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Marking the Boundaries between the Community, the State and History in the Andes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Sarah A. Radcliffe
Sarah A. Radcliffe
Affiliation:
Post-doctoral Researcher in Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge.
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Extract

This paper attempts to draw out the significance and meaning of the recorreo [sic] (recorrido) de los linderos (going around the boundaries), also called linderaje ritual in an Andean peasant community. In villages such as Kallarayan which lie in the crop and pastureland regions of Cuzco department, Peru, the recorreo is a regular point in the ritual calendar, occurring as part of the lead-up to Lent.1 The event, which occurs on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, contains multiple references to the Peruvian nation, to surrounding haciendas, to local apus (spiritual powers embodied in mountain peaks), and to the community: as such it is a ‘polyvalent’ ritual,2 juxtaposing and inter-mingling symbols and meanings which otherwise are kept separate.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , October 1990 , pp. 575 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Communities to the north-east of Vilcanota carry out a similar ritual (Allen, C., The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community (Washington, 1988), p. 183)Google Scholar, although it seems to have disappeared completely in some villages of the region (M. Sallnow, personal communication). Rasnake, R. (Domination and Cultural Resistance (London, 1988), pp. 244–6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar documents a ritual procession that takes ‘an invariable route’ around the ayllu boundaries on Comadres (the Thursday before Ash Wednesday) in carnaval, in the communities of Yura, Bolivia.

2 Turner, V. and Turner, E., Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

3 See Platt, T., Estado Boliviano y ayllu andino (Lima, 1982)Google Scholar; Sallnow, M., Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cuzco (Washington, 1988)Google Scholar; Allen, The Hold Life Has; Rappaport, J., ‘History and Everyday Life in the Colombian Andes’, Man, vol. 23, no. 4 (1988), pp. 718–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Bastien, J. W., Mountain of the Condor (Prospect Heights, 1985).Google Scholar

5 The Hold Life Has.

6 Ibid., p. 107.

7 Ibid., p. 103.

8 Ibid., p. 106.

9 Yambert, K. A., ‘Thought and Reality: Dialectics of the Andean Community’, in Orlove, B. and Custred, G. (eds.), Land and Power in Latin America (London, 1980), pp. 55–78.Google Scholar

10 See Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage.

11 See Sallnow, , Pilgrims of the Andes, pp. 3, 12Google Scholar; Rappaport, ‘History and Everyday Life’.

12 Grimes, R., Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico (Ithaca, 1976).Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 68.

14 In other Andean communities, similar processions exists to confirm community: during carnaval in Yura, Bolivia, the processions around the boundaries ‘demarcate and reconfirm the social and geographic reality of the aylluo units’. Rasnake, R., ‘Carnaval in Yura: Ritual Reflections on Ayllu and State Relations’, American Ethnologist, vol. 13, no. 4 (1986), p. 676.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 The ethnography of the recorreo is drawn from my participation on Tuesday 3 March 1987.I was at the meal before the recorreo in 1985, but was excluded from the boundary-marking along with all village women. By 1987, I was invited to the entire ritual, and told ‘you don't count as a woman’.

16 See Allen, The Hold Life Has; Bastien, Mountain of the Condor; Harvey, P., ‘Language and the Power of History: The Discourse of Bilinguals in Ocongate (Southern Peru)’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of London, 1987Google Scholar; Isbell, B., To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Villageo (Austin, 1978).Google Scholar

17 See Allen, The Hold Life. Has; Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes.

18 Elected every two years, the administrative and overseeing committees are the legal representatives of the community who run affairs in consultation with meetings of all villagers.

19 Cobo, Bernabé, History of the Inca Empire [1632] (Austin, 1979), p. 211.Google Scholar

20 Moore, S. Falk, Power and Property in Inca Peru (Westport, 1958), p. 43.Google Scholar

21 The list of 18 names for hitos, given by the president after the recorreo, includes: Harata, Chinganayoc, Wallpacasa, Sayo, Ccasa, Saphi, Awawarac, Quillinsayoc, Pataccasac, Viachapampa, Rumbiniyoc, Cruzmuyuc, Allparawmi, Accaspata, Huykuqlluyoc, Paucarwasi, Chincanapata, and Qochawasi.

22 Fiovaranti, A. (‘The Andean Community Today’, in Murra, J., Wachtel, N. and Revel, J. (eds.), Anthropological Histories of Andean Polities (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 342–58Google Scholar) mentions the use of crosses in Yucay in the Vilcanota valley, although the crosses are left in the mountains all year round, rather than taken there once annually as in Kallarayan. Among Bolivia's Kataans, a wooden cross is placed on the last hito on a round similar to the recorreo, and may represent the ‘unburdening of Christianity’ (Bastien, Mountain of the Condor, p. 57).

23 Cf. Sallnow, , Pilgrims of the Andes, p. 137Google Scholar; Allen, The Hold Life Has.

24 M. Sallnow, personal communication.

25 See Sallnow, , Pilgrims of the Andes, p. 138.Google Scholar

26 Fiovaranti, ‘The Andean Community’; Yambert, ‘Thought and Reality’; Davies, T., Indian Integration in Peru: A Half Century of Experience 1900–1948 (Lincoln, Neb., 1970).Google Scholar

27 Conflicts over boundaries throughout the country necessitated subsequent clarification of legislation. In 1929 a law sought to rectify boundaries for owners who lacked titles, although few villages took advantage of the provision and Indian lands continued to be stolen. By 1930, 321 comunidades were registered, and their rights to ‘unalienable, imprescriptible and not attachable land’ were incorporated into the 1933 Constitution (Davies, Indian Integration in Peru).

28 Hunefeldt, C., Lucbas por la Tierra y Protestas Indígenas 1800–1830 (Bonn, 1982)Google Scholar; Platt, Estado boliviano.

29 Bastien, Mountain of the Condor; Allen, , The Hold Life Has, p. 31.Google Scholar

30 One topo is equivalent to 2,768 m2.

31 Walking itself can be an affirmation of the community for villagers in nearby Sonqo village (Allen, The Hold Life Has, p. 202).

32 These patterns of interaction have colonial antecedents. In 1771, the cacique of Coya complained to church authorities in Cuzco about conditions for its labourers in Hacienda Paullo. The cacique noted that Indians had worked in Paullo for seven months, which exceeded the agreed period, and were not paid their due wages nor fed adequately (Archivos Arzobispales de Cuzco XXIX.2.36, 1771).

33 Archivos Arzobispales de Cuzco XLII.1.6, 1748; 6.42–314.3, 1751.

34 Yambert, , ‘Thought and Reality’, p. 62.Google Scholar

35 Davies, Indian Integration in Peru.

36 No woman has yet been elected to this post.

37 Orlove, B., ‘Tomar la Bandera: Política y Trago en el Sur peruano’, in Briggs, L. et al. , Identidades Andinas y Lógicas del Campesinado (Lima, 1986), pp. 131–6.Google Scholar

38 Cf. Allen, The Hold Life Has; Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes.

39 Cf. Warren, K. and Bourque, S., ‘Gender, Power and Communication: Women's Responses to Political Muting in the Andes’, in Bourque, S. and Divine, D. R. (eds.), Women Living Change (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 255–86.Google Scholar

40 Radcliffe, S., ‘Women's Lives and Peasant Livelihood Strategies: A Study of Migration in the Peruvian Andes’, unpubl. PhD diss, University of Liverpool, 1986.Google Scholar

41 Before comunidad recognition, villagers dealt with abandoned land through the courts: in 1941, a judge awarded Kallarayan rights over fields of two ex-villagers then resident in a nearby town. Allen notes an occasional ceremony held in February at Chakra mañay when land left by death or migration is redistributed (The Hold Life Has, p. 101).

42 Cf. Harvey, ‘Language and the Power of History’.

43 Documentation can be conceived negatively by Andean peasants. Villagers of Sonqo in their oral histories say that runa were dispossessed of land when the Spaniards arrived with documents (documentoyuq) (Allen, , The Hold Life Has, p. 110).Google Scholar

44 See, for example, Allen, , The Hold Life Has, p. 106.Google Scholar

45 Cf. Howard-Malverde, R., ‘Storytelling Strategies in Quechua Narrative Performance’, Journal of Latin American Lore, vol. 15, no. 1 (1989), pp. 3–71.Google Scholar

46 Cf. Harvey, ‘Language and the Power of History’; Sallnow, , Pilgrims of the Andes, p. 267.Google Scholar

47 Cf. Rasnake, , Domination and Cultural Resistance, p. 259.Google Scholar