Vicos and Beyond: A Half Century of Applying Anthropology in Peru

375 Pages·2010·3.24 MB·English

by  Ralph Bolton

Vicos and Beyond

Vicos and Beyond
a Half century of applying
anthropology in Peru
edited by
Tom GreaVes,
ralPH BolTon, and
Florencia ZaPaTa
A division of
roWman & liTTleField PUBlisHers, inc.
Lanham • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vicos and beyond : a half century of applying anthropology in Peru / edited by
Tom Greaves, Ralph Bolton, and Florencia Zapata.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7591-1974-1 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-7591-1976-5 (electronic)
1. Cornell Peru Project—History. 2. Indians of South America—Land tenure—
Peru—Vicos. 3. Indians of South America—Peru—Vicos—Social conditions.
4. Indians of South America—Peru—Vicos—Economic conditions. 5. Applied
anthropology—Peru—Vicos. 6. Agriculture, Cooperative—Peru—Vicos. 7. Vicos
(Peru)—Social conditions. 8. Vicos (Peru)--Economic conditions. I. Greaves,
Thomas C. II. Bolton, Ralph, 1939- III. Zapata, Florencia.
F3429.1.V43V52 2011
985—dc22 2010038749
` ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction Tom GreaVes and ralPH BolTon vii
Part I: Remembering the Vicos Project
cHaPTer 1
Who Was That Gringo? Holmberg before Vicos Tom GreaVes 3
cHaPTer 2
Early Years of the Vicos Project from the Perspective of a Sympathetic
Participant Observer William manGin 19
CHAPTER 3
Lessons from Vicos cliFFord r. BarneTT 39
cHaPTer 4
Anthropological Journeys: Vicos and the Callejón de Huaylas,
1948 to 2006 PaUl l. doUGHTy 51
Part II: Evaluating the Vicos Project
cHaPTer 5
Anthropological Hope and Social Reality: Cornell’s Vicos
Project Reexamined William P. miTcHell 81
v
vi conTenTs
cHaPTer 6
modernizing Peru: negotiating Indigenismo, Science, and the “Indian
Problem” in the Cornell-Peru Project JASON PRIBILSKY 103
cHaPTer 7
Reflections on Vicos: Anthropology, the Cold War, and the Idea of
Peasant conservatism eric B. ross 129
cHaPTer 8
Vicos as a Model: A Retrospective enriqUe mayer 163
Part III: Alternatives to the Vicos Project
cHaPTer 9
Globalizing Andean Society: Migration and Change in Peru’s Peasant
communities KARSTEN PAERREGAARD 195
cHaPTer 10
Chijnaya—The Birth and Evolution of an Andean Community:
Memories and Reflections of an Applied Anthropologist
ralPH BolTon 215
cHaPTer 11
The Case of Kuyo Chico JORGE A. FLORES OCHOA 265
Part IV: Vicos Today
cHaPTer 12
Cornell Returns to Vicos, 2005 BILLIE JEAN ISBELL 283
CHAPTER 13
Remembering Vicos: Local Memories and Voices
Florencia ZaPaTa 309
Conclusion Tom GreaVes, ralPH BolTon, and Florencia ZaPaTa 345
Index 349
About the Editors and Contributors 355
Introduction
Tom GreaVes and ralPH BolTon
F
or almost sixty years the Andean core countries of Bolivia,
Peru, and Ecuador have hosted profoundly important efforts to use
anthropology to improve the lives of people.1 These Andean coun-
tries comprise one of the key zones of the world where, over the past six
decades, the features of contemporary international applied anthropology
were actively shaped, revised, and improved. This book provides a corpus
of data, narratives, analyses, and critiques that a reader will find essential to
understanding the role played by the andes in forging applied anthropol-
ogy as it exists today.
Any account of applied anthropology in the Andes must devote close
attention to a watershed development in the Andes, the Cornell-Peru
Project (Proyecto Perú-Cornell), led by Allan R. Holmberg and con-
ducted in partnership with Peruvian scientist Carlos Monge Medrano. The
project began in 1952 and officially ended ten years later. Less formally
referred to as the Vicos Project, this initiative quickly became central to
Andean anthropology and, indeed, to anthropology and applied social sci-
ence practiced in Third World settings anywhere.
The Cornell-Peru Project was led by Allen Holmberg, professor
of anthropology at Cornell University, who in 1952 arranged for that
university to lease, for five years, the Hacienda Vicos, an agricultural es-
tate in the central Peruvian highlands on which some eighteen hundred
Quechua-speaking highland peasants resided. Vicos was part of a portfolio
of income-generating properties owned by a public charity based in a
nearby regional city, Huaraz, using the lease payments to support charitable
work in public health in Huaraz. Between 1952 and 1957 Holmberg, with
vii
viii Tom GreaVes and ralPH BolTon
colleagues and students, initiated a set of social, economic, and agrarian
changes and nurtured mechanisms for community-based management of
the estate by the resident labor force of Quechua-speaking peasants. Well
before the end of the lease, the people of Vicos were running the estate by
themselves as a collective.2
Holmberg’s plan had been for the people of Vicos, using earnings from
selling agricultural products raised on the estate—now much more produc-
tive—to purchase the estate collectively from the charity owner. However,
resistance from the charity and from the regional landowning class to selling
an estate to its peasant residents (thereby threatening the central economic
underpinning for the landed gentry) thwarted the sale. A second five-year
lease was negotiated (1957–1962), this time assumed by the Vicos com-
munity rather than Cornell. Holmberg and his team continued in the roles
of advisor, defender, and advocate. By the end of the second lease in 1962,
sufficient political pressure had been brought to bear on a reluctant national
government to force the sale of Vicos to its people. From the beginning,
Holmberg consistently saw the Vicos Project as having twin goals: (1) to
bring about, with the participation of the people of Vicos, community pos-
session of their land base and to end their subjugation to the landed gentry,
and (2) to study, at Vicos, the change process as it unfolded, advancing an-
thropological understanding of cultural change. To describe the process of
doing both, he invented the term participant intervention.3
Eight chapters of this book deal with the Vicos Project, and despite
the large corpus of existing Vicos publications,4 the chapters contain much
information that here reaches print for the first time. Our chapter authors
do not entirely agree on various key points regarding the nature of the
Vicos Project, the intentions of project personnel and community actors,
and what interpretive framework is most valid; in part, these disagreements
reflect the relevance and importance of the Vicos Project to contemporary
applied anthropologists and the contrasting ways in which any historical
event can be explained. This volume assembles writings by authors who
argue contrasting interpretations (some voiced passionately enough to be
polemics) so that readers new to this literature can evaluate these argu-
ments for themselves and see once again how strongly conclusions are
shaped by the implicit or explicit paradigm of the writer.
But this book is not only about the Vicos Project, which ended in the
1960s. Other chapters look at contrasting projects in the southern Andean
highlands. Two further chapters examine new developments at Vicos it-
self, partly stemming from factors set in motion decades earlier, but also
reflecting more recent changes in Peru’s society and politics and in the way
inTrodUcTion ix
applied anthropology is done today. In the conclusion we suggest how
those changes should be understood, within Andean anthropology and
within anthropology more generally.
Each chapter author includes a listing of the published sources used.
In the aggregate these bibliographies list only a fraction of the published
material that is relevant to understanding the Vicos story. Yet, the chap-
ters’ bibliographies and notes will give the reader ready entrée to the full
published literature, accessible through any good academic library.
Vicos: Issues and Queries
The Vicos Project has occupied a major place in Andean anthropology and
in the larger discourses of applied anthropology.5 The number of publica-
tions, conference papers, PhD dissertations, and archival holdings is im-
mense.6 Yet, key facts and conclusions about the project remain subject to
debate. The chapters of this book supply new—and we think important—
information on the following questions and should contribute to direct
investigation and research on them in the future. Consider the following:
n Was the project just a needless effort to achieve what, waiting a
decade, the people of Vicos would have had for free?
n Was the project predesigned, or to what degree was it largely seat-
of-the-pants invention as the project went forward?
n Was Holmberg’s role at Vicos, on close scrutiny, actually that of an
andean patrón? If so, was this ethically acceptable by the standards
of anthropology then? Or now?
n Was the project caused and motivated by the Cold War, or was it
benevolent applied anthropology that happened to be conducted in
that geopolitical context? Or was it both?
n Was it wise to introduce change within one local community
without attacking the national social structure that exploited Indians
throughout Peru? Did working at a local level doom the project to
insignificance?
n Was credit and responsibility for the project balanced fairly between
Peruvian and American social scientists?
n What role did Mario Vázquez (project field director) play? Is
his role adequately weighted and measured in understanding the
project’s outcome and its reproducibility?
n As the project went on, how did the Vicos indigenous leadership
progressively take on decision making, over what sectors of life, and
in what order?