Froemming, Steven John; 1999; Rational Choice and Collective Action in an Andean Community. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Washington, Seattle. Excerpt from Chapter 11 (pages 686-695).

Construction of Two Roads

...During the years that I was in Ccachín, there were two major efforts to build a road to the settlement. The first was to pave the way for the arrival of the tractor; the second was to build a permanent road capable of bearing truck traffic to and from the village plaza. Both projects required major investments of community members' time, and provide insight into the organization of Andean work groups. I will describe each in turn.

Phayna for the Tractor

When Barbara and I first set foot in Ccachín, there was only a steep and narrow footpath connecting the main road with the village settlement. With the arrival of the tractor a year later, a road needed to be constructed to transport it to the central plaza. While for me, thereafter, this road was an ugly gash in the hill, it was also a testament to the capacity of the comuneros to mobilize collective labor to transform the landscape to suit their needs (Figure 11.1).

The road itself was laid out along the east slope of the village in a way that both bypassed everyone's cornfields and skirted a eucalyptus plantation, minimizing the damage to both private and communal resources. In terms of motivating community participation and support, the gains made by avoiding controversy in this way may have been canceled out by the dubious trajectory: despite the frequent switchbacks, there was widespread doubt that the tractor could negotiate certain areas of the precipitous hillside. The road was surveyed with a single goal in mind -- bringing the tractor to the community -- rather than to serve the community's long-term transportation needs. Not only was it not accessible to truck traffic, it could not be negotiated with the motorcycle used by the FAO-Holanda extension agent headquartered in Choquecancha.

Over the course of a few weeks, eight phayna were held to build the road. The phayna were led by the community president and the alcalde de menores. One or the other would mark off chuta with a pole cut three pick-lengths long, the minimum width needed for the tractor to pass. Three pole lengths made up a chuta. The comuneros informally divided themselves into work teams of ten men each at the start of each day according to kin, compadrazgo and friendship ties and according to the tools that each had brought. Half of each group would work with picks, metal bars, and wankha ('eucalyptus poles used as levers'), the other half with shovels and lampa ('shovel-faced hoes'). The first broke away the soil and rock and then rested while the second smoothed out the trail, rotating turns in this way so that the workers would stay out of each others' way and remain rested. Each team worked its designated site to completion, and then went to the head of the line to tackle another. The president occasionally passed up the ranks fortifying all with cane alcohol, and the pututero signaled lunch breaks and the end of the phayna. Every phayna began with an informal assembly among those gathered to discuss topics and resolve problems of the day -- the work plan, arrival of the tractor, incidents of theft, characteristics of the candidates in the upcoming national elections -- and ended with the taking of attendance. Participation rates varied between 25% and 60% of household heads per day, the higher figure achieved the day that the project was completed and the tractor brought up the road.

On the final day, the tractorista needed thirteen hours to pilot the tractor the five kilometer, 2000-foot rise to the village. While most crews worked furiously ahead to complete the road, a team including various members of the junta directiva and consejo de menores accompanied the tractor, guiding the driver and widening curves that the vehicle couldn't negotiate. Once the tractor's capabilities were determined, the final portion of the road was reworked to cut a more direct route to the plaza. Work continued past sundown, until the tractor finally reached the plaza around eleven o'clock. A small celebration was held to culminate the grueling day. The tractorista made one loop around the church with the machine, accompanied by a swarm of men and children, and honking the horn all of the while. When the tractor came to rest, the president called for a cheer (a very western "hip-hip-hurray"), followed by applause. A woman emerged from the crowd and tossed white carnation pedals over the tractor and the driver. A speaker system and record player were set up on the front hood of the tractor and powered off the battery. The president of the community made a short speech, and the secretary called the roll of households. Waynu were played, and while most comuneros retired to their homes, a small group stayed with the tractor to drink and dance through the night. The next morning, the Inca alcalde and first alguacil went door-to-door, advising households how much they owed for the transport costs of the tractor, and collecting the 15,000 inti (54¢) per day fine for phayna missed.

Phayna for the New Road

Despite the labor and financial investments (assuming a 40% participation, rate on average, for the road building, at least 5000 individual labor hours went into its construction), neither the tractor, nor the road built to transport it to the community, had any further use. While the tractor had been driven up the road, there was no guarantee that it could be safely driven back down it. The road was used as a longer and more gentle footpath by those driving pack animals to and from the market in Yerbabuenayoq, and through weathering, was gradually reclaimed by the hillside.

In the months immediately following the project, however, these prospects were unknown. Inspired by their road-building success, community officials redoubled their efforts to bring a new road to the community, one designed to meet the needs of truckers and the demands of the seasons. A few months later the president signed a contract with CORDE-Cusco to do just that. The state was to provide engineers, machinery, and a veteran road crew, while the community would pay for the fuel for the caterpillar, provide communal labor, and feed the government workers. The budget prepared by CORDE-Cusco was based on the assumption that the road would cut through the south-slope corn sector on its climb to Ccachín, the gentlest and least-cost route.

Five months after the tractor phayna, a government survey team arrived to mark off the course for the new road. The head engineer expected to complete the task in three days, and asked the community to provide a group of workers to help. Fifteen men were selected for the phayna by community officials, and they were advised by the pututeros, who passed through the community at sunrise the first day to call out their names. In addition, six women were summoned to serve as cooks.

The ingeniero ('engineer') skillfully assigned roles -- ruler holder, mark painter, etcetera -- and participants enjoyed the novelty of the work, taking the opportunity to look through the transit and clinometer every chance they had. It did not take long, however, for the first doubts about the project to emerge. Before continuing on with the work after lunch, an impromptu assembly was held among all present. The president expressed his apprehension about the road passing through people's cornfields. Several others joined in to voice similar concerns. The two women who had brought lunch to the fields were as vocal in this as the men. Although people knew that this was the plan and had signed on to it in general terms, the fact didn't take on emotional urgency until the point was reached where specific families were about to be affected. It so happened that neither the president, nor anyone else at the phayna was likely to lose any land to the road, but all had relatives and friends who potentially would.

The cornfields are the most valuable of people's land holdings in Ccachín. Use rights are well-defined, and individual plots can be bought and sold within the community. Along with being the most productive fields, the cornfields are the least expendable and least expandable. Most all of the arable land at the low-lying elevations where corn could be grown are already in production. The assembly would be hard-pressed to come up with equally-valuable plots to compensate those who lost land to the road. While the engineer was reluctant to depart from the original agreement, he listened to people's concerns and ultimately agreed to try to lay out the route without touching the cornfields. The going was slow on this, however, and making little headway in the afternoon, he dismissed his helpers early.

As the phayna ended for the day, the engineer stressed the importance of everyone returning for the next, and the following, until the survey was complete. The roles were somewhat specialized, and he was concerned that time would be lost if he had to train a new crew everyday. While people seemed to understand the logic in this, it did not fit standard practice for recruiting communal labor, where turns are taken to distribute the burden equitably. A few of the comuneros indicated that they already had previous commitments or plans -- it was late September, and the potatoes needed to be planted -- and with this the engineer modified his original appeal, asking those with the most technical and essential roles to continue.⁽¹⁾

Despite efforts to get an early start the following morning, when I jointed the group at "marker 6," the last marker placed the day before, the engineers and phayna workers were in the midst of another meeting. The president of the community did not return the second day, but the alcalde de menores was there to take his place. Discussion centered on the cornfields. This time, the head engineer insisted that the road had to go through the corn sector, as above it, the hillside was too "accidentado." He advised the comuneros that he would leave the community that very afternoon if the community could not agree to this. He said that there were many communities that wanted roads but were not in line to have them; here, the community was to receive one, but was opposed to it out of shortsighted concerns about the cornfields. He argued that the road to Ccachín would be more valuable than the one that already existed to Choquecancha, because of the two communities, Ccachín had more goods to market. And what's more, he suggested that people with fields bordering the road would see the value of their land increase five-fold.

The engineer emphasized that consensus was needed to continue, as he didn't want to see anyone sabotage the project with derrumbes ('landslides') later on. He said that at this point, no one could say whose fields the road would go through. It could be anyone's, "It could go though yours, or that of your enemy." But people could not wait to make up their minds until the exact route was known. Turning to one comunero whose field was located in the sector, he asked him if he was willing to proceed given this uncertainty, and the fellow said "yes." Others agreed. But the decision was not for phayna participants alone to make, and the engineer requested that someone fetch the president and vice-president of the community to assure that the agreement had the backing of the community's highest authorities. Neither community official could be found, however, and after the survey crew became impatient with the wait, the gathering decided to proceed without them. The alcalde de menores indicated that an assembly would be called to discuss "la recompensa" ('compensation') to be given those whose fields were destroyed by the road. An attempt would be made to find plots in the corn sector on the community's east side for them.

By the end of the day, the resolve of phayna participants had again weakened. The survey had reached the cornfields, and the comuneros could now see the effects. The switchbacks caused the greatest problem. One of the curves caught both the lower and upper sections of one family's field (one of the carguyoq for the pilgrimage to Qoyllur Rit'i the following year), leaving little area left for cultivation. One of the comuneros, who the day before complained to me that too many of his peers were thinking too much of the loss and not enough of the gain from the road, now suggested that the comuneros should move the markers after the engineers left, before the tractorista arrived to do the actual work (one of the others that was part of the discussion, however, pointed out that one of the engineers had written down the location of each survey marker in a notebook, so that the tractorista would know that the markers had been moved). There was widespread belief that there was an alternative route that would do considerably less damage to the fields.

The following day, only one comunero showed up for the survey. There were bad feelings. Talk of the "mal trazado" ('bad lay out') could be heard throughout the community. The president advised the engineers that there was widespread disapproval of the route that they had chosen. The survey crew left the village later in the morning without finishing its work. Many comuneros -- including but not limited to those with land in the affected area -- were not the least distraught to see it go. Others, however, blamed the president. They felt that the president should have smoothed things over with the head engineer, that he should have had him to his home, and served him a special meal. They lamented that the community was about to lose an opportunity that would not come around again for many years, that in the long-run, everyone would suffer.

Like most major ventures in Ccachín, the road project unfolded slowly and haltingly, as different pieces fell into place at different times to make it happen. I was not present to see it through. The president and vice-president of the community managed to assuage the surveyors, and pushed to have the road complete before their term of office ended three months later. The community sold a truckload of corn to purchase fuel for the road-building equipment, and this was taken by CORDE-Cusco as a good-faith commitment to continue with the project. The internal problem of compensating comuneros who would lose land to the road, however, remained unresolved. Many comuneros remained lukewarm about the project, though there was no organized or public opposition. Others were skeptical about the feasibility of the endeavor. As one compadre told me, "Its difficult to build a road here. Where there's pampa, a machine can work, but below, it's pure rock. It can't be done."

Two weeks after leaving Ccachín with an unfinished survey, the head engineer told me that the road crew was set to begin excavating in the village the following week. Soon after, however, the caterpillar broke down while repairing a slide on the main road between Lares and Yerbabuenayoq and was out of action for several weeks. On top of that, the crew lacked the dynamite to finish the project, which it needed to do before moving on. Most comuneros were glad for the delay. The community was now well into the planting season, and few were interested in working any phayna for the new road until January.

On January 1, 1991 a new junta directiva took office, with the dream of outgoing officers of inaugurating the road unfulfilled. During the rainy season, the road crew has its hands full trying to keep existing roads open, so it had no time to start a new project in Ccachín. It withdrew from Lares to work in the Amparaes Valley. The contract with CORDE-Cusco expired with the new year, and it had to be renegotiated. The new community officials, however, organized two general phayna in January to begin the project with manual labor, and the community made some headway cutting a path up from the Lares River. In late March, community officials traveled outside the village to sign the new documents needed to bring the road crew to Ccachín. After that, people expected that the survey crew would have to return to complete the survey, and this would be used by CORDE-Cusco to prepare a new budget for the project. There was little public discussion, and no further construction on the road during the rest of 1991.

The next I heard of the project was at the December assembly, where a phayna was announced for mid-January to continue with the work started a year earlier. Community officials seemed to have little interest in going any further in securing government aid. The junta directiva expressed a desire to do as much as possible with communal labor in order to save on the costs -- particularly for fuel -- that they would have to pay to have the tractorista do the work. One corn crop had been planted and harvested and another was in tassel in the sixteen months since the surveyors first came in, but the community had yet to resolve the dilemma of how to secure the necessary right of way through people's fields. Unfortunately, I had to leave before this issue was addressed.

Notes

1. To develop his argument, the engineer used me as an example, saying that I was there colaborando ('helping out', 'collaborating') even though I would return to my own country and would never benefit from the road. He noted that I did not have any goods to market, but I was there because I wanted to see "a well-made road." He concluded that given this, it's all the more important that those who live there, who stay behind, should work for the same goal. This is a simplification of my own motives, of course -- which in any case focused more on the process than the product -- and I cite it here as a fairly mild, but relatively typical example of the kind of paternalistic discourse directed by mestizo development workers toward the comuneros. It was not the first time that a priest, teacher or government official used Barbara's name or my own to make a similar point.

Figure 11.1: Phayna to Build a Road for the Tractor