement journal, which intermittently appeared between 1935 and 1948.Google Scholar

30 Innovative programs of the 1940's included a literacy campaign, colonization projects for Puno's lowlands, new school types, an experimental textile cooperative in Huancané, and the “Indian Culturization Brigades” (Brigadas de Culturización Indìgena).Google Scholar

31 The 1940 figures derive from that year's Extracto estadistico del Peru; those for 1957 are from Plan Regional para el Desarrollo del Sur del Peru, Vol. VIII, Informe PS/B/17, Educacion: Sus problemas y perspectivas (Lima, 1959). Physical conditions in the schools are most tellingly summarized in the Ministerio de Educación Pública's Inventario de la realidad educativa del Peru (Lima, 1957–1958), pp. 184 and 211.Google Scholar

32 For the nucleos escolares campesinos, see Ministerio de Educación Pública/Servicio Cooperativo Peruano-Northeamericano de Educación (SECPANE), Nucleos escolares: Informe sobre el programa de educacion rural (Lima, 1949); and the same authors' Informe sobre los Nucleos Escolares Rurales (Lima, 1955). More generally, the number of official primary schools in Puno jumped from 227 in 1940 to 638 in 1948. While the Altiplano contained about nine percent of the country's population throughout this period, its share of the primary schools grew from 4.6 to 7.0% of the total.Google Scholar

33 República del Perú, Dirección Nacional de Estadìstica y Censos, VI Censo nacional de poblacion. Tomo II: Migración, nacionalidad legal, estado conyugal, religión. fecundidad (Lima, 1965); and Tomo III, provide the information on population structure and movement.Google Scholar

34 Mary, Bane, Jo and Jencks, Christopher, “The School and Equal Opportunity,” Saturday Review of Education (Sept. 16, 1972), assess the modern American assumption that truly equal education for all will eliminate socioeconomic inequality. They conclude that schools in fact have little effect on generation-crossing poverty. Rather than striving for educational homogeneity, the authors suggest that our priorities might be more fruitfully directed toward more equal economic opportunity. While the elite expectations attached to education in Peru never equalled those found in our society, the dominant groups' interest in schooling over structural reform may indicate an implicit awareness of this conclusion. On the other hand, the suggestion that economic security is far more important than quality of education seems to both apply to, and underlie, recent highland interest in instruction. Educational credentials, more than mastery of the skills they theoretically reflect, are essential for upward mobility.Google Scholar

35 See Handelman, Howard, Struggle in the Andes: Peasant Political Mobilization in Peru (Austin, 1975), chapter 8.Google Scholar

36 Such articulation is reflected in the processes analyzed in Dew's, Edward Politics in the Altiplano: The Dynamics of Change in Rural Peru (Austin, 1969).Google Scholar