Froemming, Steven J.; 1999; Rational Choice and Collective Action in an Andean Community. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Washington. Excerpt from Chapter 1, p. 52-70.

Cultural Identity

Ethnicity and Class

It is tempting to categorize all the villagers of Ccachín as runa (i.e., culturally indigenous Andeans), and the Lareños and other bearers of national culture -- truckers, traders, teachers, health officials, and government workers -- as misti ('mestizos'), and leave it at that. Certainly, there is considerable precedent among Andean scholars to do so. Given the complexity of ethnicity and ethnic change in the Andes, however, it would be to draw, at best, a caricature.

As Van den Berghe (1974) reminds us, twenty-five years ago a standard ethnographic description of social stratification in an Andean community would read something like, "about 10 percent of the town's population is mestizo. The rest of the inhabitants are cholo. The surrounding rural population is predominantly indio." In the late 1960s and 1970s, emphasis on class and stratification led to the substitution of the term campesinofor indio and indígena in the social science literature and in Peruvian government policy. A number of recent ethnographic works have returned to ethnicity as a frame of reference, with a preference for using the Quechua terms runa ('human being, person') and misti (from the Spanish mestizo, 'mixed parentage') to discuss cultural identity, ethnic conflict, and accommodation and resistance to colonial and modernizing influences (Skar 1982; Allen 1988; Poole 1990; Sallnow 1991). As Allen (1988:238) puts it, "I prefer to use the Sonqueños own term rather than refer to them as Indians or peasants. . . . The word campesinohas acquired the same derogatory connotations that were previously associated with the word Indio. I think it preferable to use a term that recognizes ethnic differences and to work on changing the negative connotations associated with these differences."⁽¹⁾

The struggle over terms of identity in the Andes tends to confirm Urla's (1993) observation that social science concepts themselves provide important tools of persuasion for groups trying to define their cultural identity. In the late 1960s, the reformist government in Peru adopted class terminology current in the social sciences (especially dependency theory, see Quijano 1982). The law of the comunidad indígena became the law of the comunidad campesina in 1969, but despite this conceptual and terminological change, ethnic criteria remained embedded in granting groups separate legal status in the rural areas. The intent of the change in terminology was to downplay the cultural and linguistic aspects of the ethnic distinctions, and to emphasize the rural residence, subordinate class position, and dependence on the urban center of the designated groups. The change served the interests of those seeking to promote national Peruvian identity, and it provided rhetorical support for those trying to break down the power of the landed aristocracy. Van den Berghe (1974) observes, however, that by failing to take sufficient account of ethnic processes, this emphasis on class at the policy level left the structure of ethnic domination in the Andes largely intact. It remains to be seen if the 1990s emphasis on identity as a means to political autonomy and cultural survival in the face of an expanding global culture and world economic system will correct this.⁽²⁾

Descriptively, ethnic definition in the Andes must be seen as fuzzy, prototypic and context-bound. Coca-chewing may be used as a marker in some areas but not in others, Quechua monolingualism or bilingualism may or may not be a marker, and in some areas the sharpness of the ethnic boundary is related to pronounced variation in cultural differences over a broad range of traits, while in others, there may be little such variation. The ethnic terms used for classificatory purposes in the social science literature are often those used by the people themselves to comment on the social position of others, rather than as ethnic categories to which people have a sense of belonging. Often, the terms can't be elicited spontaneously from the people they identify. In Ccachín, I rarely heard ethnic terms used at all. Ethnographers frequently assume more uniformity of perception and unanimity at local or regional levels than in fact exists, overlooking class, age and sex differences in usage (Van den Berghe 1974).⁽³⁾

From my perspective, the traditional ethnic terms do not help us make sense of the complex dynamics of identity change in the Andes. Class, ethnicity, rural-urban provenance, and age identities tend to be conflated, with the underlying mechanisms of change obscured. As Fuenzalida and Mayer (1974) suggest, much of the dynamic of change may come not from hegemonic processes of mestizaje, but from young people of all social and ethnic groups rejecting the status quo. To the extent that this is true, the process of modernization taking place in the Andes is not that different from that discussed by Abu-Lughod, who shows the implications of being caught in multiple overlapping and intersecting webs of power. Her observations about generational conflict in a distant and vastly different society ring surprisingly true for Ccachín (and if representative, for the Andes) as well:

As Van den Berghe (1974) emphasizes, the relative salience of class and ethnicity as explanatory concepts is an empirical question. The general pattern in the Cusco area has been that the closer one comes to the urban center of Cusco and to the main interconnecting roads, the more the processes of mestizaje and bilingualism tend to blur ethnic distinctions, and the more class differences become salient. Additionally, education in State schools, radio communication, and travel for labor migration, military service, religious pilgrimage, and trade have intensified the processes of assimilation while further blurring the salience of ethnic distinctions.


Identity, Status, and Stratification in Lares

Whatever the intricacies of class and ethnic distinctions, stereotypes and prejudice by their nature leave little to ambiguity. Despite the background of all that has been written about social stratification in the Andes, it's ever shocking to see it expressed in personal relations and the characterizations people make of each other. Take, for example, the following description of the "indios" of Lares, written by a second-year university student of the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco doing a research project in the region 50 years ago:

While such brutal assessments may have become unfashionable or unacceptable in the intervening years, at least in print, more subtle versions are common in daily discourse, and can even be found in professional social scientific reports. The following description of villagers in Choquecancha was written just a few years ago by a well-known historian at the same university:

The hallmark of such stereotyping is that all the perceived ills in the countryside reduce to character, the only difference being in how the supposed degeneration of character is explained.

Ethnicity in the Andes is relatively uncontaminated by somatic criteria, and labels such as indio, mestizo, and blanco, while once racial, have been redefined in sociocultural terms in both popular and social science discourse (van den Berghe 1974). Angles Vargas (1992:167), for example, notes that the "indios" of Choquecancha often have a lighter complexion than the mestizos that dominate them. Dress, language, education, and wealth are more prominent ethnic markers than physical ones. This is not to say that physical appearance in general, or color in particular, is not noted, or doesn't matter to locals. People are often nicknamed flaco('skinny'), gordo ('fatty'), or chinito (diminutive of 'Chinese') among Spanish speakers, the latter, because of their eyes. In Ccachín, one of my comadres addressed her youngest daughter as samba because of her dark skin color, and the label is applied to other children in the village as well. When I asked villagers if color mattered, their typical response was that "white is better." Some investigators have paid attention to color as well, noting that people in the Lares area have a lighter complexion and taller stature than the typical indigene (Valencia and Nuñez 1989; Gutiérrez Pareja 1979).

Apparently there is a local tradition that claims that residents of the area are of partial English or French descent, but I never encountered the tale. Many researchers emphasize local residents' Spanish and Portuguese ancestries, the latter coming not only through Portuguese miners who entered the area during colonial times, but also perhaps, more speculatively, through muleteers of Portuguese heritage from the province of Acomayo who settled in the region (see Flórez Muñiz 1946 for evidence in this regard). There are also families with Basque surnames in Lares and the puna communities west of Ccachín. Villagers in Ccachín don't trace their genealogies back more than three or four generations, and it tends to be the more hispanicized Peruvian social scientists that emphasize the processes of mestizaje (racial or cultural mixing) in the area, not residents themselves. Commentators agree that the population of Lares is primarily mestizo or white, but whether one characterizes Ccachín or Choquecancha as an "aldea mestiza" ('mestizo village') as Angles Vargas (1992:163) does, or treats them as "runa" communities, as Seibold (1990) does, depends on the perspective of the beholder. Heritage is something that its holders can choose to invoke or ignore, and Seibold tells of how when she asked who constructed some terraces of obviously very recent construction above Choquecancha, her native informant replied "the Last Incas." Pressing to find out who these Incas were, the informant replied, "We built them. We are the Last Incas."

Ccachín and Choquecancha have a similar class and ethnic makeup, and I treat them almost interchangeably here, but that is not to deny distinct histories and fine and locally meaningful differences. Knox-Seith (1995:45) notes that just as she was able to recognize an unknown individual in Ccachín as a member of a particular village family by his or her family resemblance, so she was able to recognize visitors from Choquecancha as outsiders by their faces. Both physical features and the limited overlap in surnames (a pattern that goes back at least two centuries) suggests that there has been little intermarriage between the two communities. While this is surprising given their geographic proximity, it makes sense ecologically, and I suspect that when both communities were smaller, their residents were more likely to choose partners from different ecological levels -- the puna and the cloud forest -- than from their own level. Taking the comunidad campesina as a whole, Ccachín is now predominately endogamous, but as Hurtado Huamán et. al. 1996) indicate, one of the strategies for securing wider access rights to agricultural land and pastures is for a young person to marry someone from one of the other anexos within community boundaries; a man from Ccachín may pair with a woman from Qochayoq, for example. It may be -- and this is just a hypothesis -- that Gutiérrez Pareja's metaphoric reference to Ccachín as "a fine veiled rooster" is more incisive than it first seems, and that part of the historical rivalry between people in the two villages has been for mates.

Information gleaned from 19th century tax-lists for the district of Lares suggests that Ccachín has experienced periods of settlement from outside. The roll of contributors for 1851 lists fifty native households ("originarios") and resident outsiders ("forasteros") with land and thirty-six forastero families without land (Provincia de Calca 1851). A full 42% of residents at that time were thus immigrants or descendants of immigrants without land, a situation favoring the owners of adjacent haciendas.

The pattern of change in surnames over time gives an idea of the rise and fall of family lines, and hints at when the ancestors of present community members first arrived. While I lack the genealogical data to confirm it, it appears that the Guaman, Crúz, and Quispe families are the oldest in the community, the first two going back over 200 years). A few of my informants reported that Crúz was one of the oldest families in the community, and the census data validates their collective memory. The Guamans have historically held land in the center of the community just above the church, but by 1990 only 3% of villagers had Guaman as their paternal surname. The Zúñiga family, on the other hand, has had remarkable success since first appearing in the village sometime after 1851. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, ancestors of most of the present day Zúñigas were arrendire at Hacienda Palanganayoq, and they appears to have been relatively wealthy and powerful by community standards.

Surprisingly, while 57% of the surnames that appear in the 1836 tax roll were not present in the community fifty years earlier, none of them have survived till present. On the other hand, a significant number of family lines that are now well represented in the community first appear on the 1886 tax list. There's no significant difference between the percentages of men and women with Quechua surnames in the 1786, 1836, and 1851 censuses. Over time, the percentage of community members with a Quechua surname has declined, but it is important to note that at present, names play no role in the region in determining ethnic identity, and they don't enter into people's sense of ethnic pride, as in some parts of the world.

Relations Between Villagers in Ccachín and Lares

The classic ethnographic description in the Andes documents a bilingual mestizo minority in the district capital -- the lowest rung of a ruling class -- dominating the monolingual Quechua majority in the hinterlands. While once the case of Lares as well, this picture has been complicated by the breakdown of the hacienda system, the formation of independent comunidades campesinas, and the changes brought by increasing mobility. Perhaps this is best symbolized by the fact that, for the most part now, when people dress up and go to town, they get on a truck and pass right through Lares on their way to Calca or Cusco.

With recent changes, the differences between Lares and Ccachín are not as pronounced as they once were. There has probably always been considerable overlap in the mix of strategies used to make a living in Ccachín and Lares -- a mix that includes small-scale subsistence agriculture and stock raising, and commercial and artisanal specialization. There are various degrees of bilingualism. In both communities, everyone can speak Quechua, but not everyone is fluent in Spanish. Quechua is the language used at home by everyone in Ccachín, but Spanish is far more common in the home and in the street in Lares. Styles of dress differ for women more than men, with some shopkeepers in Lares adopt the "chola" dress of the Qosqo market. Impressionistically, the language, lifestyle, and living standard differences between the runa of the puna communities of Chupani and Wakawasi that attend the weekly market in Lares and the runa of Ccachín and Choquecancha, as well as the differences between individuals within both Ccachín and Choquecancha, are as great as the difference between the Lareños and the members of these latter comunidades campesinas. Whatever the emic reality of local distinctions, the nature of local differentiation creates a problem for broader classification: whatever the ethnic marker, the difference between those said to be runa or misti and those who are not is no greater than the difference between members of each of these identity groups themselves. It's relatively easy to find individuals from the two cultural categories that, excluding territorial affinities (i.e., whether they live in a town or in a comunidad campesina), have more in common with each other than either of them do with others of their identity group.

In the position that the Lareños are in -- the lower middle rungs of a status hierarchy -- they are subject to negative stereotyping from all sides. The following description of the male youth of Lares was written from the perspective of a student from the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco in 1949:

Beyond the ethnographic detail to be gleaned (Ranrayoq, for example, is now one of the potato sectors in Ccachín), such descriptions no doubt tell us more about the character of class-ethnic relations -- between an educated, urban youth and his small-town country counterpart -- than they do about the character of the people described.

In Ccachín, the Lareños likewise have the reputation of being "malo" ('mean, malicious'). Villagers in Ccachín say that the people of Lares are "abusivo" ('abusive') and full of "tonterías" ('nonsense'). Lareños are thought to be uncooperative, obstinate, and given to theft. As evidence, comuneros cite the problems that the Salesian priests have had with the Lareños -- theft from the parish house and failure to cooperate with church and public works -- and note that because they are always fighting with the priests, the latter have withdrawn from their outpost there. People likewise cite the refusal of the Virgin of Guadalupe to stay in Lares, and her preference for Ccachín. They also refer to their own experiences with the Lareños. A member of my host family told me, for instance, that the Lareños continue to call people in Ccachín "indios," and scoff that "with their radios and aluminum pots and pans, we can hardly recognize these cholos anymore."⁽⁵⁾

The negative image that comuneros have of the Lareños as a whole is tempered by admiration and esteem in specific cases, especially those based on the strength of long-term compadrazgo relations (often honored into the second generation). With reduced dependence on the district capital, the choice of Lares townsfolk for compadrazgo relationships appears to be in decline. For all of the complaints about their relations with Lareños, however, the people in Ccachín that I talked to rarely if ever refer to them in ethnic terms, either as individuals, or as a group. Their behavior was generally deferential to them, reflecting asymmetrical relations in terms of status and power, but it would be hard for an outsider to construct a model of ethnicity based on this observed deference alone.

On the strength of history, many of the Lareños think of themselves as superior to the runaof the outlying comunidades, and they behave accordingly. Likewise, many people in Ccachín consider themselves superior to the people living in the highland communities above. Many referred to the people of the neighboring puna communities of Qelkanka, Chupani, Wakawasi (and even those in the Ccachín anexoof Qochayoq) as uncivilized and salvaje ('wild'), decidedly unlike themselves. According to one informant, the people of the puna "no son gente" -- "they're not people" -- at least in the sense that they are not like the people of Ccachín).⁽⁶⁾ Given the range of what is considered proper within the community itself, stresses emerge generationally and according to the distance one lives from the nuclear center, differences marked by the same traditional-modern continuum that exists with regard to their highland neighbors.

As people move between Ccachín and Qelkanka, Chupani, Wakawasi and the other neighboring communities on the puna, between Ccachín and Ocobamba, Quillabamba, and Yavero in the La Convención-Lares Valley, or between Ccachín and the urban centers of Calca, Cusco, and Lima, they shuttle between points of different identity reference, alternating between situations where ethnic distinctions and class distinctions predominate. Some people travel more, some less. Some of the older women in Ccachín have never been as far away as Cusco, some of the younger men go to Calca almost weekly on business. For those that travel, and particularly for the young, identity and status is constantly being negotiated and redefined in the context of the local social makeup. While the group -- whether identified as runa, indio or campesino -- stays at the bottom of the social pyramid, the way is open for considerable individual mobility. It's long been noted that ethnicity in the Andes can be mapped spatially, highlands to valley, rural to urban. The latter contrast is so important that one wonders whether if ethnic prejudice were not at issue, the map of social stratification wouldn't be much the same.

Twenty-five years after the agrarian reform, the reformist language has become a part of the way that people in Ccachín identify and project themselves. The terms compañero ('comrade'), compañerokuna(kuna, as a suffix, marks the plural in Quechua.), comunero, and campesinos have become common forms of address and reference in public discourse, both in the village, and regionwide. It is the language of identity expressed at the village assemblies and in the public announcements made by town criers, heralding their advance with conch shells. If campesino continues to carry a sense of a poor and dependent social position, it also is the language of community and regional action in a way that runa is not. As members of comunidades campesinos they engage in joint action organized by the campesino federations (Federación Departamental de Campesinos de Cusco (FDCC), Federación Agraria Revolucionaria Túpac Amaru (FARTAC). United as campesinos they join together with other communities to march in Lares, in Calca, and in Cusco, and as campesinos they block the main transportation arteries during strikes. Their participation in these campaigns is always organized according to comunidades, with each community led by its varayoqs, pututeros, and a banner identifying its presence. In organizational terms, these are affinity groups, territorially-identified rather than distinguished by a common characteristic or interest as they often are in protests in contemporary industrial states.⁽⁷⁾

To a considerable extent, people's identity seems to be defined by their ties to the land and membership in a local corporate territorial entity. This identity is expressed whenever people speak of belonging to a particular llaqta ('community, town, nation, country') or ayllu ('community, clan'). The smallest corporate unit of identification seems to be the settlement. Ccachín has three anexos -- Rayankancha, Qochayoq, and Yerbabuenayoq -- and one settlement seeking anexo status, Pampallaqta, besides the nuclear community. Each of these settlements has its own history and sense of dependence on or independence from the nuclear village of Ccachín. Qochayoq, the oldest and largest of these settlements, distant from Ccachín and located at a higher ecological level, seems to have the strongest independent identity. Culturally, it is more associated with the herding communities of the puna than the agricultural settlements below. Clothing is typical of the Urubamba range, but can be generally distinguished from that of Ccachín. In recent times, it has switched from being administered by Rosaspata to being an anexo of Ccachín. Yerbabuenayoq, the smallest and most transient settlement, has the least independent identity. Its population is composed of shopkeepers from Ccachín and Choquecancha who maintain their ties to their home settlements, and outsiders from Calca and Sicuani who are not members of the comunidades campesinas. Each of the anexos have their own assemblies, and they vary in the extent that they attend the assemblies in Ccachín as well. As a settlement of merchants, some of whom are not members of (and not eligible for membership in) the comunidad campesina, Yerbabuenayoq is organized by the Asociación de Comerciantes de Yerbabuenayoq.

For most people, identity seems to reside with the village: Ccachín. There are no moiety divisions as there are in some Andean communities. As a comunidad campesina, it has its own decision making structure, and for all but those in the anexos, it is the first formal level of membership in a corporate group. At this level, people distinguish themselves from the neighboring comunidades campesinas of Choquecancha and Rosaspata, and from the district capital of Lares. They have stereotypes about what people in each of these neighboring communities are like. There are slight, but noticeable, differences in clothing between Ccachín and Choquecancha (and between those two and Lares), making it possible to distinguish origin. Those who marry into Ccachín continue to be perceived as having one leg outside, a perception of betwixt- and-between that is only overcome in the next generation. At this level, the community constitutes a nación when it sends its dancers on pilgrimage to Qoyllur Rit'i, or when it participates in political demonstrations in the capitals. When people from the region migrate to Arequipa or Lima, they activate networks based on their community of origin. In a nesting hierarchy of territorial identities, we might hypothesize that comunidad campesina membership is the basic level of identity in the region.

That identity, however, is defined by the context of similarities and contrasts with adjacent neighbors.⁽⁸⁾The immediate reference point is the greater Lares area. Ccachín, Choquecancha, Rosaspata, and Lares are bound by a shared ecology and history. As one looks out over the valley, they all fall within the sweep of land that the eye can see. All are at the same ecological level, and all have equal access to the road. People are familiar with the place-names -- with the spirits and history of the land -- throughout this zone. Cross-culturally, this seems to be an often salient level of cultural identity, and I note that in this sense, the Andes are not that different from Iberia, where the comarca ('district') has been an important level of identification (Tax Freeman 1989).⁽⁹⁾ For some reason, the term does not seem to be used much in social science discourse in the Andes, but it reminds us that geographic identities are often felt as strongly, if not more so, than class and ethnic ones.

Generally, in most contexts that people find themselves, these local-level territorial sentiments outweigh linguistic ties, so that in common use, the term runa does not represent a pan-Andean indigenous identity based on widely-shared cultural traits or the Quechua language. Certainly, the symbols exist for the construction of such an identity, but the manipulation of this symbolic material has been most pronounced, not in the countryside among the comuneros, but among the more Westernized urban population of Cusco, as it tries to define its own identity. As early as 1967, Bourricaud talked about the cultural synthesis between indio and mestizobrought about by social and geographical mobility. Out of this process, he suggested, would emerge a new national Peruvian culture which is neither Indian nor Spanish. While it is still not clear that such an outcome is ordained, the shape of the synthesis is being contested at regional and national levels (e.g., as a cultural component of the political movement toward decentralization, as through the Región Inca).

Along with their other identities, identification as peruanos appears to be of growing importance in Ccachín. This identification is relatively recent, but the signs are near ubiquitous. National symbols -- the Peruvian shield, the Peruvian flag, Túpac Amaru (a rebellious indigenous leader appropriated to some extent into the national identity) -- have become a part of women's weavings in the village in the last 20 years, picking up on images and themes first seen in school texts. During caballo ch'allay, the blessing of the horses associated with the festival of Santiago, ribbons flying the colors of the Peruvian flag are tied to the horse's tails. The same ribbons are sometimes tied to the scissors used in ritual first-haircuttings. As Ccachín men collectively check the community's boundaries in the annual deslinde, they are led by pututeros and the Peruvian flag. The State grants comunidad campesina status and legitimates land claims, and the flag is an important symbol used to stake claim to contested territory. Young men from the village who have performed State military service are exempted from serving the lower-level offices of Ccachín's civil-religious hierarchy (cargo system). Peruvian identity is reinforced through the carrying of national identity cards, and through identification with the national party symbols of parties courting the campesino vote in presidential elections. Such symbols -- the fríjol ('bean', Izquierda Socialista), estrella('star', Partido Aprista Peruano), escalera ('stairway', FREDEMO) -- now make it possible for a rural population with varying degrees of literacy to vote in national elections; prior to the Velasco regime they were effectively disenfranchised by the literacy requirement. The radio provides a daily reminder for the comuneros of Ccachín of their membership in the Nation. It establishes their interest and stake in otherwise seemingly distant events.

Authenticity

Indigenous Andean culture is a synthesis of pre-Columbian and Spanish traits, and in this sense it's not so different from mestizo culture. Perhaps this seems a truism, but it sometimes bears repeating by those of us, who, for our own identity reasons, are fascinated by cultures that seem more original and pure than our own. As Gade (1992) points out, exaltation of the indigenous leads us to emphasize present-day continuities with the Incan past. Our sympathies for the oppressed lead us to portray Western influence as an entirely negative force. Scholarly discussion of Spanish impact has most often focused on its disadvantages and its disintegrative effects, overshadowing the ingenuity with which Andean peasants have selected among introduced elements, adapting some, eliminating others, to incorporate them into their lives. To cite but one example, sheep, the most important introduced species in the Andes, are often treated as intrinsically inferior to the autochthonous alpaca they largely replaced. It often seems that the vehemence with which they are dismissed owes more to their taint by Old World origins than to legitimate ecological concerns. As Bernardo Fulcrand, points out, however, "There are no bad animals, there are only badly-managed animals" (Fulcrand 1989).⁽¹⁰⁾

Indigenous communities in the Andes have always faced the issue of what is authentic to the community and how to authenticate synthetic elements whose origins lie outside of it (Dover 1992). Many of the Old World plants and animals in the hybrid Andean cultural complex are viewed by villagers in Ccachín as autochthonous, or "criollo," which when contrasted with "improved" varieties, means much the same thing. For practical people in an oral culture, authenticity tends to be a matter of family tradition -- of what ones parents and grandparents did -- rather than of ancient cultural origins. Like peasants everywhere, many Andeans have been initially distrustful of innovation and slow to embrace them (the same can be said of European peasants who were slow to adopt the Andean potato). It's hard to determine what role authenticity plays in advancing or retarding innovation. It may be or may not be at stake in a given context, and it may dominate or be subordinate to other considerations. What's more, it's hard to determine exactly what "identity" means in such domains, and how, if at all, it differs from frequency-dependent and vertical cultural transmission rules.

Authenticity seems to be more clearly at stake in the realm of dance, dress, and ritual, and it's most transparent as one considers the difference in ceremonial contexts. Again, there is a question of audience here, of how one identifies oneself and who one identifies with as participant and observer. Poole (1990:118) notes that in contemporary concepts of "folklore," dance and other ritual activities seek "to 'represent,' 'reassert,' or otherwise totalize a collective 'ethnic' identity." In an enlightening essay, she discusses the different meanings of dance for the runa, mestizo, cholo, and gringo pilgrims that attend the festival of Qoyllur Rit'i. Runa pilgrims understand the pilgrimage as an offering to the miraculous Christ of Qoyllur Rit'i and to their Apu, the snow-capped mountain, and they are motivated by the reciprocal relations they maintain with these spirit entities and by the opportunity to advance rank in the local cargo system (a hierarchy of prestigious positions and political offices). For more urban Peruvian nationals and foreigners, the pilgrimage is often a quest that "provides them access not only to a timeless nature, but to an ancient, 'authentic' culture whose non-Western, precolonial roots . . . [they] have come to idealize as a less complex, less coercive, less historically compromising way of life" (Poole 1990:98). The pilgrimage may provide a liminal experience for both, but for the former, unlike the latter, the liminality does not derive from its representational quality.

In Ccachín, there are both religious and secular contexts for dance. Take the ch'unchudance, for example, a dance that portrays the "savages" of the jungle and includes the killing of a very important figure in Andean mythology, the Andean bear. The ch'unchu dance is performed in the Ccachín church before the image of Santiago, under the sponsorship of a carguyoq('festival sponsor'). It is also performed by dance troupes representing various community organizations in a dance competition for Ccachín's anniversary. And ch'unchu can be danced by students in programs organized by the teachers on secular holidays such as Mother's Day and Independence Day and on moment's notice for visiting tourists. Each of these contexts is very different. Qualitatively, dancing for Santiago is similar to dancing for the Taytacha at Qoyllur Rit'i as described above. The dances for the anniversary celebration and school contexts, however, are purely representational, or "folkloric" in the sense identified by Poole, in that they are performed outside of their traditional religious and ritual context, and they are intended exclusively for the outside observer. In most cases, the "outside" observers are the community members themselves. In a few cases, the viewers may be community members who have migrated to Cusco, Arequipa, or Lima and have returned to their natal village for the holidays. Occasionally the intended audience is foreign tourists, who are indeed outsiders. Qualitatively, these secular feasts are like the numerous folk festivals that are sponsored by State institutions and the schools in which highland dances play a role. Often, dances that play no role in the religious and religious activity of Ccachín, but that are danced somewhere in the highlands and enter in the wider repertoire of Peruvian folk dance, are performed. The paradox of such folkloric dance is that while in motivation and meaning they are less "authentic" than in their religious manifestations, their primary purpose is to convey authenticity: reaffirm the village's formal status as a comunidad campesina, to assure mothers and fathers that their children have not been lost to them, and to define membership in the Peruvian Nation. Poole (1990:122, n. 19) suggests that in this last respect, the modern day politics of folklore have much in common with the cultural surveillance of dance in the Inca state, when dances were presented in Cusco to control and confine the ethnic identities of the groups subject to Inca hegemony.

People have a sense of what it means to be a comunero via-a-vis other social groups, not only in terms of primary symbols -- their language runasimi, the use of coca, indigenous dress -- but also in terms of behavior. This is the meaning of runa in its normative rather than membership sense, and there is individual variation and social evolution in the ideal. The use of the term in this sense -- who and what is runa-- indicates the degree of consensus about what is appropriate, a consensus that with the passage of time is shifting, constantly tested, and apparently negotiable. Individual behavior often differs widely from the ideal, even as diverging individuals continue to idealize stereotypic traits. Often, the ideal finds expression in ritual more than in everyday behavior, although the ritualistic expression of identity likewise differs widely, even on special occasions. In this as in other things, some people are more religious than others. Caught up in our own issues of identity in the field, it is understandable when anthropologists fix their sights on central traits. The core is denser and better defined than the boundaries, and helps serve as an anchor for those of us who enter as professional strangers. Understanding local identity issues, however, requires that we keep our eyes moving between cultural center and periphery.

Ccachín youth move back and forth between city and country without ceasing to be runa, and more permanent emigrants to Calca and Cusco maintain animals, fields and family ties in the country. The stresses of culture change get expressed in rural-urban and generational terms more often than in explicitly ethnic ones. Parents complain that their urbanized children don't work as hard as they. Young people say that they want to move to the city so that they don't have to work as hard as their parents. With the current level of movement, and using traditional sociocultural criteria of class and ethnicity, individual families may best be characterized as multiclass and multiethnic in their membership. To say that families are multiclass is to speak of structural positions and leads to no major problems. To say that a family is multiethnic, however, appears to be a contradiction in terms: it challenges the primordial nature of ethnic identifications (Keyes 1981). A rupture in the family may come in succeeding generations. Whether there is a rupture or not, however, depends on the entire field of ethnic definitions in the larger society, and the extent that these allow for nesting and inclusion. People in the Cusco area are living at a time when these cultural boundaries are being contested and rewritten.

Notes

1. While runa is a term used by people in the Quechua-speaking communities to refer to themselves, misti or mestizo is a term of reference used by the runa to refer to their Spanish-speaking, hispanicized neighbors. It is not normally used by the misti themselves, and does not meet the test of self-reference that runa does. I agree with Bodley (1994), that anthropologists should favor non-pejorative terms acceptable to the people themselves. The term campesino does have pejorative connotations for some segments of Peruvian society, but it is a self-referential term, and unlike runawhich focuses on primordial qualities, it plays a role in emphasizing the collective and organizational force of community identity.

2. Dover (1992) provides examples from the III Congreso de la Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia of how authenticity has become an important part of the new indigenous rhetoric in the Andes. While the issue of authenticity has long been embedded in the syncretic processes typical of the Andes (i.e., in the preservation of what is authentic to the community through accommodation by disguised resistance [Poole 1990], or by subsuming under Andean ideology cultural practices and traits whose origins lie outside it), a self-conscious rhetoric of identity does not presently exist in most rural areas of Cusco to challenge the processes of mestizaje and political incorporation.

3. The word indio has pejorative connotations in the Andes, and I did not hear it often. When I did hear it used self-referentially, it was in a familiar, playful or ironic sense. Once, for example, in a relaxed moment after lunch during the corn harvest, a comadre engaged one of my god children in a sing-song follow-along word game, the refrain of which went "indio, indio, cholo, cholo." My godchild repeated it with delight, laughing with every round. The head catechist of Ccachín once introduced me to a visiting priest jokingly by saying, "entre los indios, aquí encuentras gringos" ('here among the Indians you find gringos'). There was irony in the comment, since the priest himself was German and likewise a gringo, but whether the irony was part of the joke, or priests are put into an "ethnic" category of their own and the irony was missed, I don't know. As used by outsiders to describe villagers, indio was a pejorative. I was once surprised to hear the term used by one of the porteros('janitors, doorkeepers') of the Ccachín school, of all the school personnel, the one with the closest friendships with the comuneros (the porteros are perceived as intermediate between the comunerosand profesores in status and prestige). The portero, traveling in the company of the profesoreson the truck to Calca, responded to an impasse of a small landslide blocking the path by saying, "déjadles hacerlo los indios" ('let the Indians do it'; i.e., 'let the Indians get down off the truck and clear the road'). The status implications of the term could have been no more clear.

Cholo is a term with multiple connotations, perhaps best exemplified by the term used to refer to tetherball in Ccachín: matacholo ('cholo-killer'). The game was brought to Ccachín by itinerant traders near the end of my stay there in late 1991. Cholo may refer to young people in general, and the traders well as the Ccachín lad who set up a tetherball pole in the courtyard of his newly-established store, were in their early 20s. Cholo also may refer to peasants that have to some extent acculturated to national, urban culture, who are bilingual, or who have migrated to urban areas. It carries the sense of being in a state of transition between Indian and mestizo status, and this too describes these youth. Any male under the age of 40 in Ccachín fits the description, as well as the women who have spent time outside of the village as housekeepers in Cusco or in other income-producing activities. In this neutral sense, the term choloficaciónis sometimes used to describe the process of social change and social mobility whereby the population acquires a syncretic culture that is neither indigenous nor European (Van den Berghe 1974). Most often, however, cholois used as a pejorative, expressing a suspicion that someone who is actually an "Indian" does not know his or her place. The term matacholo plays on this sense as well, even as used by those who fall within the category itself. Because of the negative connotations, I do not adopt the term cholo here.

The meaning of misti in Ccachín is publicly expressed in the yunsa dance on Carnival Sunday. The dance, known in Kiswarani and other highland areas of Lares as mullkiwut'uy ('tree-cutting') (Valencia and Nuñez 1989), is called misti carnaval in Ccachín. Pairs of young men and women dance around a decorated tree erected in the village plaza, alternately chopping at its trunk with an ax. The dancers dress in their going-to-Cusco finery, stone-washed jeans a favorite among the men, and brightly-colored factory-made skirts and blouses among the women. In contrast to all the other festivals in the village -- and in contrast to all the other dances and rituals associated with carnival -- where brightly-colored ponchos are worn by the men and their best pullira and llikllas by the women, for the dancers of misti carnaval, Western dress is preferred. The dance is accompanied by colored flour, balloons, and water play as in Cusco. If misti carnaval in Ccachín recalls Poole's observation that Andean dance emphasizes the portrayal of "ethnic, cultural, historical, ancestral, or normative ('wild') outsiders" (1991:334), the idea of misti clearly merges with that of cholo here, and serves as a social commentary on changes taking place inside the community among their own: Ccachín's youth.

4. I don't know whether the author has precise data to back up his figure on emigration to Lima, but allowing for the fact that even residents of Ccachín comment on the high rates of out-migration from Choquecancha, it strikes me as an exaggeration. By my count, the number of people in Ccachín that have gone to Lima pales by comparison with the number that have gone to Cusco, to the Lares Valley, or that continue to live in the village.

5. I recognize that by reporting these grievances of the people of Ccachín against those of Lares, I am opening myself up to the same kind of criticism voiced against Margaret Mead in the film "Anthropology on Trial" (Gullahorn-Holecek 1983), that she painted an unfair image of certain groups based on the reports of rival neighbors. That there are both class and ethnic antagonisms here only complicates the picture. I have not had extensive contact with people in Lares, and all I can say is that I was treated well whenever I stopped through there on my trips to Ccachín. Unfortunately, I do not have data on the Lareños images of the people of Ccachín, or their complaints. While it's common for anthropologists to become emotionally-attached to the particular group of people they are living and working with, there is a decided imbalance in our choice of communities to study, so that the perspective of indigenous communities over more nationally-acculturated ones and the perspective of the relatively powerless over the powerful in the Andes and elsewhere is adopted a priori. While the power differential may in itself be good reason to choose as we do, both interpersonal understanding and research opportunities are lost. I am uncomfortable with that -- for what is gained in advocacy may be lost in partiality -- and I apologize to those in Lares who might suffer from the incomplete picture given here.

6. The Quechua word ch'unchu is used to talk about the "wild" jungle people of Yavero and beyond, the Machigenga, but locals usually use the Spanish "salvajes" to talk about their neighbors in the adjacent highlands.

7. In these terms, the community's pilgrimage to Qoyllur Rit'i is subdivided into interest-groups, although these groups do not cross community boundaries (more accurately, a few of the musicians accompanying the troupe in 1989 were from the neighboring community of Rosaspata, but they attended high school in Ccachín). In 1989, the first year I attended (Ccachín's third year of attendance at the Sinakara Sanctuary), only one dance group from the village was represented -- the Qhapaq Qolla -- so that Ccachín's presence was as one unified nación. In 1991, however, Ccachín sent three groups -- Qhapaq Qolla, K'achampa, and Sargento (the latter representing the Qochayoq contingent), each with its own carguyoq ('sponsor') and láminas (images of El Señor de Qoyllur Rit'i), each traveling in a separate truck, and each camping at different locations in the Sanctuary. There is a certain amount of competitiveness between these groups, but the competition, perhaps because of the newness of their participation, has not been resolved through institutionalization in a symmetrical or hierarchical structure as it has in other areas (see Sallnow 1991). The Ccachín groups arrive late and leave early in order to be able to participate in the Corpus Christi celebrations back in the village, content to pay their respects to the shrine and leave, not participating in the full fiesta complex. In integrating into the existing moiety structure (since 1980, a tripartite structure of Paucartambo, Quispicanchis, and Canchis), the ukuku ('bear dancers') from all three Ccachín groups join the Paucartambo contingent in climbing the central glacier in the morning hours of the Tuesday after Trinity.

8. When President Garcia presented a gift of fifty Italian-made tractors to select communities in anticipation of the 1990 elections, leaders from the recipient comunidades campesinas were invited to Lima for the presentation. The teniente gobernador of Choquecancha was able to travel to the Capital for the occasion, but Ccachín could not afford to send a representative. When the presentation was made before the cameras, Don NQ first appeared in a jacket to accept the endowment in the name of Choquecancha, and then disappeared to slip on a pallay poncho ('patterned poncho') from Ccachín to accept a tractor in the latter's name. Don NQ normally dresses in western clothing in Choquecancha, and he can frequently be seen wearing a jacket. There is a rivalry between the neighboring communities, ranging from the marketing of textiles to receipt of development aid, and the change of clothes perhaps allowed Don NQ the opportunity to use clothing to make a subtle comparison of the modernity of the two communities on a national stage.

Several people in Cusco told me that Choquecancha is the more "traditional" of the two communities, based on rituals they maintain. However, Choquecancha has had a road leading to its central plaza since 1968 -- something that Ccachín lacks -- facilitating contact with the outside world and making it the more attractive site for traders and for development aid. In socioeconomic terms, Choquecancha is no more traditional than Ccachín. Measured in the number of storefronts and in the number of houses with sheet-metal roofs, the reverse is arguably true. The judgement of "traditionality" is too broadly-painted and impressionistic to be useful, except as a study in how people represent and contrast themselves and their neighbors. Locals, to some extent, are offended by the designation of "traditional" (though proud of their customs). Anthropologists gain professional status by studying in such settings. In this sense, the status positions of the two worlds, given their respective spheres of prestige, are reversed.

9. The comarca concept takes diverse geographic, historical, and socioeconomic factors into account to distinguish a zone from neighboring ones. Comarcas do not necessarily have the same boundaries as political divisions. Unfortunately, outside observers often differ in their identifications of comarcas, and their schemes do not necessarily map the local sense of shared identity. Gipuzkoa, my current home province in the Basque Country of northern Spain, for example, has been divided into as few as three and as many as nine comarcas by geographers. These mappings reflect not only differing ways of envisioning the same space, but changing visions through time. River valleys in the Andes, as in Spain, play an important role in defining similarities and divisions. The upper Lares Valley geographically confines and defines the social boundaries, so that the people of Ccachín, Choquecancha, Rosaspata, and Lares recognize a common, if sometimes antagonistic, identity.

10. As Fulcrand (1989) points out, there has been a tendency by those who find sheep to be out of place in the Andes to explain their ubiquity in terms of colonial imposition and historical contingency rather than to peasant choice and agrotechnological factors. The fact that there was a time when tribute had to be paid in sheep's wool, llama meat was looked down upon as "carne de Indio," and the haciendas of the 19^th century were open to the English wool market all played a part, but nutritional and reproductive factors that give ovines certain comparative advantages over native camelids should not be overlooked. It's important here, as elsewhere, to separate social goals from explanatory ones, so that the former do not constrain the latter.

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