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Religion, Collectivism, and Intrahistory: the Peruvian Ideal of Dependence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Fredrick B. Pike
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The Inca ruling elites of ancient Peru based their right to leadership on a claim not only to aristocratic but also to divine blood. They were, they assured their subjects, descendants of Manco Capac, the son of the sun who according to official Inca history had founded the Empire of Tahuantinsuyo (the four corners). For the Incas, therefore, legitimacy rested on charisma, in the sense in which Max Weber used that word: ‘It is the quality which attaches to men and things by virtue of their relations with the “supernatural,” that is, with the nonempirical aspects of reality in so far as they lend theological meaning to men's acts and the events of the world.’

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Articles
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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , November 1978 , pp. 239 - 262
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 This is the description of Weber's concept of legitimacy and charisma provided by Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action, (2 vols., 2nd ed., New York, 1868). 2, 669.Google Scholar

2 Brundage, Burr Cartwright, Lords of Cuzco: A History and Description of the Inca People in Their Final Days (Norman, 1967), p. 29.Google Scholar

3 Brundage, Burr Cartwright, Empire of the Inca (Norman, 1963), p. 43.Google Scholar

4 Some authorities attribute the text of nearly all of the Cantigas to Alfonso X (1252–84), while others believe his contribution was more limited (about forty of the Cantigas are purely instrumental). Those interested in hearing for themselves some of the results of the bridging of class differences through the transformation of folk music and folk religion into high art and official religion may turn to various currently available recordings of selections from the Cantigas, and other music of this period with similar origins. These recordings, most of which feature accompaniment by authentic reproductions of medieval instruments, include: Deutsche Grammophon 2530 504, ‘Canciones Españolas’; MCA-2510, ‘Spanish Medieval Music’; Musical Heritage Society OR 302, ‘Las Cantigas de Santa María,’ Vol. I of History of Spanish Music, and MRS 3118/ 19, ‘El Misterio de Elche,’ Vols. VI and VII of History of Spanish Music; Vanguard 71175, Cantigas de Santa María ’; Telefunken SAWT 9620/21-B, ‘Música Ibérica’; and EMI Electrola, Reflexe, C 063-301707/8, ‘Camino de Santiago,’ 2 albums. The ‘Camino de Santiago’ albums are particularly distinguished both by performance and selection of material, but for many their effectiveness is limited because only a German translation of the original Galician text is included. During the past ten or fifteen years recordings of music from remote areas and from past centuries extending back to the Middle Ages have made available to many the opportunity to assemble their own museums through which they can experience history in a new intimacy.

5 Quoted in the New York Times, 28 Jan. 1977, p. 8.Google Scholar

6 On Marianismo, see Pescatello, Ann (ed.), Female and Male in Latin America (Pittsburg, 1973),Google Scholar and de Martí, Rosa Signorelli, ‘Spanish America,’ in Patai, Raphael (ed.), Women in the Modern World (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

7 On the early spread of Christianity among the native populace of viceregal Peru, see de Armas Medina, Fernando, Cristianización del Perú, 1532–1600 (Seville, 1953);Google ScholarLopétegui, León, Zubillaga, Félix, and de Egan¯a, Antonio, Historia de la lglesia en América española desde el descubrimiento hasta comienzos del siglo XIX (2 vols., Madrid, 1965, 1967), II,Google Scholar and Ugarte, Rubén Vargas, Historia de la lglesia en el Perú (4 vols., Lima, Burgos, 1953–1961), 1, passim.Google Scholar

8 The concern of Spanish theologians with maintaining the dependence of the faithful on a small and specialized class in matters of salvation is revealed by the assertion of sixteenth-century Dominican theologian, Melchor Cano, that absorption in prayer should be discouraged among the masses; for it would result in ‘the cobbler sewing shoes worse and the cook spoiling the meat’. Another Dominican, Alonso de la Fuente, similarly argued that the common folk should not give themselves to intensive prayer. Above all, prayer was not for married couples, for ‘to teach them to pray intensively would be making a bed for heresies.’ See Boxer, C. R., Women in Iberian Expansion Overseas, 1415–1815 (New York, 1975), p. 99.Google Scholar

9 See Rowe, John H., ‘The Incas Under Spanish Colonial Institutions’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 37 (1957), esp. pp. 156–7,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Spalding, Karen, ‘Indian Rural Society in Colonial Peru: The Example of Huarochiri’, University of California (Berkeley) Ph.D. dissertation (1967).Google Scholar

10 On the divided loyalties of curacas and caciques, see Spalding, Karen, ‘The Colonial Indian: Past and Future Research Perspectives’, Latin American Research Review, 7, (1972), 46–76.Google Scholar

11 Many Spanish officials realized that, in order to preserve the effectiveness of Indian intermediaries in controlling native masses, it was necessary to turn a blind eye to the continuing practice of pagan rituals. These circumstances also meant that the curaca intermediaries were not likely candidates for the Catholic priesthood, for ordination would have demanded absolute abjuration of pagan beliefs, which would in turn have resulted in loss of power over Indian masses. A native clergy, therefore, would have meant the Creation of new elites, certain to be resented by the old ones and likely at first to be less effective in controlling the native populace. Thus considerations of political control counseled against formation of a native clergy.

12 See Klaiber, Jeffrey, ‘The Posthumous Christianization of the Inca Empire in Colonial Peru’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 31 (1976), esp. Pp. 514–16.Google Scholar See also Adorno, Rolena K., ‘The Nueva Crónica y burn gobierno of Don Felipe Guama¯n Poma de Ayala: A Lost Chapter in the History of Latin American Letters’, Cornell University Ph.D. dissertation (1974).Google Scholar

13 About a century before Santos Atahuallpa appeared among the Campas, a Spanish adventurer had acually anticipated the Indian's revolutionary methods. Dressed in traditionalAndean native garb, he convinced thousands of Indians in a remote part of viceregal Peru that he was a descendant of Inca emperors and in possession of religious powers over both Indian and Spanish gods. More than one hundred native caciques accepted the Andalusian. born impostor, furnished him with maidens, and followed him in battle when he promised to liberate them from Spanish domination. See Miller, Ryal, ‘The Fake Inca of Tucumán: Don Pedro de Bohorques’, The Americas, 32 (1975), 196–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See Fisher, J. R., Government and Society in Colonial Peru: The Intendant System, 1784–1814 (London, 1970), p. 22.Google Scholar

15 See Dobyns, Henry F. and Doughty, Paul L., Peru: A Cultural History (New York, 1976), p. 134.Google Scholar

16 The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, trans. Sergio, Lisa (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

17 See Unamuno, , En torno al casticismo (2d ed., Madrid, 1916), esp. pp. 142–3.Google Scholar See also Entralgo, Pedro Laín, La generación del noventa y ocho (3rd ed., Madrid, 1956), pp. 184 ff.Google Scholar

18 Rowe, John H., ‘Inca Culture’, in Steward, Julian H. (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, 2, The Andean Civilizations (New York, 1963), p. 266.Google Scholar

19 Durkheim, , The Division of Labour in Society, trans, Simpson, George (New York, 1933), pp. 23, 26.Google Scholar

20 See Anne, E. and Freedman, P. E., The Psychology of Political Control (New York, 1975), esp. Chap. 4.Google Scholar

21 See Hunt, Shane J., ‘The Economics of the Hacienda and Plantation in Latin America mimeo’., Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School Discussion Paper (1972), esp. p. 6,Google Scholar and Mörner, Magnus, ‘The Spanish American Hacienda: A Survey of Recent Research and Debate’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 53 (1973), esp. pp. 191, 219–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Motivation and attempted implementation of Westernization are ably discussed by Davis, Thomas M. Jr, Indian Integration in Peru: A Half Century of Experience, 1900–1948 (Lincoln, 1974), chaps. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

23 Sec my ‘La Catholicisme en Amérique Latine’, in Aubert, R. et al. , L'Eglise dans le Monde Moderne, 1848 a nos jours (Paris, 1975), esp. pp. 381–7, 393–5.Google Scholar

24 On populism, in the context in which the term is here employed, see Hennessy, Alistair, ‘Latin America’, in lonescu, Ghita and Gellner, Ernest (eds.), Populism (New York, 1969), esp. pp. 28–36,Google ScholarRomero, Jose Luis, El pensamiento político de la derecha latinoamericana (Buenos Aires, 1970),Google Scholar especially his concluding chapter, and Di Tella, Torcuato S., ‘Populism and Reform in Latin America’, in Véliz, Claudio, ed., Obstacles to Change in Latin America (New York, 1965), p. 46, defining populism ‘as a political movement which enjoys the support of the mass of the urban working class and/or peasantry but which does not result from the autonomous organizational power of either of these two sectors’.Google Scholar See also Van Niekirk, A. E., Populism and Political Development in Latin America (Rotterdam, 1974).Google Scholar

25 Unamuno himsdf stated that leaders must reach down into intrahistory so as to learn consciously what the masses know only subconsciously. Thereby leaders would learn better how to guide masses. See En torno al casticismo, pp. 28–9.

26 Peruvian and U.S. radicals were to some degree under the influence of Marxism-Leninism, or at least imagined themselves to be. Sometimes they were also responsive to various branches of anarchist theory, for it is widely recognized that in Bakunin and certain of his disciples the urge to dominate was as strong as the urge to liberate (the same was true of course of most nineteenth-century liberals). Radicals, both in Peru and the United States, may finally have been under the influence of ‘paradigmatic’ fascism. See Gregor, A. James, The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics (Princeton, 1974).Google Scholar

27 In this discovery Peruvian elites were very much under the influence of Spain's Generation of ‘98, particularly of one of that generation's most lionized mentors, Joaquín Costa. The Generation of’98 had set the example of aspiring elites attempting to fathom the mysteries of intrahistory so as the better to dominate the masses and to utilize them in sweeping away an allegedly archaic oligarchy. Costa and like-minded aspiring elites had fully appreciated the importance of collectivism — for the masses, not for themselves – in re-establishing discipline over the lower classes. Some of the literature supporting this contention is found in my ‘Capitalism and Consumerism in Spain of the 1890s: A Latin Americanist's View ’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, 26 (1973), 19–47, and ‘Making the Hispanic World Safe from Democracy: Spanish Liberals and Hispanismo ’, Review of Politics, xxxiii (1971), 307–22.Google Scholar

28 See Stein, Stephen Jay, ‘Populism and Mass Politics in Peru: The Political Behavior of the Lima Working Classes in the 1933 Presidential Election’, Stanford University Ph.D. dissertation (1973), esp. p. 385. This remarkable study delivers far more than the title would suggest and provides essential insights into the ideology and working of the APRA.Google Scholar

29 This theme is developed with skill and originality by Klarén, Peter F., Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo: Origins of the Peruvian Aprista Party, 1870–1932 (Austin, 1973),Google Scholar and North, Liisa, ‘The Origins and Growth of the APRA Party and Socio-Economic Change in Peru’, University of California (Berkeley) Ph.D. dissertation (1970).Google Scholar

30 These are the terms employed by Basadre, Jorge in his Chile, Perú, y Bolivia independientes (Barcelona, 1948), p. 749. Basadre's treatment of Peru in this book is to some extent 2 succinct summation of a portion of his admirable Historia de la Repúhlica del Per–1933 (17 vols., 6th ed., Lima, 1968), perhaps the finest history of a single Latin American country ever written.Google Scholar

31 The best account of the religious aspects of the Atusparia uprising is found in Klaiber, Jeffrey L., Religion and Reuolution in Peru, 1824–1976 (Notre Dame, 1977), esp. pp. 60–67.Google Scholar On other manifestations of nineteenth-century Indian unrest, see Piel, Jean, ‘The Place of the Peasantry in the National Life of Peru in the Nineteenth Century’, Past and Present, No. 46 (1970), esp. Pp. 126–31.Google Scholar

32 See Richardson, Miles, Pardo, Marta Eugenia, and Bode, Barbara, ‘The Image of Christ in Spanish America as a Model for Suffering’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 8 (1971), 246–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 See Klaiber, Jeffrey L., ‘Religion and Revolution in Peru: 1920–1945’, The Americas, 31 (1975), 289–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 See Tucker, Robert C., Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1965), esp. p. 25.Google Scholar Additional insights into the topic under discussion are provided by Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movement (New York, 1961),Google Scholar and Lasky, Melvin J., Utopia and Revolution (Chicago, 1977).Google Scholar

35 Numerous valuable studies of Peruvian military corporativism and also of its precursor, Aprista corporativism, are available. I am vain enough to believe that an adequate listing of these sources is provided in my The United States and the Andean Republics: Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador (Cambridge, Mass., 1977).Google Scholar

36 See Dietz, Henry A. and Palmer, David Scott, ‘ Citizen Participation under Innovative Military Corporatism in Peru ’, in Booth, John and Seligson, Mitchell (eds), The Citizen and the State: Political Participation in Latin America, a forthcoming Holmes and Meier publication. I am grateful to Palmer for making available to me an advance copy of this manuscript.Google Scholar See also Dietz, , ‘Bureaucratic Participation and Clientelist Participation in Peru’, in Malloy, James (ed.), Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 1976),Google ScholarKnight, Peter T., ‘New Forms of Economic Organization in Peru: Toward Workers' Self- Management’, in Lowenthal, Abraham (ed.), The Peruvian Experiment: Change under Military Rule (Princeton, 1975),Google Scholar and McClintock, Cynthia, ‘Structural Change and Political Culture in Rural Peru: The Impact of Self-Managed Cooperatives on Peasant Clientelism 1969–1975’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. dissertation (1976).Google Scholar

37 On this topic, see Macaulay, Michael Gregory, ‘The Role of the Radical Clergy in the Attempt to Transform Peruvian Society’, University of Notre Dame Ph.D. dissertation (1972).Google Scholar Elements of the elitist populism involved in the approach of some of Peru's ‘radical’ clergy are revealed in Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, ‘ Notes for a Theology of Liberation ’, Theological Studies, 31 (1970), 243–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 The concept of concientización, propounded with tiresome frequency by the populist clergy of Peru and other ‘Third World’ countries is remarkably similar to the Leninist concept of consciousness-raising as carried out by the vanguard of the proletariat among the proletariat. While Lenin, however, stressed the importance of the intellectual worker in conciousnessraising, the populist clergy emphasize the role of the spiritual worker.

39 Berger, Peter, ‘The Socialist Myth’, The Public Interest, No. 44 (1976), pp. 3–16,Google Scholar and Wesson, Robert G., Why Marxism? The Continuing Success of a Failed Theory (New York, 1976) write discerningly on the continuing glitter of the socialist myth, largely undiminished by real-life failures. There is no reason to believe the corporativist myth will prove any less hardy.Google Scholar Some indications of the enduring appeal of a political culture that is in many ways the antithesis of the pluralist, democratic tradition are found in Dealy, Glen C., ‘The Tradition of Monistic Democracy in Latin America’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1974), 625–46,CrossRefGoogle ScholarMalloy, James M. (ed.). Authoritarianisn, and Corporatism in Latin America, Pike, F. B. and Stritch, T. J. (eds.), The New Corporatism: Social-Political Structures in the Iberian World (Notre Dame, 1974),Google Scholar and Wiarda, Howard J., Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experiment (Amherst, 1977) and (ed.), Politics and Social Change in Latin America: The Distinct Tradition (Amherst, 1974).Google Scholar

40 Valárcel, Luis E., quoted in José Antonio Arze, Sociografla del inkario: fue socialista o comunista el imperio inkaiko? (La Paz, Bolivia, 1953), pp. 33–4.Google Scholar See also Valcércel, , Del ayllu al imperio (Lima, 1925), esp. pp. 168, 184–5.Google Scholar

41 Vicente Mendoza López, quoted in de Izquierda Boliviano, Frente, ¡Hacia la unidad de las izquierdas bolivianas 1 (Santiago de Chile, 1939), p. 83.Google Scholar

42 Pozo, Hildebrando Castro, Del ayllu al al cooperativismo socialista (Lima, 1936), p. 79.Google Scholar

43 Pozo, Castro, ‘Social and Economico-Political Evolution in the Communities of Central Peru’, in Steward, (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, 2, 497.Google Scholar

44 Amalrik, , ‘By Bread Alone? A Well-Fed Slave is a Well-Fed Slave’, New York Times, 3 02. 1977, p. 33.Google Scholar

45 See, for example, Shils, E. A., ‘The Calling of Sociology’, in Parsons, Talcott, Naegle, K. D., and Pitts, J. R. (eds.), Theories of Society, (2 vols, New York, 1961), II, 1405–48.Google Scholar The subject is discussed by Gouldner, Alvin W., The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York, 1970), esp. pp. 251–77.Google Scholar

46 Heilbroner, Robert L., Business Civilization in Decline (New York, 1976), argues that the capitalist order has never been able to meet the spiritual needs of mankind, and that now it is becoming incapable of meeting the sheer needs of human survival. He asserts the need for a new religious orientation directed against the ruling notions of business civilization and toward a wholly different conception of the meaning of life — easier said than done l And he believes that the new faith, combined with the high degree of political authority the future will demand, may necessitate some kind of a state religion.Google Scholar Along similar lines, Bell, Daniel, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976), argues that modernity's problems arise basically from a spiritual crisis and a problem of belief.Google Scholar For a closely related analysis, see Wager, W. Warren, ‘Religion, Ideology, and the Idea of Mankind in History’, in Wager, (ed.), History of the Idea of Mankind (Albuquerque, 1971), esp. p. 196.Google Scholar

47 See Howard J. Wiarda, ‘The Latin Americanization of the United States’, mimeo., paper presented at the 1976 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago. Bayley, David H., ‘Learning About Crime — the Japanese Experience’, The Public Interest, No. 44 (1976), 55–68, suggests that the reason for declining crime rate in Japan during the past twentyfive years in Contrast to the soaring levels in the United States may be due to the presence of intermediate, informal, corporative groups in the first country and their absence in the second.Google Scholar Law and order enthusiasts may be quick to discern a moral, On the abiding fascination of important U.S. intellectual figures with collectivism-corporativismco-operativism, even before law and order became a priority national issue, see Gilbert, James, Designing the industrial State: The Intellectual Pursuit of Collectivism in America, 1880–1940 (Chicago, 1972),Google ScholarGoodwyn, Lawrence, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America (New York, 1976),Google Scholar and Neely, Mark E. Jr, ‘The Organic Theory of State in America, 1838–1918’, Yale University Ph.D. dissertation (1973),Google Scholar Finally, the suggestion that the United States is even now living through an inevitable transition to collectivism is found in Savelle, Max, ‘Reflecions on Renovation in America, 1887–1976’, The Americas, 33 (1976), 185–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 The ‘hierarchy of human needs’ theory of psychiatrist Abraham Maslow seems applicable to the circumstances under discussion. (See Maslow, , ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, Psychological Review, 50 ‘1943’, esp. pp. 370–75,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Toward a Humanistic Biology’, American Psychologist, 24 [1969], esp. pp. 727–32.) As a part of his theory, Maslow posits five stages of needs, beginning with physiological needs and ending with the need for sclf-actualization and fulfilment through realization of one's potential. One can speculate that a society of abundance affords broad opportunities to satisfy this fifth and highest need. But the environment of spreading scarcity in which the United States and the rest of the developed world now begin to find themselves may necessitate stepping down to the essentially collectivist needs that Maslow places in category three of his hierarchy. Against a background of mounting frustrations, governments in the developed world may be more and more inclined to grasp at all means, including religion and inducements toward collectivism; that hold forth the promise of facilitating control without requiring the use of overt coercion.Google Scholar

49 I have borrowed the term from Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977). There are glaring Contrasts and also fascinating parallels between the feminization of culture in the nineteenth-century United States, as described by Douglas, and events in Peru. In the United States, déclassé clergymen, resentful of the new business leadership that was carrying all before it, formed an alliance with female writers and reformers to produce, according to Douglas, a sentimental set of values that would provide a foundation for much of the twentieth century's mass culture. During the same period, the Peruvian clergy, deprived of status by the rise of liberal, business-oriented, anticlerical groups that the churchmen denounced as slaves to Mammon, turned to women as a principal power base, glorifying all the while the virtues of resignation, docility and dependence while downgrading traits of competitive achievement.Google Scholar

50 See, for example, Nordhaus, William D.. ‘The Falling Share of Profits’, in Okun, Arthur M. and Perry, George L. (eds.), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Washington, 1976), 1, 169–208,Google Scholar and Okun, , Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-off (Washington, 1976).Google Scholar A deeply-probing analysis of these and other works is found in Epstein, Jason, ‘Capitalism and Socialism Declining Returns, The New York Review of Books, 17 02 1977, pp. 35–9.Google Scholar See also the articles by Pessen, Edward, Lampman, Robert J. and Lamale, Helen H., exploring ‘Money and the Pursuit of Plenty in America’, in The Wilson Quarterly, 1 No. 5 (1977), 134–169.Google Scholar