Post on 09-Jan-2023
Environmental and Demographic Change and Rural Violence in Peru: A Case Study of the District of Chuschi,
Ayacucho
by
Athanasios (Tom) Deligiannis
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Political Science University of Toronto
© Copyright by Athanasios (Tom) Deligiannis 2020
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Environmental and Demographic Change and Rural Violence in
Peru: A Case Study of the District of Chuschi, Ayacucho
Athanasios (Tom) Deligiannis
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
2020
Abstract
Considerable debate exists about whether and how human-induced pressure on the natural
environment contributes to violent conflict. This dissertation examines whether human-induced
environmental and demographic change helped generate rural violence in the District of Chuschi,
in the South-Central Andes of Peru in the latter half of the 20th century, in the years leading up to
the Sendero Luminoso insurgency in 1980.
The dissertation’s findings reveal that long-term patterns of resource capture and human-induced
environmental and demographic change, combined with prevailing local, regional, and national
political-economic currents in Peru over the 20th century to increase inter-community
competition for valuable but limited agricultural resources – over range lands, crop lands, and
water resources. In particular, these changes conditioned patterns of violence between two
neighbouring communities in the District – the Community of Chuschi and the Community of
Quispillacta. Changes aggravated conflictual relationships between Chuschi and Quispillacta
over rights to long-contested resources that were essential to increasingly pressured livelihoods
in both communities. Change and contest resulted in winners and losers, with implications for
social stability years into the future. Quispillacta largely emerged as the victor in these
community resource conflicts. However, their victory fostered enduring resentment in Chuschi -
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the traditional administrative centre of the District - and among Chuschi’s associated hamlets.
These grievances spilled out during the Sendero insurgency as some in rival communities falsely
accused Quispillacta of being a centre of Sendero militancy, accusations likely stemming from
community members who lost out in the inter-community land competition. Quispillacta
suffered terribly as a result in the Peruvian military’s counter-insurgency bloodletting,
disproportionately more than Chuschi and its associated hamlets – score-settling by counter-
insurgency.
Human pressure on the local environment and people’s adaptive choices to these pressures thus
helped condition patterns of violence in the decades before the Sendero insurgency, and patterns
of violence once the insurgency heated up in the area. Understanding why violence took the
shape that it did in Chuschi during the insurgency and over the previous century in various small-
scale confrontations requires examining the interface of human-induced environmental change
and demographic change, in the relation to socio-economic changes in the region.
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Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to my family, friends, and colleagues, who have stood by me and supported
me for many years as I completed this dissertation. First, I want to thank Tad Homer-Dixon for
being the intellectual inspiration for this project, and for not giving up on me as the years passed
and my dissertation remained unfinished. Without Tad’s continued support and encouragement,
I would never have reached the end. Tad’s research and guidance over the years have pushed me
to uncover and make sense of the complex local reality in Peru. I also want to thank the other
members of my committee, Steven Bernstein at the University of Toronto, and Simon Dalby at
the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Both have been extremely understanding of my
progress, and provided tremendously insightful and helpful feedback on my dissertation. Gavin
Smith was an early member of my committee who, unfortunately, had to leave the committee as
the years dragged on; however, his participation and support was very important, given his
extensive work in highland Peru. Kate Neville provided outstanding feedback and suggestions
for improvement as the internal reader. Joshua Busby of the University of Texas at Austin made
insightful suggestions as the external reader of this dissertation.
Many people assisted me during my fieldwork in Peru. I would like to thank Kimberley Theidon
for putting me in touch with Marcela Machaca at ABA, in Huamanga, Ayacucho. Marcela’s
help was crucial for connecting me with my outstanding field assistants in the District of
Chuschi, Hereberto Nuñez Mejiá and Mario Silverio Huamaní Conde. I owe a deep debt of
gratitude to Hereberto and Mario for their assistance in arranging interviews and field
assessments in Quispillaccta and Chuschi. I also want to thank Edwin Medina Ramírez, who
accompanied us during our fieldwork in the District and assisted me with translation. The
fieldwork would have been impossible without Hereberto, Mario, and Edwin. Don Theodosio
Flores Galindo graciously allowed me to stay in his house in Llacctahurán during my fieldwork
in the District. Don Theodosio’s taciturn presence was intimidating at first; but also inspired me
to dig deeper to get to know the reality facing comuneros in the District. I would also like to
thank the elected authorities of Chuschi and Quispillaccta for granting permission for my study:
Vincente Chaupin Huaycha, who was Alcalde of Chuschi at the time, and the Varayoc of
Quispillaccta – the traditional authorities. Over sixty community members in Chuschi and
Quispillaccta graciously agreed to interviews during my time in the District, and I am eternally
grateful to them for allowing me learn about their lives. In Huamanga, Yovanna Mendieta
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Tacuri and Hugo Sarmiento Medina assisted me with research. In Lima, my research assistant
Vivien Weiner was outstanding in helping me connect with various Peruvian scholars and
NGOs. I would also like to thank Martin Scurrah and Igidio Naveda Felix, who were then with
Oxfam America, for their generous assistance and advice. Raul Grados and Luis G. Orellana
graciously provided support and hospitality during my trips to Lima.
During my time at UPEACE, in Costa Rica, Dr. Rolain Borel, Dr. Ronnie De Camino, Dr. David
Hoffman, and Jan Breitling were outstanding colleagues who helped me understand the Central
American agro-ecological reality. In Canada, I’m lucky to have wonderful friends and
colleagues who have encouraged and supported me in completing my dissertation: Dr. Moshe
Khurgel, Dr. Craig Johnson, Dr. Francine McKenzie, Dr. Jodi Salter, and Dr. Alicia Sliwinski,
have been particularly important. Jodi’s encouragement two years ago to join her dissertation
boot camp at the University of Guelph was instrumental in getting my dissertation organized and
back on track.
Finally, but most importantly, this project would never have been completed without the
unconditional love and support of my family – especially my best friend and partner, Kelly
Main, and my kids Eva and John. Kelly probably wants me to end this sentence as fast as
possible, because then the dissertation will be finally finished. For the sacrifices that she’s made,
her name should also be on the front cover. I promise that I’ll never again take my research or
my marking on family holidays. Lastly, I want to thank my parents Elias and Evangelia
Deligiannis, who showed me what could be achieved with hard work, even if you start with
nothing. They were my original introduction into the lives of αγρότες, and I’ve never stopped
learning from them.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................x
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi
List of Appendices ....................................................................................................................... xiii
Preface.......................................................................................................................................... xiv
Chapter 1 Introduction .....................................................................................................................1
Overview of case study region .............................................................................................3
Key findings and plan of dissertation.................................................................................15
Timeline of key events .......................................................................................................26
Chapter 2 Literature Review and Research Design: Do environmental scarcities impact
violent conflict onset? ...............................................................................................................29
Introduction ........................................................................................................................29
Theories of revolution and rural rebellion .........................................................................33
Research linking environmental change and violent conflict ............................................42
Specific explanations for unrest in Peru.............................................................................48
2.4.1. Pre-land reform unrest ...........................................................................................48
2.4.2. Post-Land Reform unrest .......................................................................................55
2.4.3. Debates on the origins of Sendero and the degree of peasant support ...................59
2.4.4. Comprehensive theories of the origins of Sendero’s revolt ...................................61
2.4.5. Criticizing comprehensive theories: Sendero exceptionalists................................63
The state of the peasantry ...................................................................................................68
2.5.1. Ecological and demographic Influences ................................................................68
Research focus and research design ...................................................................................74
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2.6.1. Key questions .........................................................................................................74
Chapter 3 The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research: Toward a Livelihood
Framework ................................................................................................................................79
Introduction ........................................................................................................................79
Environmental change and the role of the state – mediating scarcity, undermining
capacity, or actively exploiting ..........................................................................................80
Shifting the focus from the state to household livelihoods: A household-livelihood
framework for environment-conflict research ...................................................................82
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................97
Chapter 4 Historical Structural Changes and Transformations in Rio Pampas Affecting
Natural Assets and Livelihoods in Chuschi and Quispillaccta .................................................99
Introduction ........................................................................................................................99
Natural asset capture and entitlement capture in Western Cangallo – Pre-Conquest to
20th Century ......................................................................................................................101
4.2.1. Pre-Colonial and Colonial developments ............................................................101
4.2.2. Mestizo elite and Catholic Church: impacts in the 19th and 20th Centuries .........118
4.2.2.1. Regional Structural Change, Patterns of Elite Capture, and Land
Holding Patterns in Cangallo .................................................................118
4.2.2.2. Communities in Conflict? Revealing the Impacts of Landed Estates
and Mestizo Elites in Western Cangallo ...............................................128
4.2.2.3. Elite Capture of Scarce Cultivated Lands in the District of Chuschi .....133
4.2.3. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................142
Chapter 5 Elite Capture of High-Altitude Pasture Lands in the District of Chuschi ...................144
Introduction ......................................................................................................................144
Livelihoods and the high-altitude grazing zones of the district .......................................145
The history of elite capture of high-altitude grazing lands in the District of Chuschi .....152
5.3.1. Community struggles to regain control of captured high-altitude grazing lands.156
5.3.2. Chuschi’s Yaruca dispute on the north-west borders ..........................................164
5.3.3. Quispillaccta’s dispute over Hacienda Quicamachay lands on the NE borders ..168
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Chapter 6 Controlling the Centre: The Struggle to Control the High Sunni and Puna Zones of
the Rio Cachi Basin in the District ..........................................................................................178
Introduction ......................................................................................................................178
Disputes in the 1940s and 1950s to control the centre .....................................................179
Factors drawing district members to settle the high Sunni and Puna zones ....................183
Inter-community clashes in 1960 over control of disputed high Sunni and Puna zones .197
Détente and maneuver – continuing struggles to control disputed zones between
Chuschi and Quispillaccta, 1960s and 1970s ...................................................................201
Peace in the midst of civil war – final settlement of land disputes in the District of
Chuschi and the impacts of this settlement in the context of Sendero’s insurgency in
the area .............................................................................................................................204
6.6.1. The 1981 peace agreement between Chuschi and Quispillaccta .........................204
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................216
Chapter 7 Supply and Demand Pressures in the District of Chuschi ...........................................220
Introduction ......................................................................................................................220
Demand-induced pressures on livelihoods in the District of Chuschi .............................221
Demand-induced impacts on livelihood resources in the District of Chuschi .................231
7.3.1. Perspectives on the peasant household ................................................................233
7.3.2. Trends in declining land availability....................................................................235
Adaptations and their impacts ..........................................................................................243
7.4.1. Migration..............................................................................................................243
7.4.2. Extensification and intensification of land use ....................................................247
Precipitation and temperature changes.............................................................................272
Declining agricultural yields and crop quality .................................................................277
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................287
Chapter 8 Living Between the Sword and the Stone ...................................................................290
Introduction ......................................................................................................................290
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Violent revenge and the Peruvian Government’s counter-insurgency campaign in
1983..................................................................................................................................291
Explaining violence in the district in the early 1980s in the context of historical land
conflicts ............................................................................................................................300
Chapter 9 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................308
Qualitative fieldwork pays off – delayed temporal impacts of resource capture and
revised understanding of conflict causes .........................................................................308
Revising theoretical links between environmental change and violent conflict ..............312
Scarcities can condition violence during violent conflict ................................................316
Scarcities shape structures and processes, rather than trigger conflict ............................321
Livelihoods should be at the centre of environment-conflict research ............................323
Postscript ......................................................................................................................................326
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................333
Appendices ...................................................................................................................................350
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List of Tables
Table 1: District of Chuschi Land-Use According to Agro-Ecological Zone………………….136
Table 2: Quispillaccta’s 1960 Population: Main Town and Annexes………………………….187
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Map – Department of Ayacucho……………………………………………………......2
Figure 2: Map – Province of Cangallo……………………………………………………………3
Figure 3: Map – District of Chuschi………………………………………………………………4
Figure 4: Toronto Group’s Model of the Causal Links between Environmental Scarcity and
Violence …………………………………………………………………………………………44
Figure 5: Watters’ Model of the Peasantry ......………………….………………………………69
Figure 6: Rural Household Livelihood Framework for Environment-Conflict Research……….90
Figure 7: Peru Population: Pre-Conquest (1520) to 2007…………………………………...….108
Figure 8: Large and Small Landholdings as a Total Percentage of Agricultural Land in
Ayacucho’s Provinces, 1961 & 1972…………………………………………………………...124
Figure 9: Department and Provincial Comparison of Percentage of Land Held by Those with
Less Than 5H, 1972………………………………………...……………………………...…...125
Figure 10: Map - Province of Cangallo and the Location of the Hacienda Pomacocha….....….126
Figure 11: Map - Agro-ecological Zones in the District of Chuschi….……..…………………135
Figure 12: Map - Major Land Disputes in the District of Chuschi in the 20th Century…...…...145
Figure 13: Map - Rio Cachi Watershed in Vinchos and Chuschi Districts….………....………147
Figure 14: Map - Disputed Territory Between Chuschi and Hacienda Yaruca in NW of District
of Chuschi………………….………………………………………………………………..….164
Figure 15: Map - Disputed Territory in Land Conflict Between Quispillaccta and Hacienda
Putaje in NE of District…………....……………………………………………………………169
Figure 16: Map - Disputed Zone between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, 1940…….…………….179
Figure 17: Map - Disputed Zone between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, late 1950s to 1980s…...188
Figure 18: Total Cattle in Peru and Ayacucho, 1950-1980…………………………………….192
Figure 19: Map - Current boundaries of Quispillaccta (black) within the District of Chuschi
overlaid with historic conflict zones…..………………………………………………………..212
Figure 20: Population of Ayacucho’s Provinces, 1876-1993…………………………………..223
Figure 21: Population of Department of Ayacucho and Province of Cangallo, 1791-2007……224
Figure 22: Population of Province of Cangallo and District of Chuschi, 1876-2007……….….225
Figure 23: Population of Province of Cangallo and District of Chuschi, 1940-2007……….….226
Figure 24: Chuschi and Quispillaccta: Births and Baptisms, 1850-2000………………………228
Figure 25: Cultivated Land (H) per Capita in the District of Chuschi……………………….…240
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Figure 26: Altitudinal Shifts in Maize Zone in District of Chuschi……………………………259
Figure 27: Map - Land Use in the District of Chuschi………….……………………………...269
Figure 28: Average Annual Rainfall Chuschi Station and Rio Cachi Basin Station (mm)…….275
Figure 29: Chuschi Station Precipitation, 1963-1981…………………………………………..276
Figure 30: Comparison of Historical and Contemporary Corn Yields in Sacks/Yugada in
Quispillaccta and Chuschi According to Interviews……………………………………………281
Figure 31: Historical Potato Yields in Sacks/Yugada in Quispillaccta and Chuschi According to
Interviews…………………………………………...…………………………………………..282
Figure 32: Environmental Scarcity-Migration-Conflict Links Worsened Group Conflict Rather
than Contributing to Insurgency Onset........................................................................................312
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List of Appendices
Appendix 1: Field Measures of Soil Erosion in Quispillaccta………………………………….348
Appendix 2: Population of Peru, Ayacucho, Province of Cangallo, and District of Chuschi….350
Appendix 3: Notes on the Use of Box and Whisker Plots…………………..………………….351
Appendix 4: Map – Department of Ayacucho………………………………………………….354
Appendix 5: Map – District of Chuschi and Surrounding Districts…………………………….355
Appendix 6: Map – High Resolution Topographical Map of District of Chuschi……………...356
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Preface
The question at the heart of this dissertation is not the question that led me to the southern
highlands of Peru. I went to Peru hoping to discover whether environmental scarcities and
demographic change helped cause the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebellion. This question
anchored my environment-conflict research in the long tradition of research on rural rebellions
and revolutions. But field work in the District of Chuschi (D. Chuschi), where the Shining Path
initiated the violence in 1980 that would plague Peru for more than a decade, instead led me to a
puzzling local story and a different question.1
In early November, 2004, I was in the isolated Quispillaccta hamlet of Huertahuasi, in the D.
Chuschi, Ayacucho. I’d been in the district for almost two months, interviewing elderly
residents in various hamlets, trying to piece together long-term patterns of livelihood change.
Memories were still raw from the violence of the 1980s, so I rarely asked direct questions about
events in the years of the Sendero insurgency. Instead, I focused on understanding how local
livelihoods had evolved in the decades leading up to 1980, when Sendero initiated its violent
challenge to the Peruvian state by burning the ballot boxes in the D. Chuschi for the upcoming
national election.
On this day, however, an informant was talking about the manchay tiempo – the ‘times of fear’
during the Sendero insurgency and the government’s counter-insurgency campaign.2 He
described the terrible ordeal that he endured at the height of the civil war violence in the district
when he was the only survivor of a Peruvian Army massacre of community members from
Quispillaccta in early June, 1983. Captured at the end of May in a sweep of Quispillaccta’s
high-altitude hamlets by a platoon of Peruvian Army soldiers accompanied by a group of almost
one hundred peasants from the neighbouring communities of Chuschi and Cancha Cancha, my
informant explained in a calm, measured voice how he and 15 other bound Quispillacctinos from
1 In order to differentiate the community of Chuschi from the District of Chuschi, I will use D. Chuschi to refer to
the District of Chuschi. All other usages of Chuschi refer to the community of Chuschi, one of several peasant
communities in the District of Chuschi.
2 Interview, Identity withheld, Huertahuasi, Quispillaccta, 5 November, 2004. Throughout this dissertation I have
carefully weighed whether or not to identify my local informants. If the information is sensitive or possibly
defamatory, I have kept identities private. This mixed approach to obscuring interview identities is common today
among scholars working in Peru on sensitive post-Sendero topics.
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5 different hamlets were marched to a school in Chuschi’s town centre, where the captives were
beaten and held for one week without food and water, before being shipped by helicopter to the
nearby Peruvian army base in the District of Totos. There, they were again tortured and
questioned to identify Senderista militants in Quispillaccta – torture that included vicious
beatings and being hung from the building’s rafters.
That afternoon my informant overheard his guards say that the “Quispillacctinos say goodbye
today.” Later that night, he and his fellow captives were roughly led, with hands bound, to a
nearby brushy spot, on the edge of a deep ravine, and given shovels to dig two large pits.
It was my turn to dig together with Francisco Núñez of Cuchoquesera. On the
other side was Moisés Huamaní Ccallocunto. I got tired of digging; my hands hurt
and I said to Francisco: ‘Pancho, it’s your turn make the hole. ‘When I came out
of the hole, already deep, I put my hands in my pocket and found a handful of
coca and a little sugar. In my mouth I felt a sweet flavor. Then I looked up and
back in the darkness. While the soldiers were distracted with other prisoners, I
decided – in a blink of the eye to escape and I threw myself into the ravine full of
thorns and rocks.3
The soldiers noticed his escape and rained gunfire around him. Injured from the fall, and hiding
in a large bush, he evaded the bullets and the soldiers’ attempts to find him, and later listened as
his fellow captives were killed and buried. When the sounds of the soldiers and their shoveling
stopped, he carefully made his way back to Quispillaccta. Years later, he was able to tell his
remarkable story to Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, identifying the mass grave of
3 Quoted in an account of the killing of Moisés Huamaní Ccallocunto, one of the victims of the Sankaypata
massacre, as told to the victim’s family by my informant. See Felimón Salvatierra, Honorato Méndez, and Oseas
Núñez, La Vida Ya No Era Vida: Un homenaje a la vida y memoria de las víctimas de Allpachaka, Chiara y
Quispillaqta (Huamanga: Hivos/Impunity Watch/Paz y Esperanza, 2016), 249. His account published in Salvatierra
et al. is consistent with what he told me in 2004. But he adds a few more details in this account compared to what
he told me, so I have decided to use these words.
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his fellow captives.4 None of the dead were Sendero militants, as far as my informant knew;
only innocent Quispillacctinos, caught up in an orgy of violence.5
My informant was lucky; luckier than the dozens of other community members from
Quispillaccta who were murdered by Sendero and military forces during the first years of
Sendero’s insurgency. There were several cases in May and June 1983 when small groups of
Peruvian Army soldiers accompanied by groups from Chuschi and associated hamlets rampaged
across Quispillaccta’s high-altitude barrios, looting and destroying houses as they went, and
capturing numerous innocent Quispillacctinos in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Quispillaccta, in fact, suffered far more than any other community in the D. Chuschi during the
war, both at the hands of Sendero and the Peruvian security forces. According to Gustavo Flórez
Salcedo, between 1980 and 1985, 73 Quispillacctinos were murdered or disappeared in the
district, compared to only 15 from Chuschi.6 Field work in the D. Chuschi in 2006-07 by Marté
Sánchez Villagómez, based on records kept by community authorities, list 140 Quispillacctinos
and 16 Chuschinos killed after the government’s counter-insurgency operations began in the
district in 1983.7 Quispillaccta’s high-altitude hamlets in the Rio Cachi watershed were
particularly hard hit, with 58 murders and disappearances, 3 rapes, and 146 cases of torture
4 The Peruvian Army massacre in Sankaypata is outlined in: Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report
(TRC), Book 7, Chapter 2, Section 2.3. (http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ifinal/pdf/TOMO%20VII/Casos%20Ilustrativos-
UIE/2.3.%20TOTOS%20SANCAYPATA.pdf), Accessed June 26, 2019. Kimberly Theidon provides a careful
discussion of Peru’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) in her
outstanding book on violence and reconciliation in Peru, in part based on her experiences as a researcher for the
TRC in Ayacucho. See Kimberly Theidon, Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 5 Peru’s TRC report on the massacre notes that those take by the military were on a list of supposed Sendero
militants or they were accused by the Chuschino community members accompanying the soldiers on their sweep of
Quispillaccta. 6 Gustavo Flórez Salcedo, “Rivalidades comunales y contiendas electorales: micropolítica en las elecciones
distritales de Chuschi. El caso de las comunidades campesinas de Chuschi y Quispillaccta,” in Alejandro Diez
Hurtado ed., Tensiones y transformaciones en comunidades campesinas, CISEPA-PUCP. Lima, 2012: 234. There is
no definitive accounting of the district’s dead, missing, wounded, and tortured during the Sendero insurgency.
Different authors provide different figures, though all agree that Quispillaccta suffered far more casualties than
Chuschi and its annexes. Figures on rapes and sexual violence are almost certainly under-reported, given the on-
going trauma and social stigma around sexual violence in Peru. See Theidon, 2013, chapter 5. 7 Marté Sánchez Villagómez, El Horror Olvidado: Memoria e historia de la violencia política en Ayacucho, Perú
(1980 -2000), PhD Diss., Departament d'Antropologia Social i de Prehistòria, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
2015, 230.
xvii
recorded in the five barrios of Catalinayuq, Cuchoquesera, Pampamarca, Puncupata, and Unión
Portrero between 1980-1985.8
Early in the conflict, Quispillaccta gained a reputation as a hotbed for Sendero support in the
district. Press reports in the mid-1980s identified two of the ballot box burners as
Quispillacctinos, though it now appears that they played relatively minor roles in that attack.9 In
interviews, a local evangelical pastor went further and laid the blame more widely on
Quispillaccta: “In all honesty, I’m not going to lie … That was [a job done] by the people of
Quispillaccta. This is something of which the [police] posts in Cangallo and the police station in
[Huamanga] are well aware. That night of the burning of the ballot boxes, there was a man [in
charge] who came from another place, and that man acted with men from Quispillaccta; it was
them.”10 Such testimony, and comments from Chuschinos have convinced some, like historian
Miguel La Serna, that Quispillaccta was a Sendero stronghold, and that Quispillacctinos
8 Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 218.
9 Gustavo Gorriti, The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1999), 17; Oseas Nuñez Espinoza, Cuchoquesera,
http://www.tutiempo.net/Tierra/Pe1ru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html (accessed June 24, 2019). Four Sendero
militants and the Municipal Registrar were involved in the burning of D. Chuschi’s ballot boxes. Nuñez notes that
one of the four was a 16-year old girl named Alejandra. It is not clear if Alejandra was from Quispillaccta. Two
older Senderista cadres were not from the district - a teacher at Chuschi’s Ramon Castilla secondary school,
Bernardino Azursa, possibly of Huancaíno origin, and a 20 year-old named Victor from Andahuaylas province, in
the Department of Apurímac. According to Nuñez Espinoza, Victor was living for some time before the attack in a
house in Chuschi, rented from the Meneses family, close to the creek dividing Chuschi and Quispillaccta. He and
Alejandra travelled about the district spreading Sendero’s message and organizing popular schools to indoctrinate
residents. I have not found any information about the fourth Sendero militant involved that day. The Municipal
Registrar, Lorenzo Conde, from Quispillaccta, was forced to open the municipal offices to the Senderistas,
according to Nuñez Espinoza. Peru’s TRC notes that the Sendero teacher from Andahuaylas who helped burn the
ballot boxes was named, José. Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, Volume 5.1, Section 2.1, 18.
La Serna notes, based on an anonymous interview with a then-young Chuschino Senderista, that a Senderista teacher
from outside the community organized the first popular schools in the district out of a house rented from a
Chuschino butcher, who was also suspected of running a cattle rustling operation. However, there is no mention
about whether this Senderista teacher was also involved in burning the ballot boxes in D. Chuschi, and La Serna’s
account of where the teacher lived does not corroborate the account of Nuñez Espinoza. Miguel La Serna, The
Corner of the Living: Ayacucho on the Eve of the Shining Path Insurgency (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of
North Carolina Press, 2012), 145-147. Theidon notes that one of those who burned D. Chuschi’s ballot boxes was
later Shining Path’s military commander for the Zonal Committee in eastern Cangallo, in Vilcashuamán. Theidon,
Intimate Enemies, 328-9. In a newly published account of the ballot box incident, Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna
claim that five masked men accosted the Municipal Registrar and burned the election ballots. They identify the
Registrar as Florencio Conde. Unfortunately, they offer no footnotes or citations to explain their sources. Orin
Starn and Miguel La Serna, The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2019), 85-6.
10 Quoted in La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 162.
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embraced Sendero far more than other communities in the district, using the insurgency as a way
to get back at Chuschinos, their historic enemies.11
However, recent interviews with survivors of the dirty war and their families and field work in
the district raise serious questions about claims that Quispillaccta was the main source of
Sendero support in the district and that their higher death rate in the civil war resulted from
Peru’s security forces correctly targeting a community that had more Sendero militants and
supporters. Such claims are puzzling because, after extensive research piecing together the
centuries-long land conflicts in the district, it appears that Quispillaccta had the most to lose from
throwing its support behind Sendero’s insurgency. They were the clear victors in the long-
running district land conflicts with Chuschi and its annexes. Inter-community land
confrontations between the 1940s and early 1980s and the legal trials that spawned from these
conflicts were decisively won by Quispillaccta. When a final peace agreement was signed
between Chuschi and Quispillaccta in late 1981, as Sendero was tightening its grip on the D.
Chuschi, Quispillaccta consolidated its control over most of the long-contested lands in the Rio
Cachi basin and central Kimsa Cruz zone of the district. (See district map, Figure 19, Chapter 6)
The current boundaries of the Community of Quispillaccta show it holding a vast area of once-
contested high-altitude puna lands in the centre of the D. Chuschi.
These facts raise an important question about whether the nature of violence during the civil war
in the district was influenced by the outcome of long-running land conflicts between
communities? Anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell hinted at this in 2005, when she wrote that,
“Quispillaccta was the target of such strong reprisals due to the old litigation that it maintained
with its neighbors because of disputes over land boundaries and not because it supported Sendero
Luminoso more.”12
This puzzle about how violence during the civil war was linked to long-running resource
conflicts in the district lies at the heart of this dissertation. The thesis traces the origin and
11 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 163.
12 Isbell, my translation, Spanish translation of To Defend Ourselves, Billie Jean Isbell, Para defendernos: ecología
y ritual en un pueblo andino, vol. 6 (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolomé de las Casas, 2005).
Isbell’s comments on Quispillacta’s attitudes toward Sendero are more definitive in the this later Spanish translation
of her book, compared to the 1985 English edition.
xix
development of the district’s land conflicts and the role played by environmental scarcities and
demographic change in the district over many decades, in the context of evolving economic,
political, and social currents in the region more generally, to help us understand how and why
violence happened in the latter twentieth century, and why one community suffered to a much
greater extent than other communities in the D. Chuschi during the early years of the counter-
insurgency operations in 1983 and 1984. While the dissertation does offer some suggestions
about the original question driving my research in Peru, the main findings from archival and field
work speak less to the causes of Sendero’s support and more to how environmental scarcities and
demographic change can help to condition patterns of violence during civil wars. We cannot
understand why Quispillaccta suffered more in the anti-Sendero dirty war, or why Quispillaccta
was labelled as a hot bed of Sendero support, unless we understand the long history of conflict
over land, water, and grazing opportunities in the D. Chuschi between different communities and
Quispillaccta’s ultimate victory in most of those conflicts. These findings thus offer new insights
about the role of environmental scarcities and demographic change in violent conflict – not their
role in violent conflict generation, but instead their role in explaining “the logic of violence in
civil war.”13 This is a burgeoning area of civil war research over the past fifteen years, but not a
theme linked by environmental conflict research to date.
So, the logic of the dissertation’s layout reflects my attempt to grapple with the challenge of
starting down one research path, formulating a livelihood framework to gain insights on the
environmental change-revolution/insurgency pathway, but then getting into the field and finding
evidence that human environmental change – in the context of many other key factors and
influences – instead helped to condition patterns of violence between communities in and around
the district, rather than contributing to the rise of Sendero’s insurgency in this area.
13 Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2004).
1
Chapter 1 Introduction
Considerable debate going back to the 1990s exists among scholars and policymakers about
whether and how human-induced pressure on the natural environment contributes to violent
conflict. Recent research about the impact of climate change on social stability has furthered the
intensity of debates about environmental change-conflict linkages. No consensus exists among
scholars about key causes, key causal mechanisms, or the best methodologies to move the field
forward.14 Over the past twenty years, most of the findings on these questions have emerged
from qualitative, desk case-studies and large-scale statistical studies. Qualitative research on the
linkages between environmental change and violent conflict, however, has stalled since the burst
of work in the mid-1990s.
Most scholars agree that one strategy for moving the field forward and critically building on the
work to date requires detailed field studies of environment-conflict linkages, sensitive to the
local variability and complexities of socio-economic and political relationships around human-
induced environmental change.15 Such studies can deepen our understanding of whether human-
induced environmental change plays a role in generating violent social conflict, and if so, how
these linkages may operate.16
This rationale forms the background to this dissertation’s examination of whether human-
induced environmental and demographic change in the D. Chuschi played a role in generating
the Sendero uprising in the South-Central Andes of Peru in the latter half of the 20th century.
14 Tobias Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent? A qualitative comparative analysis,”
Global Environmental Change 33 (2015): 61-70. 15
Richard A. Matthew and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, “Environment, Population, and Conflict: Suggesting a Few Steps
Forward,” Environmental Change & Security Project Report, Issue 6 (Washington D.C., The Woodrow Wilson
Center, Summer 2000), 100; Tobias Ide and Jurgen Scheffran, “On climate, conflict and cumulation: suggestions for
integrative cumulation of knowledge in the research on climate change and violent conflict,” Global Change, Peace
& Security,” 26, no.3 (2014): 277. 16
Case studies are highly effective in identifying causal mechanisms linking environmental change and conflict.
See Daniel M. Schwartz, Tom Deligiannis, and Thomas Homer-Dixon, “The Environment and Violent Conflict,” in
Environmental Conflict, Paul F. Diehl and Nils Petter Gleditsch, eds. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 280-88.
This is an area that some scholars have recently argued needs more attention in future research. See Halvard
Buhaug, “Climate-conflict research: some reflections on the way forward,” Climatic Change 6 (May/June 2015):
271.
2
The D. Chuschi is an important case.17 Residents are acutely dependent upon natural resources
for their livelihood security. Equally important, the D. Chuschi was the location of the first
armed actions by the Sendero
Luminoso uprising in 1980, where
they burned the ballot boxes for the
upcoming presidential elections. In
the early years of Sendero’s
insurgency in Peru, the D. Chuschi
and the wider province of Cangallo
where it is situated, suffered
disproportionately along with
several other provinces in the
Department of Ayacucho from high
levels of civilian casualties as a
result of violence between the
Sendero militants and the Peruvian
military’s counter-insurgency
campaign. The first years of
Sendero’s insurgency serve as the
end point for this dissertation, as I
trace back through detailed field
work, over 60 ethnographic field
17 This case is not a “crucial” case, in social science methodological terms. Instead, this case fits more closely to a
“most-likely” case, according to case study design discussed by Alexander George and Andrew Bennett. Crucial
cases are rare, according to Harry Eckstein. Instead, the D. Chuschi case provides a good fit with a most-likely case,
according to George and Bennett. “In a most-likely case, the independent variables posited by a theory are at values
that strongly posit an outcome or posit an extreme outcome.” Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case
Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 2005), 170. Given the
reliance of district residents on natural resources for household survival and given the tremendous demographic
change that the area went through in the twentieth century, the D. Chuschi seems to provide an excellent single case
to examine the applicability of Homer-Dixon’s theory linking environmental scarcities to violent conflict. As
George and Bennett note, “Single cases serve the purpose of theory testing particularly well if they are “most-
likely,” “least-likely,” or “crucial” cases.” George and Bennett, Case Studies, 111. Crucial cases and their
limitations are discussed in Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific
Inquiry in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P., 1994), 209-11.
Figure 1: Department of Ayacucho
3
interviews with elderly residents, and through archival research in Peru and North America, the
role that human-induced environmental change and demographic change played in violence in
the D. of Chuschi.18 This dissertation employs a process-tracing methodology throughout to
help make sense of these relationships across space and time.19
Overview of case study region
The following study focuses on assessing the local impact of scarcities on peasant livelihoods
and local patterns of violence by conducting a case study in the D. Chuschi, Cangallo province,
Department of Ayacucho.20 Covering
about 1916 km2, Cangallo is currently
divided into 6 districts with a total
population of about 35,000 people.21
Within the province, two clearly defined
zones can be identified. The western
zone, encompassing the districts of Totos
and Paras, is isolated by geography and
the absence of road connections from the
18 Most of my interviews were with men in Chuschi and Quispillaccta. I have only one formal interview with a
female head of a household in the district. I am acutely aware of the gender limitations of my fieldwork in the
District, a region where gendered notions of authority and power are still a daily reality. On a few occasions, wives
joined their husbands during my interviews. Other times, I could tell that women in the household were listening to
our interview from nearby. Sometimes the female member of the household would shout out a comment, in
response to something her husband had just said to me. In retrospect, I regret not making a greater effort to speak to
women in the district, or use a female assistant in my field research. As much as possible, I have tried to supplement
my fieldwork interviews with the voices of local women, particularly widowed survivors of the dirty war in the early
1980s. 19
Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel, "Process Tracing: From Philosophical Roots to Best Practices," in
Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytical Tool, ed. Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015).
20 Peruvian “departments” are analogous to Canadian provinces or US states, while Peruvian “provinces” are
roughly analogous to Canadian municipalities. Provinces are composed of several districts in Peru. Each district
has a designated district town centre, and numerous associated communities and hamlets. In recent years, Peru has
begun a regionalization process to combine departments into regions. However, no regions have yet to be created,
and departments remain the main administrative jurisdiction below the national level. Confusingly, departments are
now led by regional governments. 21
In 1984, a portion of the eastern part of province of Cangallo bordering on the department of Apurimac was split
off to create the new province of Vilcashuamán.
Figure 2: Province of Cangallo
Source: Municipalidad Provincial De Cangallo. Mejoramiento y Ampliación del Servicio de Agua Para Riego en 07 comunidades del
distrito de los Morochucos – Cangallo – Ayacucho. Cangallo,
Ayacucho, Octubre 2012.
4
provincial capital, and is instead bound more closely with the province of Huamanga to the
north.22 The eastern zone includes the area surrounding the provincial capital (also named
Cangallo), and is bisected by road networks going west along the Rio Pampas valley toward the
D. Chuschi and east to the province of Vilcashuamán, while another road runs north-south to the
provinces of Huamanga and Victor Fajardo. Cangallo has traditionally been composed of
marginal peasant communities engaged primarily in subsistence or semi-subsistence farming and
high-altitude livestock production. There were few large haciendas (large estates), or fundos
(small estates) in Cangallo.23
22 CVR, Informe, Volume 4, 39-40.
23 CVR, Informe, Volume 4, 40 & 18.
Figure 3: District of Chuschi
Source: Perú, Departamento de Ayacucho, Plan Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos Y
Prevención de Los Efectos Climatológicos Adversos del Distrito de Chuschi del Departamento de Ayacucho, N.P., 2006: 105.
Town Centre
of Community
of Chuschi
Town Centre of
Community of
Quispillaccta
5
The D. Chuschi lies roughly in the centre of province in an area dominated by high mountain
grasslands and deep river valleys. Spread over 49,000H, about 60% of the D. Chuschi’s land
area consists of high-altitude pasture lands above 3900m, where agriculture is risky and limited
to a few hardy tubers and grains. A range of mountains runs through the centre of the D.
Chuschi, with the northern half of the district draining into the Rio Cachi watershed that flows
north through the District of Vinchos to the arid flat lands around the capital city of Huamanga24
in northern Ayacucho. The southern half of the D. Chuschi sits on the northern bank of the
Pampas River valley, which runs west to east, plunging from high puna grasslands in the
department of Huancavelica to the west at heights of over 4500m to about 2000m east of the D.
Chuschi. Cultivated agriculture has historically been more common in the southern half of the
district, below 3900m, with crops such as maize, tubers, beans, wheat, barley, and fruit trees
dominating. According to the most recent census, the district has 8,321 residents, living in
several dozen population centres of various sizes.25 There are three recognized peasant
communities in the D. Chuschi: Chuschi, Quispillaccta, and Cancha Cancha. Chuschi has been
the main population centre in the immediate area since the colonial era, and was designated the
district headquarters when the district was created in 1857. Both Chuschi and Quispillaccta have
a historical town centre in the southern end of the district, fronting the Pampas River. Each also
has various associated annexes and hamlets located in different sectors of the district.
Ayacucho has historically been one of the poorest departments in all of Peru, with some of the
worst development indicators in the country. Throughout history, Ayacucho has seen repeated
patterns of conquest, exploitation, rebellion, and marginalization. Incan Conquest of the tribes in
Ayacucho took place long before the Spanish arrived in Peru, profoundly transforming the
communities and cultures living in the area. Spanish invaders entered the area in 1539, founding
the capital of Huamanga on the northern plains and dividing the lands and peoples of the area
into Spanish-controlled estates. Spanish Conquest set in motion hundreds of years of
exploitation, suffering, and dislocation for Ayacuchanos. Diseases brought by the Spanish
24 The capital city of the Department of Ayacucho is sometimes called Ayacucho and sometimes Huamanga. To
avoid confusion, I refer to the department capital as Huamanga throughout the dissertation. 25
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI), Directorio Nacional de Centros Poblados, Tomo 2,
Censos Nacionales 2017: XII de Población, VII de Vivienda, y III de Comunidades Indígenas, Lima: INEI,
Setiembre 2018, 410.
6
conquerors helped to decimate the residents of the area, dropping populations 50-75%, as
outlined below in section 4.2.1. But isolated highland areas like Ayacucho suffered less than
other more heavily populated areas like coastal Peru. The Battle of Ayacucho in 1824 led to the
defeat Spanish Royalist armies in Peru and marked the beginning of Peru’s independence.
Spanish and Mestizo exploitation of Ayacucho continued throughout this period, only partly
impacted by Peru’s war with Chile fifty years later, which led to widespread destruction of
Ayacucho by invading Chilean forces.
Though constantly fought over because of its relatively strategic position between Lima and
Cuzco to the east, Ayacucho remained a relative backwater for most of Peru’s post-Conquest
history. The D. Chuschi’s isolated location in mountainous central Cangallo was even further
removed from Peru’s economic and political power centres. Compared to the rest of the
department, this part of Ayacucho – including the other central provinces of Vilcashuamán,
Victor Fajardo, and Huancasancos – has been politically and economically isolated throughout
history. Geography has contributed to uneven patterns of development throughout Ayacucho’s
history, with the northern provinces establishing stronger commercial ties to the central Sierra
and Lima through road connections to the north, while the provinces of southern Ayacucho have
traditionally maintained stronger commercial ties with the coast and the large urban centres in
southern Peru than with the rest of the department.26 Economic power in Ayacucho has long
rested with the northern-most provinces in the department – La Mar, Huanta, and Huamanga (the
location of the department capital, Huamanga). In 1959, these three provinces had 205
haciendas in operation, representing over 80% of the total haciendas in the department.27 By
contrast, in central Ayacucho, there were only 18 haciendas in the early 1960s, and all were
located in the provinces of Cangallo and Vilcashuamán. The lack of good road connections and
the relative absence of large amounts of good agricultural land because of the steep geography
26 CVR, Informe, Volume 4, 19. The southern part of Ayacucho is home to the provinces of Lucanas, Parinacochas,
Sucre, and Paucar del Sara Sara – the latter two created in 1986 by breaking up the former. Here, the CVR notes,
communities and haciendas were primarily engaged in livestock ranching for the coastal zone of Ica, Arequipa
(Peru’s 2nd largest city), and Lima. See CVR, Informe, Volume 4, 18-19. 27
CVR, Informe, Volume 4, 18.
7
have thus further marginalized isolated districts in central Ayacucho like Chuschi, in this already
marginalized part of the Peruvian Sierra.28
Household agricultural production in the D. Chuschi has mostly been for subsistence purposes,
though some households always traded crops to fill needs. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, some households sold small portions of their cultivated production for cash – mainly
tubers and garlic. Most households also raise livestock, selling them or their products as needed
for cash. Household economic activity around livestock production increased in the latter
twentieth century.
Travelling today to the D. Chuschi from Ayacucho’s capital Huamanga typically means enduring
a long, bone-jarring trip on a local combi, as I did in 2004. Combi’s are the small Toyota vans
that serve as local transportation throughout the Peruvian Sierra. Outfitted with bench seats in
the back, ours had room for twelve, but typically left with about twenty people jammed in every
available nook and cranny. Those departing Huamanga – the capital of the department – to
return to Quispillaccta and Chuschi were bringing back supplies – sacks of fertilizer, seed,
household goods, fresh baking, and even farm animals like ducklings or chickens, sitting in
crates on the roof or in the aisles of the van.
The road to Chuschi and Quispillaccta takes 5-6 hours along twisting, bumpy roads, heading
south from Huamanga. The city of Huamanga sits in a broad, flat valley, situated in the northern
half of the department. The climate is dry, semi-arid. One wonders how anyone can make a
living in the near desert-like conditions. But this is September, and the dry season is just ending.
Vegetation is sparse, though. Eucalyptus trees are interspersed with low native shrubs where the
land is not in cultivation. In the driest areas, prickly pear cactus surrounds the roads and fields
providing an annual harvest out of the parched land. Since the planting season is only just
starting the land is brown from the dry months of June, July, and August. September’s hesitant
rains come sparingly in the area immediately around Huamanga. High mountains loom in every
direction – to the east, a ridge of mountains runs north into the province of Huanta; beyond these
28 CVR, Informe, Volume 4, 18-9. The only exception to the relative lack of economic dynamism in central
Ayacucho was the eastern part of the central provinces, an area of humid, high-altitude tropical valleys near the
border with Apurimac. With greater agricultural versatility, this area proved to be economically more dynamic
through the production of coffee, cocoa, fruit, and coca leaf – the precursor for cocaine.
8
eastern mountains the land sharply descends to the Amazonian lowlands. To the south and west,
another wall of mountains looms in the distance. This western cordillera of the Andes catches
moisture on the western slopes, leaving the eastern slopes and plains around Huamanga semi-
arid. The ridges to the south west, in the direction of the province of Cangallo – the location of
Quispillaccta and Chuschi – climb to well over 5000m. Water from those peaks, flowing
through the D. Chuschi, was tapped in the mid-1980s by the Rio Cachi irrigation project to bring
drinking and irrigation water to Huamanga and the surrounding plains, much to the consternation
of district residents who had no say in the project and suffer from their own water shortages.
In 1959, the first road opened from Huamanga to Chuschi wound out of the Department capital
to the south, through the inter-montane valleys to the broad high plains of Pampa Cangallo,
before turning west alongside the Rio Pampas (Pampas River) toward the D. Chuschi. The
western districts of Cangallo – Chuschi, Totos, and Paras – lie in a land of thrusting mountain
peaks, sliced through like a knife on their southern borders by the deep Rio Pampas river valley.
The steep hills offer only narrow slivers of valley bottomland that is heavily cultivated by
farmers, forcing the inhabitants to cultivate steep hillsides which, in places, have a slope of more
than 20 degrees. The northern parts of these districts are high montane punas - grasslands of
varying quality and steepness, with cattle, sheep, and camelids raised on lands sometimes at
dizzying heights, up to 5000m.
Back when there was only one road to Chuschi, you entered Chuschi from the southeast, passing
by the town square before you crossed the bridge over a small creek into the main square of
Quispillaccta. Today, however, that route is less traveled. A newer dirt road has cut more than
an hour off the trip, and enters the area from the neighbouring District of Vinchos to the
northeast, through the Rio Cachi watershed, passing through some of the upper barrios of
Quispillaccta and Chuschi, climbing over the high ridge above the main towns – which reaches
more than 4400m at this point –before descending into the valley that divides the towns of
Chuschi and Quispillaccta. While the newer route is shorter, even four hours of winding,
sometimes jarring roads takes its toll on the passengers in the combi.
Descending into the valley holding the town centres of Chuschi and Quispillaccta, we enter into
a broad, horseshoe-shaped valley that runs perpendicular to the Rio Pampas river valley due
south of us. The river is invisible almost 2 km below. The road skips back and forth over the
9
current boundaries of the two communities; ownership of the valley is now roughly shared
between both. In fact, we pass directly through areas which 40 years ago were hotly contested
by the two communities. It was here in the upper reaches of the valley, and in the puna above –
the area known as Kimsa Cruz – that, in the first days of May 1960, a huge clash took place
between Chuschi and Quispillaccta. For three days, thousands of comuneros (community
members) from both communities battled with clubs, slings, rocks, and even a few guns. In the
end, dozens on both sides were injured, while three Quispillacctinos were shot dead, and two
were seriously injured by bullet wounds. One unlucky Chuschino was later caught and beaten to
death. The decades-long conflict between the two communities had again drawn blood.
Today, however, relations between Chuschi and Quispillaccta are peaceful. There is no anxiety
as we make our way down into the valley, past the isolated hamlets of Yuraqcruz – a barrio of
Quispillaccta, past the small chacras (fields) planted with broad beans, potatoes, wheat, and, a
little lower down, as we pass into the quichwa zone – traditionally, the corn-growing area below
3300m – which sits both above and below the town centres of Chuschi and Quispillaccta.29
Spread out on either side of the small brook which divides the valley sit the main population
centres for Chuschi and Quispillaccta, straddling the valley at about 2800m.
Situated around the main squares of both towns are a Catholic Church and the offices of the
community authorities. Chuschi also houses the offices of the district officials and the District
29 Billie Jean Isbell, To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
1978): 51 & 55.
The town centres of
Chuschi (foreground) and
Quispillaccta (background behind line of trees. The
tower of Chuschi’s
colonial-era Catholic church is visible in front of
the town square. A small
brook divides the town centres, located in a small
valley in the south of the
district. The brook flows south in the Rio Pampas,
to the left. Source:
http://chuschi.com/
10
Alcalde (mayor). The majority of the small stores in the two communities are scattered close to
Chuschi’s main plaza, as is the district medical post.
The two population centres are situated like many Andean communities in the Sierra, anchored
in quichwa zone to allow easier access to both the sallqa or puna zone above 4000m where
alpacas, llamas, sheep, and cattle have traditionally been kept, and the mayapatan, or river
bottom, around 2300m – the area specializing in corn and fruit production like apples, peaches,
oranges, and prickly pear. Peasant household economies in the Andes have traditionally
employed a variety of altitude zones for agricultural production – from small parcels on the
bottoms of valleys for maize production, right up the side of hills to the high-altitude puna where
they raise camelids and sheep. This practice is known as Andean verticality.30 Locating the
main population centres in the quichwa zone facilitated verticality, and puts the community
within the culturally important maize production zone. But their current location is not entirely
due to rational agricultural decision-making, as is discussed below in chapter 4.1 in more detail.
Land in all the communities in the district is owned collectively by the community, but has been
parceled out to community members on a usufruct basis. These lands can be passed down to
family members through inheritance or sold to other community members; however, land cannot
be sold to anyone outside of the community. The community can seize abandoned land for
redistribution, or it may decide to seize land for community development projects like road
construction.
In recent decades, social, economic, environmental, and demographic change, have somewhat
altered the traditional settlement pattern in Chuschi and Quispillaccta. While most of the
population of Chuschi continues to reside in the Matriz (main town), much of Quispillaccta’s
population has disbursed to the other 11 barrios (hamlets/neighbourhoods) spread all over the
community territory, particularly those hamlets located in the northern Rio Cachi watershed.
Larger barrios in Quispillaccta like Unión Portrero, Puncupata, and Catalinayuq today look like
30 See Enrique Mayer, The Articulated Peasant: Household Economies in the Andes (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
2002): Chapter 8; John V. Murra, “ ‘El Archipielago Vertical’ Revisited,” Chapter 1 in Shozo Masuda, Izumi
Shimada, and Craig Morris eds., Andean Ecology and Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean
Ecological Complementarity (n.p.: University of Tokyo Press, 1985): 3-13 and Murra, “The Limits and Limitations
of the “Vertical Archipelago” in the Andes,” Chapter 2 in Andean Ecology and Civilization, 15-20; and Brush,
“Diversity and Change in Andean Agriculture,” 273-74.
11
small towns, with stores, schools, and sports fields. Some families in Quispillaccta maintain a
family house in the village centre, but only use it when they have business in the area. This
decades-long process of intra-communal migration is one of the key parts of the story below in
chapters 5 and 6.
Campesinos in this area have always been on the move. Like most Andean peasants, their land
is divided into small parcels spread all over the community territory. Chuschi’s settlement
pattern used to be the norm in Quispillaccta – campesinos lived in the main town most of the
time and traveled between their various plots to tend to their crops or to their corrals in the puna
to graze their animals on the community pasture lands in the high puna. While they may stay for
a day or two in distant parts of the community while tending to those distant parcels or animals,
their main place of residence was in town. Seasonal changes also governed these movements,
with fields being sown when rains arrived in September to November, and being harvested from
March to May. Livestock were traditionally moved around to different pastures as necessary,
brought to lower cultivated fields to feed on crop residues when harvests were completed.
Increasingly, however, the upper puna pastures are being divided and parceled into individual
walled holdings. Dry season might bring travel to distant towns or agricultural zones for wage
work, or a greater focus on simple commodity production in and around the district. Change is a
constant the lives of local comuneros, even if at first glance their lives appear traditional and
certain.
Until the mid-1970s, the political structure of the D. Chuschi was a dual system, made up of
indigenous peasants and their traditional authority structures on one side, and the mestizo-
dominated bureaucratic governmental system on the other.31 Chuschi is not just a peasant
community, it is also a municipal district of the province of Cangallo, and thus part of the
administrative structure of the Peruvian government – district, province, and department – with
its own associated district institutions.32 The municipal (district) mayor is the top bureaucratic
authority in the district. Working with a small committee of assistants, the mayor is responsible
31 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 83.
32 Brush, Mountain, Field, and Family, 59.
12
for village affairs, budget and record duties, village improvements, and keeping order.33 The
mayor’s authority is greater than the other district authorities, the governor and lieutenant
governor. While the district mayor is generally elected, the positions of governor and lieutenant
governor are appointed by provincial officials. The governor and lieutenant governor are
primarily responsible for law and order, tax collection in the district, and maintaining
communication with the prefect in the provincial capital, the town of Cangallo.34 Bureaucratic
hierarchies in the district also traditionally included officials of the Catholic Church, including
the priest and various officials tasked to assist the priest, most of whom were assigned from the
traditional indigenous authority structure described below.35 To peasants, the bureaucratic
authority structure in the D. Chuschi represented foreign domination in the midst of their
community’s social structure.36
Peasant communities also have their own bureaucratic leadership structure. Before Agrarian
Reform in 1969, the village bureaucracy was led by the junta comunal, who were the guardians
of communal lands. The junta comunal was led by an elected president and his deputy, the
personero, who is “the legal representative of the village in all land disputes,” and assisted by a
six-man committee who were elected with the personero for four years.37 With Agrarian
Reform, the junta comunal was abolished and an administrative council (Consejo de
Administración) and a vigilance council (Consejo de Vigilancia) were created instead, each led
by the elected president.38 In 1987, the Peruvian General Law on Peasant Communities was
passed which formalized the Directiva Comunal as the main body of village bureaucracy.
Consisting of a president, vice-president, and a minimum of four directors, the directiva comunal
is elected for two years by a vote in the community assembly.39 The president of the directiva
comunal is the key village leader in the communities of Chuschi, Quispillaccta, Cancha Cancha,
33 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 89.
34 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 88-89; Brush, Mountain, Field, and Family, 60.
35 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 88-89.
36 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 89.
37 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 84.
38 González, Unveiling Secrets of War, 119.
39 Ley General De Comunidades Campesinas, Peru, No. 24656, 14 April, 1987.
13
and other recognized communities in the district. They represent the interests of community
members and lead community administrative and development matters.
Each peasant community also has its own
traditional indigenous authority structures that
operates in parallel to the state’s bureaucratic
structures, serving both to buttress the roles and
activities of the bureaucratic authorities, but
also to maintain indigenous social structures
and cohesion in communities in the district.
According to Isbell, the indigenous civil-
religious prestige authority system – or varayoq
system - in Chuschi has served to reinforce “the
structural principles of the comuneros’
conceptualization of space and ecology,”
maintain mechanisms of reciprocal aid and
community service, and thereby ensure the
cohesion and survival of the village.40
Functionally, the traditional authority structures
played crucial roles in the religious cargo
system associated with Catholic fiestas, and
worked closely with bureaucratic authority structures to maintain moral and civil order in the
district. Some traditional authority members also worked directly with the district governor and
lieutenant governor to patrol the village and keep the peace, while others were tasked with duties
to secure agricultural fields and livestock herds, or serve as functionaries for various community
and district tasks.41 While most Peruvian peasant communities had such traditional authority
structures, they have been on the decline over the past fifty years. By the time of Agrarian
Reform, the varayoq system had already disappeared in many communities in Peru or was
40 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 84-5. See also Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 125-27
41 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 88-94.
Varayoq of Quispillaccta with their staffs of authority, 1969.
Billie Jean Isbell Andean Collection, Cornell University Library
14
greatly diminished, with positions left unfilled or abolished.42 Communities in the D. of Chuschi
had largely preserved the varayoq system when anthropologists first entered the area in the late
1960s.43 While some positions have been abolished over the decades, they continue struggle to
maintain their indigenous authority system up to the present day, as described in the Postscript.
The dual nature of the political structures in the D. of Chuschi stem from a similar dual social
system in the district. Identity in Peru is complex and partly socially constructed, and this is also
reflected in identity classifications of social structures in the D. Chuschi. According to Isbell,
mestizos (vecinos) are outsiders or are emulating outsiders, in contrast to local indigenous
peasants. Community members (comuneros) in Chuschi, ascribed identity – whether someone
was a comunero or a vecino - based on a person’s participation in communal affairs: “the
comuneros, or communal members of the village, who participate in the [traditional indigenous
authority] hierarchy, wear traditional dress, and speak Quechua; versus the vecinos, or qalas
(literally, peeled or naked ones), who are Spanish speaking, western dressed, foreign
nonparticipants in communal life.”44 Until the early 1970s, mestizo vecinos or qalas were
usually the shop keepers, district bureaucratic officials, priests, school teachers, and their
relatives. Their greater facility with the Spanish language meant that they tended to dominate the
bureaucratic positions in the district until the late 1960s and early 1970s. Comuneros who
migrate to urban areas, adopt vecinos lifestyles and refuse to participate in communal life could
also lose their comuneros status, in the eyes of community members at that time, according to
Isbell.45 Social identity became increasingly fluid in the latter 20th century, increasingly altering
by the 1960s and 1970s social distinctions in many highland communities described by scholars
earlier in the twentieth century. A thorough historical account of the origins and activities of
mestizo, misti, qala, and gamonales in the D. Chuschi remains to be written. However, what is
clear from recent historical work is that up to the early 1970s they were a frequent source of
42 Mitchell notes that the varayoq system had been abolished in Quinoa, Ayacucho in the late 1960s, while Mayer
reports that it was severely handicapped with many positions left unfilled in the late 1960s in the village of Tangor,
Department of Pasco, in central Peru. Mitchell, Peasants on the Edge, 163-4; Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 106. 43
Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 84-97. 44
Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 67.
45 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 70-3.
15
abuse and controversy for indigenous community members throughout the district, with the
impacts being felt particularly strongly on Chuschi and its associated annexes.46
Key findings and plan of dissertation
The findings of this dissertation speak less to the role of human pressure on the environment in
causing Sendero’s rural rebellion and instead show how human pressure on the environment
helped to cause particular patterns of rural violence in the D. Chuschi. Long-term patterns of
resource capture and human-induced environmental and demographic change, combined with
prevailing local, regional, and national political-economic currents in Peru over the 20th century
(along with some international influences) helped to increase inter-community competition for
valuable but scarce agricultural resources – over range land, crop land, and water resources. In
particular, this dissertation is a micro-study of how these changes conditioned patterns of
violence between two neighbouring communities in the district – the communities of Chuschi
and Quispillaccta. Household livelihood changes pushed conflictual relationships both vertically
within Chuschi – in conflicts between elites and peasants – but also horizontally, between the
peasant communities of Chuschi and Quispillaccta, over rights to contested resources essential to
increasingly pressured livelihoods in both communities. Change and contest resulted in winners
and losers, with implications for social stability many years into the future.
Quispillaccta emerged as the victor in these local community battles. However, their victory
fostered enduring resentment in Chuschi – the traditional administrative centre of the district –
and among Chuschi’s associated annexes. These grievances spilled out during the Sendero years
as Quispillaccta was branded as a centre of Sendero militancy, partly as a result of accusations
from those who lost out in the inter-community land competition. Quispillaccta suffered heavily
as a result in the Peruvian military’s counter-insurgency bloodletting, disproportionately more
than Chuschi and its annexes. Quispillaccta faced retribution by counter-insurgency because of
their land conflict successes.
In this sense, this study’s findings cannot link human-induced environmental change directly to
Sendero’s growth in the area; however, human pressure on the local environment and people’s
46 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, chapter 3; and chapters 4 and 5 below.
16
adaptive choices to these pressures did help to condition the patterns of violence in the decades
before the Sendero insurgency, and patterns of violence once the insurgency heated up in the
area. This thesis is but one strand of a complex local story behind the violence in the district; we
are still in the early stages of attempting to piece together how and why violent conflict broke out
in the D. Chuschi during Sendero’s insurgency. Certainly, other parts of the story remain to be
explored by scholars. But we cannot understand why violence took the shape that it did in this
area during the insurgency, and over the previous century in various small-scale confrontations,
unless we examine the interface of human-induced environmental change and demographic
change, in the context of wider socio-economic developments in the region.
The story in Peru is complicated, this dissertation concludes, because these local competitive
dynamics were also happening concurrently with wider regional patterns in Peru, where
livelihoods affected by environmental and demographic change in Cangallo and other areas of
the South-Central Andes were probably also contributing to dynamics that helped spur the
Sendero insurgency. Human-induced environmental and demographic change probably had
multi-level influences, with considerable local level variability. However, the field work in this
dissertation found only indirect evidence in the D. Chuschi for environmental change and
demographic change contributing to the rise of Sendero’s insurgency.
This dissertation adds to the prevailing understanding of how environmental change can
contribute to violent conflict by deepening the sophistication of linkages proposed by research to
date. It is rooted in detailed field work, and grounded upon a foundation of the literature on rural
rebellions, civil war, agro-ecological livelihoods in the Andes, and ethnographic literature on
indigenous Peruvian communities. The dissertation also critically evaluates past qualitative
research on environmental change-conflict linkages and finds important deficiencies in the level
of analysis used by much of the qualitative research to date. The dissertation proposes a new
livelihood framework for local-scale qualitative environmental-conflict research. This
framework forms the foundation for the study of human-induced pressure on the local
environment in the D. Chuschi.
Research on household adaptation to environmental scarcities and other livelihood pressures in
the D. Chuschi leads us to revise thinking about the most appropriate level of analysis of
environment-conflict research and about prevailing hypotheses about linear processes from
17
environmental scarcities to violent conflict outcomes. Much of the research to date on
environment-conflict linkages has chosen to use a state-level of analysis when attempting to
determine if environmental scarcities can help cause violent conflict. This dissertation
demonstrates that such an approach is misguided, because scarcities impact households and
groups at the local level, and their local responses to these pressures are often lost if the focus is
on the state level. Situating the household livelihood model at the centre of the causal analysis of
the impacts of environmental scarcities allows for a more complex understanding of the impact
of scarcities in light of other factors noted by scholars, like political-economic processes, and an
appreciation of how household capacities mediate social impacts. Environment-conflict research
that posits linear processes from environmental scarcities to social effects and then to violent
conflict is simplistic because households adapt and cope to stresses like environmental stresses
or economic transformation. Certainly, Homer-Dixon’s arguments that environmental scarcities
can constrain agricultural and economic productivity are correct,47 but there are likely few
instances of a direct impact from environmental scarcities to social effects as he suggests. The
impacts of scarcities defy simple, linear predictions of social effects. Complex adaptive and
coping responses of households modelled in this dissertation point to many possible outcomes,
and instead suggest that we need to pay attention to changes in household vulnerability and risk
and to constraints on adaptation and coping, if we want to model likely social effects of pressures
like environmental scarcities and their possible violent conflict implications.
The dissertation is organized across nine chapters. The literature review in Chapter 2 situates the
study’s original research question in qualitative research on environmental change and conflict,
with the theoretical starting point located in classic research on rural rebellions/revolts - a subset
of the larger research field of revolution studies, and in recent research on the causes of civil war.
A review of qualitative research on environment-conflict linkages suggests that the impact of
human-induced environmental change may result in particular material social effects that make
certain types of violent conflict more likely. This work echoes earlier work done by scholars of
rural rebellions and revolutions about the role played by grievances (or motivations) and
opportunities for rebellion. These arguments have also ignited debates among qualitative
researchers about whether political-economic capture of important resources is instead largely
47 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 80-85.
18
responsible for the negative social effects of environmental change on rural residents.
Quantitative research on environment-conflict linkages has failed to settle the question of the
role or importance of human pressure on the natural environment in causing violent sub-state
conflict and rebellions. In each of these bodies of research, debates remain over the impact and
importance of material changes to the well-being of residents who participate in violent
uprisings. Debates about the importance of such factors also emerge from a review of empirical
research on the causes of rural violence in Peru in the latter half of the twentieth century. The
chapter concludes by outlining the key areas of investigation for the field work chapters.
Chapter 3 expands critiques of key qualitative research on environmental change-conflict links to
make the case for local studies grounded in detailed field work.48 It argues that the level of
analysis of most of the qualitative research to date on environmental change-conflict linkages has
been done from an inappropriate state-level of analysis. The chapter then develops a detailed
livelihood framework for qualitative research on local-level environment-conflict linkages.
Continued debates about findings have also sparked questions about the best methodological
approaches to study environment-conflict linkages. While many qualitative and quantitative
desk studies have been done in the past twenty years, few detailed field studies have been done
to explore whether and how human-environmental pressures contribute to violent conflict. This
chapter argues that a local, micro case study examining the role of human-induced environmental
change and demographic change in the D. Chuschi could be beneficial to understand whether
and how such impacts operated before and during the Sendero insurgency.
The livelihood framework developed in this chapter serves as the foundation for the organization
of the fieldwork findings from Chuschi and Quispillaccta examined in chapters 4-7. While this
project initially aimed to use the livelihood framework as a direct research guide for fieldwork in
Chuschi and Quispillaccta, in the field I realized the incredible difficulty of undertaking such
detailed household studies. The data requirements are considerable, and it is almost impossible
to do such studies backwards – as a historical reconstruction, given the sparse historical
livelihood data for the D. Chuschi and highland Peru generally. So, in many ways, this
48 The core of the chapter was published in: Tom Deligiannis, “The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research:
Toward a Livelihood Framework,” Global Environmental Politics 12, no.1 (Feb. 2012): 78-100.
19
framework serves as an aspirational guide for other scholars and a heuristic framework to help
organize the fieldwork findings in Chuschi and Quispillaccta, given the available data.
Chapter 4 is the first of four field work chapters which discuss the findings of my research in the
D. Chuschi. These chapters map out the scope of conflicts over these community lands and
border lands, consolidating field interviews, secondary accounts, and archival research into a
comprehensive account of the impacts of land and water tenure conflicts from before Spanish
Conquest to the late 20th century. The field work findings are interpreted through the household
livelihood lens to map and understand how long-term changes in the agricultural livelihoods of
district residents evolved over several hundred years, with a particular focus in the latter half of
the twentieth century. The dissertation largely focuses on changes and conflicts over land
resources; however, water resources in the district relate to land conflicts in several important
ways and are thus examined along with changes in the supply, demand, and distribution of land
resources in the field work chapters.
Chapter 4 begins with short snap-shot evaluation of peasant livelihoods in the D. Chuschi in the
mid-twentieth century in order to highlight the key household asset categories and livelihood
activities of a typical district household. Changes in household livelihoods and changes in
specific assets, entitlements, and capabilities over time will be discussed in depth in each
fieldwork chapter. However, the field work chapters pay particular attention to long-term
changes in the natural asset category and entitlement changes to those assets, while also
integrating findings about changes and influences from other asset categories.
Chapter 4’s examination of natural asset resource changes and tenure capture and change in
Chuschi and Quispillaccta from pre-Conquest to the 20th century focuses on the capture of
cultivated assets in the district – land to grow crops for household survival. Chapter 5 examines
elite capture of high-altitude livestock grazing lands in the northern half of the district, and
efforts by communities in the district to regain control of these lands in the 20th century.
Gradually increasing permanent settlement of disputed lands by members of rival communities
in the district – moving from the Colonial-era settlements in the south of the district to the
disputed northern lands of the district – was a key process that aggravated group conflict in the
district over several decades in the twentieth century. Chapter 5 focuses on efforts by
communities to claim lands in the northern border area of the district, while Chapter 6 focuses on
20
clashes to control disputed livestock grazing lands and water resources in the centre of the
district. While land clashes on the borders of the district often involved neighbouring elite
estates or neighbouring peasant communities, the clash to control the centre of the district was
primarily between the community of Chuschi and its allied hamlets and the community of
Quispillaccta.
Chapter 6 concludes by examining the historic peace settlement between Chuschi and
Quispillaccta, concluded in late 1982, just as Sendero’s insurgency in the area was growing in
strength. The implications of the settlement conclude chapter 6, both in the context of debates
among scholars about the degree of peasant support for the insurgency and in the context of
nature of violence in the district during the first years of the insurgency.
Chapter 7 complements the analysis in chapters 4-6 by outlining demand and supply changes in
livelihood resources that increasingly pressured households in the 20th century, because of
diminishing asset holdings and increasing challenges in agricultural yields. These changes
helped to push many district residents to settle in disputed lands in the north-central zone of the
district. The chapter first uses archival population data from church records and government
archives to chart population change in the D. Chuschi. These figures are contextualized with
data showing provincial, department, and national population trends from Conquest to the late
20th century. The role of population factors has been highly controversial in environment-
conflict research to date.49 So, this chapter carefully reconstructs and assesses demographic
trends in the District. The data shows that population change in the district began to take off in
the early to mid-twentieth century, at the same time as the general population of Peru returned to
pre-Conquest levels around the middle of the 20th century. The D. Chuschi thus slightly lagged
behind national level population trends. The chapter links local population growth to increasing
pressure among households for arable cultivated and pasture lands in the mid-20th century in the
district, using household interviews to reconstruct average land asset holdings among community
members in Chuschi and Quispillaccta. Interviews also chart the extent of temporary or semi-
49 See Betsy Hartmann, "Will the Circle be Unbroken? A Critique of the Project on Environment, Population, and
Security," in Violent Environments, ed. Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2001), 32-69.
21
permanent out-migration from the district, trends that became increasingly common in the
second half of the 20th century. Like internal district migration, out-migration from the D.
Chuschi was a livelihood diversification choice for many households, helping to ease increasing
pressures on agricultural production and satisfying increasing consumer and educational desires.
Finally, the chapter assesses how demand pressures on local cultivated resources – mostly
located around the traditional Colonial-era settlements in the south of the district – stressed
yields and increased the supply scarcity of agricultural production. This is challenging to assess
because of the tremendous variation in local production conditions; however, data obtained from
interviews and supplemented by archival survey data from the late 1960s appears to show yield
declines in key household crops in this area in the three decades before Sendero’s uprising. The
introduction of green revolution agricultural technology may have helped increase yields for
some in the 1960s; however, local informants indicate that these gains did not last.
Combined demand and supply scarcity changes described in chapter 7 increased pressure on the
livelihood activities of community members in the traditional, colonial-era settlement areas of
the district at the same time as the communities in the district were struggling to regain control or
consolidate control of contested lands in the northern and central zones of the district. These
combined pressures on livelihood resources increased the stakes for inter-community
competition over control of contested cultivated and pastures lands in the area. In the D.
Chuschi, changes in the availability of household assets thus operated in the context of changing
national and regional structural conditions to lead small-holder farmers in Quispillaccta and
Chuschi to adjust household livelihood strategies in ways that contributed to inter-community
conflict. One of the most important household assets is the natural asset category, comprising
land and water necessary for growing crops and raising livestock. For farmers whose livelihoods
largely depend upon what they can produce, the availability or scarcity of land has been crucially
important in moderating household livelihood strategies. Until well into the twentieth century,
there were few livelihood alternatives for residents in Chuschi and Quispillaccta other than
small-holder farming and herding. Patterns of change over time in land assets and the creation of
new and competing entitlements for assets in the north and centre of the district thus provide
insights into crucial mechanisms of livelihood change over time in the two communities, and the
social conflicts these changes helped to spawn.
22
When conflicts were settled in the late 1970s and early 1980s over the Rio Cachi watershed lands
in the district, decades of efforts to regain control of seized lands in the Rio Cachi basin came to
an end. Though every community in the district sought to expand their control of Sunni and
Puna lands in this zone, Quispillaccta was the clear winner of these struggles, significantly
expanding its presence in the upper Rio Cachi basin from the late 1800s to the 1980s. However,
there were clearly winners and losers in the long fight to regain high-altitude grazing lands.
Communities members in Chuschi, Cancha Cancha, Putaje, and Ccochapampa lost out to
Quispillaccta in the land struggles. When their efforts to gain control of these lands were
abandoned or settled in the late 1970s and early 1980s, most of their claims remained unfulfilled
and their aspirations unrealized. Sendero’s insurgency and the Peruvian military’s counter-
insurgency in the district in the early 1980s appeared to undermine the collective will to continue
the land struggles, leaving the enmity with Quispillaccta among some over their decades-long
efforts to gain control of the disputed lands unresolved. Similarly, there were also losers on
Quispillaccta’s side who may have been angered by settlements reached with Chuschi and its
associated hamlets.
Chapter 8 examines how centuries of competition and sometimes violent conflict between
Quispillaccta and its district neighbours came to a head in the early 1980s. As Sendero
Luminoso began to openly operate in the district in 1981-81, killing local thieves and deviants
and driving out or eliminating local government officials, land invasions and intercommunity
clashes in the district worsened. Community leaders, tired of decades of competition and
expensive land litigation, recognized that the time was ripe for a new approach to finally settle
the district’s disputed land boundaries. In a few months during late 1982, they conclusively
settled disputed borders and finalized an agreement that settled the long-running land conflict
between Chuschi and Quispillaccta. No sooner was the agreement finalized, however, when the
Peruvian government’s aggressive counter-insurgency operations began in the district to find and
destroy Sendero militants. These events and a series of deadly operations in May and June 1983
by the Peruvian Army are outlined in Chapter 8. For the first time, the bloody events of 1983 are
reconstructed in a coherent narrative, illustrating that the differential violence perpetrated against
Quispillaccta was likely directed toward the community in retribution for their earlier land
competition successes.
23
The implications of the D. Chuschi case study findings for research on the causes of rural
violence and research on the linkages between human-induced environmental change and violent
conflict are outlined in Chapter 9, the concluding chapter of the dissertation. The dissertation’s
local, field-based approach to examining environmental change-conflict linkages has satisfied
many of the suggestions of scholars like Tobias Ide, who have promoted field-based qualitative
research as a way of advancing our understanding of debates about environmental change-violent
conflict linkages, including debates about climate change and violent conflict.50
One key finding of Chapter 9 is that the resource disputes and their outcomes conditioned
important patterns of violence in the D. Chuschi during the first years of Sendero’s uprising, and
particularly during the Peruvian military’s counter-insurgency campaign. Quispillaccta, largely
the victor of the inter-community conflict over land and water resources, suffered
disproportionately in the military counter-insurgency campaign after being characterized as a
hotbed of Sendero support. However, given their success in competing with their neighbours
over land disputes, the logic of Quispillaccta being the key centre for Sendero support in the
district – a common conclusion among scholars and Peruvian experts – is questionable. As a
community, they had the most to lose by throwing their support behind Sendero, following their
success in consolidating land in the district. While some Quispillacctinos certainly supported
Sendero, the same was true for every community in the area. The most logical explanation for
Quispillaccta being labelled as a centre for Sendero support and suffering disproportionately in
the government’s counter-insurgency war is that grievances stemming from their success in the
intercommunity resource competitions led some in neighbouring communities to claim that
Quispillaccta was a Sendero stronghold in order to seek revenge for their land conflict successes
– score-settling by counter-insurgency.
This conclusion does not speak directly to the question of whether scarcities in livelihood
resources directly led to or contributed to the Sendero uprising, which was the original question
guiding this thesis. The thesis does finds that scarcities aggravated group conflict between
communities in the district in the decades leading up to Sendero’s insurgency. The historical
50 Tobias Ide, “Research methods for exploring the links between climate change and conflict,” WIREs Climate
Change 8, no.3 (May/June 2017): 1-14. See also the sources in note 13.
24
account of land conflict in the D. Chuschi affirms Homer-Dixon’s conclusion that
“environmental scarcities can aggravate divisions or segmentation among ethnic, religious, and
linguistic groups.”51 Clearly, as grazing and cultivated land became scarcer in the district and
competition for these resources with neighbouring communities became more pronounced,
enmity between communities increased. Violent clashes and the casualties from these conflicts
only increased the fear, mistrust, and bitterness toward neighbouring communities. These
impacts did help cause households in the district to “turn inward and to focus on narrow survival
strategies” for their communities, as Homer-Dixon predicted.52 Hardening attitudes toward each
other resulted in fewer interactions between members of different communities in the 1960s and
1970s.
More importantly, however, this dissertation argues that we cannot understand how patterns of
violence developed during the insurgency unless local changes in livelihood assets are assessed
over the long term. The violence perpetrated during the insurgency and particularly after 1982,
when the Peruvian government began an aggressive counter-insurgency campaign in the area,
was many times more deadly to district residents than group conflicts over land resources in the
decades before Sendero’s insurgency. This violence disproportionately impacted Quispillaccta.
Conflicts over environmental resources thus impacted the process and direction of violence in
the civil war in the district once it began, with tragic consequences, particularly for
Quispillacctinos. So, environmental scarcities were crucially important for shaping patterns of
violence during the civil war, in addition to influencing processes that led to violent conflict
onset. This finding is new in environment-conflict research and confirms work by Stathis
Kalyvas on the sources and nature of violence in civil war, where people caught up in a war take
advantage of the situation and denounce rivals “to settle private and local conflicts whose
relation to the grand causes of the war or the goals of the belligerents is often tenuous.”53
Denunciations to the Peruvian military in May 1983 by some in Chuschi and associated hamlets,
stemming from decades of heated local land conflict, unleashed indiscriminate counter-
insurgency violence against Quispillacctinos. From the military’s perspective, this violence was
51 Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Environment, scarcity, and violence (Princeton University Press, 1999)., 96.
52 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 96.
53 Kalyvas, Logic, 364.
25
necessary in order to turn them against Sendero and toward collaboration with Peru’s security
services, precisely as Kalyvas’ theory of indiscriminate and discriminate violence suggests.54
A second key finding of this dissertation speaks to debates among environment-conflict scholars
about the causal significance of environmental scarcities and whether they can act as violent
conflict triggers.55 Environmental scarcities in the D. Chuschi did not act to trigger violent
conflict; instead, various political and policy changes in Peru in the 19th and 20th century
triggered local violent conflicts in the district, particularly in the three decades leading up to
Sendero’s insurgency. Policy changes on land reform correlated to peasant activism and conflict
over land resources going back to the early 19th century, decades before scarcities began to
acutely impact household livelihoods in the district. The causal significance of environmental
scarcities is instead as a deep structural factor, altering causal pathways and impacting livelihood
constraints and opportunities available to households. While some might characterize
environmental scarcities as root causes, this would be an overly narrow description of their
causal impact because scarcities also exhibit dynamic pressures56, depending on the degree of
scarcities and the adaptation and coping strategies employed by households. The structural
impacts of environmental scarcities are not “static and invariate over time,”57 as some scholars
suggest, but instead change and transform in relation to the degree of human-pressure on the
resources. Their causal structural role in the D. Chuschi case is analogous to tectonic plates, as
Homer-Dixon has suggested.58 Their precise causal role is likely contextually specific and
difficult to generalize, however, and it is conceivable that environmental scarcities could act to
trigger conflicts in other contexts.
54 Kalyvas, Logic, 150.
55 Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent?” 62-3.
56 See Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie; Terry Cannon & Ian Davis, At Risk. Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and
Disasters, 2nd Edition (London: Routledge, 2005), 48. 57
Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent?” 62. 58
Homer-Dixon, Environment, 18.
26
Timeline of key events
1532 – Spanish conquest of Peru begins
1567 – Earliest recorded evidence of dispute between Quispillaccta and Chuschi, refers to disputes
Canas Indians and the Aymaraes.
1824 – Spanish Royalist forces defeated at Battle of Ayacucho, securing independence of Peru and
South America.
1828 – Limited agrarian reform law allows indigenous communities to obtain property titles for lands
they occupied and opened up opportunity to buy land on private market.
1840 – Quispillacta begins process to buy Hacienda Santa Catalina, in the area of Catalinayocc in Rio
Cachi zone to hold communal herd. By 1890 the Catholic Church took control of this herd.
1857 – District of Chuschi created.
1879-1883 War of Pacific between Chile and Peru leads to destruction and abandonment of some Rio
Cachi haciendas.
1920-23 – Wave of peasant rebellions and resistance in highlands against abusive elites in wake of ups
and downs of wool market following WW1.
Early 1920s – Chuschi-Hacienda Yaruca litigation begins over lands seized in NW of district.
16 January, 1923 – First record of Quispillacta-Manuel Ruiz dispute (owner of the hacienda Putacca) in
NE of district.
27 May, 1941 - Chuschi officially recognized as a peasant community.
1941 – Quispillaccta-Chuschi legal clash over lands in centre and north-east corner of district.
1942 – Quicamachay estate in north-east zone of district bought by Quispillacta from hacienda owners.
These lands source of dispute with Putacca hacendados and Cancha Cancha comuneros.
29 November, 1944 - Quispillacta recognized as a peasant community.
May, 1960 – Massive conflict between Quispillacta and Chuschi in Kimsa-Cruz area leaves 3
Quispillacctinos dead and dozens injured on both sides.
March 1962 Quispillacctinos kill 1 Chuschino in revenge for 1960 deaths.
1968 – Presidential coup by General Juan Velasco Alvarado and reform minded military officers seizes
power in Peru.
27
1969 – Agrarian Reform law instituted, leading to elimination of private haciendas in Peru.
1972 – Chuschi gets control of all church lands and animals.
Aug. 1975 – Pres. Gen. Velasco deposed by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez in conservative counter-
coup in Peru.
1979 – Land conflict between Quispillaccta and Chuschi in centre and NE of district heats up.
May 17, 1980 – Senderistas enter town hall in Chuschi and burn ballots being stored for national
elections.
May 18, 1980 – Military rules ends as democratic elections return Fernando Belaúnde Terry as
President of Peru.
September 1980 – Sendero representatives return to D. Chuschi and demand a meeting with the school
teachers; deepening of their conscious raising and moralizing attempts by Sendero Luminoso.
March-early Oct. 1981 – repeated clashes between Chuschi and Quispillaccta over lands in centre and
NE of district.
16 October, 1981 – Act of Agreement finalized between authorities of Quispillacta and Chuschi, to
meet to solve the problem of borders. Efforts to fix the borders begin from this date until 17th
Feb., 1982 when the borders were finally settled.
October 1981 – SL close the district government and abolish district political posts.
November 1981 – SL militants return to district without hoods or masks and held a meeting with all the
schoolteachers and formed the Laborers and Workers Class Movement (MOTC) and a Popular
Committee.
November 1981 – all local officials resigned their posts in a general assembly and signed a document to
this effect.
17th Feb., 1982 – settlement between Chuschi and Quispillacta completed. Clause 13 says that, in the
event of a breach by one of the parties, they will have to pay 20,000,000 soles.
July 1, 1982 – Masked Sendero militants blow up the post office in Cancha Cancha and captured the
governor of Chuschi, Bernadino Chipana, wanting to kill him. But he is spared after the
community rejected their call to sanction his killing.
August 2nd, 1982 – Allpachaca research station NE of district ransacked and fields communally planted.
31 December, 1982 – Declaration of Emergency situation in Ayacucho and the installation of the
Military Political Command. Peruvian military takes over counter-insurgency against Sendero.
28
December 20, 1982 – combined forces from the army, PIP, and Civil Guard arrive by truck in Chuschi,
beginning security forces’ counter-insurgency campaign in the area.
Feb. 1983 – Chuschi flies the white flag from municipal building and asks that a military post be
established. A Civil Guard post was set up afterward.
April 1983 - Peruvian army base set up in D. Totos, west of D. Chuschi.
April, May, June 1983 – Massacres by Sendero and Peru’s security forces kill dozens in district.
29
Chapter 2 Literature Review and Research Design: Do environmental
scarcities impact violent conflict onset?
Introduction
Over the past 50 years, Peru’s Southern and Central Sierra has been the scene of repeated
protests, small-scale conflicts, and insurgencies. Land invasions, protests, and strikes by rural
peasants began in the late 1950s and spread through the area in the early 1960s. Many were led
or inspired by the growing peasant unions, peasant syndicates, and peasant federations that
sprang up in the area around the same time. These actions continued into the 1970s, even after
the Peruvian government undertook widespread land reform in the area. Violent confrontations
sometimes accompanied peasant actions: violence between peasants and landlords; violence
between peasants and hacienda workers; and even violent confrontations between peasant
communities. Hundreds of peasants were also killed and injured as a result of the repression that
often followed as local elites, the Peruvian police, or the Peruvian military attempted to suppress
peasant militancy.
Although violent conflicts in Peru’s Sierra go back centuries, the peasant activity in highland
Peru during the 1960s constituted the largest peasant mobilization in recent Latin American
history.59 Capitalizing on the apparent signs of peasant activism in the highlands and inspired by
the example of Cuba’s recent revolution, guerrilla insurgencies sprang up in several highland
departments in the 1960s following the increased peasant unrest. Quickly and decisively crushed
by the Peruvian military, the insurgencies proved to be a pale challenge to Peruvian government.
A far greater danger emerged from the southern Sierra in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
however, when the Sendero Luminoso initiated a widespread violent insurgency to overthrow the
Peruvian state – a challenge that would eventually lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of
Peruvians, cost the country billions in damages, and take more than a decade to bring under
control.60
59 R. F. Watters, Poverty and Peasantry in Peru’s Southern Andes, 1963-90 (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg
Press, 1994): 245. 6060
Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, Informe final: Perú, 1980-2000 (Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y
Reconciliación, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2004),
30
Although peasant support for Sendero ultimately proved to be locally contingent and short-lived
in many parts of the Sierra, the insurgents were initially able to tap into a significant reservoir of
on-going peasant dissatisfaction on issues such as land reform, elite and market exploitation, and
state neglect. These were, in many cases, the same issues that had been stirring unrest in the
highlands since at least the late 1950s. In fact, one can argue that the unrest in Peru’s highlands
in the 1960s and the early 1970s, and Sendero’s insurgency in 1980 represented an historically
contiguous period of varying rural protest, conflict, insurgency and mobilization in the area.
When viewed as a quarter century of efforts to agitate for change, these developments raise the
question of origins and underlying conditions that led to rural unrest and rebellion in Peru
between the late 1950s and the early 1980s?
In the context of more than twenty-five years of research on the links between environmental and
demographic change and violent conflict, this project examines whether environmental stress and
demographic change contributed to the widespread rural unrest, peasant mobilization, and
insurgency in Peru in the latter half of the twentieth century. Research on rural unrest in Peru
has not adequately explored how environmental stress and demographic change have contributed
to these events.61 Greater scholarly attention about how environmental scarcity interacted with
other factors responsible for rural conflict and peasant mobilization in the Southern Sierra in the
latter half of the twentieth century can enrich our understanding of why those events took place.
A focus on the impact of environmental scarcity in the Southern Sierra can offer important
revisions to the dominant explanations offered by scholars about rural change in the Peruvian
highlands. This study also speaks to wider debates among scholars about the role of
environmental and demographic change in causing social conflict, debates that have regained
renewed urgency in light of the accelerating impacts of climate change.
The impact of environmental stress and demographic factors on rural change in Peru during the
latter half of the twentieth century has not received thorough treatment to date. While the
structural causes of poverty and inequality have long been studied by scholars, this study
General Conclusions, 316. A general history of this era can be found in: Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique,
Peru: Time of Fear (London: Latin American Bureau, 1992). 61
In this dissertation I use Homer-Dixon’s term ‘environmental scarcity’ interchangeably with environmental stress
and demographic change. Environmental scarcity is defined below in section 2.3.
31
integrates those insights with the impacts of environmental and demographic stress to investigate
its possible impact on rural unrest, popular mobilization, and insurgency during decades of
transformation in the southern highlands of Peru through a micro-study of long-term change in
the D. Chuschi, Ayacucho.62 The impacts of supply, demand, and structural changes in
household assets over the twentieth century can offer unique insights on the question of the
causes of rural rebellion and conflict in Peru.
This chapter examines the role of environmental stress and population growth in the rural
transformation of highland Peru and its possible linkages to violent rebellion and conflict in the
context of three broad bodies of research. At a theoretical level, we first need to have an
understanding of the debates about the causes of rebellions and rural revolts – that subset of
social science research on civil wars that focuses on understanding the causes of revolutions –
and the role, if any, of environmental scarcities in those theories.63 Research on civil wars is
vast, so scholars categorize different types of civil wars, particularly with the growth of statistical
studies of civil war in the latter twentieth century. Some argue that we can distinguish between
revolutionary and secessionist civil wars, and between ethnic versus ideological conflicts, both to
better compare events and to help sort out “different possible causal pathways to civil war onset,
62 Blaikie and Brookfield note the common failing of most of the literature on Latin American agrarian issues to
adequately assess environmental issues. “There is a very large literature on land tenure and agrarian structures as
impediments to productivity and causes of inequality, but in so far as the environment is considered at all in most of
this literature, it is only as a passive background to human interaction. The degree to which this is so is quite
remarkable. It runs through almost the whole of the vast literature on agrarian issues in Latin America, for example.
Even in the series of reports prepared in the 1960s for the Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development
(CIDA), a major outcome of the Punta del Este conference convened in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution to
find means of resolving agrarian discontent without revolution, environmental factors are statically and briefly
described as a basis for the real information on land use and land tenure … In consequence we have a substantial
body of very insightful literature on agrarian problems of transition closely related to political and economic theory,
and little until recently on the social, economic and political aspects of environmental transition.” Piers Blaikie and
Harold Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society (New York: Routledge,1994): xvii-xviii. 63
David Armitage, “Civil War and Revolution,” Agora 44 (2), 2009: 19-20; Kalyvas, Logic, 19. Armitage and
Kalyvas convincingly argue that revolutions are a sub-set of civil wars. For Armitage, groups fighting in civil wars
with major societal transformation goals can be characterized as revolutionary. See also David Armitage, Civil
wars: a history in ideas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). Kalyvas also agrees that revolutions are a subset of
civil wars, though he distinguishes between small scale rural revolts or rural rebellions and “[l]arge-scale
insurgencies with a predominantly rural base” that are sustained long-enough and have enough organization to
challenge the state. In his definition, small-scale rural rebellions would not qualify as civil war. However, if we are
interested in civil war onset, the causes of these smaller-scale events can give insights into causes of larger civil
wars.
32
duration, and outcome as well as post-conflict peace duration.”64 Unrest in Peru has been
categorized as a class-based revolutionary event.65 On the surface, this seems fair because
revolts from the late 1950s to the 1980s ranged from limited land invasions to movements with
transformative revolutionary goals like Sendero Luminoso.66 However, the degree to which race
and identity played a role in these events has been under-explored by scholars.67 So, we must be
sensitive to identity dimensions in our analysis, even while grounding the study primarily in the
theoretical scholarship on revolutions. These insights are also integrated with a brief review of
research linking environmental change to violent conflict in order to explore whether the impact
of environmental scarcities can refine these explanations. Thirdly, the chapter provides a clear
understanding about how existing research on twentieth century unrest in Peru integrates
environmental scarcities into their overall explanations, and whether other factors are instead
emphasized as key in those explanations. Scholars from a variety of disciplines have generated
insights about why rural conflict and peasant mobilization occurred in highland Peru over the
past half century. This chapter’s overview of debates about the causes of rural rebellion in Peru
and wider scholarly debates about the impacts of environmental and demographic change on
social conflict thus provides the foundation for our detailed examination of events in the D. of
Chuschi in the remainder of the dissertation.
64 T. David Mason, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Alyssa K. Prorok, “What Do We Know about Civil Wars?
Introduction and Overview,” in T. David Mason and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell eds., What Do We Know about Civil
Wars? (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 2. Plotted in a four by four table, their categorization would yield
four possible types of conflict events: ethnic revolutionary events, ethnic secessionist events, class-based
revolutionary events, and class-based secessionist events. 65
Mason et al., “What,” 4. 66
Jack A. Goldstone, "Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory," Annual Review of Political Science
4 (2001): 142. 67
Much of the research examining rebellion in Peru in the latter twentieth century was written when class-based
analysis was one of the dominant lenses for explaining civil unrest.
33
Theories of revolution and rural rebellion
Studies of rural rebellions or peasant revolts can be distinguished from general theories of
revolutions. General theories of revolution apply to “great revolutions”68 – such as the French
revolution of 1789 – events which Theda Skocpol argued resulted in “rapid, basic
transformations of a society’s state and class structures … accompanied and in part carried
through by [mass]-based revolts from below.”69 Skocpol argued that revolution occurs when
peasant insurrection takes place in the context of a collapsing state – a collapse that comes about
because of external military pressure and (or) landlord resistance to agrarian reform. Skocpol’s
macro-structural analysis of revolutions in France, Russia, and China70 capped what sociologist
Jack Goldstone has termed the “third generation” of revolutionary analysis – a body of scholarly
theorizing about revolutions written in the 1960s and 1970s that moved beyond prevailing
explanations relying on broad single factors like ‘modernization’ or ‘relative deprivation’ to
emphasize instead “a conjunction of multiple conflicts involving states, elites, and the lower
classes.”71 Largely an American academic enterprise, much of this work was initially inspired
by the concerns at that time with revolutionary movements in South East Asia, an area deemed
of primary importance to U.S. national security policy. By 1979, when Skocpol’s book “States
and Social Revolutions” was published, research on revolutions was moving in new directions.
Her work thus appeared to represent the high-point of scholarly consensus about the structural
determinants of revolution.
Research on revolution splintered into many directions in the 1980s. Some scholars sought to
deepen Skocpol’s findings through more fine-grained structural analyses, while others departed
from her approach to instead emphasize theories focused on agency, contingency, or ideological
factors.72 The application of Skocpol’s structural approach to a wider range of cases and the
apparent inadequacy of structural approaches in explaining some of these events led to the
68 Goldstone, “Toward,” 142.
69 Quoted in Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, “Structural Theories of Revolution,” in John Foran ed., Theorizing
Revolutions (London: Routledge, 1997): 46-7. 70
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China
(Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1979). 71
Goldstone, “Toward,” 140. 72
The essays in Foran’s volume highlight the diverging paths taken by revolution scholars.
34
blossoming of alternative theoretical approaches. The new theoretical approaches could be
differentiated according to the outcome of the revolution, the actors involved, the success or
failure of revolutionary activity, and the scope of revolutionary activity. Iran’s Islamic
revolution and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe similarly stimulated another broad
stream of scholarly theorizing on revolutionary movements around issues of “guiding
ideology.”73 Scholars dissatisfied with Skocpol’s “third generation approach” also called “for
greater attention to conscious agency, to the role of ideology and culture in shaping revolutionary
mobilization and objectives, and to contingency in the course and outcome of revolutions.”74
The inadequacies of Skocpol’s structural approach was also highlighted by theorists who
recognized a convergence of thinking between revolution theory and theoretical work on social
movements. These scholars realized “that many of the processes underlying revolutions – e.g.
mass mobilization, ideological conflicts, confrontation with authorities – have been well studied
in the analysis of social movements.”75 This led to the creation of a new literature of
“contentious politics” that has worked to combine insights from both fields.76 The implications
of this work, according to Goldstone, are both a revised definition of revolutions and the notion
that the complexity of revolutions necessitates a more modular approach to future research.77
Goldstone argues that a basic consensus now exists among revolution scholars around three
elements that seem to determine regime stability: first, “those factors that affect the strength of
the state” (or what some term the opportunity structure for revolt); second, “competition among
elites”; and third, popular living standards” (a source grievances).78 As a result, Goldstone
73 Goldstone, “Toward,” 142-3.
74 Goldstone “Toward,” 141. Following the Arab Spring revolts in 2010-11, social movement scholars added a
focus on information technologies, like social media, for facilitating revolts or repression in the region. See Philip
N. Howard and Muzammil Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York,
NY: Oxford University Press, 2013). 75
Goldstone, “Toward,” 142. 76
Goldstone, “Toward,” 142. 77
Goldstone, “Toward,” 142. Goldstone offers a broader and more contemporary definition of revolution based on
work from the past 20 years. Revolutions are “an effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications
for political authority in a society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized
actions that undermine existing authorities.” At their core they consist of a common set of elements: “(a) efforts to
change the political regime that draw on a competing vision (or visions) of a just order, (b) a notable degree of
informal or formal mass mobilization, and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions such as
mass demonstrations, protests, strikes, or violence.” 78
Goldstone, “Toward,” 166-7.
35
believes that future work on revolutions need separate models of the “conditions of state failure,
the conditions of particular kinds and magnitudes of mobilization, and the determinants of
various ranges of revolutionary outcomes, each of which may be the result of contingent
outcomes of prior stages in the revolution’s unfolding.”79 Goldstone’s recent survey suggests
scholars can narrow the theoretical focus on the various stages and necessary elements on the
path to revolution.
Rather than exploring the entire process of revolutionary activity in Peru, recent scholarship
suggests that one could study the distinct stages along the path to revolution or the necessary
elements which cause revolutions. It would thus make sense, for example, to study separately
the origin and nature of the conditions out of which revolutionary movements arose in Peru (an
element of what Goldstone would term as the conditions of state failure) from the factors
responsible for the emergence and early growth of revolutionary movements in the Peruvian
highlands (an element of revolutionary mobilization).
This study seeks to examine whether environmental scarcities influence the origins and nature of
the conditions that create revolutionary movements, including factors affecting the grievances or
motivations behind revolutionary movements. I do not explore the range of factors that fostered
the mobilization and expansion of revolutionary activity, nor the determinants of the range of
possible outcomes for the revolution. As a result, a good deal of theoretical work on revolutions
and contentious politics is outside the scope of this project and not reviewed in this chapter. The
core focus of this micro-study is instead assessing whether environmental change-conflict
linkages can help us understand the origins and nature of the conditions that created
revolutionary movements in Peru.
Particularly relevant to this study are those theories that focus on rural revolutionary events with
limited goals, and the conditions which foster these uprisings. Today, scholars generally accept
that “oppositional movements that either do not aim to take power (such as peasant or worker
protests) or focus on a particular region or subpopulation are usually called rebellions (if violent)
or protests (if predominantly peaceful).”80 Theories purporting to explain rural rebellions, rural
79 Goldstone, “Toward,” 174.
80 Goldstone, “Toward,” 142-3.
36
revolts, rural protests, agrarian revolts, agrarian revolutions, agrarian protests, etc., offer useful
insights for the present study of Peru.81 These theoretical models combine a focus on the
motivations of particular actors – those in the rural sector like peasants – with an appreciation of
the typically limited goals of their revolutionary activities. Insights from this work informs
empirical studies of peasant unrest in the latter twentieth century in Peru, discussed below in
section 2.4.
Several scholars of peasant rebellion have focused on capitalist market transformation of peasant
livelihoods and its role in causing peasant unrest. They debate, however, the impacts of these
changes on different sectors of the peasantry and the role of changes in processes of rebellion.
Accounts generally emphasize the impacts of grievances and/or motivations behind peasant
dissatisfaction and the consequences of changes in opportunity structures during capitalist
transformation that enable rebellion. This work is broadly consistent with more recent research
on civil wars that debates the importance of motivations behind rebellion (greed or grievance),
and the opportunity changes that facilitate revolt.82 Particularly important in these debates is the
extent to which the material changes brought about by capitalist transformation and the impacts
of altered social relations among peasants and elites helped to facilitate peasant revolts. Eric
Wolf argued that peasant dissatisfaction in several twentieth century peasant revolts stemmed
from the impacts of the global spread and diffusion of capitalism, which commodified land and
labour, severed prevailing social pacts between landlords and peasants leading to increased
peasant suffering, and increasingly alienated peasants from their work and their fellow
peasants.83 Jeffrey Paige’s study of agrarian revolt in Peru similarly argued that the capitalist
transformation of peasant and landlord relationships into wage relationships resulted in explosive
tensions because the economic conflicts inherent in capitalist relationships transformed landlord-
81 To avoid confusion, however, I will adopt the term “rural rebellion” for consistency in this proposal unless
referring to specific theories. 82
This recent research on civil wars is surveyed in Joseph K. Young, "Antecedents to Civil War Onset: Greed,
Grievance, and State Repression," in What Do We Know About Civil Wars? Ed., T David Mason and Sara
McLaughlin Mitchell (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 38-39. 83
Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 279-80.
37
peasant disputes to political conflicts.84 Tight political control, repression, and restricted
political rights were at the heart of peasant grievances in such a system, and spurred mobilization
of disaffected wage earning peasants.85
Somewhat related to the class-based explanation of grievances behind rural rebellion outlined by
Wolf and Paige, James Scott believes that the issue of peasant subsistence survival is central to
peasant grievances in cases of rural unrest in Southeast Asian history.86 The violation of a
peasant’s subsistence ethic and the relational obligations between landlords and peasants are at
the heart of his moral economy theory. The moral economy of peasants is “their notion of
economic justice and their working definition of exploitation – their view of which claims on
their product were tolerable and which intolerable.”87 Scott’s argument is thus similar to Wolf,
who noted that capitalist market penetration disturbed the social-economic equilibrium between
peasants and elites that governed the degree of elite confiscation of peasant surpluses.88 Scott
believes that capitalist economic and political transformation during the colonial era in Southeast
Asia systematically violated “the peasant’s vision of social equity,” leading to intolerable
impoverishment and a basic threat to their subsistence survival.89 While the actual path from
grievances to revolution depends upon a variety of additional variables, the rage that spawned
peasant rebellion in this region stemmed from the impact of violations of peasants’ moral
economy, according to Scott. 90
The moral economy relationship has questionable relevance in Peru, however, given the racism
and Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples and their lands in Peru. Historically, there was
84 Jeffery Paige, Agrarian Revolution (New York: Free Press, 1975), 21-24. “The fundamental causal variable in
this theory,” Paige writes, “is the relationship of both cultivators and noncultivators to the factors of agricultural
production as indicated by their principal source of income.” The political behavior of both cultivating classes and
noncultivating elites is largely determined by the source of the majority of their income – whether from landed
property, wages, or from profits derived from market or industrial activities. Paige, Agrarian, 10. 85
Paige, Agrarian, 23. 86
James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven:
Yale U.P., 1976): 3. 87
Scott, Moral, 3-4. 88
Wolf, Peasant Wars, 281. 89
Scott, Moral, 3-4. 90
Scott, Moral, 4.
38
little, if any, legitimacy to rule conferred by peasants on landed elites in highland Peru.
Grievances borne of conquest, exploitation, and expropriation have always been a feature of the
relationship between peasants and Mestizo elites, as discussed below in chapters 4 and 5.
Racism against “Indian” peasants fueled centuries of abuse, constantly reaffirming the
oppressive system governing peasants and undermining any idea of a legitimate moral bargain
between peasants and landlords that could have been violated by capitalist transformation. Since
the late-1800s, peasants increasingly agitated to overturn the abuses of Conquest, making the
notion of the existence of a moral bargain in Peru an illusion.
Although the process of capitalist transformation was crucial in leading to the formation of
peasant grievances in the studies discussed above, each emphasizes differing causal mechanisms.
Material impoverishment is far more important according to the work of Wolf and Scott,
compared to Paige. Paige’s conclusions generally speak to the processes and mechanisms that
inhibit or promote social movement mobilization and enable revolts to grow. Various factors
can affect the likelihood of revolts growing, according to Paige, such as overly limited goals,
external support for political organization, national political changes that can impact the
opportunity structure of revolts, the influence of strong political parties, and national economic
development changes.91 He says little about factors that cause social grievances to form in the
first place, aside from zero-sum struggles over wage levels. Wolf agrees with Paige, however,
that grievances are insufficient to mobilize peasants to act without changes in the opportunity
structure for revolt and mobilization: “Poor peasants and landless laborers … are unlikely to
pursue the course of rebellion, unless they are able to rely on some external power to challenge
the power which constrains them.” This tilt to the causal importance of mobilization and
opportunity structure changes as key enablers of rural rebellions is consistent with the focus on
opportunities in recent debates about whether greed versus grievance factors better explain civil
war onset.92
The dislocation and growing economic inequality that frequently accompany capitalist
transformation of subsistence agricultural societies suggest a mechanism linking the grievances
91 Paige, Agrarian, 345-48.
92 Young, “Antecedents of Civil War Onset,” 37.
39
outlined by Wolf and Scott to the willingness of peasants to mobilize in rebellion in agricultural
wage economies described by Paige. Recent research argues that vertical inequality is
inconclusively linked to violent conflict.93 However, scholars have found more support for the
impact of perceived or actual horizontal inequality for causing violent conflict.94 Horizontal
inequality results from “differences in access and opportunities across culturally defined (or
constructed) groups based on identities such as ethnicity, region, and religion.”95 This evidence
suggests that relative deprivation mechanisms operate in the face of horizontal inequality.96
Relative deprivation may instead be the mechanism at the heart of Scott’s moral economy
argument, either as inequalities between peasants and landlords increase, or as capitalist
transformation increases peasant differentiation.97 Group identity definitions are inherently
slippery, however, especially in countries like Peru where identity construction based on
economic wealth seems to blur the line between vertical and horizontal inequality.
The focus on peasant grievances as an important causal factor in explaining peasant rebellions
has been challenged by some scholars. Skocpol claims that peasants are always aggrieved; thus,
their grievances fail to explain why a revolution occurs when it does. As a result, any theory
focusing on peasant grievances “tries to turn a constant feature of the peasant condition into an
explanatory variable.”98 Instead, she “proposes a theory of peasant insurrections that combines
the capacity to rebel with the opportunity to rebel.”99 The capacity of peasants to rebel arises
from their “internal structural solidarity and their external structural autonomy from elite
control.”100 The opportunities for peasant rebellion increase once the repressive apparatus of
state control over peasants is removed or weakened as a result of state collapse from
international pressures and state fiscal paralysis stemming from entrenched agricultural elites
93 United Nations and World Bank. Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018): 110. 94
UN, Pathways, 111-112. 95
UN, Pathways, 111. 96
James B. Rule, Theories of Civil Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 200-223; UN,
Pathways, 111. 97
I am grateful to Thomas Homer-Dixon for pointing out this point. 98
Skocpol, States, 114-15. 99
Wickham-Crowley, “Structural,” 53. 100
Wickham-Crowley, “Structural,” 53.
40
blocking necessary reform.101 In Skocpol’s theory, Timothy Wickham-Crowley writes, the
“weakening of repression, above all of state repression, takes the place of the ‘increased
grievances’ of relative deprivation and moral economy theories in helping to understand the
timing and actual appearance of uprisings.”102
To be fair, Scott’s focus on the subsistence crisis that developed along with capitalist
transformation implies that grievances were not static, as Skocpol suggests. The material
changes in peasant well-being that accompanies a subsistence crisis suggests that a tipping point
was reached that facilitated peasant mobilization and opposition. While Scott’s argument largely
focuses on the impact of capitalist economic transformation to cause a peasant subsistence crisis,
by focusing on household survival his theory is sensitive to the role of environmental and
demographic stress. Scott mentions that maintaining adequate subsistence livelihoods for the
peasantry was complicated by land shortage and population demands – although these factors are
not systematically treated in his work. He is similarly aware that “the physical setting of certain
areas subjected their inhabitants to fluctuations in yield of such amplitude that, even without the
claims of elites, their survival is tenuous.”103 Thus, in spite of the very different context in
Peru’s rural rebellions, Scott’s research suggests a role for severe disruptions in peasant
subsistence livelihoods and the exogenous impacts of demographic and environmental stress in
enabling rural rebellions.
Careful consideration of debates in the rural rebellion research about whether grievances and
motivation are as important as changes in opportunities to cause rebellion lead to the conclusion
that both factors are important if we are to make sense of how the sources of peasant
dissatisfaction contribute to rural rebellion. Research on civil wars and revolutions accept such
multi-factor theories and emphasize the importance of the state of the peasantry, factors that
101 Wickham-Crowley, “Structural,” 57.
102 Wickham-Crowley, “Structural,” 54.
103 Scott, Moral, 197. “An uncompromising ecology alone may be enough to spark a great amount of unrest,” Scott
writes, “but when it is joined with a dissident intelligentsia based in the region the combination will be far more
volatile.” Scott, Moral, 198, footnote 9. He similarly notes that the distribution of water supplies in rain deficit
areas is likely to be a source of significant dissention. See Scott, Moral, 198, footnote 10.
41
facilitated peasant mobilization, and structural changes that opened opportunities for rebellion.104
Context matters, however; differing empirical realities may demonstrate different causal
mechanisms generating rural rebellions. The consequences of specific agrarian structures noted
by Paige and the disruptions to the moral economy of the peasantry noted by Scott should instead
be seen as “functional alternatives” expressed in different revolutionary situations, according to
Wickham-Crowley.105 Some change in the well-being of the peasantry was an essential element
for revolt in many cases.106 Peasants “respond not only to violations of their moral economy, but
also to intrusions on their physical economy. That is, we might expect peasants to respond to
changes in their relations to the land itself, in particular to their gain or loss of lands due to
various social or political measures taken by governments and individuals,” especially when
those changes affect historical or contemporary expectations of well-being and progress.107
Processes of rural change like land grabbing or agrarian reform can thus be crucially important
for assessing the likelihood of rural revolts because they directly impact peasant well-being.108
However, we could also widen our focus to the range of factors that were responsible for the
104 Young, “Antecedents of Civil War Onset,” 41; Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas & Revolution in Latin
America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton, Princeton U.P., 1993): 93; Kurt
Schock, "A Conjunctural Model of Political Conflict: The Impact of Political Opportunities on the Relationship
between Economic Inequality and Violent Political Conflict," Journal of Conflict resolution 40, no. 1 (1996), 99-
100. Wickham-Crowley’s rich multifactor explanation of the causes of revolution in Latin America highlights a
variety of factors that influence the likelihood and success of revolutionary mobilization, structural changes that
impact the opportunity structure for successful revolt like the impact of elite alliances or external support, and
factors that speak to the state of aggrieved groups. Taken together, he argues that “… revolutions came to power in
Latin America from 1956 to 1990 only when a rural-based guerrilla movement secured strong peasant support in the
countryside and achieved substantial levels of military strength; if that movement also faced a patrimonial praetorian
regime (a.k.a. mafiacracy), then it was structurally pressured to seek, and succeeded in securing a cross-class
alliance against the patrimonial dictator who, lacking the social bases of support to resist such an alliance, in the end
fell to a national resistance; under such conditions the United States tended to withdraw support from the
dictatorship because of the symbolic and social pressures exerted by the constitutionalist and electoral symbols
under which the revolutionaries and their more moderate allies united.” Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas, 320. 105
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas, 320. 106
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas, 118-119. 107
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas, 118. Italics in original. He goes on to suggest that peasant assessments of their
relative deprivation compared to other groups is a key factor in peasant willingness to rebel: “Just as in Scott’s case,
the peasants are always measuring their status at any point in time against some kind of ‘reference group’ or
measuring stick, usually their own historically specific experience. Where they feel that their lot is worsened
relative to that reference group, we are likely to find radical sentiment, just as Scott found when the peasant moral
economy began to decay.” 108
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas, 119.
42
outcome of agrarian change if these factors helped materially impact peasant well-being,
including processes of environmental and demographic stress.
Research linking environmental change and violent conflict
Research linking environmental change to violent conflict compliments insights from rural
rebellion studies by deepening our understanding of processes and factors that impact peasant
well-being, and thus possibly play a role grievance (or motivation) formation and opportunity
changes.109 Concerns about the security implications of human-induced environmental change
have a long and contentious history.110 A central question facing students of security in the post-
Cold War period has been whether the definition of security should be defined more broadly to
incorporate factors that have not traditionally been understood as determinants of security.111 An
important thread of this debate examines the merit of the concept of “environmental security,”
which implies a fundamental connection between the pursuit of environmental goals and the
pursuit of security.112 Partly because this discussion seems ultimately unresolvable, several
researchers focused on the narrower and more tractable question of whether a causal link exists
between environmental change and violent conflict. 113
In the 1990s, a number of scholars examining this relationship chose to focus on those areas
where both the local environmental relationships were crucial for people’s survival, and the
opportunities and capabilities to forestall negative implications were weakest – in the world’s
109 Portions of the following section were first published in Tom Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Qualitative
Environment-Conflict Research: Moving Towards Consensus," in Environmental Security: Approaches and Issues,
ed. Rita Floyd and Richard Matthew (New York: Routledge, 2013). 110
Simon Dalby, Security and Environmental Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), chapter 1. 111
Environmental security and environmental sources of conflict remain contested by some prominent peace and
conflict scholars. As recently as 2015, Nils Petter Gleditsch questioned the wisdom of expanding traditional notions
of security to include the environment, and argued that “environmental stress may be more appropriately viewed as
a symptom that something has gone wrong than as a cause of the world’s ills.” Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Climate
Change, Environmental Stress, and Conflict," in Managing Conflict in a World Adrift, ed. Chester A Crocker, Fen
Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, DC: United Institute of Peace Press/Centre for International
Governance Innovation, 2015), 149 & 161. 112
Geoffrey D. Dabelko, "Tactical Victories and Strategic Losses: The Evolution of Environmental Security"
(Ph.D. University of Maryland, 2003). 113
Nina Graeger, "Environmental Security?" Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996). This focus combined
conventional and unconventional determinants of security and largely sidestepped the debate over the merits of the
concept of environmental security.
43
poorest, developing states.114 People who are heavily reliant on natural resources for their
survival– particularly renewable resources like land, water, and forests – and who are limited in
their ability to sustainably manage these resources are particularly at risk of the impacts of
human-induced environmental transformation. Today, almost half of the people on the planet
rely upon local natural resources for a large part of their well-being.115 Those living in
developing countries are particularly tied to their local natural resources and thus vulnerable to
human-induced pressure on these resources. Investigating the material impact of changes in
these key resources is thus highly relevant.
During the 1990s, qualitative research projects in Canada, led by Thomas Homer-Dixon at the
University of Toronto (Toronto Group), and in Switzerland, led by Guenter Baechler (Bern-
Zurich Group), set out to conduct a series of qualitative case studies on environmental change-
conflict linkages in the 1990s. Each hypothesized that human pressure on natural resource
endowments could affect the material well-being of developing societies and increase the risk of
conflict.
The Toronto Group’s research suggests that environmental scarcities indirectly help to generate
various forms of civil conflict, like insurgencies, group-conflict, coup d’etats, etc. 116 Their
research did not support a link between human-induced environmental and demographic
scarcities and inter-state conflict. Homer-Dixon defines environmental scarcity as a tripartite
variable—a composite of three factors: degradation or depletion of resources (supply-induced
scarcity), increased demand for resources due to population growth or increased per capita
consumption (demand-induced scarcity), and changes in access to resources due to skewed
distributions of resources among social groups (structural scarcity).117 These sources of scarcity
114 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 4-5.
115 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Eco-Systems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis (Washington DC: Island
Press, 2005), 49. The report is available at:
<http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf>. 116
Homer-Dixon, Environment, 177. 117
Homer-Dixon, Environment, 47-52. Environmental scarcity is a composite term that includes environmental
stress and demographic change. According to Homer-Dixon, environmental scarcity is a tripartite concept
consisting of supply-induced scarcities, demand-induced scarcities, and structural scarcities. He argues that
“ecologists and environmentalists often focus on environmental change, a term that refers only to a human-induced
decline in the quantity or quality of a renewable resource – that is, to worsening supply-induced scarcity.” Equally
important, however, are demand-induced scarcities caused by the effects of population growth or increasing
44
can operate independently but often interact with important effects. Homer-Dixon hypothesized
that environmental scarcities influence the incidence of violent civil conflict through a series of
intermediate social effects, like constrained economic productivity, intra or inter-state migration,
the creation and aggravation of group tensions and divisions, and the weakening of institutions
and the state’s capacity to respond to public needs and effectively deliver public goods. (See
Figure 4)
Figure 4: Toronto Group’s Model of the Causal Links between
Environmental Scarcity and Violence
Source: Homer-Dixon 1999, 134.
As well, scarcities often interact in particularly important ways to cause resource capture and
ecological marginalization.
resource use, which reduces a resource's per capita availability by dividing it among more and more people. Thirdly,
“scarcity is often caused by a severe imbalance in the distribution of wealth and power that results in some groups in
a society getting disproportionately larger slices of the resource pie, whereas, others get slices that are too small to
sustain their livelihoods. Such unequal distribution – or what [Homer-Dixon] call[s] structural scarcity – is a key
factor in virtually every case of scarcity contributing to conflict.” Homer-Dixon, Environment, 48 and 15.
45
Resource capture occurs when the degradation and depletion of a
renewable resource (a decrease in supply) interacts with population
growth (an increase in demand) to encourage powerful groups
within a society to shift resource access (that is, to change the
resource’s distribution) in their favor. These groups tighten their
grip on the increasingly scarce resource and use this control to
boost their wealth and power. Resource scarcity intensifies
scarcity for poorer and weaker groups in society.118
Ecological marginalization is often interlinked with resource capture and often a consequence of
resource capture.
Ecological marginalization occurs when unequal resource access
(skewed distribution) combines with population growth (an
increase in demand) to cause long-term migration of people to
ecologically fragile regions such as steep upland slopes, areas at
risk of desertification, tropical rain forests, and low-quality public
lands within urban areas. High population densities in these
regions, combined with a lack of knowledge and capital to protect
the local ecosystem, cause severe resource degradation (a decrease
in supply).119
In all cases, Homer-Dixon and his colleagues emphasized that scarcities never act alone to cause
conflict, but instead interact with a wide range of contextual factors, operating across multiple
levels and multiple scales.120 Thus, according to this model, environmental scarcity is an indirect
cause of intrastate conflict.121
Günther Baechler’s Zürich-based Project on Environment and Conflict (Bern-Zürich Group)122
examined a much broader selection of case studies, but came to similar conclusions as the
Toronto Group in the end. While sharing a similar concern with the Toronto Group about the
impact of environmental change on the material well-being of people in developing countries123,
118 Schwartz, Deligiannis, and Homer-Dixon, Environment and Violent Conflict, 275.
119 Schwartz, Deligiannis, and Homer-Dixon, Environment and Violent Conflict, 275; Homer-Dixon, Environment,
177. 120
Homer-Dixon, Environment, 104 – 106 and 169 – 176.
121 Schwartz, Deligiannis, and Homer-Dixon, Environment and Violent Conflict, 295-7; and Homer-Dixon,
Environment, 177. 122
The Bern Zürich Group’s was initially known as the Environment and Conflicts Project (ENCOP). I refer to
their work as the Bern-Zürich Group because there were additional projects after ENCOP. 123
Günther Baechler, Violence Through Environmental Discrimination: Causes, Rwanda Arena, and Conflict
Model (London: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1999), xi.
46
Baechler’s focus on the transformation of human-environment relationships as a starting point of
analysis, results in a much broader independent variable than Homer-Dixon’s focus on
environmental scarcities. Though environmental transformation encompasses both negative and
positive consequences, the Bern-Zurich Group’s focus is the negative consequences of human-
induced environmental transformation. It can frequently lead to “environmental discrimination,”
which “occurs when distinct actors - based on their international position and/or their social,
ethnic, linguistic, religious, or regional identity experience inequality through systematically
restricted access to natural capital (productive renewable resources) relative to other actors."124
Baechler takes a similar multi-causal approach to explaining how human pressure on the natural
environment can help to cause conflict. Environmental transformation combines with various
factors to result in different types of sub-state conflict, such as ethnopolitical conflicts, centre-
periphery conflicts, migration conflicts, or in international environmental conflicts.125
Almost three decades after the beginning of research on environment and conflict, little, if any,
consensus exists on research priorities, theories, or findings.126 Some scholars have strongly
criticized the approaches of Homer-Dixon and Baechler,127 while others have suggested
hypotheses that claim to improve the explanatory power of their models.128 Still others have
continued their approach, adding conceptual clarity and theoretical sophistication to the
frameworks laid out by those initial projects.129 The environmental conflict research agenda has
also splintered into a number of research sub-programs, generally following qualitative or
124 Baechler, Violence Through Environmental Discrimination, 87.
125 Baechler, Violence Through Environmental Discrimination, 87. See Fig. 6.1, 180. 126
Geoffrey D. Dabelko, "Tactical Victories and Strategic Losses: The Evolution of Environmental Security" (Ph.D.
University of Maryland, 2003), 66 and 109; Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent?”
61-70; Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-Conflict Research: Moving Towards Consensus." 127
Marc A Levy, "Is the Environment a National Security Issue?," International Security 20, no. 2 (1995); and
Hartmann, "Will the Circle be Unbroken?". 128
Jack A Goldstone, "Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory," Annual Review of Political Science
4, no. 1 (2001), 139-187; Nils Petter Gleditsch and Paul F Diehl, Environmental Conflict (Westview Press
Incorporated, 2001); and Indra De Soysa, "Paradise is a Bazaar? Greed, Creed, and Governance in Civil War, 1989-
99," Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 4 (2002), 395-416. 129
Colin H Kahl, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2008); Leif Ohlsson, Livelihood Conflicts: Linking Poverty and Environment as Causes of Conflict (Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), 2000); and Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Qualitative
Environment-Conflict Research: Moving Towards Consensus."
47
quantitative research approaches.130 One strand of qualitative research, including projects led by
Homer-Dixon, Baechler, and some political ecology scholars, explicitly examine links between
conflict and the use of those natural resources directly necessary for survival.131 A second strand
of more recent qualitative research examines the links between the commercial exploitation of
valuable commodity resources—usually, high-value, non-renewable resources—and conflict.132
Quantitative research on natural resources and conflict also has developed, focusing primarily on
evaluating claims linking valuable commodity resources and violent conflict.133 Currently, most
attention among both qualitative and quantitative research focuses on extractive sector disputes
in poor countries over “abundant” or high-value resources and on quantitative tests of
environment-conflict linkages, with somewhat less—but still notable attention—given to links
between rapid demographic change and conflict.134
Qualitative research on environmental change-conflict linkages has penetrated policy discussions
and provided a theoretical foundation to recent research examining climate change and security
linkages.135 However, study of the original questions addressed by Homer-Dixon and Baechler’s
130 Distinctions among strands of environment-conflict research are not clear-cut and frequent sources of contention
among scholars. The author acknowledges significant overlap in approaches between qualitative researchers, and
among qualitative and quantitative researchers, on the causal relationship between natural resources and violent
conflict. For example, distinctions are somewhat artificial between qualitative researchers about whether resources
are commercially exploited for sale in markets (sometimes global or regional markets) or whether resource use takes
place for household survival. In many cases, both dynamics operate, and one type of exploitation impacts the other,
and the subsequent forms of conflict that may develop. 131
See Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts, eds., Violent Environments (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2001) on the political ecology of environmental conflict. Durham provides an early analysis linking human-induced
environmental change and violent conflict. William H Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central America:
Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford University Press, 1979). I discuss disputes and similarities between
the work of the Toronto Group and political ecologists in, Deligiannis, “The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-
Conflict Research,” 40-44. 132
Philippe Le Billon, "Resources and Armed Conflicts," The Adelphi Papers 45, no. 373 (2005), 29-49. Le
Billon’s arguments are expanded in, Philippe Le Billon, Wars of Plunder: Conflict, Profits and the Politics of
Resources (London: Hurst & Company, 2012). 133
Le Billon, “Resources.” Also see James Ron, "Paradigm in distress? Primary Commodities and Civil War,"
Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005), 443-50. I examine disputes around greed and grievance debates in
environment-conflict research in, Deligiannis, “The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-Conflict Research,” 51-
53. 134
Research linking high-value commodity resources and conflict, quantitative studies on environment-conflict
linkages, and demographic security research are beyond the scope of this review. 135
Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (German Advisory Council on
Global Change), Climate Change as a Security Risk, Routledge (London, 2009). Global Humanitarian Forum, The
Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, Global Humanitarian Forum (Geneva, 2009).
48
projects—that is, of the particular connections between environmental change or scarcity and
conflict—has progressed little. Basic ontological, epistemological, and methodological
disagreements and, in some cases, harsh polemics appear to have paralyzed research.136 This line
of research is largely moribund, with little agreement on fresh questions to move inquiry
forward. However, the key conclusions of Homer-Dixon’s research that scarcities can constrain
economic productivity, stimulate migration, and worsen group conflict compliments the rural
rebellion research discussed above, suggesting specific causal mechanisms that can underpin
peasant grievance formation. The following section explores these theoretical hypotheses in the
context of empirical research on the causes of rural unrest in Peru in the latter half of the
twentieth century.
Specific explanations for unrest in Peru
2.4.1. Pre-land reform unrest
Empirical studies of unrest in Peru echo some of the theoretical conclusions of research on rural
rebellions and environmental change-conflict linkages by stressing the impact of changes in
highland Peru for mobilizing peasants against landlords and the Peruvian state. Much of the
research on rural revolts and revolutions in Peru from the late 1950s to the 1980s is temporally
split, with analysts either focusing on peasant unrest in the pre-land reform period in the late
1950s and early 1960s, or on the consequences of Peru’s 1969 agrarian reform and the factors
leading to the outbreak of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency in the early 1980s. Although this is
a somewhat artificial division, we can usefully divide the following discussion about the factors
highlighted by scholars to explain rural unrest in Peru into two broad sections discussing
explanations for the pre-agrarian reform and post-agrarian reform periods. Work on the first
wave of peasant unrest in the late 1950s and 1960s has emphasized a range of causal factors that
altered peasant livelihoods to increase peasant grievances and enable peasant mobilization and
unrest.
A recent survey of Peruvian history by Peter Klaren points to the uneven patterns of social and
economic transformation in highland Peru in the 1940s and 1950s as key to explaining peasant
136 Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Nancy Peluso, and Michael Watts, "Exchange: On Violent Environments,"
Environmental Change and Security Project Report 9 (2003), 89-96.
49
unrest in the Sierra. In the years following WWII, export-led growth propelled Peru’s economy
forward, particularly on the strength of the agro-export and mining sectors.137 While Lima and
other areas on Peru’s coast were the earliest and biggest beneficiaries of the expanding economy,
its modernizing impact gradually percolated into the highlands during the late 1940s and 1950s.
Those areas of the Sierra with ready access to the coast, such as the central highland departments
of Junin and Cerro de Pasco, were the first to see these benefits as increases in inter-zonal trade
and capital inflows led to a “commercial awakening” – a “rapid increase in the movement of
money, goods, and people” during the 1950s and 1960s.”138 However, the impact of the
commercial awakening in the highlands “was not geographically or socially uniform; it was
confined mostly to the Sierra regions with easy access to Lima and the central coast and to a
rural bourgeoisie made up of merchants, artisans, bureaucrats, small-to medium-sized
landowners, and other inhabitants of small towns and provincial cities.”139 Growth was
particularly concentrated in the department and provincial capitals of the central Sierra, which
tended to become centres of capitalist transformation compared to the largely traditional
agricultural areas surrounding the highland towns. Over time, those urban centres in the midst of
capitalist transformation served as the vehicle for greater market penetration into the lives of
nearby peasants.
Uneven patterns of market penetration in the Sierra combined with several other significant
trends at the time like declining terms of trade for agricultural products to significantly affect the
livelihoods of peasants and set the stage for rural unrest, according to Klaren. Economic studies
support Klaren’s analysis. Export-led growth in Peru during the 1950s and 1960s led to a
general rise in prices throughout the country at the same time as rural incomes stagnated or fell
as a result of the combined impact of unfair government pricing policies that held food prices
artificially low for the benefit of urban residents, and rising imports of cheaply produced foreign
foods.140 Those in the rural sector who produced for the domestic market were gradually being
137 Peter Flindell Klaren, Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes (New York: Oxford U.P., 2000): 302-5.
138 Klaren, Peru, 309. Quoting Richard Webb, Government Policy and the Distribution of Income in Peru, 1963-
1973 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1977): 27. 139
Klaren, Peru, 309. 140
Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski, Peruvian Democracy Under Economic Stress: An Account of the Belaunde
Administration, 1963-1968 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977): 10-11.
50
squeezed. As the cost of living increased around them, their crops brought an increasingly
diminished return for their labor. Klaren argues that “the growing inequality and social
differentiation that characterized the highland peasant population as capitalism and the internal
market advanced in its customarily variegated and uneven way, set the stage for the upsurge in
rural unrest and peasant mobilization that suddenly erupted during the late 1950s and that would
peak in the middle of the next decade.”141 Klaren is thus suggesting that rising inequality and
increasing social differentiation among highland peasants was increasing pressure on peasant
livelihoods, leading to rising grievances or creating new grievances for peasants. These changes
enabled conditions for unrest in the highlands.
While capitalist penetration into the Sierra increasingly affected the lives of peasants, trends
were developing to slowly dissolve the power of traditional elites in the Sierra, shifting the
opportunity structure and enabling peasant mobilization. Paige’s research on the impacts of a
growing agro-export economy explain how economic transformation weakened highland
landowning elites much more severely compared to coastal estate owners, enabling more
effective peasant mobilization in the highlands. Economically weak highland estate owners
relied on coercive political and legal control to protect rights to land, and to maintain an
exploitative grip on highland peasants. 142 With limited prospects for mechanization or increases
in productivity in the Sierra and declining terms of trade for agricultural products, increases in
earnings from land holdings could only come at the expense of landowners or peasant
cultivators. On Peru’s coast, by contrast, politically and economically powerful sugar and cotton
estate owners were able to maintain enough political influence with the central government in the
late 1950s and early 1960s to retain coercive control over their land.143 Capitalist penetration in
the Sierra and the slow withdrawal of central government support and assistance for the
economically weak highland land owners thus opened the door for peasants to re-take stolen
lands with little fear expulsion or retribution, while coastal plantation elites were able to forestall
similar worker mobilization.144 Klaren also points out that “the long-standing quid pro quo
141 Klaren, Peru, 311.
142 Paige, Agrarian, 339-40.
143 Paige, Agrarian, 340.
144 “Dependence on land [among the upper class]”, Paige writes, “led to economic weakness and political
vulnerability, to servile labor and resistance to worker organization, and to static production and zero-sum conflict.
51
between the state and the gamonal [traditional abusive rural elite] class to maintain order in the
interior was undermined by the ever-expanding reach of the government by means of new roads
and agents sent into the remote corners of the country.”145 At the same time, population changes
were helping to shift the political focus of the country’s ruling elite. Since 1940, Peru’s
population had risen dramatically, growing 43% by 1960. Legions of Peruvians began to
migrate from the Sierra to urban centres like Lima and Arequipa (Peru’s second largest city),
swelling the urban population by 3.7% per year, compared to 1.2% in rural areas.146
Increasingly, politicians sought policies to stem the tide of migration from the highlands, and to
respond to the demands of growing urban constituencies. Their policies would come at the
expense of highland elites.
Outbreaks of peasant unrest in the Sierra in the late 1950s and early 1960s helped to undermine
the dominant position of highland landowners as a consensus began to form among the country’s
ruling elites in favor of some sort of land reform and redistribution. Anti-land reform forces –
including some very powerful government cabinet members – increasingly found themselves
isolated as the pace and scope of peasant unrest spread throughout the central and southern
highlands, and peasants succeeded in organizing themselves into regional agrarian syndicates,
thereby increasingly shifting the tide of Peruvian opinion in favor of immediate land reform.
Many of the same factors transforming Peru and undermining the power of rural elites in this
period were also facilitating the mobilization of highland peasants. Paige argues that the rise of
the agro-export economy in the Sierra provided economic incentives for highland communities
in the central Sierra like San Pedro de Cajas and the peasant farmers of La Convencion valley in
Both in the Sierra and on the coast these political characteristics of the upper class led to political conflict over the
ownership of landed property and resulted in a series of peasant land invasions. The difference between the coastal
and Sierran haciendas also illustrates that within the category of commercial haciendas the degree of dependence on
land versus industrial capital exerts a crucial effect on both the political and the economic behavior of the agrarian
upper class. The greater mechanization and commercialization of the coastal cotton estates led to a more influential
land-owning class, less use of coercion in labor recruitment, and greater productivity. These economic
characteristics in turn led to less political vulnerability, greater tolerance of worker organizations, and a greater
ability to concede a share of agricultural income to workers. As a result, conflict in coastal estates was focused not
only on the question of land, which concerned the small holders and peasant communities in the valleys, but also on
wages, which were the principal concern of the resident laborers of the estates.” Paige, Agrarian, 341-2. 145
Klaren, Peru, 311-12. 146
Klaren, Peru, 316.
52
the southern Sierra to organize and reclaim lost lands from weakened land owners.147 By
contrast, peasants relatively untouched by the effects of agro-export penetration of the Sierra,
like those in the traditional small-holding community of Hualcan or the peons of the hacienda
Vicos, did not mobilize to seize lost lands or agitate for an end to abusive land owner
exploitation, according to Paige. While many peasants wanted to end exploitation at the hands
of landed elites, they could not overcome what Paige describes as the inhibiting effect on peasant
collective action of the risk-adverse, isolated, and internally divided nature of traditional
Peruvian peasant communities.148
Other scholars contend, however, that Paige’s focus on the role of the agro-export economy
over-simplifies the developments in the highlands that enabled peasant mobilization.
Researchers from Cornell University and Peru’s Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) discarded
the “myth of the passive peasant”, which characterizes traditional peasant communities in this
period as “naturally tradition-bound, fatalistic, and inclined to resist change.149 In the rapidly
modernizing central valley and in southern Sierra population centres like Cuzco they instead
found that peasants were not passive agents reacting to structural changes around them, but were
actively engaged in transforming their Sierra reality to take advantage of structural changes that
weakened traditional elites, even as market pressures described by Klaren squeezed their
147 Paige, Agrarian, 208. Paige writes: “It was the export economy that … made peasant land invasions both
organizationally possible and economically profitable. The changing national political climate finally provided an
opening for direct collective action, but it was only those communities which had been transformed by the export
economy which were in a position to take advantage of the political change.” Paige, Agrarian, 209. 148
Summing up his analysis of traditional subsistence communities, Paige concludes that “Hualcan shares all the
political and economic characteristics which made collective political action by the serfs of hacienda Vicos unlikely
or even irrational. Its backward economy provides a slim margin of survival which could easily be threatened by
either technical innovations in agriculture or changes in the political structure of the community. Precarious
agriculture and tiny dispersed plots create the same kind of economic conservatism that was found at Vicos. The
internal stratification of the community, particularly the division between the bottom lands and the hillside, creates
an atmosphere of individualistic economic competition which inhibits cooperative economic or political action. The
administrative structure of the varayoc (community leaders), the teniente gobernador (local official appointed by the
metizo officials), and the hacienda mayorales (hacienda lieutenants) ensure that conservative organizations will co-
opt or suppress independent peasant leadership. The limited financial resources of the community make it unlikely
that union organizers could be supported from dues or other contributions of community members. Hualcan, like
most of the traditional subsistence communities of the Sierra, had little reason to participate in the comunero
movements of the 1960s and, like almost all of them, remained uninvolved.” Paige, Agrarian, 195. 149
The results of this project are summarized and synthesized in, William Foote Whyte and Giorgio Alberti, Power,
Politics and Progress: Social Change in Rural Peru (New York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., 1976).
53
livelihoods.150 The Cornell/IEP findings are corroborated by Howard Handelman’s study of
peasant unrest in the Sierra. Handelman found that there were few traditional peasant
communities left in the Sierra by the early 1960s, and that the impacts of modernization were
seeping into even the most remote corners of the highlands.151 The movement of people and
ideas around the highlands was also facilitating change. Klaren, for example, points to the
increasing back-and-forth migration of peasants from the Sierra to the coast spreading new ideas
and forms of political organizing, the rising penetration of improved forms of communication
like radio into the far-corners of the Sierra, and the “subversive” ripples of the Cuban revolution
as important for facilitating peasant mobilization.152
Handelman found that the integration of peasant movements into the national political system
was crucial for their success in the central Sierra, while their lack of integration was important
for their repression by the state in the southern Sierra. The first wave of peasant mobilization
reached its peak shortly after the inauguration of President Fernando Belaunde Terry in 1963,
and centred around cholo153 and mestizo communities in the central and northern Sierra – in
places like San Pedro de Cajas in Junin, and the communities in the mining centre of Cerro de
Pasco. Handelman argued that these communities were more modernized than towns in the
150 Whyte and Alberti, Power, 201-2. “In the course of [our] experience,” Whyte and Alberti write, “we abandoned
the modernization framework and came to focus on structural change. Discarding the myth of the passive peasant,
we came to see peasants as men and women in motion in response to forces they generated among themselves as
well as in response to external forces. Community studies were no longer our central concern, and we came to view
villages simply as convenient locations for the study of structural change at the microlevel. No longer did we see
space and time information simply as background for a community study. In order to explain local events, we had
to identify the external forces that impacted upon the community. We now see local events as being the results of
the interaction between local conditions and external forces. According to this view, history should take us beyond
understanding and enable us to discover those external conditions most relevant in the determination of local
events.” Whyte and Alberti, Power, 5-6. 151
Howard Handelman, Struggle in the Andes: Peasant Political Mobilization in Peru (Austin, TX: The University
of Texas Press, 1975) 191. 152
Klaren, Peru, 314. Many of these changes were noted by Handelman; however, Handelman believed them to be
a product of agro-export growth in the highlands, including a higher proportion of bilingual community members, a
higher degree of education, a greater proportion of people who had traveled outside of their village to large urban
centers, greater integration into the capitalist economy, the use of modern agricultural techniques, etc. 153
Handelman argues that a “cholo” is “a person of Indian origin who lives among mestizos … and has been
partially integrated into the white Spanish-speaking culture of the highlands,” while a mestizo is “a person whose
ancestry is at least partially Indian but who has acculturated fully into white Spanish culture.” Handelman, Struggle,
278 and 281. For many Peruvians, cholo came to be seen as a derogatory term, illustrating the severe racism and
discrimination in Peruvian society toward highland residents. The question of how to identify highland Peruvians
varies depending upon the author and the area studied. This issue is discussed further in chapter 4 below.
54
southern Sierra, better plugged into the national political system, and engaged around “specific
economic grievances” – the “scarcity of pasture land, expansion of large livestock estates, and
diminishing opportunities for employment in the mines” of the area.154 In the end, they tended to
be more successful in consolidating control over the lands that they seized, with the result that
there was little violence during first wave. The second wave of peasant unrest was concentrated
in the communities of the southern Sierra – especially in La Convencion valley and nearby
provinces in the department of Cuzco – involving more traditional, isolated peasants who were
far less engaged with national political organizations and relied on the organizational leadership
of more ideologically radical peasant federations, rather than local village leaders. These
communities mobilized as a result of “longstanding cultural and socioeconomic repression of
Indian comunidades (communities).”155 This wave of unrest also took place in an area where
there have been frequent peasant rebellions and a history of extremely violent repression at the
hands of local elites and representatives of the state. To many of Lima’s political and military
elites, the urgency of staving off a Cuban-style revolution proved to be a powerful justification
for ignoring the protests of the increasingly marginal highland landowners in favor of some sort
of land reform in the central Sierra.156 But as the leftist peasant movement in the south escalated
following Belaunde Terry’s election, the old habits of violent retribution against peasants
reappeared. Now the Peruvian government was more inclined to label unrest in Cuzco the result
of a communist conspiracy, opening the door to violent repression by the military and police of
peasant movements and the later insurgency in the area. Consequently, some of the worst
massacres of peasants in the 1960s occurred during the unrest in the southern Sierra.157
Peasant mobilization in the highlands in the pre-1969 period, according to this survey, was thus
broadly enabled by the commercial awakening in the 1950s and 1960s in the area. Export-
agriculture may have kick-started these developments in Peru after World War II, but economic
growth soon developed a particular dynamic of its own in the highlands, and was accompanied
by myriad developments that facilitated mobilization of peasants, while opening up the
154 Handelman, Struggle, 113.
155 Handelman, Struggle, 113.
156 Klaren, Peru, 314-5.
157 Handelman, Struggle, 116-121. For information on the insurgencies of 1965, see footnote 117.
55
opportunity for revolt by undermining the power and control of highland elites. Importantly,
however, trends differed in different parts of the highlands, depending upon a range of factors
like integration with national economic and political movements, external ideological influences,
and the degree of modern state penetration. Rising inequality and peasant differentiation also
stressed many peasant livelihoods by the 1960s, contributing to new grievances among many in
the highlands, and setting the stage for continued unrest in the years to come.
Environmental scarcities feature marginally in the first wave of research on unrest in the 1950s
and 1960s. Land was certainly a main source of contention for many of the peasant
mobilizations; however, there is little discussion of how or when these lands were seized by
highland elites. We are left to speculate that land invasions sought to right some long-distant
resource capture, making them relatively static grievances. Supply and demand pressures were
not examined in detail by scholars, except for passing references to the stresses resulting from
population growth. The Cornell/IEP study noted that population growth was contributing to
demand-induced pressures on household land assets: “as the population continued to grow in the
rural Sierra, sons divided the land of their fathers so that their work obligations remained the
same and yet each family could make less out of its own lands.”158 On the whole, however,
changing demographic trends are only generally described in Peru and its sub-regions, appearing
mainly to aggravate the impact of precipitating factors listed above.159
2.4.2. Post-Land Reform unrest
Peasant unrest, rural mobilizations, and insurgencies did not end with the Peruvian government’s
repression in the south-central Andes in the mid-1960s. In fact, land invasions continued
sporadically for the next two decades, and deadly insurgencies sprang up in the 1980s – more
than a decade after the MIR and ELN insurgencies in the southern Sierra were crushed by the
Peruvian military.160 In the 1980s, the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) – and to a lesser extent,
158 Whyte and Alberti, Power, 202.
159 Whyte and Alberti, Power, 17-18.
160 The Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) led the
short-lived insurgencies in Peru’s southern highland departments of Ayacucho and Cuzco in 1965 and 1966. Both
groups were led by non-peasant intellectuals inspired by the Cuban revolution’s foco model, where “a small
vanguard of guerrillas [attempt to] gain the support of peasants in an isolated area and from there, initiate a
successful revolutionary war.” Klaren, Peru, 329. Unfortunately, their insurgency was ill conceived, and they made
56
the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) – initiated a civil war in Peru which
eventually claimed almost 70,000 deaths by 2000, according to Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.161 Scholarly explanations about post-land reform unrest have tended to concentrate
on efforts to understand the origins and causes of the Sendero insurgency, with less focus on the
general structural sources of peasant grievances.
What is surprising about the insurgencies of the 1980s, however, is that they came after Peru had
undertaken one of the most comprehensive land reform programs in all of Latin America. Most
scholars now agree that the disappointing effects of the 1969 Agrarian Reform Law were
crucially important in fomenting unrest in Peru, although they disagree about its importance
relative to other factors. To many, land appeared to be a scarce commodity for many small-
holding peasants in the Sierra before the 1969 agrarian reform, with large landed estates holding
most of the land. Huge inequalities between elite landowners and peasants were believed to be
the norm, according to researchers. Studies based on Peru’s 1961 census claimed that land-
holdings greater than 500 acres accounted for no more than 0.4% of all holdings, but represented
almost 76% of surveyed holdings.162 By contrast, peasants holding less than 5 hectares of land
accounted for more than 82% of the holdings surveyed.163 Later studies of Peru’s pre-Agrarian
Reform landholdings concluded that highland land-holding domination by large estates was, in
fact, a myth. A small group of estates between 2 and 50 hectares and a large group of
minifundio family holdings under 2 hectares actually controlled 80% of Sierra farmland.164
little progress bonding with the peasants of the southern Sierra. Both guerrilla groups were eventually wiped out by
the Peruvian military, along with approximately 8000 peasants. See Klaren, Peru, 328-330; Leon G. Campbell,
“The Historiography of the Peruvian Guerrilla Movement, 1960-1965,” Latin American Research Review, Volume
8, No. 1 (Spring 1973): 45-70; and the interesting book by the surviving leader of MIR, Hector Bejar, Peru 1965:
Notes on a Guerrilla Experience (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970). 161 Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, Informe final: Perú, 1980-2000 (Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y
Reconciliación, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2004),
General Conclusions, 316. The MRTA is the group made famous by their take-over of the Japanese embassy in
Lima in December, 1996. 162
Solon Barraclough ed., Agrarian Structure in Latin America: A Resume of The CIDA Land Tenure Studies of
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973): 252. 163
Barraclough, Agrarian, Table 11-1, 253. 164
Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009):
15-16. Enrique Mayer notes that an analysis in 1981 by José María Caballero in 1981 found that the degree of
inequality was not as severe in the early 1960s as the CIDA figures quoted above made it out to be.
57
Pre-Agrarian Reform highland landholding reality aside, however, the perception driving calls
for land reform in the 1960s was that poor peasants were suffering because landlords controlled
most of the land in the sierra, a perception buttressed by the fact that most peasant households
had very little land. In the early 1960s, land per capita in Peru was the lowest of all South
American countries.165 In the southern Sierra, with more than 80% of the economically active
population engaged in agriculture, the average family farm in the 1950s was about 0.9ha, divided
into many small plots.166 Given the general scarcity of good agricultural land in the highlands
and the fact that there were few large estates to expropriate, land reform as a solution was
probably bound to disappoint many peasants.167
The first attempts at land reform actually occurred with the passage in 1962 of a law that
attempted to diffuse the unrest in the La Convencion and Lares valleys of Cuzco. Hopes were
raised at that time by the reform promises of President Belaunde-Terry, who appointed a land
reform commission soon after taking office. However, Belaunde’s land reform law was
ultimately a disappointment, watered down by the powerful landowners that dominated the
commission helping to draft the law.168 In the end, Law 15037, as it was known, essentially
excluded the prosperous coastal estates from expropriation, and merely legitimized those
highland land occupations that had already taken place.169 “By 1969, about 4 percent of the land
had been redistributed among 1 percent of the rural families.”170 Although limited in its
165 Cynthia McClintock, Revolutionary Movements in Latin America: El Salvador’s FMLN and Peru’s Shining
Path (Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998): 167. 166
Watters, Poverty, 40-1. 167
Mayer, Ugly Stories, 16. Mayer notes that the “highlands faced an absolute shortage of land. The redistribution
of land would therefore not solve many problems, since there was not that much of it to expropriate...” Land
holdings by different holding size in Cangallo and the D. of Chuschi are examined in greater detail below in sections
4.2.2.1 and 7.3.2. 168
A. Eugene Havens, Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel, and Gerardo Otero, “Class Struggle and the Agrarian Reform
Process,” in David Booth and Bernardo Sorj eds., Military Reformism and Social Classes: The Peruvian Experience,
1968-80 (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1983): 22; Colin Harding, “Land Reform and Social Conflict in Peru,”
in Abraham F. Lowenthal ed., The Peruvian Experiment: Continuity and Change under Military Rule (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton U.P., 1975): 233-35; and Mayer, Ugly Stories, 18-19. 169
Susan Eckstein, "Revolution and Redistribution in Latin America," in The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered,
Cynthia McClintock and Abraham F. Lowenthal eds., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1983): 362. 170
Eckstein, “Revolution,” 362. Between 1964 and 1969, Harding notes, 14,631 families received a total of 375,
000 hectares. Harding, “Land,” 234. Mayer notes that Belaunde’s land reform law did eliminate serfdom in Peru –
the yanaconaje and colonato system, where a family was granted a plot of land on an estate in exchange for
obligatory work for the landowner. Mayer, Ugly Stories, 18.
58
application, the law was successful in stoking expectations among peasants for reform and in
arousing fear among landowners, who quickly stopped all agricultural investment and proceeded
to decapitalize their holdings by selling land and liquidating holdings where possible in
anticipation of future reform attempts.171 As a result, agriculture in Peru fell into sharp decline,
with per capita food production stagnating in the 1960s.172
While Belaunde lacked the political will to undertake land reform, the unrest of the 1960s
crystallized opinion among influential officers in Peru’s armed forces in favor of wide-ranging
and comprehensive land reform. The army’s encounters with Peru’s “backward” and exploited
peasants in the southern Sierra during its 1960s counter-insurgency operations helped to
convince many officers that radical transformation was necessary to modernize Peru’s agrarian
sector.173 In fact, since the 1950s, Peruvian military officers had had broad ambitions. They
increasingly came to see themselves as a “permanent vehicle for modernization” in Peru.174 As
economic crisis began to envelop the Belaunde administration in 1968, Peru’s military stepped
back into its traditional interventionist role and overthrew the democratic government. However,
this time the officers in charge were preparing to embark on a revolution from above in an effort
to remake and modernize Peru, and thereby forestall a communist revolution.175
The Peruvian military’s “revolution from above” was an attempt by the military and high-level
state officials to initiate and guide social transformation with little or no mass participation.176 A
key part of that effort involved the 1969 Agrarian Reform Law, where the military sought to
“gain popular support, destroy oligarchic domination, control conflict and rural discontent,
improve income distribution, stop massive migration to the cities, and create a stable agrarian
171 Eckstein, “Revolution,” 362. Needless to say, such actions no doubt only further exacerbated tensions between
landowners and peasants who claimed the land. 172
Klaren, Peru, 331. Agricultural decline also accelerated because of a greater willingness by the Peruvian
government to allow imports of foreign food products, which undercut domestic producers. This is discussed below
in chapter 6. 173
Klaren, Peru, 338. 174
Quoted in Daniel M. Masterson, “Caudillismo and Institutional Change: Manuel Odria and the Peruvian Armed
Forces, 1948-1956,” in Linda Alexander Rodriguez ed., Rank and Privilege: The Military and Society in Latin
America (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994): 150. 175
In addition to the sources cited above, a bibliography of the extensive literature on Peru’s military “revolution”
of 1968 can be found in Klaren, Peru, 468-470. 176
Eckstein, “Revolution,” 348.
59
sector for an expanding internal market.”177 However, during the “implementation of its reform
program, the state’s involvement grew and – paradoxically – became increasingly out of touch
with popular (and rural) demands.”178 In spite of this, most scholars agree that Peru’s agrarian
reform ranks with Mexico and Bolivia as one of the most comprehensive in Latin America. “By
1980, after twelve years of military rule, 8.6 million hectares of land and 2.2 million head of
livestock (representing 39 percent of the land and nearly 8 percent of the livestock) had been
granted to 390,684 peasants.”179 In a few short years the traditional oligarchy and landed elite,
with their large coastal estates and highland haciendas, ceased to exist in Peru.
Agrarian reform, it seemed, had eliminated one of the key sources of peasant grievances behind
the mobilizations and unrest of the 1960s. However, the agrarian reform effort had important
implications on the likelihood of insurgency in Peru in the next two decades. These are
discussed in the context of the following overview of scholarly thinking about the origins and
causes of the Sendero insurgency.
2.4.3. Debates on the origins of Sendero and the degree of peasant support
Efforts to explain rural unrest and mobilization in the post-land reform period remain highly
contentious. Peasant mobilization and unrest in Peru’s Sierra in the 1950s and 1960s led
scholars to search for the various underlying causes of peasant unrest, settling on a combination
of both macro causal factors and micro processes of change and mobilization in rural areas.
However, this has not occurred to the same extent with scholarly investigations of the origins of
the Shining Path. The incredible violence and breadth of the Sendero uprising has somewhat
mesmerized scholarly attention in a narrower quest to discover just what makes Sendero tick.
Like drivers passing a traffic accident who are unable to take their eyes off the carnage, many
scholars have been drawn to attempt to explain how a band of homegrown revolutionaries could
be so ruthless in their attempt to topple Peru’s government that they would flay peasants alive,
177 Christine Hunefeldt, "The Rural Landscape and Changing Political Awareness: Enterprises, Agrarian Producers,
and Peasant Communities, 1969-1994," in The Peruvian Labyrinth: Polity, Society, Economy, Maxwell A. Cameron
and Philip Mauceri eds., (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997): 109. 178
Hunefeldt, “Rural,” 109. 179
Hunefeldt, “Rural,” 110-11.
60
and assassinate popular shantytown leaders? Among Sendero’s rivals and critics in Peru, as
historian Steve Stern suggests, the “desire to draw moral distance encouraged depictions of
Sendero as a freakish evil force outside the main contours of Peruvian social and political history
– more an invention of evil masterminds and an expression, perhaps, of the particular regional
milieu than a logical culmination or byproduct of Peruvian history.”180 The few – largely
American – efforts that sought to explain Sendero by defining the general structural conditions
out of which Sendero emerged have been rejected by many scholars, giving way instead to a
kind of analytical “exceptionalism” in explaining the insurgency – a discourse with a particular
focus on the unique characteristics of Sendero as an organization that seeks to explain the
anomalies of its existence: a brutally violent Maoist insurgency breaking out in 1980 just as Peru
returned to democratic government after more than a decade of military rule; an insurgency that
gradually appeared to grow more powerful and deadly through the 1980s as other Marxist
movements around the world were dissolving.
On the surface, “Sendero exceptionalism” makes sense in the context of the actions of the rest of
Peru’s radical leftist parties in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The return to democratic elections
in 1980 brought out virtually the entire left of Peru’s political spectrum to actively campaign for
the presidency, with many prominent radical leftists publicly renouncing armed struggle and
pledging to join the democratic process. Among the leading presidential contenders on the
‘formerly’ radical left were prominent peasant leaders from the Sierra movements of the early
1960s, including Genaro Ledesma, who led the first peasant land invasions in Cerro de Pasco,
and Hugo Blanco, who gained world-wide notoriety as leader of the peasant movement in La
Convención valley. Blanco, whose ‘Tierra o Muerte’181 slogan came to symbolize the
mobilizations of the early 1960s, would go on to win the most votes among the far-left parties in
the 1980 election (although together the far-left still managed only 14% of the total vote).
Nevertheless, peasants and their leaders had a place on the national stage in the 1980 elections,
and the left appeared ascendant in Peruvian politics. A far left coalition won Lima’s municipal
180 Steve J. Stern, “Beyond Enigma: An Agenda for Interpreting Shining Path and Peru, 1980-1995,” in Steve J.
Stern, ed., Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995 (Durham, N.C: Duke U.P., 1995): 2. 181
Translated: ‘land or death’. See Hugo Blanco, Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru (New York:
Pathfinder Press, 1972). For an interesting recent interview with Blanco, see:
https://www.sudamericarural.org/index.php/noticias/que-pasa/11-peru/3577-peru-entrevista-a-hugo-blanco-tierra-o-
muerte, accessed 12 July, 2019.
61
election in 1983, while Alan Garcia led the newly invigorated leftists of the American Popular
Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) – Peru’s oldest socialist party – to capture the presidency in
1985.182 So, Sendero’s decision at this precise moment in history to begin the armed struggle
reinforced the appearance among many analysts that this was a movement operating outside of
history – that Sendero was “rowing against the stream of history, and actually making progress
against the current.”183 Such thinking encouraged analysts to explore whether there was
something unique driving Sendero Luminoso apart from the range of factors influencing the rest
of Peru’s left. It led many analysts to exclusively focus on Sendero’s organizational structure
and mobilization, and to ignore or downplay the impact of grievances and changes in
opportunities for rebellion.
The consequence of viewing the insurrection as exceptional has been an overly narrow focus in
much of the research trying to make sense of Sendero. This exceptionalist discourse artificially
limits the search for the root causes of Sendero’s growth – it allows analysts to side-step the
issue of whether there were background factors that set the stage for Sendero’s uprising,
including whether these background factors were having a detrimental impact on peasants. This
discourse also downplays the causal power of grievances or structural factors in causing the
insurgency – as the following section on debates about Sendero’s origins and peasant support for
Sendero discusses. The exceptionalist interpretation of the rise of Sendero could explain away
the need to explore the sources and impacts of grievances in Peru, including whether
environmental stress and demographic change was a factor contributing to the insurrection’s
outbreak, and it severs the historical and analytical link to the unrest and mobilizations of the
1950s and 1960s.
2.4.4. Comprehensive theories of the origins of Sendero’s revolt
A few years after Sendero began armed struggle in Peru, American political scientists Cynthia
McClintock and David Scott Palmer each released influential studies that sought to explain the
origins of Sendero. Both argued that a combination of factors including national structural
changes and particular contextual developments affecting peasants in Peru, especially in
182 Stern, “Beyond,” 3.
183 Gorriti, Shining, xvi.
62
Ayacucho, helped to lay the groundwork for Sendero to emerge and fostered support among
peasants for violent insurrection. Their attempts to explain Sendero in the context of theories
and causes of revolutions opened a rancorous debate among scholars about Sendero’s origins and
the degree of peasant support for the insurgency. McClintock’s analysis pointed to the impacts
of an ineffectual agrarian reform for highland peasants, a particularly severe economic decline in
the 1970s, a subsistence crisis at the same time among rural peasants and the urban poor, the
presence of a well-trained, well-organized, and cohesively led revolutionary organization in the
form of Sendero, and the declining capacity of the Peruvian state as a result of the economic
crisis in the country.184 She argues that support for Sendero in the early 1980s was “substantial
among southern highland peasants,” among residents of the town of Huamanga, and in the
department of Ayacucho generally.185 By 1991, one year before the capture of much of its
leadership, she estimates that popular support for Sendero had grown to about 15 percent
nationally.186 McClintock concludes that Sendero’s insurgency supports the hypotheses of
several scholars of revolution: she agrees with Scott’s focus on subsistence crises; she concurs
with Paige’s concern with economic transformation; and she accepts Wickham-Crowley’s
emphasis on the importance of insurgent leadership and organizational capacity, etc. Together,
these factors contributed to both the development of grievances among peasants and provided
opportunities for violent expressions of these grievances against the Peruvian state.187
184 Cynthia McClintock, “Why Peasants Rebel: The Case of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso,” World Politics, 37(1),
1984: 48-84. See Cynthia McClintock, Revolutionary, for her latest expression of this argument. Note, however,
that she offers very little discussion in this book about whether or not Sendero was a “peasant rebellion” – no doubt
because of the ferocity of criticism by anthropologists of Peru like Deborah Poole and Gerardo Renique, as
discussed below in section 2.4.5. McClintock’s book is specifically focused on identifying the cause of the
“expansion” of the Sendero. As she notes, “the reasons for the emergence, expansion, and outcome of the
revolutionary challenge may be different;” McClintock, Revolutionary, 10, and 327, footnote 50. 185
McClintock, Revolutionary, 78. 186
McClintock, Revolutionary, 78. 187
See McClintock, Revolutionary, 159-161. McClintock places the issue of a subsistence crisis within a wider
context of an economic crisis in the southern Sierra in the years preceding the Sendero insurgency. “I do not argue
that economic decline was the only factor in the expansion of the Shining Path,” McClintock writes. “Peru’s
economic plunge was a spark igniting dry political timbers; it provided unprecedented opportunity to a shrewd
revolutionary organization and provoked new problems for a state whose legitimacy was limited in any case …
[T]he argument here is that … the economic plunge in Peru was extraordinarily deep and severely affected not only
peasants but also university-educated aspirants to the middle class; especially given that the correlations between the
onset of misery and the emergence of Sendero are strong and that economic conditions are frequently cited by
Sendero militants as a key reason for their joining the movement, it is appropriate to conclude that the plunge was
the triggering variable in Peru’s revolutionary equation.” McClintock, Revolutionary, 161-2. In the on-going debates
about the causes of revolutions and rural revolts – ranging from state centric views, society views, agency/structure
63
David Scott Palmer agreed with much of McClintock’s analysis, arguing various socio-economic
and political changes at the national level combined with poverty, isolation, and the failure of
reformist initiatives at the local level in the southern highlands of Ayacucho to lead to Sendero’s
revolt.188 To Palmer, Sendero’s rise cannot be separated from the realities of Ayacucho at that
time. He highlights several factors that impacted rural and highland livelihoods and contextual
factors that facilitated the “growth and orientation” of Sendero.189 Rather than emphasizing the
impact of a subsistence crisis as McClintock does, however, Palmer believes that the declining
capacity of the Peruvian state to deliver on highland resident’s increasing expectations in the
1960s and 1970s resulted in a loss of legitimacy for the Peruvian state, thereby translating
grievances among highlanders into mobilized Sendero revolutionaries.190
2.4.5. Criticizing comprehensive theories: Sendero exceptionalists
Critics of McClintock and Palmer, however, have vigorously disputed the extent to which the
Sendero insurgency was, in fact, a rural rebellion with wide and active support of campesinos.
perspectives, cultural arguments, ethnicity views, grievance arguments, or views about material structure –
McClintock’s emphasis on economic decline as a key factor surely ranks as one of her most important contributions
to the field. 188
David Scott Palmer “Rebellion in Rural Peru: The Origins and Evolution of Sendero Luminoso,” Comparative
Politics, No. 18, (January 1986): 127-146. In the late 1960s, Palmer served as a young Peace Corp volunteer in
Ayacucho and taught at the Universidad Nacional de San Cristobal de Huamanga in Huamanga during the time that
Abimael Guzman, the leader of the Shining Path, worked at the university. Palmer was both a witness and an early
target of Sendero – watching first-hand as Guzman built a strong Sendero presence at Huamanga University, only to
be forced out of Ayacucho later with the rest of the Peace Corp by Guzman and his Sendero cadres. Guzman’s fond
memories of this incident can be found in, “‘Exclusive’ comments by Abimael Guzman,” World Affairs, 156(1),
Summer 1993: 52-6. 189
David Scott Palmer, "Introduction: History, Politics, and Shining Path in Peru," in Shining Path of Peru, David
Scott Palmer, ed., 2nd Edition (New York: St. Martin's, 1994): 30. Palmer expands on context factors, noting the
impacts of “a provincial university at a historic moment; a poor, overwhelmingly Indian region isolated in the
Andes; an inappropriately conceived and applied agrarian reform in an area of great need; expanding educational
opportunities and stagnant employment prospects; the opportunity to train in China during the Cultural Revolution;
and a succession of civilian governments at the center unwilling and/or unable to respond appropriately to the needs
of the population at the periphery (geographical, economic, social, cultural, and political). Shining Path and its
people have been very much affected by such contextual factors. These have served more to prepare the
organization and its leadership to seize the initiative, however, than to explain why Maoist revolution started in
Peru, or why it started where it did.” 190
Palmer “Rebellion,” 143, footnote 1. Palmer explicitly says that he finds James Davies’ J-curve theory of
revolution more persuasive as an explanation of the causes of Sendero’s revolt than McClintock’s focus on a
subsistence crisis among peasants. Davies’ arguments and the relative deprivation theories that his work spawned
are examined in James B. Rule, Theories of Civil Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 200-
223.
64
Anthropologists have spearheaded the attack against this ‘American school of Senderologists’—
with Deborah Poole and Gerardo Renique leading the charge. They argue that McClintock
fails to examine carefully what might be meant by the term
‘support’ in the Peruvian case and that she instead assumes the de
facto existence of a generalised and historically non-specific
peasant support network … Rather than considering the specific
political structuring and raison d’être of the PCP-SL [Sendero
Luminoso] as a political military organization, McClintock
explicitly structures her questions to address the literature on
comparative peasant and agrarian rebellions and revolutions. The
PCP-SL’s relevance to this literature, and therefore its status as a
‘peasant rebellion’, is thereby presented as an a priori assumption
rather than as a historical or sociological problem which must be
first proven, and then addressed.191
Palmer is also guilty of transforming Sendero from an insurgency with its main base of support
in the city of Huamanga, to one based on rural support, according to critics. While Palmer
“admits the mestizo and vanguard nature of Sendero as a political party, and the importance of
teachers,” the critics note, they dispute his claims of “a ‘logical’ drifting of Sendero towards a
sympathetic organic relationship with the ‘peripheral’ peasantry.”192 Poole and Renique instead
concludes that “the parties to the violence [had] at best only tenuous connections to the
indigenous peasantries whom anthropologists and historians had taken to be the principal actors
in Andean rural history and culture.” In fact, “Andean peasants and their community and
political organizations have been the principal victims of both Sendero’s war and the
counterinsurgency campaigns waged by the Peruvian armed forces,” according to these critics.193
By narrowing the analytical focus to what one might describe as Sendero’s unique identity,
Poole and Renique raise the important question about whether or not the rebellion had anything
to do with those who were not actual members of Sendero Luminoso. If Sendero’s uprising
could be solely explained by the nature of the organization and its members, then perhaps it is
191 Deborah Poole and Gerardo Renique, “The New Chroniclers of Peru: US Scholars and the ‘Shining Path’ of
Peasant Rebellion,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, 10(2), 1991: 140. 192
Poole and Renique, “New,” 157. 193
Deborah Poole, “Anthropological Perspectives on Violence and Culture – a View from the Peruvian High
Provinces,” in Deborah Poole, ed., Unruly Order: Violence, Power, and Cultural Identity in the High Provinces of
Southern Peru (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994): 4.
65
irrelevant to even consider whether peasants supported Sendero or whether urban dwellers
supported Sendero. Following from this, then, it would be irrelevant to try to explain the
Sendero insurgency by focusing on the subsistence condition of the peasantry, or the impacts of
economic transformation in the highlands and cities, unless those factors somehow enabled the
mobilization of the guerrilla organization itself. Theories of peasant rebellion would then largely
cease to be of any relevance in trying to make sense of the events in Peru.
The foundations of this perspective rest on the anthropological research of Carlos Ivan Degregori
and journalist Gustavo Gorriti. In denying linkages to and origins within the peasantry, the
emphasis in this group of explanations about the rise of Sendero instead shifts to the particular
organizational and ideological elements of Sendero which enabled them to emerge from
competing leftist groups in the city of Huamanga in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. In spite
of limited support at this time in Ayacucho, Degregori argues that Sendero’s “ideological rigidity
and organic cohesiveness” enabled it to become “a sort of dwarf star – the kind in which matter
gets so compressed it acquires a great specific weight disproportionate to its size.”194 Sendero
rejected a leading role for the masses “in favor of the leading role of the party; the party
decide[d] everything.”195 Regional economic crisis, a backward semi-feudal department still
controlled by provincial elites, a general yearning among people in Ayacucho for progress stifled
by the central government’s indifference to developing the region – all these factors played a part
in forming the trajectory of the insurgency, but they were clearly of secondary importance to the
unique characteristics of the Sendero movement, according to Degregori.196 Instead of a broad-
based peasant rebellion, Sendero’s insurgency was begun by a party made up of “teachers and
university professors and students with little influence among the regional peasantry.” It
expanded through the incorporation of Ayacucho’s youth – “a significant number of rural youth
with secondary school education, or in some instances no more than a primary-school education,
who swelled the party ranks and constituted the most active sector of Shining Path’s rural
194 Carlos Ivan Degregori, “Return to the Past,” in Palmer, ed., The Shining Path of Peru, 53. “For that reason
nobody detected [Sendero] in 1980,” Degregori writes, “nobody noticed that despite its small size, it had the power
to affect decisively the Peruvian political scene of the 1980s.” Gorriti’s book is almost exclusively focused on
providing a detailed narrative of the ideological rigidity and organic cohesiveness of Sendero, and linking these
elements to its violent activities in the 1980s. 195
Degregori, “Return,” 55. 196
Degregori, “Return,” 55-57.
66
‘generated organizations.’”197 Their receptivity to Sendero’s message did not come from
grievances based on poverty or material hardship. Instead, “power seduced these secondary
students.”198 This view has come to dominate informed opinion about the origins of Sendero to
such an extent – especially among Peruvian experts – that discussions about other potentially
important factors explaining the rise of Sendero, or whether peasants may have been initially
receptive to its message, are marginalized. Degregori’s research has thus served to anchor the
exceptionalist arguments about Sendero.
In more recent writing, Palmer now accepts much of Degregori’s arguments, emphasizing the
particular causal role of Sendero’s strong leadership and its ideological and organizational
strength in Ayacucho as key to its success. In Sendero’s case, revolution is leadership, defining
reality, setting the terms of the combat and pushing for a response that justifies and legitimates
the definition rather than the other way around. Shining Path defines the setting in ways that
make revolution the only possible outcome, and then wages revolution on its own terms. Thus,
the insurgency itself becomes the independent variable, not dependent on social, economic, or
external factors.199
However, Palmer does not push the exceptionalist argument so far as to ignore other
“contextual” factors to explain the rise of Sendero’s insurgency. While he concludes that
“Sendero is derived from the university, not from the peasantry,” he does acknowledge that a
convergence of interests existed between Sendero’s militants and elements of the peasantry and
urban poor in the southern Sierra.200 Those peasants who did support Sendero made a rational
decision that going along with the Shining Path offered them their best option at the time.
“Peasants individually and collectively are rational actors who operate in a context in which their
options are extremely limited and in which they tend to be the subordinates in most role
relationships. They will accept and work with whoever seems to provide them the best available
197 Carlos Ivan Degregori, “Harvesting Storms: Peasant Rondas and the Defeat of Sendero Luminoso in
Ayacucho,” in Steve Stern ed., Shining and Other Paths, 129. 198
Degregori, “Harvesting,” 130. 199
Palmer, "Introduction,” 30. Emphasis in original. 200
David Scott Palmer, “Conclusion: The View from the Windows,” in Shining Path of Peru, David Scott Palmer
ed., 2nd edition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994): 262.
67
options at the time.”201 Thus, while McClintock’s characterization of Sendero as a peasant
movement naturally leads her to study those grievances factors that might contribute to peasant
radicalization, Palmer’s recognition of the importance of differing identities between Sendero
militants, peasants, and the urban poor suggests we must be very careful to find the particular set
of causes that motivated the different actors in the insurgency. A convergence of interests by
peasants not invested in Sendero but willing to tolerate their actions against the state could be
important for explaining the growth and spread of the insurgency. McClintock has come to a
similar position in her later writing.202 Peru’s economic crisis in the 1970s exacerbated the
highland subsistence crisis among peasants and destroyed the economic aspirations and well-
being of many in the country, while undermining, at the same time, the ability of the government
to deliver on people’s needs. To McClintock, these structural factors provided an opportunity for
Sendero to expand its support among those disaffected by these changes, including many
aspiring urban professionals only one generation removed from their peasant roots.203 The
factors that helped to create a subsistence and economic crisis in Peru are thus key for
understanding the growth, expansion, and possible success of Sendero’s revolt.
Anthropological reactions to the work of McClintock and Palmer object to their use of sweeping
political theories and processes to link the peasants and the state of the peasantry in the Southern
Sierra with the Sendero insurgency. True to their disciplines, they stress the importance of
regional and local contexts for Sendero-peasant interactions, emphasizing that accurate analysis
of peasant support for Sendero must attempt to distinguish between “active support and passive
support.”204 However, questions about whether or not peasants were receptive to Sendero, how
receptive they were, how different strata of the peasantry responded to Sendero, whether they
actively or passively assisted them, and why peasants may have supported Sendero in some way,
are all highly contentious among scholars.205 There is, in fact, evidence suggesting that scholars
201 Palmer, “Conclusion,” 266.
202 McClintock, Revolutionary, 11.
203 McClintock, Revolutionary, 14-5.
204 Poole and Renique, “New,” 169.
205 These are very challenging issues to resolve, according to one well known scholar of Peru. “The question …
about degree of support by various peasant strata is extremely difficult to answer. Even the question of initial
"support" versus initial "tolerance" is difficult to disentangle (even if you control for timing and regional context of
Sendero's initial appearance in a given locale in a war context), since the effect of kin relations with young people
68
such as Degregori, Poole, and Renique perhaps overstate both the degree of separation of
Sendero from the peasantry, while also understating the degree of sympathy and tolerance among
peasants for Sendero in the early years of the insurgency in the southern Sierra.206 Consequently,
the question about what was actually going on in the lives of peasants in the southern Sierra to
make them receptive, or at least tolerant, of Sendero’s efforts to organize an armed insurrection
remains open, and is one of the key issues explored below in section 8.3.
The state of the peasantry
2.5.1. Ecological and demographic Influences
There is, in fact, research that supports the work of McClintock and Palmer and offers additional
insights into the question of the state of the peasantry in the southern Sierra. This work suggests
that it is premature to cast aside McClintock’s focus on a crisis in peasant livelihoods in the years
leading up to the Sendero insurgency. William Mitchell’s detailed study of the Ayacucho district
of Quinoa from the late 1960s to the 1980s, for example, found that ecological constraints
combined with population pressure and economic change to force increasing numbers of
Quinoa’s peasants to either migrate in search of non-agricultural sources of income or live with
ever-increasing poverty and destitution.207 These factors combined, he concluded, to create “a
context in which many young people [had] little to lose in violently opposing the established
order.”208 In the late 1960s, Antonio Diaz Martinez similarly noted the poverty and desperation
of Ayacucho’s peasantry, who chose in large numbers to search for a living elsewhere than
sympathetic to Sendero, along with the effect of intimidation, makes it difficult at times to distinguish support from
tolerance.” Steve J. Stern, “Environmental Scarcities and Conflict in Peru,” Personal e-mail to Tom Deligiannis, 30
July 1999. 206
Orin Starn, "New Literature on Peru's Sendero Luminoso," in Latin American Research Review 27, 2 (1992):
215 and 223; Ronald H. Berg, "Sendero Luminoso and the Peasantry of Andahuaylas," Journal of Interamerican
Studies and World Affairs 28, 4 (Winter 1986-87): 92; Ton and Gianotten de Wit, Vera, "The Center's Multiple
Failures," in Shining Path of Peru, David Scott Palmer, ed., 2nd Edition (New York: St. Martin's, 1994): 70-72. See
also, Orin Starn, “Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru,” Cultural Anthropology 6(1), 1991:
63-91. 207
William P. Mitchell, Peasants on the Edge: Crop, Cult, and Crisis in the Andes (Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1991): 22-24. Quinoa is located in the province of Huamanga. 208
Mitchell, Peasants, 24.
69
attempt to scrape a living from lands that were “eroded, poorly irrigated, extremely divided …
tired and deforested.”209
Similar insights led another anthropologist, R.F. Watters, to argue that over-population and
ecological stress form part of the basic constraints that have hindered Peru’s peasants from
improving their livelihoods over the past 50
years, along with class and ethnic barriers, the
short-comings of traditional agricultural
technologies, unequal terms of trade with urban
areas, and unfavorable macro-economic policies.
For Watters, these constraints form a “Jack-in-
the-box” model of Peru’s peasantry. Only the
“most innovative and enterprising peasants can
hope to improve their situation … by breaking
out of the confining box of [these] limiting
circumstances.”210 The implication of Watters’
model and of Mitchell’s insights are that
ecological stress and demographic change
increasingly challenged peasant livelihoods in the decades leading up to Sendero uprising,
possibly dashing expectation of improved livelihoods. Assessing changes in environmental
scarcity is thus important for assessing the state of the peasantry in the southern Sierra.
Several scholars also point to the impact of changes in agricultural tenure and rural structure
from the military government’s agrarian reform program as an important cause of rural unrest –
in Peru generally, and in the southern Sierra in particular. In some areas, the impacts of agrarian
reform also interacted with economic transformation and modernizing influences to alter rural
209 Quoted in Starn, "Missing," 80. “The coast, the mines of Cerro de Pasco, the jungle of Apurimac serve them as
an escape from the poverty of the land,” Diaz Martinez wrote, giving them some temporary or permanent work and
a bit of economic income. After the planting, they go to these centers of work and then return for the harvests,
bringing with them a few clothes and a little money saved for the family that stayed to take care of the house and the
fields. Others emigrate for good, taking their family with them and leaving their small plot to a relative. Sometimes
they come back for the fiestas, or don't come back ever.” 210
Watters, Poverty, 323.
Figure 5: Watters’ Model of
the Peasantry
70
livelihoods and open new fissures in rural society. Agrarian reform may have increased peasant
differentiation in the Sierra, creating new groups of winners while embittering many other
peasants against both the state and those who benefited from the reforms.
The process of peasant differentiation was, in fact, taking place in many parts of the Sierra long
before the military government’s agrarian reform as capitalist economic transformation
penetrated the highlands and increased inequalities between peasants. As Dianna Deere’s
research in the north-central Sierra Department of Cajamarca illustrates, rural class structures
began to change significantly with the agricultural transformation of the 1950s and 1960s that
accompanied the establishment of a dairy industry.211 Communal land holding structures gave
way to private holdings. Many hacienda owners transformed themselves into private dairy
producers, working the best valley land holdings intensively while selling off their marginal
hillside parcels to peasants and former hacienda peons. As a result, “the independent peasant
sector grew in population and proportion of land owned but also in internal differentiation.”212 A
new group of middle-level peasants were increasingly important. Many earned higher wages by
participating in the dairy boom, and increased their personal land holdings by buying land.
However, inequalities also increased among the peasant sector as land holdings and income
levels among the poorest groups either remained stagnant or declined by the early 1970s. The
landless or near landless smallholders (with holdings of barely over 1 hectare) accounted for the
bulk of the farming population in Deere’s study area, but their incomes in the early 1970s “were
lower than the minimum estimated income from the poorest peon households on the haciendas in
1917.”213
The increasing inequalities in incomes and land-holdings that accompanied private reform in
Cajamarca was a typical consequence of the process of peasant differentiation taking place in
other parts Peru. Peasant differentiation in the southern Sierra similarly increased inequalities in
wealth between sectors of the peasantry. However, in many parts of the southern Sierra, scholars
argue that it was agrarian reform and the somewhat later penetration of capitalist economic
211 Carmen Diana Deere and Alain de Janvry, “Demographic and Social Differentiation Among Northern Peruvian
Peasants,” Journal of Peasant Studies 8(3), 1981: 364-5. 212
Enrique Mayer, “Patterns of Violence in the Andes,” Latin American Research Review 29(2), 1994: 151-3. 213
Mayer, “Patterns,”155-6.
71
relationships that drove the process of peasant differentiation. These trends appear to have
interacted with the impacts of limited ecological resources to amplify existing inequalities in
peasant livelihoods.
In Ayacucho, competition for land among the peasant communities has long been fierce, partly
because of the poor quality of land in the department.214 With limited quantities of good land,
few large haciendas existed in Ayacucho before the military’s agrarian reform. In all of Peru, the
government expropriated 1,493 haciendas with a total area of over 7.5 million hectares during
the 1970s and 1980s. Government officials, however, had long known that the need for land far
outstripped available land. As far back as 1966, the CIDA report pointed out that there was not
enough land to fulfill land reform goals, and that only a fraction of those who needed land would
be able to receive land under comprehensive land reform.215 This turned out to be true in
Ayacucho where the total expropriated during the agrarian reform period amounted to only about
325,000H – about 22% of total agricultural land in the department, benefiting about 18,000 rural
households.216 Consequently, the little land that was available for redistribution with agrarian
reform was bitterly contested. The dislocations of agrarian reform also provoked many peasant
communities to renew bitter feuds with each other over long-standing boundary issues.217 As
well, in parts of Ayacucho, anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell reports, agrarian reform opened the
door for a new class of mestizo or aspiring mestizos to seize the financial rewards of the reform
process, and slip into old patterns of exploitation of the peasant majority. “The same relations of
exploitation,” she writes, “were reproduced by the new class of rich peasants, the new state
bureaucrats who replaced the old officials, and on ex-haciendas by the administrators of the new
214 de Wit and Gianotten, " Center's," 66.
215 Mayer, Ugly Stories, 19. In the highlands, where need far outstripped land availability, CIDA economists
predicted that only 4% of those needing sufficient land would be satisfied by land reform, benefitting about 150,000
families, but leaving 700,000 families unfulfilled. In the end about twice that number of families in the highlands
received land from agrarian reform. 216
Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliacón: Informe Final (Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Final Report),
Tomo 4 (Volume 4), August 2003, Lima: 19-20. Accessed online, 21 September, 2003
<http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ifinal/indice.php>. Hereafter referred to as (CVR). Total area of agricultural land is
taken from Degragori, Ayacucho, 179. 217
CRV, Inform, 66-67.
72
state cooperatives” that were set up on the old hacienda lands by the agrarian reform officials.218
This group was often best placed to take advantage of the opportunities that arose with land
reform, and they tended to make up a majority of the newly prospering class of merchants and
shop keepers that arose in many towns in Ayacucho.219 At their worst, they were recreating
patterns of abusive relationships with poorer peasants in the style of the old gamonal mestizo
elites.
The process of land distribution that accompanied agrarian reform was also stimulating
differentiation among peasants in the southern Sierra, as R. F. Watters demonstrates in his study
of Chilca, in the Cuzco district of Anta. Land distribution was highly controversial among the
peasants of the community. Community leaders and the administrators of the cooperatives set up
by the government’s agrarian reform program used their positions to get more land out of the
reform process than other community members.
A poor man alleged that Aurelio, the President and a former
administrator of the co-operative (already one of the richest men in
the community), had given help to widows in distress in return for
their making their land over to him at death, a practice which was
also observed in Qolquepata. The powerful people, it was said,
allied with ‘the good people’ and not with the poor … it was
widely accepted that land distribution had been carried out in an
unequal way.220
These inequalities were reflected in Watters’ survey of incomes between 1964 and 1979, where
the distinctions between rich, middle and poor peasants had become “more pronounced and the
gaps between groups wider.”221 Agrarian reform in Chilca was also accompanied by increasing
capitalist agricultural penetration, as more and more peasants began producing for the region’s
agricultural markets. As with land distribution, the richer sectors of the peasantry were best
placed to take advantage of the opening markets, further contributing to the widening inequalities
in the community.
218 Billie Jean Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses in Rural Ayacucho,” in Palmer ed., Shining Path of
Peru, 2nd Edition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994): 80-1. 219
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 82. 220
Watters, Poverty, 309. 221
Watters, Poverty, 135.
73
Various scholars agree that these changes and the unfulfilled expectations of agrarian reform
stoked bitterness among much of the peasantry in the southern Sierra. The experiences of the
peasants in the Andahuaylas region of the Department of Apurimac are similarly illustrative. In
the early 1970s, delays in implementation of the agrarian reform were jeopardizing efforts to
eliminate the area’s haciendas. Comuneros and hacienda peons grew increasingly angry as they
watched former hacendados (hacienda owners) take advantage of the confusion of pending
agrarian reforms to decapitalize their estates, selling or taking with them anything of value.222
Their anger grew as the agrarian reform authorities frustrated their desire to parcel out the
haciendas to the peons and land-hungry comuneros who invaded many of the disputed estates in
1974. Instead, Peru’s military brutally evicted the peasants and arrested many of their leaders.223
As in other parts of the Sierra, the state rejected parcelization of the former hacienda lands in
favor of massive cooperatives that were often run by outside bureaucrats or corrupt local
officials. The frequent mismanagement of these cooperatives further alienated many peasants
because some of the cooperative managers used their positions of power to increase their
personal land holdings or to steal from the cooperative’s coffers.224 Lastly, as in Ayacucho and
Cuzco, the expansion of capitalist agricultural activities that accompanied the agrarian reform
was frequently manipulated, to the detriment of the majority of peasants, by a small number of
middle-income and rich peasants. This further aggravated existing social tensions as differences
in wealth became increasingly polarized.225
The consequence of a botched and derailed agrarian reform in many areas of the southern Sierra
like Andahuaylas was that it did little to improve livelihoods of many peasants, alienating much
of the peasantry and turning many of them against the state, according to several scholars.226 In
some cases, the failures of agrarian reform also convinced peasant leaders that the impossibility
of looking to the state for deep and lasting change meant that revolutionary war the only option
222 Berg, "Sendero,” 172; and Florencia E. Mallon, "Chronicle of a Path Foretold? Velasco's Revolution,
Vanguardia Revolutionaria, and "Shining Omens" in the Indigenous Communities of Andahuaylas," in Shining and
Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995, Steve J. Stern ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998):
95; Mayer, Ugly Stories, 24. 223
See Malon, “Chronicle,” 97-109. 224
Berg, “Sendero,” 172-3. 225
Berg, “Sendero,” 173-4. 226
Mayer, “Patterns,” 153; Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 82; Berg, “Sendero,” 174.
74
left. As Andahuaylas peasant leader Lino Quintanilla concluded in the months following the
military crackdown,
[T]he peasantry’s agrarian problem and the problems afflicting the
Peruvian people will only be resolved through revolutionary war,
destroying the power of the semi-colonial bourgeois State and
constructing another power on the ruins … 227
In the end, agrarian reform appears to have done little to ease the agricultural pressure on the
peasantry in the southern Sierra. Although a significant amount of land was distributed through
agrarian reform, “the vast majority of peasants in highland Peru still [had] too little land to make
a living.”228 Investigating the local consequences of economic change and Agrarian Reform, and
its impact on peasant livelihoods in light of changes in the 20th century, appears to be crucial for
understanding why some highland peasants were willing to support or tolerate Sendero in the
early 1980s. Impacts from environmental scarcities may have combined with these processes to
aggravate grievances or motivations among some peasants to support challenger groups against
the Peruvian state like Sendero.
Research focus and research design
2.6.1. Key questions
To explore whether human pressure on the natural environment combined with factors and
processes discussed above to help cause Sendero’s uprising, this thesis examines whether
environmental and demographic change played a role in generating Peru’s rural unrest and the
type of causal role played by environmental scarcities. In no way does this thesis assume that
environmental scarcity and demographic change played a necessary or sufficient role in causing
rural unrest in Peru’s Sierra. Working within a framework of complex causation, scarcities
instead act as an INUS condition to interact with other conditions.229 The theoretical literature
227 Quoted in Mallon, “Chronicle,” 112.
228 Mayer, “Patterns,” 155; Noting the inadequacies of Agrarian Reform to solve the land problem in Peru, William
Stein writes: “It was an agrarian “reform” which built the foundation for the terrors of the 1980s and 1990s.”
William W. Stein, Deconstructing Development Discourse in Peru: A Meta-Ethnography of the Modernity Project
at Vicos (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), 471-472. 229
My methodological explanation for the causal role of environmental scarcities is founded on the INUS approach
to understanding complex causality. Due to space constraints I have not provided a full explanation of my
framework for understanding causality. Instead, this is explored in detail, along with additional methodological
75
on rural revolts surveyed in this chapter suggests that scarcities and demographic change may
have played a role in affecting the subsistence security of the peasantry, thereby helping to
motivate peasants to support rural insurgencies as revolution theorists suggest, particularly in the
context of differential economic transformation of the highlands which led to some peasants
getting richer, while others were left behind. Since environmental scarcities and demographic
change, in combination with other political-economic factors, can affect the popular living
standards of peasants, they are conceivably part of the set of INUS conditions that gave rise to
this period of revolutionary change in Peru. Unfortunately, revolution theorists offer few
specific insights into the causal role of environmental scarcities. Homer-Dixon and others who
have explored environment-conflict linkages have suggested specific ways in which
environmental stress and demographic change may cause violent conflicts such as insurgencies
and group conflict. These theoretical hypotheses suggest specific avenues for researching rural
unrest in Peru’s southern Sierra that are reflected in the study below, examining the impact of
supply and demand scarcities and the impact of structural scarcities in the D. of Chuschi.
The question of productivity constraints is of central importance in this dissertation,
attempting to analyze of the impact of resource constraints on peasant subsistence capabilities in
our local case study. Land availability in the highlands has been a long-time grievance of
peasants. Peasant access to productive resources like land is intimately connected to the question
of the state of the peasantry. The reasons for the scarcity of productive resources in the Sierra
vary considerably depending on the specific region studied. In some cases, as noted above in
section 2.5, long-term trends like modernization and the incorporation of the peasantry into the
modern capitalist economy appear to have greatly affected scarcities for the peasantry as rural
elites took advantage of the changes to seize peasant lands. As well, observers have argued that
these trends increased differentiation among the peasantry and widened wealth differentials
among sectors as certain groups of peasants benefited disproportionately from others, and gained
more access to production resources. These are enduring trends in Andean history, Steve Stern
has suggested, having contributed to peasant unrest and mobilization for decades.230 Some
concerns of critics of the Toronto Group’s approach, in the co-authored paper with Daniel Schwartz and Thomas
Homer-Dixon. See Schwartz, Deligiannis, and Homer-Dixon, “The Environment and Violent Conflict.” 230
Steve J. Stern, “New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the
Andean Experience,” in Steve J. Stern ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World:
76
scholars have suggested that peasants lacked access to adequate land resources to make a living
during this period.231 Land reform in Peru’s Sierra does not appear to have alleviated this issue
in many places, as noted above in section 2.5.1. In fact, Agrarian Reform appears to have
provoked new grievances around land, adding another layer to the accumulated grievances
surrounding access to land resources. Obviously, the highly variable nature of local productive
resources in Peru means that the sources of productivity constraints will be carefully
disentangled in this local study.
A related issue that has received little attention from scholars is the social-physical aspects of
land scarcity, like the degradation of land resources in the Sierra as a result of erosion,
salinization, or unsustainable use. Unfortunately, there is generally little data available on the
issue of soil management and soil loss in Peru’s Sierra.232 This study attempts what few scholars
have attempted – to explore the relationship between social-physical aspects of scarcity in the
Sierra and the question of peasant subsistence crises and rural unrest at the local level. These
supply-side changes to environmental resources will also be examined together with the impacts,
if any, of demand pressures from consumption and population change. The issue of population
growth in the Sierra over the past half century has been noted above by a number of scholars as a
key aspect of rural change in the Sierra. But its precise role is controversial and relatively under-
explored in local studies in Peru. Scholars acknowledge that the population of the Sierra
recovered to its pre-Conquest levels in the years following WWII, but with reduced access to
pre-Conquest land holdings. Some like William Mitchell have suggested that growing highland
populations and inheritance practices were also reducing per capita land availability, and
contributing to the large shift from rural to urban areas across Peru, patterns that he documented
in the District of Quinoa in northern Ayacucho.233
18th to 20th Centuries (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987): 5. Stern wisely councils that
“political analysis of agrarian movements requires explicit attention to internal differentiation among the peasantry.” 231
Mitchell, Peasants. 232
Stephen B. Brush, “Diversity and Change in Andean Agriculture,” in Lands at Risk in the Third World: Local-
Level Perspectives, Peter D. Little, Michael M Horowitz, with A. Endre Nyerges eds., (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1987. 233
Mitchell, Peasants.
77
Complicating the exploration of the population issue is the fact that rural populations have fallen
significantly in many parts of the Sierra over the past 50 to 60 years as increasing numbers of
Peruvians have migrated to urban areas in search of employment, educational opportunities,
etc.234 In fact, the rural population “problem” in the eyes of some Peruvian experts stems from
the lack of people in rural areas, which some claim is now hindering agricultural production and
leading to land degradation.235 Sendero’s insurgency in the south-central Sierra exacerbated the
exodus of peasants to urban areas as they sought sanctuary from violence.236 Many peasants
have also engaged in temporary or seasonal migration from rural to urban areas during this
period, finding ways to link livelihoods in their rural communities to their lives in urban
centres.237 With these complex trends in mind, this study attempts to make sense of the impacts
of the longer-term processes and interactions that preceded the current reality in Peru’s
highlands, especially the key period when rural population growth began to level off and decline
in the southern Sierra. Departments in Peru’s southern Sierra like Ayacucho have had some the
country’s highest rates of rural-urban migration over the past half century.238 Like the issue of
land availability, however, the question of population growth appears to vary regionally in the
Sierra, so this thesis focuses on specific local developments in the D. Chuschi.
Lastly, the literature review and case rationale in chapter 1 and 2 suggest that any study of the
impact of environmental scarcity on peasant livelihoods remain flexible on the issue of temporal
and analytical scale. Although the conventional wisdom for research design suggests stating the
level of analysis used in the study, the overview above suggests that any complete causal
explanation for rural unrest in Peru will encompass a complex interaction of macro and micro
234 Jane Collins, Unseasonal Migrations: The Effects of Rural Labor Scarcity in Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
U.P., 1989). 235
See Moshe Inbar and Carlos A. Llerena, “Erosion Processes in High Mountain Agricultural Terraces in Peru,”
Mountain Research and Development, 29(1), Feb. 2000: 72-79. 236
Between 1981 and 1993, Ayacucho was the only department in Peru to register a negative rate of population
growth (-0.2%). CVR, Inform, Tomo 4, 17. 237
See Karston Paerregaard, Linking Separate Worlds: Urban Migrants and Rural Lives in Peru. Berg (Oxford:
Berg, 1997); and Andrea Milan and Raul Ho, "Livelihood and Migration Patterns at Different Altitudes in the
Central Highlands of Peru," Climate and Development 6, no. 1 (2014), 69-76. 238
Mayer, "Patterns of Violence in the Andes," 155-6. The recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final
Report notes that Ayacuchanos formed the second largest migrant community in Lima’s shanty-towns, according to
Peru’s 1981 census. Of course, the reasons for rural-urban migration cannot be solely attributed to the impact of
environmental scarcities. See CVR, Inform, Volume 4, 17.
78
influences, ranging across different levels of analysis. Paige and Klaren, for example, note the
effects of international markets on the development of Peru’s agro-export industry, and the
resultant impact on peasants in the Sierra. At various times in the 19th and 20th century,
increasing global demand for wool stimulated elite capture of grazing lands from southern Sierra
communities for export markets. Similarly, Deere and Watters note the regional influence of
newly emerging dairy markets on peasant differentiation in Cajamarca and Cuzco. While this
study will explore environmental scarcities at the district and provincial level in Ayacucho, the
study also is sensitive to those causal impacts on scarcities that stretch to regional, national, or
international levels. As well, while the dissertation is primarily interested in events in Peru’s
Sierra from the 1940s to the 1980s, the review above suggests that the study remain temporally
flexible in discerning causal influences. In some cases, with demographic change or land
scarcity in the Sierra, the time-scales for causal mechanisms may operate over many decades.
Clearly, we cannot rule out the long view when disentangling the impacts of environmental
scarcities. Stern similarly notes the importance of long-term time frames when studying Andean
unrest, suggesting that we “must look at multiple time frames simultaneously – relatively short
time frames (“conjunctural” and “episodic”) to understand the recent changes that make rebellion
or insurrection more likely and possible, and to appreciate dynamic changes that emerge during
the course of violent conflicts; and longer time frames spanning centuries to understand the
historic injustices, memories, and strategies that shape goals, consciousness, and tactics of
rebels.”239 While the particular focus of the dissertation revolves around the unrest that shook
the Sierra from the 1950s to the 1980s, this study follows the causal influences to their source
where necessary.
239 Stern, “New Approaches,” 11. Elaborating on the importance of long-term frames of reference in studying
Andean peasant rebellion, Stern notes that “the precise definition of the relevant long-term frame of reference will
depend on the particular case at hand, but it should at least include the period considered relevant in the rebels’ own
historical memory, and the period during which the last enduring strategy of “resistant adaptation” was developed.
It is difficult to imagine a time scale less than a century long that meets these criteria. A method which studies
multiple time scales, including long-term ones, will not only explain better the causes and ideological characteristics
of particular rebellions and insurrections. It will also enable the student to distinguish more clearly between
genuinely new patterns of collective violence and grievance, and repetitions of historic cycles of resistance and
accommodation that occasionally included some forms of collective violence.” Stern, “New Approaches,” 13.
79
Chapter 3 The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research: Toward a
Livelihood Framework
Introduction
Building on the literature review in chapter 2, this chapter argues that progress has stalled among
qualitative environment-conflict research because the level of analysis adopted by most of this
work—the state level—is inadequate to capture the empirical complexity of environment-
conflict links on the ground. Qualitative work on environmental change-conflict links conducted
by the Toronto Group, the Bern-Zurich Group, and researchers who have followed in these
traditions has unconvincingly used a state-level of analysis. Although quantitative researchers
have begun to disaggregate their studies to the sub-state level, qualitative researchers have yet to
do so.240 The chapter proposes a detailed household-livelihood framework of analysis for future
qualitative environment-conflict research that will foster more fine-grained understanding of the
complex relationships between human-induced environmental change and violent conflict. This
framework is central to this dissertation’s research on the D. Chuschi because it allows us to
better understand the particular impacts of local-level environmental and demographic pressures,
and disentangle various structural and political influences on the livelihoods of district residents.
The chapter begins by providing a brief critique of the state-centric focus of past environment-
conflict research projects. This paves the way for the development of a household-livelihood
framework for future research. The final section of the chapter outlines the essentials of this
framework, and offers observations about its use for environment-conflict research.
240 In the past five years, disaggregated quantitative studies of environment-conflict links have emerged. See Henrik
Urdal, "Population, resources, and political violence: A Subnational Study of India, 1956–2002," Journal of Conflict
Resolution 52, no. 4 (2008), 590-617; Clionadh Raleigh and Henrik Urdal, "Climate Change, Environmental
Degradation and Armed Conflict," Political Geography 26, no. 6 (2007), 674-94; Halvard Buhaug, "The Future is
More Than Scale: A Reply to Diehl and O'Lear," Geopolitics 12, no. 1 (2007); Lars-Erik Cederman and Kristian
Skrede Gleditsch, "Introduction to Special issue on “Disaggregating Civil War”," Journal of Conflict Resolution 53,
no. 4 (2009), 487-95, and the project, Disaggregating Civil Wars, http://www.icr.ethz.ch/research/ecrp, accessed 3
Oct., 2011.
80
Environmental change and the role of the state – mediating scarcity, undermining capacity, or actively exploiting
Both the Bern-Zurich Group and the Toronto Group recognize the intermediary role played by
the state and institutions to forestall or mitigate negative social consequences before they
contribute to conflict-generating processes such as grievance formation or collective
mobilization.241 The lack of such “social ingenuity” interventions, they argue, can significantly
increase the probability that scarcities will lead to violent conflict.242 As well, regions
marginalized by the central state may lack the administrative and law-enforcing apparatus of the
state and “institutions founded on the rule of law, legitimized and accepted by local actors,”
Baechler notes, thus making them more vulnerable to the impacts of resource scarcity and less
capable of resolving environmental conflicts.243 In other cases, well-functioning, traditional
social institutions that regulate access and use of resources may be disrupted by central state
actions.244 Research indicates that when the role of traditional institutions are disrupted without
adequately replacing these institutions through an effective state presence, worsening scarcity
and an increased potential for conflict develops—a pattern that is particularly unsettling in areas
marginal to the central state.245 The consequences of a weak, ineffective, or non-existent state
presence is magnified, according to Baechler, in states with a weak civil society and a lack of
political pluralism.246
The Toronto Group also argues that environmental scarcities can weaken the state by directly
impacting state elites, by altering their relationship with the state, or by strengthening groups of
elites that can challenge the state’s power. Scarcities provide economic and political
opportunities for predatory elites to capture resource rents, ignore state dictates or laws like
taxation, or “to penetrate the state to make it do their bidding.”247 The consequences of predatory
241 The core of the chapter was published in: Tom Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research:
Toward a Livelihood Framework," Global Environmental Politics 12, no. 1 (2012), 78-100.
242 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 107-09; and Baechler, Violence, 101-104.
243 Baechler, Violence, 103.
244 Baechler, Violence, 101.
245 For an example of this pattern in Peru, see Paul Trawick, "Comedy and tragedy in the Andean commons,"
Journal of Political Ecology 9, no. 1 (2002), 35-68. See also, Elinor Ostrom, "Coping with Tragedies of the
Commons," Annual Review of Political Science 2, no. 1 (1999), 493-535.
246 Baechler, Violence, 103-4.
247 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 101-102.
81
behavior by elites can provoke defensive reactions from those who rely upon resources for their
survival, eroding trust in the state, worsening social segmentation like class and ethnic divisions,
and making it easier for challenger groups to develop.248 Thus, for this group, scarcities may not
only lead to greater immiseration, but also stoke patterns of blame among groups and break
bonds of trust within states and society.
Since the publication of the findings of the Toronto Group and the Bern Zurich Group, little
research has been done to refine their findings, in spite of calls from scholars to address
controversial or under-explored dimensions of environment-conflict research.249 Colin Kahl’s
work stands as a notable exception, making two advances. First, Kahl argues that demographic
and environmental stress (DES) can aggravate and deepen the inherent insecurity of weak states,
possibly triggering or aggravating the “security dilemma” between groups—where actions taken
by groups to ensure their security, perhaps in the face of the impacts of demographic or
environmental stress, “can set off an action-reaction spiral that leaves all parties worse off and
less secure.”250 Second, Kahl argues that DES provides state elites with opportunities to
“engineer and direct violence downward toward social groups.”251 These “top-down” dynamics
are in contrast to the “bottom-up” dynamics of much of the Toronto Group or Bern Zurich
Group’s hypotheses, where environmental scarcities, among other factors, weaken states and
societies, opening “political space for social groups to direct violence upward toward the state or
sideways toward one another.”252 Kahl’s “state exploitation” hypothesis recognizes that the
social segmentation and increasing grievances arising from DES provides both “incentives and
opportunities to instigate violence.”253 Rising grievances or growing numbers of aggrieved
citizens threaten to undermine stability and control by state elites, providing an incentive to
rulers to find a way to stabilize their base of support, “mobilize new supporters, and co-opt or
crush political opponents” to remain in power.254
248 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 102.
249 Matthew and Dabelko, “Environment”; Gleditsch and Diehl, Environmental; Schwartz, Deligiannis, and
Homer-Dixon, Environment and Violent Conflict; and Richard A Matthew, Michael Brklacich, and Bryan
McDonald, "Analyzing environment, conflict, and cooperation," Understanding Environment, Conflict, and
Cooperation (Nairobi: UNEP, 2004), 5-15.
250 Kahl, States, 47; and Homer-Dixon, Environment, 96.
251 Kahl, States, 12; and Peluso and Watts, Violent, 22-3.
252 Kahl, States, 12.
253 Kahl, States, 50.
254 Kahl, States, 50.
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Shifting the focus from the state to household livelihoods: A household-livelihood framework for environment-conflict research
The centrality of the state to this strand of environment-conflict research is both inherent in the
causal models and forms the referent object for many research efforts. The state and its stability
are the essential focus. The descent of the state into anarchy, the rise of violent groups that
threaten to overturn state order, or the rise of groups which threaten the integrity of the state—
these form the dependent variables of the environment-conflict research done by the Toronto
Group, the Bern Zurich Group, and those who have followed their approach.255 Similarly, the
social effects of scarcity, and the variables identified by scholars as interacting with and
mediating these impacts, are frequently explained in terms of their broad societal impacts—
general agricultural decline, the increasing division of groups or elites in states, etc. Much of this
research focuses almost exclusively at the state and societal level.
However, the impacts of scarcities are not inherently or exclusively felt at the state level.
Scarcities initially affect individuals, families, and communities personally and directly, before
being translated into broader state or societal effects. Localized immiseration or social impacts
may result in little or no national impacts. Conflicts may happen at levels far below the level
needed to pull a state into anarchy, or to threaten the integrity of the state or its rulers.
Researchers should not assume that impacts automatically scale upwards to impact the state,
though in some cases they may.
The state-level bias in case-study research leads to local processes of environmental scarcities,
and their local social effects, being understudied and inadequately understood by most
qualitative environment-conflict research to date.256 Scholars have not begun with an explicit
focus on the livelihoods of those studied or those who are impacted by changing demographic
and environmental conditions. Instead, the research offers underspecified generalizations or
incomplete accounts of the impact of environmental change. There is, in fact, an unspecified
black box in the causal chain of much environmental conflict research between the generation of
255 Homer-Dixon, Environment, chapter 7; Baechler, Violence, chapter 4; and Kahl, States, 30.
256 Quantitative studies of environment-conflict links faced similar problems in the past; however, in the past five
years such research is increasingly disaggregated to the sub-state level. See criticisms by Shannon O'Lear and Paul
F Diehl, "Not Drawn to Scale: Research on Resource and Environmental Conflict," Geopolitics 12, no. 1 (2007),
166-82; and responses by Buhaug, “The Future.”
83
environmental scarcities and the social effects that they cause. Within this black box are specific
impacts on people’s livelihoods of environmental scarcities and people’s adaptations to them.
These dynamics have yet to be adequately theorized.257 As a result, the models have sought to
assess the aggregate impact of individual or small-scale environmental scarcity-social effects
without a clear understanding of the local dynamics that generate them. They have sought to
understand the sum of societal impacts without understanding the individual processes that
generate them. A closer look at those livelihood processes shows a more complex picture.
The critique presented here has three important implications for the validity of existing
qualitative environment-conflict research. First, the state level of analysis has led researchers to
ignore the impacts of environmental scarcities on a variety of local conflicts and their
implications for societal and state stability. State-focused research uses a limited set of dependent
variables, emphasizing conflicts that appear to pose the greatest threat to the state. Yet this
overlooks how environmental change influences the extent and consequences of small-scale
local conflicts.258 These conflicts may only kill or injure handfuls of people and are rarely
reported accurately. They also may be difficult to document because they are often widely
dispersed and occur over many years. Over time, however, their local impacts may undermine
the fabric of society, alter migration patterns, and affect social and ethnic group solidarity and
cohesion in certain areas of states. The grievances spawned can stimulate social unrest, and
violence from local conflicts can exacerbate or condition patterns of violence during insurgencies
and civil war in ways not readily apparent to those examining the conflict from the state level.259
The patterns of interaction in many of these small-scale local conflicts can be characterized as
simple scarcity conflicts involving distributional conflicts between local groups over crucially
important renewable resources, worsened by supply and demand changes in resource
availability.260 These simple scarcity conflicts are exemplified by conflicts among cultivators,
257 Peluso and Watts, Violent, 20 offer a similar criticism of Baechler and Homer-Dixon’s work.
258 Quantitative environment-conflict researchers have used conflict databases with a violence threshold of 25 or
more battle deaths since the late 1990s. However, even this threshold probably fails to capture a significant number
of local conflicts that kill or injure a handful of people at a time.
259 Discussed in more detail below in chapter 6, 7, and 8; Catherine André and Jean-Philippe Platteau, "Land
relations under unbearable stress: Rwanda Caught in the Malthusian trap," Journal of Economic Behavior &
Organization 34, no. 1 (1998), 1-47; and Kalyvas, Logic, 390.
260 I adapt a term here from Homer-Dixon, Environment, 106-108. Homer-Dixon’s usage applied to inter-state
conflicts.
84
among fishers, or between herders and cultivators. In many cases, resource scarcities may have
social effects like those identified by Homer-Dixon at the state level, but at the individual,
household, or group level. This can include household economic decline or immiseration,
various forms of migration, or local social segmentation. Baechler also noted the possibility for
local transformational conflicts—what many also label as “modernization,” “developmental,” or
“market-penetration” conflicts—where the transformation of resources use or resource
exploitation shifts from one type of human-nature relationships to another type. It is possible to
trace how various simple scarcity conflicts lead to violent conflict, such as changes in land use
between herders and cultivators, upheaval resulting from of the introduction of export
agricultural crops, conservation enclosure conflicts, or the impacts of subtle changes brought
about by long-term patterns of market penetration into areas with little or no previous market-
based relationships.
Second, the analytical concentration on the state level among many researchers, without an
adequate understanding or examination of local processes, suggests that many of the hypotheses
in qualitative environment-conflict research are built upon shaky empirical ground. Local studies
were not aggregated to the state or societal level to determine social effects in state-level studies.
Detailed examination of data for state or societal level impacts reveal significant uncertainties
about local processes, raising questions about the validity of environment-conflict hypotheses.
The Toronto Group’s study of rebellion in Chiapas, for example, marshaled a variety of data that
demonstrated linkages between environmental scarcities and conflict.261 Data limitations
ultimately forced the authors to rely mostly on aggregate state level data and episodic local data
to prove their thesis,262 a point some critics have seized upon to question their conclusions.263
Although space limitations preclude a detailed examination of the limitations of the Chiapas
case, the lack of local data in the study raises questions about the validity of the analysis. The
Chiapas study merely suggests that environmental scarcities played an important role. It fails,
261 Philip Howard and Thomas F Homer-Dixon, Environmental scarcity and violent conflict: the case of Chiapas,
Mexico, American Association for the Advancement of Science (Toronto, 1995).
262 Howard and Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Chiapas, Mexico, 8 and
footnote 17.
263 See the critique by Hartmann, "Will the Circle be Unbroken?"; and Aaron Bobrow-Strain, "Between a ranch and
a hard place: Violence, scarcity, and meaning in Chiapas, Mexico," in Violent Environments, ed. Nancy Lee Peluso
and Michael Watts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. P., 2001), 155-185. Both seize on data gaps in the Toronto Group’s
Chiapas case. But a careful reading of Bobrow-Strain fails to refute Howard and Homer-Dixon’s 1995 analysis.
85
however, to make a convincing case supporting the hypothesized causal mechanisms. As with
other cases by the Toronto Group, the Bern-Zurich Group, and scholars such as Colin Kahl, the
extensive use of broad-scale or episodic data provides strong indications that scarcities cause
negative social effects and contribute to social violence.264 However, data gaps and assumptions
of trends weaken the analysis; the hypotheses would be more convincingly evaluated with
sustained and detailed examination at lower levels of analysis. By contrast, many qualitative
studies on environmental conflict by political ecologists do a better job of outlining local social
effects of human pressure on the environment, due to extensive use of local field studies,
ethnographic methodologies, and concerns about social justice. Although much of the political
ecology tradition significantly under-theorizes processes of violent conflict,265 future qualitative
work on environmental change-conflict linkages could benefit from their methodological
approaches.
A third implication of the livelihood critique made here is that it may have led some
environment-conflict researchers to over-predict the likelihood of environmental scarcities
causing conflict. A state level of analysis underestimates the myriad ways in which local
stakeholders respond to and adapt to the impacts of environmental scarcities on their livelihoods,
often in ways that ameliorate negative impacts. State-level models have underestimated local
level agency. Broad Neo-Malthusian accounts are particularly vulnerable to this criticism,
because they are excessively linear in their presentation of how scarcities can lead to conflict and
they accept as generalizable causal models that more likely describe special conditions.266 Robert
Ford notes that numerous observers of agro-ecological and demographic trends in Rwanda
predicted imminent collapse for over forty years, “but it never happened when and like they
predicted,” although “others were able to show that considerable coping was possible and
actually achieved.”267 Assumptions of linear relationships between scarcity and negative social
264 Examinations of the Bern Zurich Group’s case studies and Kahl’s cases are beyond the scope of this chapter;
however, a state-frame of analysis generally prevails in their work as well. See Tor A Benjaminsen, "Does Supply-
Induced Scarcity Drive Violent Conflicts in the African Sahel? The case of the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali,"
Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 6 (2008), 819-36 for a critique of Baechler and Kahl.
265 Kahl, States, 25.
266 See, for example, Robert D Kaplan, "The coming anarchy," Atlantic Monthly 273, no. 2 (1994), 44-76.
267 Robert E Ford and Kim T Adamson, "The Population-Environment Nexus and Vulnerability Assessment in
Africa," GeoJournal 35, no. 2 (1995), 212. Michael Thompson noted similar assumptions of impending disaster
that never happened in analyses of Nepal’s environmental situation. See Michael Thompson, “Not Seeing the
86
effects made it seem that Rwanda was always on the edge of abyss, obscuring the fact that
predicting the outbreak of violence in Rwanda required focusing on the interaction between the
local social effects of environmental scarcities and particular economic, political, and cultural
variables.268 Elinor Ostrom, in critiquing how similar ‘tragedy of the commons’ arguments over-
predict resource destruction, also notes that such broad-level models essentially accept “extreme
assumptions” as general theories.269 Broad-level Neo-Malthusian models may accurately
describe reality in those few cases when the conditions are right. However, a better
understanding of local level empirical reality demonstrates that the predictive utility of state-
level models of environment-conflict is probably less frequent than many believe.
The final section of this chapter seeks to correct the shortcomings in past environmental change-
conflict research by arguing for the use of a household-livelihood framework as an initial level of
analysis needed to understand the impact of environmental change on rural populations and,
thereby, to conflict. The state of livelihoods over time and the factors that influence livelihood
adaptation and change then become the analytical starting points for research on environmental
change and conflict. Local, regional, national, and international levels of analysis are then
integrated into this initial analysis of household-livelihood change to understand how and when
conflict will emerge. This allows for a finer appreciation of how influences on rural livelihoods
change over time. This approach also helps disentangle the underappreciated possibilities of
human agency among those confronting the impacts of environmental change.
Over the past ten years, household-livelihood analysis has entered the mainstream with
development practitioners, population-environment researchers, and climate change adaptation
researchers.270 However, only limited steps have been taken to integrate a household-livelihood
framework into environment-conflict research. Early work in this area can be traced to Indra de
People for the Population: a Cautionary Tale from the Himilaya,” in Environment and Security: Discourses and
Practices, eds. Miriam R. Lowi and Brian R. Shaw (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 192-206.
268 Baechler, Violence.
269 Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), 183-4. I would like to thank Ronald Mitchell for pointing out how my
argument here parallels aspects of Ostrom’s critique about the tragedy of the commons.
270 See “Livelihoods Connect,” Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK:
http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/dossiers/livelihoods; de Sherbinin et al 2008; and International Institute for
Sustainable Development, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, and Stockholm
Environment Institute 2003.
87
Soysa and Nils Petter Gleditsch, who argued that poverty stimulates rural conflict, hurting rural
livelihoods and entitlements, and further aggravating the poverty and immiseration cycle.271
Facing livelihood loss, subsistence crises, or “the hopelessness of surviving at the margins,”
many turn to criminality, banditry, or forms of collective violence like rural rebellions.272 Lief
Ohlsson argued that, although poverty can generate conflict, it is the processes that lead to the
rapid loss of rural dwellers’ livelihoods or their inability to attain or maintain adequate
livelihoods that prove key. These forces directly cause poverty for many rural dwellers.273 To
Ohlsson, the loss of livelihood is the “missing link” in describing “causal mechanisms linking
both poverty and environmental factors to conflict.”274 Researchers must detail those processes
that lead to increasing inequalities and rapidly cause people to lose their livelihoods, leaving
deprivation and marginalization in their wake. Since many rural livelihoods depend on
agriculture, Ohlsson argued, the failure of agriculture to sustain rural livelihoods is crucial.
Environmental and demographic factors such as the degradation of arable land and population
growth—particularly youth bulges—are important causes of livelihood loss, poverty, and, hence,
conflict.275 Ohlsson returned the focus to the causes of environmental scarcities as the sources of
livelihood loss, compared to de Soysa and Gleditsch’s political-economic arguments.
Importantly, though, both perspectives focus on the rapid loss of livelihoods as a key causal
process.
Following Ohlsson, a joint International Institute for Sustainable Development and International
Union for the Conservation of Nature (IISD/IUCN) Task Force expanded on the ways in which
livelihood changes affect the security of local communities. They define livelihoods as the
“activities undertaken to translate resources—whether natural or human—into a means for living
at the group or individual level, including the protection of goods and services.”276 Access to
natural resources is crucial, they write, because it underpins all livelihoods. Environmental
scarcity trends or sudden environmental shocks imperil livelihoods, according to the Task Force.
271 Indra de Soysa et al., To Cultivate Peace: Agriculture in a World of Conflict, International Peace Research
Institute (Oslo, 1999), 16 and 32.
272 de Soysa et al., To Cultivate Peace, 35-36.
273 Ohlsson, Livelihood, 6-7.
274 Ohlsson, Livelihood, 3.
275 Ohlsson, Livelihood, 6-7.
276 Richard Anthony Matthew, Mark Halle, and Jason Switzer, Conserving the Peace: Resources, livelihoods and
security (International Institute for Sustainable Development Winnipeg, Canada, 2002), 15-16
88
The impact of these trends or shocks on livelihoods depends upon the degree of vulnerability of
those affected, which is partly a function of their “exposure to harm, and capacity to endure and
recover.”277 Groups and individuals respond to trends and shocks to their livelihoods by adopting
various coping strategies, including “development of new livelihoods, increased demand for
productivity from the remaining livelihoods, conflict or migration in search of additional
resources, or cooperation and trading with other groups.”278
The Task Force report’s distinction between shocks and changing trends extended Ohlsson’s
focus on sudden shocks to livelihoods. Shocks resulting from natural disasters are certainly
important causes of livelihood loss, but so are more subtle, long-term changes in the natural
resource base upon which many rural livelihoods depend, such as degradation and depletion of
natural resources, gradual reduction in resource availability due to increasing consumption or
population growth, and changes in resource availability for specific groups due to distributional
changes. People use various strategies to adapt to livelihood changes and the ability to adapt is
partly a function of the underlying vulnerability of the livelihoods in question. Finally, the Task
Force recognized that a linear relationship does not exist between environmental scarcities, their
impact on livelihoods, and negative livelihood outcomes.
A deeper examination of the livelihood literature and recent research on resilience, vulnerability,
and adaptation allows development of a more comprehensive framework involving rural
household livelihood as an important component of environment-conflict research.279 At the core
of this framework are the livelihood resources that make up household assets, capabilities, and
entitlements—the dimensions of vulnerability which influence how households use those assets
to respond to external pressures, and the strategies employed by households to reallocate land,
labor, and capital resources in response to change, opportunities, and limitations (see Figure
6).280 A household is essentially a “social group which resides in the same place, shares the same
277 Matthew, Halle, and Switzer, Conserving, 16-17.
278 Matthew, Halle, and Switzer, Conserving, 17.
279 Coleen Vogel, "Foreword: Resilience, vulnerability and adaptation: A cross-cutting theme of the International
Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change," Global Environmental Change 3, no. 16 (2006),
235-36, and other authors in this special issue.
280 Annelies Zoomers, ed., Land and Sustainable Livelihood in Latin America (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical
Institute, KIT Publishers, 2001), 15.
89
meals, and makes joint or coordinated decisions over resource allocation and income pooling.”281
The people and activities in a household encompass the capabilities of the household, drawing
upon the portfolio of assets available to the household and its community.282 Scholars recognize
five primary asset categories for households: human assets, social assets, physical assets,
financial assets, and natural assets.283 Traditional environment-conflict research has mostly
focused on describing natural and physical assets, and looked to the state or institutions for an
accounting of financial or human assets. Ethnographic research and micro-studies in
development research have been effective in pointing to the importance of social assets for
household livelihood efforts.284 In traditional highland districts like Chuschi, for example,
reciprocal networks of labour exchange, called minka and ayni are crucial for household survival
and variable labour requirements. Anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell described these processes at
work in the D. Chuschi in the early 1970s: “minka is when an individual calls for aid, usually in
the form of labor of some kind, and those who respond to his call are “lending ayni,” for which
they expect repayment in comparable labour or service … A strict accounting is kept of debts
and credits. The comuneros who is ostracized from participating in the mutual aid network
cannot survive without recourse to cash for hired labor, and most comuneros do not participate in
the cash economy of the nation.”285 Households draw upon a range of assets and capabilities as
they strive to meet their various consumption and economic necessities.286
281 Frank Ellis, "Household Strategies and Rural Livelihood Diversification," The Journal of Development Studies
35, no. 1 (1998), 6.
282 Robert Chambers and Gordon Conway, "Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st
Century. 296," Institute of Development Studies: IDS discussion paper, no. 296 (1991), 7.
283 Alex De Sherbinin et al., "Rural household demographics, livelihoods and the environment," Global
Environmental Change 18, no. 1 (2008), 40.
284 See, for example, Mayer, Articulated, chapter 4.
285 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 167-68.
286 Zoomers, Land, 14.
90
Figure 6: Rural Household Livelihood Framework for Environment-Conflict Research
In developing a livelihood strategy, household decision makers are influenced by contextual and
structural factors. Contextual conditions and trends include history, climate, agro-ecology,
seasonality, demographic change, etc. These factors often operate over long temporal periods.
They are often exogenous to the household or national context and can have transformative
impacts on household-livelihood resources. For example, the steep slopes and easily eroded soils
of mountain ecosystems condition the livelihood opportunities of those living in mountainous
regions.287 Structural and process factors also influence household-livelihood resources. This
refers to some of the familiar structural and process dimensions discussed by Homer-Dixon and
Baechler where state or institutional capacities alter or transform the impacts of environmental
scarcities. In this case, structural and process factors can include a wide range of man-made
287 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 105.
Diagram created from: DFID 1999; Scoones 1998; Collinson 2003; Chambers and Conway 1991; Adger 2006.
91
influences from governments, markets, laws, policies, investment and trade relationships, and
civil society or international organizations. These forces can affect and condition the ways in
which households use and develop their livelihood assets and can mediate the types of livelihood
strategies employed. They also operate at various scales, from the local to the international,
complicating attempts to disentangle their roles and impacts.
The assets, capabilities, and entitlements of rural households, as influenced by contextual and
structural factors, determine the sensitivity of households to hazardous conditions and the
household’s capacity to respond to risk, shocks, and stress—in essence, the household’s
vulnerability and resilience to change.288 The impacts of resource scarcities remain important in
determining vulnerabilities. However, such scarcities affect only part of a household’s
endowments. The impact of scarcities on livelihoods must be examined in the context of other
factors. Livelihood vulnerability thus has two crucial aspects that must be considered in any
analysis: the external dimensions involving contextual or structural factors and the stresses and
shocks to which livelihoods are subject and the internal dimensions involving their ability to
cope or adapt.289 The likelihood of a household experiencing a particular stress or shock,
combined with the particular assets and attributes of the household determines the degree of
exposure and sensitivity of that household to the risk of a given environmental change. The
specific strategies and abilities of a household to adapt or cope is determined by various drivers
that include both the household’ attributes and broader conditions, processes, and institutions.290
In particular, because the interaction of political and economic processes in societies help
determine the distribution of power and wealth between groups and individuals, and “the
processes that create, sustain and transform these relationships over time,” a close relationship
exists between vulnerability and power.291 Political-economic processes that disempower
288 Ellis, “Household,” 14; Barry Smit and Johanna Wandel, "Adaptation, Adaptive Capacity and Vulnerability,"
Global Environmental Change 16, no. 3 (2006), 286; and W Neil Adger, "Vulnerability," Global Environmental
Change 16, no. 3 (2006), 268-81.
289 Chambers and Conway, Sustainable, 10; and Adger, “Vulnerability,” 270.
290 Smit and Wandel, “Adaptation,” 286-287; and John Pender, "Rural population growth, agricultural change, and
natural resource management in developing countries: A review of hypotheses and some evidence from Honduras,"
in Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World, ed. Nancy
Birdsall, Allen C Kelley, and Steven Sinding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 355.
291 Sarah Collinson, ed., Power, Livelihoods and Conflict: Case Studies in Political Economy Analysis for
Humanitarian Action, Humanitarian Policy Group Report 13 (London: Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas
Development Institute London, 2003), 3; and Adger, “Vulnerability,” 270.
92
households can greatly affect their vulnerability and condition the “space of vulnerability” for
households.292 Finally, determining livelihood vulnerability requires that we examine how
household assets and capabilities change over time, both as a result of the changing
circumstances of household activities, and as a result of the ever changing influences of contexts
and transforming structures.
Ellis’ work on how households diversify in the face of change provides important insights into
how the nature of external environmental change influences the type of livelihood strategy
households adopt in response. He distinguishes “ex-ante risk management from ex-post coping
with crisis.”293 In the face of natural disasters or sudden, unexpected environmental events,
households turn to coping strategies to deal with the shocks to their livelihoods.294 Coping
happens during or after the event, and is oriented towards preserving existing livelihoods in the
face of unexpected disruptions.295 A variety of specific coping strategies are employed by
households to deal with shocks, including migrating, depleting assets, making claims on other
assets, protecting existing assets, reducing current consumption, or shifting to lower quality
consumption. Some, like Ohlsson, note that livelihood shocks can drive members of households
to cope by joining criminal networks or insurgency groups. Household responses to slow stresses
or risks, by contrast, differ from after-the-fact shock coping strategies. “Stresses are pressures
which are typically continuous and cumulative, predictable and distressing,” writes Ellis, “such
as seasonal shortages, rising populations, or declining resources.”296 In this case, households take
the deliberate decision to adapt in the face of the on-going risks or stresses to make permanent
changes to their livelihoods.297 Households or individuals may use one or more adaptation
strategies, including temporary or seasonal migration, intensification or extensification of
agricultural production, making claims on other assets, depleting assets, hoarding or protecting
existing assets, stinting, or the use of diversification or complicating strategies.298 In both cases,
292 Collinson, Power, 3; and Michael J Watts and Hans G Bohle, "The Space of Vulnerability: The Causal
Structure of Hunger and Famine," Progress in Human Geography 17, no. 1 (1993), 52-53.
293 Ellis, “Household,” 13-14; and Smit and Wandel, “Adaptation,” 287.
294 Ellis, “Household,” 10.
295 Zoomers 2001, 15.
296 Ellis 1998, 10-11.
297 Zoomers, Land, 15.
298 Ellis, “Household,” 11.
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the capacity to adapt or cope is not static, but is “flexible and respond[s] to changes in economic,
social, political and institutional conditions over time.”299
Finally—and perhaps most importantly for environment-conflict research—adaptation and
coping strategies can have a range of positive and negative outcomes for household livelihoods:
“positive if it is by choice, reversible, and increases security; negative if it is of necessity,
irreversible, and fails to reduce vulnerability.”300 Households seek a low-risk framework in
which to operate. But risk adaptation strategies can reduce some risks while increasing others.
An adaptation strategy might reduce the risk of starvation or declining agricultural yields by
increasing agricultural intensification on household plots or by extending household production
to marginal lands in and around the household’s community. But this may increase the risk of
shocks like landslides, as steep marginal lands are put into production or land cover that
preserves vulnerable land is cleared. Or, such an approach may increase gradual land erosion and
nutrient loss in existing holdings. A risk adaptation strategy might satisfy short-term risks or
stresses, while also reducing the natural resilience of the natural assets necessary for long-term,
sustainable household livelihoods. Thus, there are feedback loops from coping strategies and
stress/risk management strategies to underlying contexts or conditions. Over time, risk
adaptation strategies can have significant detrimental consequences on the underlying natural
environment which households rely upon, as has happened in many parts of Haiti because of
extensive deforestation on steep hillsides. Similarly, following Homer-Dixon, livelihood coping
or adaptation strategies can also have an impact on transforming structures and processes,
increasing the costs of government or policy activities, or providing opportunities for powerful
sectors of a society to manipulate the consequences of these livelihood strategies for their own
purposes, and thereby undermine markets and other social institutions in their wake. Scholars
need to begin to disentangle the range of outcomes of adaptation and coping strategies for
environment-conflict research, including both positive and negative consequences.
Although some environment-conflict scholars like Ohlsson have noted the implications of coping
strategies in the face of livelihood shocks, the consequences of strategies of household adaptation
to environmental and demographic change for environment-conflict analysis have not been
299 Smit and Wandel, “Adaptation,” 287.
300 Ellis, “Household,” 14-15.
94
adequately analyzed. In fact, it is likely that rural household livelihoods more often adapt to
stresses and risks—particularly those emerging from developing environmental scarcities—than
cope with shocks. Yet, the implications of household adaptation strategies and the social effects
of positive or negative livelihood outcomes that emerge from these adaptations deserve more
careful examination by environment-conflict scholars.
Understanding household diversification strategies, for example, helps illustrate how a more
fine-grained understanding of livelihood adaptations enriches environmental change-conflict
research. Diversification adaptations are widespread among rural people as a way of dealing with
environmental and demographic stresses and risks.301 When employing a diversification strategy,
households combine various production activities to reduce risk, such as simultaneously
diversifying their cropping, engaging in non-farm income-generating activities, and receiving
remittances from migration.302 However, such multi-pronged approaches complicate the ability
of researchers to determine the social effects of environmental scarcities in at least three ways.
First, when households facing environmental scarcities adopt diversification strategies, outcomes
may differ from those expected by environment-conflict scholars. When changes in a
household’s assets are traced over time, we often see that gradually-building environmental
scarcities stimulate diversification responses by rural households, leading to economic activities
that forestall immiseration—undercutting the linear relationship between scarcities and
household immiseration that much of the literature proposes.303 Or, diversification may only
temporarily forestall immiseration until the impacts of environmental scarcities are impossible to
alleviate by other adaptations. Scholars must be aware of these multiple possible outcomes and
avoid assuming any direct linear relationship between scarcities and negative social effects.
Second, diversification by households experiencing environmental scarcities may generate
unanticipated negative social effects, often far removed geographically or temporally from where
the scarcity-household interactions took place. Different types of migration (temporary,
permanent, return, repeat, circular), for example, have long been a key part of diversification
301 Chambers and Conway, Sustainable, 16.
302 Ellis, “Household,” 14-15.
303 Brush, “Diversity” 271.
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strategies employed by rural households facing environmental and demographic change.304
Homer-Dixon and Baechler have noted how environmental scarcity-induced migration can lead
to social stresses and contribute to group-identity conflicts.305 These accounts emphasize,
however, how environmental scarcity-induced permanent migration is leading to conflicts in
receiving areas. This is only one of many possible types of scarcity-migration relationships.
From the household-livelihood perspective, it is evident that households use a variety of
migration diversification strategies to deal with scarcities. The negative social effects of these
strategies can be found in both receiving areas and areas of origin. Temporary or semi-permanent
migration to urban or frontier areas, for example, may expose migrants to radical ideologies and
mobilizing influences. Upon return, migrants may bring these influences back with them to their
areas of origin, reducing subsequent social stability in these areas.306 Similarly, families often
send members to urban areas for education opportunities or to find wage employment to return
remittances. Such rural-urban migrants are possible targets for radical groups or radical
ideologies spread through urban educational institutions, unions, or social groups. In Peru in the
1970s and 1980s, many youths targeted for recruitment by the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group
were young rural migrants to urban areas seeking educational or employment opportunities.
Once radicalized, these recruits returned to their rural homes to prepare the groundwork for
insurgency.307 Negative impacts on the natural resource base in the areas of origin of many
migrants are also evident as a result of migration diversification strategies. Studies have shown
that migration can increase environmental scarcities in some areas, because migration-induced
labor shortages make it impossible for households to maintain natural assets like farm terraces,
speeding soil erosion while increasing livelihood vulnerability for households.308 The empirical
304 Ellis, “Household,” 70-73; de Sherbinin et al., “Rural Household,” 45-46; Richard E Bilsborrow, "Migration,
Population Change, and the Rural Environment," Environmental Change and Security Project Report 8, no. 1
(2002), 77-78; and Robert McLeman and Barry Smit, "Migration as an Adaptation to Climate Change," Climatic
change 76, no. 1-2 (2006), 31-53.
305 Homer-Dixon, Environment, 93-96; and Baechler, Violence, 92-96.
306 See Benjaminsen, “Does Supply-Induced Scarcity,” 829-830.
307 Degregori, “Harvesting,’ and Palmer, Shining Path.
308 Bilsborrow, “Migration,” 37; Moshe Inbar and Carlos A. Llerena, “Erosion Processes in High Mountain
Agricultural Terraces in Peru,” Mountain Research and Development, 29(1), Feb. 2000: 72-79. See also: Paolo
Tarolli, Federico Preti, Nunzio Romano, “Terraced landscapes: From an old best practice to a potential hazard for
soil degradation due to land abandonment,” Anthropocene 6, June 2014: 10–25. de Sherbinin et al. note that
“remittances may have negative impacts on the environment by increasing investment in environmentally
detrimental practices such as extensive pasturage or the transformation of agricultural lands into peri-urban real
estate.” de Sherbinin et al., “Rural Household,” 46.
96
consequences of diversification strategies like migration are considerable. Scholars must
examine each case in detail from the household-livelihood perspective to untangle the
consequences of livelihood adaptation to environmental scarcities.
Finally, a detailed examination of patterns of livelihood diversification in the face of
environmental scarcities can shed lights on the attributes of households that use these strategies,
which households are vulnerable to the impact of environmental scarcities, and how differences
in patterns of environmental scarcity help condition household diversification strategies. The
impacts of scarcities are not felt equally by all rural households, given the large variations in
assets, capabilities, and entitlements. However, existing environment-conflict research has done
little to differentiate its analysis of the impacts of environmental scarcities on rural households.
Livelihood scholars recognize that patterns of differentiation vary globally and by asset
holdings.309 Some have argued that diversification in Asia and Latin America displays a U-
shaped association between level of income diversification and level of income:310 “households
with little land have become integrated into labor markets as wage workers, and agriculture is
now a small component of income, being mainly for self-consumption; medium peasants are less
reliant on off-farm income; and better-off households are diversified, but in a variety of activities
ranging from wage-work to self-employment and investment in small business.”311 Patterns in
Africa, by contrast, are somewhat different, with overall levels of diversification lower than in
Asia, though non-farm income sources like remittances are higher in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa
bordering South Africa. These patterns suggest that the impact of environmental scarcities on
diversification is also strongly affected by variation in access to markets and the degree of
household access to infrastructure, services, and institutional assistance, like roads, market
services, supplies, agricultural extension services, power, etc.312 Where land is abundant or
adequate for household livelihoods, the limits to diversification may be markets and services for
rural households.
309 Ellis, “Household,” 10.
310 Ellis, “Household,” 10; and Kirsten Appendini and Annelies Zoomers, "Land and Livelihood: What Do We
Know, and What Are the Issues," in Land and Sustainable Livelihood in Latin America, ed. Annelies Zoomers
(Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, KIT Publishers, 2001), 34, footnote 11.
311 Appendini, "Land,” 27.
312 Ellis, “Household,” 10.
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Ultimately, environment-conflict research should do more than diagnose how and why
environmental and demographic change contributes to conflict. It should offer scholars and
policymakers insights into what interventions would be most effective at mitigating the negative
social effects of scarcities. Integrating and exploring the implications of a livelihood framework
to environment-conflict analysis offers a crucial first step toward this goal.
Effectively integrating a livelihood framework into environment-conflict research, however,
requires researchers to surmount several obstacles. First, data problems abound at the local level,
in the collection of local agro-ecological and livelihood data and in the distribution and use of
this data by researchers and policymakers. Second, local studies need to work across level of
analyses and be scaled-up to assess whether there are wider impacts on stability and scarcity.
Assessing impacts across scales poses significant analytic challenges. Finally, the high degree of
interactivity and multi-causality in analyzing the impact of environmental scarcities on
household livelihoods makes it difficult to assess the relative influence of different factors and
processes.313 Considerable ink has been spilled over the past fifteen years on methodological
debates in environment-conflict research.314 Yet, beyond agreement that diversity in research
methods can help map causal mechanisms and test hypothesized relationships, no solution has
been found for the difficult problem of differentiating causal primacy among diverse processes,
factors, and drivers. A new methodology or ontology for researchers may be needed, perhaps
based upon complexity theory and complex modeling of the type used by social-ecological
systems research.315
Conclusion
This chapter argues that the state level of analysis that has dominated qualitative environment-
conflict research appears to have generated considerable uncertainty about the validity of
hypothesized connections and considerable under-specification about the myriad pathways that
exist in human-environmental change interactions. This chapter has proposed a household-
livelihood framework for future research to correct some of these problems. Such an approach
313 See Schwartz, Deligiannis, and Homer-Dixon, Environment and Violent Conflict.
314 Levy, "Is the Environment a National Security Issue?; Homer-Dixon, Environment, Gleditsch and Diehl,
Environmental; and Schwartz, Deligiannis, and Homer-Dixon, Environment and Violent Conflict.
315 See Carl Folke, "Resilience: The Emergence of a Perspective for Social–Ecological Systems Analyses," Global
environmental change 16, no. 3 (2006), 253-67.
98
will also lead to a better appreciation of the many previously-ignored local violent conflicts that
have their roots in human-environmental change interactions.
The household-livelihood framework outlined above provides a heuristic guide for field research
in the D. Chuschi discussed in the following chapters, as we attempt to reconstruct historical
changes in household livelihoods over many decades. The data requirements for modeling
household livelihood decision making are substantial; attempting to do so for entire communities
and then reconstruct these patterns historically is impossible, particularly in Peru’s Sierra, where
little historical household data is available. While a detailed application of the household-
livelihood framework may be useful for future studies, it was not possible to rigorously apply the
framework during fieldwork in the D. Chuschi. The historical trend data is largely non-existent;
instead, we have created snapshots of household livelihood conditions using data from different
periods, both from archival research and ethnographic field interviews. The framework thus
provides a crucial ordering function to the project’s field data, ensuring that questions about
changing household subsistence survival are central to the discussion in the following chapters.
The framework also helps illustrate the key structural constraints and opportunities that
conditioned household decision-making in the D. Chuschi in the decades before the Shining Path
insurgency.
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Chapter 4 Historical Structural Changes and Transformations in Rio Pampas
Affecting Natural Assets and Livelihoods in Chuschi and Quispillaccta
Introduction
In order to understand if households in the D. Chuschi were facing increasing livelihood pressure
in the decades before Sendero’s uprising, this thesis will first explore long-term historical
structural changes and transformations affecting peasant livelihoods and natural assets. In the D.
Chuschi, changes in the availability of household assets operated in the context of changing
structural conditions to lead small-holder farmers in Quispillaccta and Chuschi to adjust
household livelihood strategies in ways that contributed to inter-community conflict. One of the
most important household assets is in the natural asset category, and comprises land and water
necessary for growing crops and raising livestock. For farmers whose livelihoods largely depend
upon what they can produce, the availability or scarcity of land has been crucially important in
moderating household livelihood strategies. Until well into the twentieth century, there were few
livelihood alternatives for residents in Chuschi and Quispillaccta other than small-holder farming
and herding. Patterns of change over time in land assets and the creation of new and competing
entitlements for assets thus provide insight into crucial mechanisms of livelihood change over
time in the two communities, and social conflicts these changes helped to spawn.
Changes in assets and entitlements were particularly important later in the 19th and 20th century
when key transformations in economic, demographic, and political factors began to alter the
structural context for small-holder farmers in Chuschi and Quispillaccta. However,
understanding patterns of change in land and water assets and entitlements over time requires
tracing developments to the pre-Colonial period, when the Incas transformed ethnic settlement in
the Rio Pampas in ways that heightened conflict among communities in the area. Broad
transforming structural processes like Spanish Colonialism and economic shifts that led to
resource capture by mestizo elites also dramatically altered settlement patterns and reduced
arable land for communities, pressures only partially offset by the dramatic crash in indigenous
populations in Peru that accompanied Spanish Conquest. Indigenous populations in the area
would take centuries to rebuild to pre-Conquest levels.
100
Conquest led to the creation of new and competing entitlements to natural assets in Quispillaccta
and Chuschi. Spanish elites and the Catholic Church appropriated some of the best agricultural
land, codifying their control of these resources in the new colonial state and through the
establishment of highland estates. This process continued at various times in the following
centuries, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century as various export-led commodity booms
created incentives for other elites to purchase or capture community lands. These highland
estates on lands claimed by communities since pre-Colombian times further complicated
ownership entitlements in some areas by housing generations of serfs on the estates who
themselves developed cultural identities as workers of the land and expectations of entitlements
over estate lands – lands that were still claimed by the surrounding communities.
By the twentieth century, regional economic developments and growing populations in both
communities reduced land per capita and helped to alter settlement patterns in the two
communities in a way that heightened inter-community conflict. Reduced cultivated land
availability in the district, in lower elevation areas near the Rio Pampas, combined with growing
prices for livestock and other livelihood opportunities to stimulate a spread of settlement patterns
in the two communities to higher elevation areas, where new permanent settlements heightened
conflicts over uncertain community boundaries and rights to contested land holdings. In some
cases, communities began to come into conflict with former plantation serfs. As plantations
were sold or abandoned, competing claims to the assets arose between communities claiming
original ownership to the lands and former plantation serfs who had worked the land for several
generations. In other cases, the communities began to agitate to recover entitlements to lands
whose output had been devoted to the Catholic Church. These conflicts helped shape fights over
land and water assets in the twentieth century. This story is outlined in the following field work
chapters 4-8,
Chapter 4 outlines how elite land capture and historical structural changes impacted livelihoods
of people living in the area from pre-Conquest to the end of Spanish colonialism. The chapter
also argues that existing accounts of rural change in the D. Chuschi underemphasize the impact
of elite capture of cultivated and grazing lands, compared to other areas in Ayacucho, and
thereby present an incomplete understanding about how elite capture of district lands negatively
impacted livelihoods and conflicts in the district. By the time researchers first arrived to study
the district in the mid-1960s, few elite landowners were left. Landholding seemed particularly
101
egalitarian and free from elite domination, compared to other areas in Ayacucho. As new land
reforms swept away the last vestiges of elite land control, including lands controlled by the
Catholic Church, the District seemed largely free from the influence of abusive elites. This
chapter and chapter 5 argue that this was partly an illusion – that the pernicious impacts of past
elite resource capture were still stimulating conflict in the district, particularly conflict between
district communities. Chapter 4 focuses in particular on the livelihood impact of elite capture of
cultivated lands in the D. Chuschi, while chapter 5 examines the capture of district grazing lands
and conflictual efforts by communities to regain control of these areas from the 1800s to the
1980s.
Natural asset capture and entitlement capture in Western Cangallo – Pre-Conquest to 20th Century
4.2.1. Pre-Colonial and Colonial developments
The patterns of change in natural asset holding and competition over inherently limited
cultivated land in the steep valleys of Pampas River basin began in the pre-colonial era and were
significantly altered by Spanish colonial exploitation and reforms. More than a half century
before the Spanish arrived in Peru, competition between the Inca empire and the Chanka and
associated tribes in Southern Peru led to the rearrangement of tribal groups inhabiting the Rio
Pampas region. The Andahuaylas region, east of central Ayacucho, was the stronghold of the
Chanka, and their influence spread west to the Pampas River. Various independent groups
inhabited the Pampas River valley after the collapse of the Wari state, and some may have
sometimes associated with the Chanka when it suited their purpose, including during the
Chanka’s struggle with the Incas in the 15th century.316 The Inca’s defeat of the Chanka in the
316 Brian S Bauer and Lucas C Kellett, "Cultural Transformations of the Chanka Homeland (Andahuaylas, Peru)
During the Late Intermediate Period (Ad 1000–1400)," Latin American Antiquity 21, no. 1 (2010), 109; Frank
Meddens and Cirilo Vivanco Pomacanchari, "The Late Intermediate Period Ceramic Traditions of Ayacucho,
Apurimac, and Huancavelica: Current Thoughts on the Chanca and Other Regional Polities," Ñawpa Pacha: Journal
of Andean Archaeology 38, no. 1 (2018), 47. A widely accepted account by Luis Lubreras argued that the entire
Pampas Valley, from its headwaters in the western cordillera of the Andes to the Apurímac River in the east, had
long been a stronghold of the Chanka ‘Confederation.’ However, recent archeological work in the area, cited above,
has led to a re-assessment of Lumbreras’s arguments of widespread Chanka control of the Rio Pampas, including
areas around the D. Chuschi. Rather than a Chanka-led confederation or proto-state in the area, there is persuasive
evidence that the Pampas valley was inhabited by numerous competing groups who sometimes cooperated with the
Chanka when it served their purposes. This conclusion supports early archeological work around the D. Chuschi
which failed to find evidence of a Chanka presence in the area. See Isbell, To Defend, 62. Lubreras’ argument can
102
late 15th century led to expanded Inca control over the Andes and dislocation for the Chanka and
associated peoples.317 The Incas integrated the defeated Chankas and associated groups into
their expanding empire, resettling many Pampas River valley tribes to other parts of the empire,
while bringing in other loyal tribes (mitimae) to settle vacated areas of the Pampas River
basin.318 According to Klaren, settler groups “replaced rebellious groups and others whose
loyalty was suspect and had been deported to other settled regions for re-education and
reintegration into the empire.”319
This practice of shuffling ethnic groups around the empire was a central strategy for maintaining
Inca control over their empire; however, it also served to exacerbate inter-community tensions in
several ways.320 Few areas of the expanding Inca Empire were subjected to such a disruptive
population shuffling as the Pampas River basin, with at least 20 different ethnic groups being
settled into the area by the Incas in order to attempt to forestall renewed rebellion.321 For the
Incas, resettlement was a strategy to “educate and convert” local populations into loyal subjects.
The resettlement practice, however, also split local societies into opposing communities and
undermined the maintenance of large-scale polities that could someday pose a renewed threat to
the Incas.322 The Inca resettlement strategy also served to exacerbate intra-communal tensions
that were inherently competitive and sometimes conflictual by virtue of the Andean production
system. The exploitation of Andean landscapes into different vertical production activities –
farming plots and raising livestock at different altitude levels spread over a wide area – forced
households to rely on reciprocal exchange networks like kinship groups (ayllus) and ethnic
groups in order ensure livelihood survival. Kinship groups expanded claims over territory in
order to access and control as many production zones as possible. Competition between kinship
be found in: Luis G. Lumbreras, The Peoples and Cultures of Ancient Peru (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1974). 198. 317
Klaren, Peru, 16-7. 318
Steve J. Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison:
Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 20; Jaime Urrutia, Huamanga: región, proceso e historia 1536-1770 (UNSCH,
Ayacucho, 1984), 35. 319
Klaren, Peru, 19. 320
Klaren, Peru, 25-6. 321
Urrutia, Huamanga, 26, 35. 322
Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 12.
103
groups, ethnic groups, and between communities was a common outcome of adjacent,
overlapping, or inter-mingled group claims; though, coexistence and mutual agreements to allow
passage over each other’s lands was also equally common.323 The Inca resettlement strategy in
the Pampas River basin thus heightened existing group divisions by introducing additional ethnic
groups to the area, and to the competition for cultivated lands and pasture lands.
The land conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta most likely originated with this process of
Inca resettlement of the Pampas River basin. The standard account of the origins of Chuschi and
Quispillaccta outlines that each community was moved by the Inca from other parts of the
empire – Chuschinos descended from Aymaraes Indians moved from Apurimac, while
Quispillacctinos descended from Canas Indians moved from Cuzco. Colonial era documents
held by the communities support this account, and provide the first documentation of the conflict
between the two communities. A document in Quispillaccta’s archives from 1567 outlines the
legal fight over land between the “Canas Indians” and the “Aymaraes Indians”.324 An inspection
report of the area a few years later by a Spanish colonial official in 1574 notes that the Aymaraes
were resettled in the Pampas River basin after the defeat of the Chanka.325 Additional details of
the Aymaraes’ origins emerge from a decree dated 1593, prepared by the Corregidor Blasco
Núñez de Vela – the equivalent of a chief district magistrate with supervisory responsibility over
the Indian towns in the area. Núñez’s decree similarly details the land conflict between the
323 Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 24-5; Enrique Mayer, Articulated, 50-1. Most Andean scholars use the term ayllu,
instead of “kinship groups”, a term that captures only one facet of the meaning of ayllu, which evolved over time to
refer to many groups beyond immediate relatives, and the privileges and obligations that go along with being part of
an allyu. Isbell notes that ayllu can refer to “a barrio, the entire village, one’s family, or even the district, the
department, or the nation.” Isbell, To Defend, 105. While the ayllus of the Incan or pre-Incan period were largely
composed of extended family groups, notes Jacobson, with Spanish colonial rule, “ayllus underwent a gradual
transformation into settlements defined by geographic location and their claims to land … Although kinship ties,
real or symbolic, continued to be important, they became less rigid, and the ayllus were increasingly inhabited by
Indian peasants from different regions.” Nils Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 87. While Isbell’s study is most concerned with the kin dimension
of ayllu, the geographical dimension of ayllu as it relates to barrios in Quispillaccta and Chuschi has not been well
explained in her study of Chuschi. As outlined below, a geographic understanding of group movement in these
communities helps to untangle the evolution of the conflict between Quispillaccta and Chuschi over the centuries.
Mayer carefully explores the relationship between household economies and kinship in chapter 1. 324
John Earls and Irene Silverblatts, “Ayllus Y Etnias de la Region Pampas-Qaracha: El Impacto del Imperio
Incaico,” III Congreso Peruano el Hombre y la Cultura Andina, 31 de enero-5 de febrero 1977: actas y trabajos, 3rd
Congreso Peruano del Hombre y la Cultura Andina, Lima, 1978: 163. The Canas are variously referred to in these
early colonial documents as the “Cochas” kinship group, the “Canas” Indians, or as the “Quispellacta” kinship
group. 325
Isbell, To Defend, 63.
104
Aymaraes inhabitants of Chuschi and the Canas inhabitants of Quispillaccta.326 The Aymaraes
from Chuschi charged that Canas Indians from west of the river were usurping land given to
them by Topa Inca Yupanqui, the Inca ruler at the time of the defeat of the Chanka.327 The
Canas defended their land claim by producing a document prepared by the previous Corregidor
Damián de la Bandera, stating that they had been relocated to the area from south of Cuzco by
the Inca ruler Huayna Capac, the successor to Tupac Inca Yupanqui and the last Inca ruler to
complete his reign before the Spanish conquest.328 In his decision, Corregidor Blasco Núñez
affirmed that the Canas had a right to 10 topos of land to the west of the river bordering Chuschi
– Tacsay Mayo or Qunchalla Kuchu.329 This roughly corresponds to all the land west of the river
in the Qunchalla/Chuschi valley.330 A 1602 document outlines a renewal of the land dispute
between the Aymaraes Indians of Chuschi and the Canas Indians. These documents suggest that
both the Aymaraes and Canas were resettled into the area by the Inca after the defeat of the
Chanka Confederation in the latter part of the 15th century, the Aymaraes arriving first, followed
by the Canas descendants of Quispillaccta.
326 Isbell, To Defend, 65.
327 Isbell, To Defend, 65. There are various spellings of Topa Inca Yupanqui. I adopt Stern’s form.
328 Isbell, To Defend, 65; Marcela Machaca Mendieta, “Vigencia y Continuidad de Cultura y Agricultura Andina en
Quispillaqta” (Ingeniera Agronomo Tesis, Universidad Nacional de San Cristobal de Huamanga, 1991), 233.
Machaca cites the Communal Archive of Quispillaccta. Huayna Capac died in 1525 or 1527 after contracting
smallpox introduced by the Spanish, which had spread to the Andes by 1525. 329
Isbell, To Defend, 65. Place names for natural features in Chuschi and Quispillaccta vary from source to source
and over time, significantly complicating efforts to combine an analysis of historical records, oral history, scholar
studies, and topographical maps. The name one chooses for an area can confer legitimacy of control for one group
or another. So, deciding on one name or another is a politically fraught exercise when trying to disentangle
ownership disputes. I am sensitive to these challenges in the D. Chuschi, where there has been a high level of
contestation over land and water resources. The small stream separating Chuschi and Quispillaccta, for example,
goes by the names Qunchalla Kuchu (Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” – a Quispillactino), Taksa Mayo (Cesar
Ramon et al. La Comunidad de Chuschi (Lima: Instituto Indigenista Peruano, 1967); Isbell, To Defend), Rio
Chuschi (Instituto Geográfico Nacional 1993, Departamento de Ayacucho 2006, and La Serna, The Corner of the
Living), or Chocloqocha Mayo (Isbell, To Defend,). I refer to it as the Rio Chuschi, and the small valley that opens
from the Rio Pampas below as the Qunchalla/Chuschi valley. 330
A topo of land is an Andean unit of measure used to quantify fields during colonial inspections. While the exact
surface area of a topo varied according to soil quality, elevation, topography, or other factors that affected
agricultural productivity, Wernke argues that it is roughly equivalent to 3,496m2. A topo is still used as a unit of
measure in Cuzco, according to Watters. His study notes that one topo is equivalent to a 40mx80m field, or 3200m2
– roughly a third of a hectare. Watters, Poverty, 347. Steven A. Wernke, Negotiated Settlements: Andean
Communities and Landscapes under Inka and Spanish Colonialism (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013),
253-4. Using Wernke’s accounting, ten topos is thus 34,960m2 - or about 3½ hectares. Calculations with a
topographical map of the Qunchalla valley show that ten topos are roughly equivalent to the area of the maize zone
lands west of the Rio Chuschi/Qunchalla, from the edge of the Rio Pampas to the heights above Chuschi and
Quispillaccta, but not including the higher altitude grazing lands.
105
Other anthropological work in the area, however, suggests an alternative interpretation of the
origins of the Aymaraes in Chuschi, and counters their claim to have been resettled in the area by
the Incas. John Earles and Irene Silverblatts believe that the Aymaraes were in the Pampas River
basin since the 13th century, well before the Inca defeated the Chanka.331 While they do not offer
archeological or documentary evidence to place the Aymaraes of Chuschi in their present
location since before the Inca conquest, they argue that linguistic and kinship evidence from
Chuschi and surrounding communities supports the conclusion that their presence in the Pampas
river basin predates Inca mitimaes – ethnic groups like the Canas who were resettled in the area
by the Inca after the defeat of the Chanka. They do not dispute that Quispillacctinos are
descended from Canas Indians placed there by Huayna Capa.332 However, they question
whether the Aymaraes were really mitimaes settled in the Pampas River basin by the Inca Topa
Inca Yupanqui, as stated in colonial documents quoted by Isbell and others. Instead, they argue
that the claim in Chuschino colonial documents to their being Aymaraes mitimaes from the Inca
period was most likely a way of legitimizing their claims to land in the area, because rights to
land derived from tenancy granted by the Incas was considered legitimate under Spanish colonial
law. While the Canas of Quispillaccta had documents to prove their land rights, Chuschi’s
Aymaraes had no way to prove that their residency predated the Inca period. So, Earls and
Silverblatts believe that the Aymaraes constructed a claim to have been placed in the area by
Inca Topa Yupanqui, in order to ensure that they had legal land rights under Spanish colonial
law.333 Until further archeological work is done in the area, the origins of Aymaraes in the Rio
Pampas remains contested. Evidence clearly indicates, however, that the competition for land
between the inhabitants of Chuschi and Quispillaccta goes back at least to the early colonial era,
and likely pre-dates Spanish conquest of Peru.
Spanish conquest and the disruption and reorganization of indigenous societies throughout the
highlands that took place in the decades following conquest added a new layer of complication to
the land competition between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, decimating populations, altering
physical settlement patterns, heightening conflicts between ethnic groups, and increasing
331 Earls and Silverblatts, “Ayllus Y Etnias,” 160-1.
332 Earls and Silverblatts, “Ayllus Y Etnias,” 164.
333 Earls and Silverblatts, “Ayllus Y Etnias,” 164-5.
106
livelihood stress on households through disease and forced labour requirements. The first
decades of Spanish control were marked by social disruption and colonial plunder of the
indigenous population on a vast scale.334 However, by mid-16th century, the colonial
exploitation system in Peru was in decline and in need of reform if it was going to continue to
supply Spain with significant economic benefits in the future. The days of easy economic
plunder in Peru were over and the Spanish crown grew increasingly concerned about declining
revenues from tribute, reduced silver production from the mines in Potosí, increasing Indian
unrest in parts of the colony – particularly in Ayacucho and in the former Inca strongholds in
Cuzco – and disappearing opportunities for the Spanish immigrants who continued to pour into
the colony.335 The demographic collapse of indigenous societies in Peru following conquest was
also reducing the ability of the Spanish to extract surplus wealth and find the labour necessary to
keep the “economy of plunder” operating.336
While estimates vary about the size of the pre-conquest indigenous population in Peru, there is
no dispute that the consequences of the Spaniards’ introduction of new diseases to native
populations with no resistance, combined with brutal exploitation and control in the decades after
the defeat of the Inca – literally working Indians to death in the silver mines and rural estates –
resulted in a spectacular crash in Indian populations in the Andes.337 Noble David Cook
estimates that a pre-conquest Indian population of about 9 million in 1520 collapsed to slightly
over 1 million by 1570, declining further to around 600,000 by 1620.338 See Peru population
chart, Figure 7. Rates of decline were not even throughout Peru, however. While coastal and
lowland areas suffered population declines between 75-85% in the period from 1520-1570,
highland regions lost about 50% of their populations.339 The “relatively stable” populations of
the central highlands, compared to coastal areas, began to significantly decline in the latter
334 Klaren, Peru, 39-53.
335 Klaren, Peru, 56.
336 Term is from Klaren, Peru, 56.
337 Klaren, Peru, 48-9.
338 Noble David Cook, Demographic Collapse, Indian Peru, 1520-1620 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 114.
339 Cook, Demographic, 94. Cook argues (208) that coast and lowland areas were more vulnerable to infectious
diseases than cold, isolated highland communities.
107
decades of the 16th century and early decades of the 17th century.340 Data for the Corregimiento
of Vilcashuaman, the trusteeship area that included the Rio Pampas encomiendas encompassing
present-day Chuschi and Quispillaccta show that by the second half of the 17th century Indian
populations collapsed spectacularly to less than 25% of their levels in the 1570s.341 The impacts
of disease and repression depleted Indian populations and caused severe disruptions to clan-
based livelihood exchange systems (ayllu system) in communities in the Rio Pampas and
throughout Ayacucho, even as population decline eased pressures on productive land.342
340 Cook, Demographic, 200. Cook describes the populations of the central highlands as relatively stable compared
to the northern or coastal highlands. His characterization is puzzling, however, since he also notes that Indian
population levels declined by an estimated 50% in the central highlands between 1520 and 1570. Stern, drawing in
part on Cook’s data, also concludes that the Indians in Huamanga “faired relatively well” in adapting to Spanish
conquest by the mid-16th century – that their “post-conquest decline was not as irrevocably devastating as in other
Andean areas.” Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 44-5. However, it is hard to accept that the halving of indigenous
populations in the area was not traumatic for ethnic groups in the central highlands, something Stern admits in a
different publication. See Steve Stern, “The Social Significance of Judicial Institutions in an Exploitative Society:
Huamanga, Peru, 1570-1640,” in George A. Collier et al., eds., The Inca and Aztec States, 1400-1800: Anthropology
and History (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 305. 341
The two Repartimientos – or land divisions - of Quichuas & Aymaraes and Totos, located in the Corregimiento
of Vilcashuaman and comprising the area of present-day Chuschi and Quispillaccta, illustrate these declines.
Between 1573 and 1630, counts of tribute Indians declined 76% and 83% respectively. Data in Appendix C, Stern,
Peru’s Indian Peoples, 204. 342
Mayer, Articulated, 101. Mayer provides a detailed illustration of the “deleterious effect on the level of
household welfare” obligations in Huanuco in the 1560s.
108
Like past conquerors, consolidation of Spanish rule disrupted and reorganized indigenous
communities in ways that would have lasting impacts and aggravate inter-group conflict in many
highland areas. One of the most important impacts resulted from the efforts in the highlands to
concentrate diffuse Indian settlements into Spanish-style nuclear settlements. By the 1560s,
forty years after conquest, Spanish occupation of Peru was in crisis. Silver production was
declining precipitously at the mines in Potosi, and Indian “rebelliousness and resistance to labour
demands” increased throughout the highlands.343 In the former Incan strongholds of Cuzco, in
the south-eastern highlands, a brewing neo-Incan rebellion posed the “most-immediate” threat to
Spanish control of the conquered territories.344 Local rebellions were also fermenting in other
corners of Peru. In northern Ayacucho, Huancas Indians, long bitter enemies of the Incas, also
343 Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 71.
344 Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 71.
Peru Population: Pre-Conquest (1520) to 2007
-500000
1500000
3500000
5500000
7500000
9500000
11500000
13500000
15500000
17500000
19500000
21500000
23500000
25500000
27500000
29500000
315000001520
1549
1580
1610
1641
1671
1702
1733
1763
1794
1824
1855
1886
1914
1945
1975
2006
Peru
Sources: See Appendix 2.
Figure 7: Peru Population: Pre-Conquest (1520) to 2007
109
plotted with neo-Incan conspirators to revolt against the Spanish.345 In south-central Ayacucho,
meanwhile, Indian rebelliousness coalesced around a millenarian Indian rebellion that promoted
the return to a pristine native spirituality cleansed of Incaic or Spanish influences. The Taki
Onqoy rebellion, as it has come to be known, fed on impoverishment, social dislocation, and
most of all the profound disillusionment among the diverse Indian groups of the area who had
adapted to colonial conditions but who despaired “that the contradictions of colonialism would
lead to unbearable results.”346
In order to stabilize and reform the Peruvian colony and ensure the establishment of a secure
source of future wealth for the Spanish crown, Francisco de Toledo was appointed in 1569 by the
Spanish Crown as the Viceroy of Peru to undertake far-reaching reforms of how indigenous
populations were governed and exploited. Toledo’s reforms significantly affected land
habitation patterns of Indian communities like Quispillaccta and Chuschi with lasting impacts
well into the 20th century. Among Toledo’s reforms was the establishment of the reducción
strategy for Indians throughout Peru. Reducción consolidated “dispersed Indian settlements into
church-based towns of four hundred inhabitants or more.”347 Consolidated towns facilitated
religious instruction of Indians. As Gose notes, the establishment of new towns based on the
Spanish model went hand in hand with the destruction of old settlement patterns:
New towns were to be as far away as possible from pagan
settlements and their shrines. Once construction of new
settlements began, Indians were to destroy their ‘old towns,’ not
only to salvage building materials but also to make reducción
definitive and irreversible. A grid pattern was to define the new
towns. Onto the central plaza were to face the church, community
buildings, the town council, court, and jail. … Indians were to
construct their houses within the grid plan’s blocks with their doors
facing the street.348
345 Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 69-70.
346 Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 68. See also Jeremy Mumford, “The Taki Onqoy and the Andean Nation: Sources
and Interpretations,” Latin American Research Review 33(1): 1998: 150-165. 347
Peter Gose, Invaders as Ancestors: on the Intercultural Making and Unmaking of Spanish Colonialism in the
Andes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008): 119. See also Jeremy Ravi Mumford, Vertical Empire: The
General Resettlement of Indians in the Andes (Durham, N.C.: Duke U.P., 2012). 348
Gose, Invaders, 121.
110
The implementation of the reducción strategy also established tribute obligations for Indian
communities, with the building or expansion of community churches and municipal offices
usually the first tributary project. At a more fundamental level, however, the strategy was rooted
in notions of “ordering, modern rational persuasion, religious conversion, and political
subjugation.”349 It was the Spanish colonial version of modernization, with the transformation of
livelihoods that this implied. Reducciones, Gose notes, “were to embody an entirely different
and more elevated way of life, including Catholicism, urbanity, public order, rational
governance, improved personal hygiene, and morals.”350 The lawlessness and rebellion brewing
in Peru provided the political will to enact and enforce such wide-ranging reforms in the
highlands.351
The physical and spatial implications of Toledo’s reducción reform were significant for highland
communities, with impacts evident to the present day.352 In the case of Quispillaccta and
Chuschi, these reforms aggravated competition between the Canas and Aymaraes for hundreds
of years. Previously dispersed settlements of kinship groups of Canas and Aymaraes, depleted by
disease and forced labour requirements, were consolidated by Toledo’s reforms into concentrated
towns based on the Spanish model. The groups appear to have been relocated during the
reducción reforms to their current town-centre sites (referred to as the Matriz), next to each
other, on opposite sides of the Rio Qunchalla/Chuschi – the small brook which divides the deep
horseshoe shaped valley that runs into the Pampas River. (See Figure 3)
Their close proximity raises the question of why Spanish reformers would place competing
ethnic groups in such close proximity, virtually guaranteeing future enmity and conflicts between
the communities? Interviews and documentary evidence suggests that their current location was
probably the outcome of competition between rival Spanish encomenderos– Spanish colonial
elites who were given trusteeship by the Spanish crown over particular groups of Indians as a
349 Gose, Invaders, 119-122.
350 Gose, Invaders, 122.
351 Gose, Invaders, 120.
352 Mayer, Articulated, 35-6.
111
reward for service to the Spanish crown – who used the Indians under their control to expand
their power and resource holdings over scarce cultivated land in the area.
In the case of Chuschi and Quispillaccta, it appears that manipulation and competition by local
Spanish encomenderos led each tribal group to be consolidated into nuclear settlements in the
same small valley, on either side of a tributary that runs into the Rio Pampas, the Rio
Qunchalla/Chuschi. In the decades following the conquest of Inca Peru, Spanish conquerors,
their descendants and various elites from Spain consolidated control over Indian populations
throughout Ayacucho, to enrich themselves and help facilitate the Spanish crown’s exploitation
of Indian Peru. However, colonizing Spanish elites also competed among themselves for Indian
riches, and these conflicts probably also heightened inter-group conflict in the Pampas River
area. Documents reviewed by Isbell appear to indicate that in the early colonial period the
Aymaraes and Canas were under the control of different Spanish colonizers – or
encomenderos.353 The encomenderos “could collect tribute in the form of goods or labour” from
the Indians “in the name of the crown”, and “in return they assumed responsibility … for
protecting and Christianizing” the Indians.354 Historian Steve Stern notes that encomenderos in
Ayacucho frequently allied with the Indians under their control against the holdings of
neighbouring encomenderos, encouraging their Indians to usurp neighbouring lands and thus
expand the encomenderos’ holdings – the repartimiento.355 For the Indians, these alliances with
encomenderos provided some protection against excessive colonial exploitation, while the
encomenderos enhanced their ability to demand favours from his clients.356
Competing Spanish encomenderos likely used their control of the Indians under their charge in
ways that heightened the competition between the Canas and Aymaraes for control of the lands
in the area, ensuring that relocated ethnic groups under the Toledo reforms were pushed to the
353 Isbell, To Defend, 63-5.
354 Klaren, Peru, 41.
355 Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 119-20; 263. Stern defines a repartimiento as the “encomienda district or
jurisdiction.” 356
Steve Stern, “The Social Significance,” 297. Wernke suggests that colonization worked both ways because
Spanish elites required the help of Indians to achieve their goals, leading to various compromises with native groups
and allowing Indians to exercise a degree of control through Andean practices and institutions over their Spanish
overlords. Wernke, Negotiated Settlements, 13-15.
112
edges of trusteeship holdings.357 Mumford notes that combining different repartimientos into
one reducción was one approach pursued by Toledo’s inspectors.358 In the case of Chuschi and
Quispillaccta, however, the Indians of two different and partially overlapping repartimientos
were essentially brought together into two side-by-side reducciones, a solution that facilitated
both Toledo’s reform goals and the local interests of encomenderos and their Indian chiefs.359
Encomenderos appeared to use the relocation of the Indians as a way of expanding and
consolidating their holdings by locating communities in scarce fertile tributary valleys that flow
into the Rio Pampas. The dispute highlighted in the decree by Corregidor Blasco Núñez de Vela
in 1593 notes Aymaraes complaints that the Canas were being aided in the usurpation of their
land by “Negro slaves” belonging to the encomendero Pedro de Rivera. Rivera’s family had
trusteeship over the Canas Indians, suggesting that he approved of using his own black slaves to
help expand the Canas territory at the expense of the Aymaraes, who were part of a different
trusteeship or repartimiento, held by the encomendero Juan de Mañueco.360
With good cultivated land scarce in this part of the Rio Pampas, and with each ethnic group
under the control of different encomenderos, it appears that the reducción strategy offered
encomenderos the opportunity to relocate the Canas and Aymaraes as close as possible to the
Qunchalla/Chuschi valley to maximize their holdings of temperate maize land and the grazing
land in the high-altitude plains above the valley. For Toledo reform inspectors, relocating both
communities in such close proximity also facilitated religious conversion and control by the
Catholic church and simplified tribute collection in the area.
357 Machaca’s discussion of the colonial history of Quispillaccta similarly notes that the actions of encomenderos
provoked the rivalries between groups in the area during the colonial era. Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 235. 358
Mumford, Vertical Empire, 121. 359
I describe this arrangement as two side-by-side reducciónes rather than one reducción because two different
communities were created on either side of the Rio Chuschi by the reducción officials. Each town was built around
a central square, with church and official buildings located facing the square. While Mumford notes that Toledo’s
reforms intended to “marginalize” encomendero interests (Mumford, Vertical Empire, 127), Stern’s work highlights
the self-interested competition among encomenderos in colonial Huamanga. Given that the rational solution to
consolidating repartimientos in the area would have been to create one reducción, the unusual arrangement in
Chuschi strongly suggests that local interests – including local encomendero interests - had a role in influencing the
reducción process. 360
Isbell, To Defend, 65. A map of encomiendas in Ayacucho supports this analysis, showing encomiendas of
Totos (which controlled Canas Indians) and the encomiendas of Quichuas-Aymaraes (with the Aymaraes Indians)
next to each other in the western end of Vilcas. Miriam Salas Olivari, “La Ciudad-Región de Huamanga: de los
tiempos prehispánicos a le era colonial y republicana inicial,” in Entre la Región y la Nación: Nuevas
aproximaciones a la historia ayacuchana y peruana (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2013), 58.
113
Local evidence confirms that both communities were moved to their current location from other
areas nearby. Marcela Machaca notes that during the colonial reducción Quispillaccta was
relocated to the lower zones of the community holdings – the area known as Qichwapampa or
Qichapampa.361 Interviews with Quispillacctinos note that the location of the Quispillaccta
Matriz moved east several times to its current location from the mountain side several kilometers
to the west.362 Similarly, Isbell notes that the modern history of Chuschi maintains that the town
centre was relocated to its current location from the plain of Calcabamba, which is a few
kilometers to the east.363 Both communities eventually came to be located in the same small
valley and claimed land on their respective side of the Rio Qunchalla/Chuschi that flows into the
Rio Pampas. As a result of the relocation of the communities, conflicts continued for centuries,
primarily in the grazing lands in the high puna above, where boundaries remained unclear and
contested and where control of land and water rights was crucial for livelihoods, as we will see
below in chapters 5 and 6.
Interestingly, members of both communities and peasants from surrounding communities
maintain links to their pre-reducción kinship identities, both culturally and spatially. In
interviews, members of both communities divide the towns and annexes in the immediate area
according to their kinship ties and allegiances with either the Aymaraes or Canas (Chuschi or
Quispillaccta). These relationships partly determined the axis of conflicts between groups
throughout the history of the area, with the dominant axis of conflict between Chuschi and
Quispillaccta reproduced in conflicts between annexes of Chuschi and Quispillaccta. To this
361 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 235. In terms of Andean production zones, the qichwa zone is the
temperate area best suited for maize production, generally lower than 3600m, according to most authors. See
diagram of Andean production zones. 362
Interview, Sept. 30, 2004, Quispillaccta, Peru. 363
Isbell, To Defend, 65. She notes that there is a chapel today in Calcabamba, but “no evidence of house structures
or refuse indicating a nucleated village.” Oral history accounts cited by Isbell of the move to Chuschi’s present
location explain that the move was instigated by the disappearance of a religious statue from a chapel in Calcabamba
to the modern site of Chuschi. (Isbell, To Defend, 65). Sánchez Villagómez argues that the creation of this “legend”
would have facilitated the consolidation of dispersed Indians by religious authorities, presumably during Toledo’s
reducción reforms. Marté Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado, Sendero Luminoso Y La Violencia
Política En El Perú: El Caso de Las Comunidades de Chuschi y Quispillaccta Durante la Década Del 80," Maestría
De Antropología tesis, Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos, Setiembre, 2004, 30-1. Interestingly, an
informant in Quispillaccta told me that religious authorities pushed the Chuschinos to move the town further west
from Calcabamba to its present location, even though the Chuschinos knew the land was claimed by the Canas and
that trouble would follow the move. Interview, 17 Oct., 2004, Quispillaccta, Peru.
114
day, Quispillacctinos identify their community by describing the main town (Matriz or Llacta,
located across the river from Chuschi), along with 11 barrios – hamlets located in other parts of
the community. Each hamlet is home to distinct kinship groups (ayllus), but all self-identify as
part of the community of Quispillaccta: Soccobamba, Pirhuamarca, Llacctahurán , Yuraqcruz,
Huertahuasi, Tuco, Cuchoquesera, Saint Jerónimo de Pampamarca, Catalinayuq, Puncupata, and
Unión Potrero.364 In conversations, it is common for Quispillacctinos to identify themselves by
their barrio and as Quispillacctinos – members of the community of Quispillaccta, with ties to a
specific geographic area of the community. “We are Canas Indians; they are Aymaraes,” elders
in Quispillaccta maintained.365 Chuschinos also readily admit their Aymaraes ancestry and their
links to surrounding communities, but they no longer maintain a single corporate identity like
Quispillaccta. The main town of Chuschi is often discussed in relation to its annexes of Uchuiri,
Chaqolla, and Cancha Cancha, though the latter obtained status as an independent peasant
community in 1964.366 Historical and ethnographic evidence indicates that Chuschi shares
kinship relationships with several communities both south and north of the Rio Pampas, such
Cancha Cancha, Uchuyri, Chacolla, Tomanga, and Sarhua.367 In fact, during the colonial period,
Chuschi was the administrative centre for the parish of Chuschi, which included 7 villages:
Chuschi, Quispillaccta, Cancha-Cancha, Huarcaya, Tomanga, Auquilla, and Sarhua.368
Informants say that Chuschi and its annexes have supported each other in conflicts with
Quispillaccta because they share kinship ties.369 “With Chuschi, we are family; we are
364 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 19. A 1967 study of Chuschi lists 12 barrios for Quispillaccta, differing
from the list above only by the addition of Qachir and using Portrero, rather than Unión Potrero. Ramón C. César et
al., La Comunidad de Chuschi (Ayacucho, Instituto Indigenista Peruano, Sub-Proyecto de Investigación Zona
Cangallo, Octubre, 1967), 23. Quachir and Portrero may have been combined to form Unión Potrero at some point
in the past. Some studies refer to Qachi Portrero, while the Peruvian topographical map of the area refers to the
hamlet of Portrero next to the hamlet of Jachiripampa. While many annexes likely refer to pre-Colonial settlements,
some of the barrios are clearly more recent creations as Quispillacctinos settled and secured control of areas of the
district in the twentieth century. This is discussed in more detail below in section 6.3. 365
Quoted in Doris Castillo Gamboa, "Conflictos Comunales Case: Quispillaccta y Cancha Cancha, 1940-1980,"
(Practica Pre-Profesional, Especialidad Historia tesis, Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal De Huamanga,
Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, 1997), 81. 366
Fanny Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, in Victor Hugo Sarmiento Medina et al., Los Distritos
de Vischongo, Chuschi, Concepcion, y Ocros (Ayacucho: Instituto Indigenista Peruano, 1967): 13. 367
Earls and Silverblatts, “Ayllus Y Etnias,” 161-66; Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 46. 368
Isbell, To Defend, 62. The last four, located south of the Rio Pampas (the village of Sarhua and its annexes
Auquilla, Huarcalla, and Tomanga) were separated from District of Chuschi in 1910 with the creation of the
province of Victor Fajardo. 369
Interview, Quispillaccta, Peru, 18 Oct., 2004.
115
Aymaraes,” notes a resident of Cancha Cancha.370 Over time, the Aymaraes that settled the area
have developed separate administrative communities, particularly following colonial Spanish
consolidations. Isbell notes a document from 1586 which describes the parish of Chuschi as
composed of the villages of Chuschi, Cancha Cancha, Sarhua, and Moros.371 However, we
should be careful to not over-emphasize the degree of ethnic distinctiveness between
communities today in the area. It is simplistic to conclude that ethnic divisions between
Aymaraes and Canas were the root of centuries of conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta.
As the ethnographic work of Earls and Silverblatts indicate, there has been inter-marriage and
mixing between kinship groups over the centuries, and this complicates any attempt to draw
clear ethnic distinctions between Quispillaccta and Chuschi.372
In sum, it appears that Spanish conquest and the reduction strategy pushed competing ethnic
groups to settle in the Qunchalla/Chuschi valley that serves as the current location of the town
centres of Quispillaccta and Chuschi. Reducción forced disparate Indian kinship groups to leave
their dispersed settlements, which ranged widely over the various eco-zones, from the high puna
to the banks of the Rio Pampas.373 The actions of Spanish elites no doubt aggravated the conflict
dynamics between different ethnic groups in this area. While intermingling of ethnic groups did
happen at times, the close proximity and competition for scarce temperate maize lands ensured
heightened conflict between the two communities for hundreds of years. With the population
crash of the 16th and 17th century, pressure on temperate zones and high-altitude puna grazing
lands in the area probably abated to some extent for many decades, until Mestizo elites began
establishing small haciendas on community borders and community populations recovered in the
19th and 20th century.
While the Rio Qunchalla/Chuschi provided a clear boundary between Quispillaccta and Chuschi
in the Qunchalla/Chuschi valley, boundaries in the higher puna zones remained unclear and in
dispute. Unfortunately, there is no definitive evidence of the extent of Canas and Aymaraes
settlement before Spanish conquest, or what the boundaries were between groups before the
370Quoted in Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 82.
371 Isbell, To Defend, 62.
372 Earls and Silverblatts, “Ayllus Y Etnias,” 165-6; and personal communication with John Earls, 29 Sept., 2011.
373 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 184-5.
116
upheavals of Toledo’s reducción policy and the influence of local encomenderos. The dispersed
barrio settlements of present-day Quispillaccta give some indication of how ayllus may have
settled the area in the pre-Conquest period.374 While Quispillacctinos maintain in oral testimony
vigorous claims over these lands as original community lands and have struggled over the
centuries to have these areas recognized as part of their community’s patrimony, many of the
same areas remain contested by neighbouring communities like Chuschi and Cancha Cancha, as
we shall see below in chapters 5 and 6. It is quite possible that claims by Quispillaccta and
Chuschi overlapped in many areas, particularly in the grazing zones, possibly originating in
overlapping repartimiento land grants.375 Mumford notes that Toledo’s reducción inspectors
dealt with overlapping repartimiento grants in other parts of the highlands.376 Unclear
boundaries or overlapping land titles were also common problems in the late 19th and early 20th
century, according to Jacobsen.377 It is not unreasonable to surmise that a similar scenario in the
decades after the chaos of Conquest served to aggravate relations between Chuschi and
Quispillaccta.
The livelihood impacts of reducción in Chuschi and Quispillaccta are difficult to discern after all
this time, and on top of the existing disruption of Spanish colonization, disease impacts, and
Spanish forced labour drafts. Consolidation of the ethnic groups to the current town centres no
374 Marcela Machaca presents an interesting diagram of Quispillaccta’s barrios by altitude and agricultural zone.
Most of the annexes are located in a band between 3500m and 4000m, which corresponds to the extreme upper end
of the maize zone, and sits comfortably in the tuber and grain growing zone – the Suni or upper Qichwa zone. This
is several hundred meters above the altitude of the town center that was formed following Toledo’s reducción. The
settlement band of Quispillaccta’s barrios could be indicative of their pre-Hispanic settlement patterns, or it could be
indicative of more recent population shifts in the 20th century driven by push and pull factors and climatic change in
the latter half of the 20th century. My conclusion is that both explanations are probably correct – that many barrios
harken back to the pre-Hispanic settlement of the area, but that resettlement of the area was also driven by more
recent events for some barrios, as discussed below in chapter 7. Archeological and ethnographic evidence from
numerous communities in Peru indicate that the Spanish frequently moved communities to lower elevations when
enacting resettlement policies. See Stephen B. Brush, Mountain, Field, and Family: The Economy and Human
Ecology of an Andean Valley (n.p.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 49-50; and Mitchell, Peasants, 7. This
continued practices employed by the Incas, who also appear to have moved groups to lower elevations, partly as a
consequence of their conquest of the area and partly as a result of their greater interest in growing maize. See
Geoffrey O. Seltzer and Christine A. Hastorf, “Climatic Change and its Effect on Prehispanic Agriculture in the
Central Peruvian Andes,” Journal of Field Archeology 17(4), 1990: 409-10. Gradual climatic warming in the Andes
in the late 15th and early 16th century facilitated the movements, but were not the cause. 375
Overlapping repartimientos was not unusual, according to Mumford, because “a repartimiento was more of a
social and political unit than a territorial one.” Mumford, Vertical Empire, 29. 376
Mumford, Vertical Empire, 121. 377
Jacobsen, Mirages, 237.
117
doubt increased travel times for peasants who farmed different parcels of land over a wide area
or cared for animals in the puna grazing lands. Hiking from the current town centre (Matriz) to
the high-altitude puna grazing lands takes hours. It is quite likely that some community members
continued to live part of the year in the high zones in rudimentary huts to care for pasture
animals, much as they continued to do until the mid-20th century, according to informants.
While demographic collapse alleviated some pressure on cultivated lands in the area, reducción
probably increased agricultural intensity on the lands located closest to the new town sites. This
area is the prime maize growing zone, and informants in Quispillaccta indicate that the area
known as Mollebamba, steep lands fronting the Rio Pampas and slightly west of the town centre,
contain some of the oldest farm plots in the community.378
The ecological and livelihood impacts of increased agricultural dependence on cultivated lands
around the new nuclear Rio Pampas settlements would not be felt until community populations
began to recover to pre-Conquest levels in the early twentieth century. However, contemporary
critics of Toledo’s reducción policy recognized that concentrating dispersed households could
exhaust the ability of the land to sustain those resettled:
It is a question in all these kingdoms, discussed by many, whether
it is right that the Indians’ pueblos be brought together and … large
civilized pueblos created. Those who say no, and that it would be
a great irritation for the Indians … give as the principal reason the
large quantity of Indians and that the land is thin in valleys and
places to plant and harvest food, and that being as there are now
[only] ten or twenty houses together … they are no more than the
land can sustain.379
Toledo brushed aside these concerns, noting that the land sustained many more Indians under
Incan rule.380 However, Incan rule allowed for more dispersed settlement patterns and a wider
mix of livelihood strategies that did not heavily rely on cultivated lands. The concerns of
opponents to Toledo’s reforms would be partly realized centuries later, as discussed below in
chapter 7.
378 Interview, Sept. 30, 2004; and Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 21.
379 Mumford, Vertical Empire, 91.
380 Mumford, Vertical Empire, 91.
118
4.2.2. Mestizo elite and Catholic Church: impacts in the 19th and 20th Centuries
The second major influence on natural asset holdings in the history of Chuschi and Quispillaccta
comes from the resource capture of cultivated and pastures lands by elites and Catholic Church
authorities. Coming on top of the upheaval that accompanied Toledo’s reducción and the
imposition of tribute burdens in the decades after conquest, resource capture directly impacted
the livelihoods of peasants in Ayacucho for hundreds of years by completely removing some of
the most productive maize and pasture lands from community hands. Landholding in Chuschi
and Quispillaccta was much more equitable than other parts of the department, with few large
haciendas and a majority of the land held by small holders and communities in common. These
trends do not alter the fact, however, that elites in the D. Chuschi and in neighbouring districts
appropriated some of the best cultivated and grazing lands, and these seizures had livelihood
impacts on both communities. The capture of valuable natural assets heightened competition for
remaining resources among communities in the area, particularly in the 20th century as
populations recovered to their pre-Conquest levels and the communities began to integrate into
the cash economy. The processes of resource capture and the structural factors that facilitated
elite capture of lands in and around Chuschi and Quispillaccta thus aggravated conflict between
the communities over time, particularly in the 20th century. Violence between Quispillaccta and
Chuschi thus was not a simple case of competing communities fighting for a limited resource
pie. Understanding the causes of conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta and reasons for the
violence in the latter half of the 20th century requires an understanding of how resource capture
impacted livelihoods in these communities.
4.2.2.1. Regional Structural Change, Patterns of Elite Capture, and Land Holding Patterns in Cangallo
Conflicts between communities and highland estates are a common theme in Peruvian history.
They make up the essential narrative in the indiginista movement that began in the late 19th
century to expose the exploitation of many peasants in Peru at the hands of the landed elite.381 In
Ayacucho, wider national economic development trends and geographic reality conditioned the
381 Klarén, Peru, 245-6.
119
rise of landed estates in the department, and their development path during the colonial period
and later following Peru’s independence in the early 19th century. Since colonialism, dynamic
economic activity generally took place outside Ayacucho, in the mining centres of Potasi and
Huancavelica, or later around urban centres of Lima or departments to the south. With the
decline of mining in the neighbouring department of Huancavelica at the end of the 17th century
and the dislocation and economic disruption that followed the wars for independence in the early
19th century, economic activity remained rather insular and fragmented in Ayacucho.382 The
northern half of the department was the centre of large haciendas, with a servile population of
hacienda workers (peons) controlled by a small elite class of Mestizo notables. Peons came from
the ranks of those dispossessed of their land by the hacienda’s creation, often from neighbouring
communities. Estate owners included the Catholic Church, former colonial military officers, and
private citizens. Independent peasant communities in these areas had to navigate around the
considerable influence of the landed elite, who also controlled the political levers of power in the
department.383 Smaller estates – or fundos – occupied the small valleys surrounding the
department capital Huamanga, and south to the high-altitude lands bordering the Rio Pampas and
beyond – the location of Chuschi and Quispillaccta.384 The high-altitude grasslands of the
southern half of the Department of Ayacucho, broken in places by deep river valleys, was home
to few large haciendas. Instead, a small number of fundos existed in lowland areas, surrounded
by traditional peasant communities. These estates employed few peons.385
The economic and political disruption caused by the wars of independence in the early 1800s
severely stressed the landed estates in Peru’s Sierra. Economic activity was concentrated in the
landed estate sector. Those who backed the Spanish lost their estates, while commercial
dislocation after the war forced many others to sell their holdings to other estate owners.386
There was little additional usurpation of peasant community land during those first decades
382 Klarén, Peru, 139-40; Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 28.
383 Degregori, Ayacucho; Virgilio Galdo Gutiérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad (Siglo XIX)," (Ayacucho,
Perú, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga, 1988), 27. 384
Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 28. 385
Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 28; and Gutiérrez "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 51. 386
Joanna E. Drzewieniecki, "Indigenous Politics, Local Power, and the State in Peru, 1821-1968" (PhD Thesis,
State University of New York at Buffalo, 1996), 171-2.
120
following independence, as hacienda owners consolidated control over existing hacienda
holdings.387 The post-colonial history in the area of the current D. of Chuschi remains obscure.
However, the most significant policy development affecting rural communities in the early post-
colonial period emerged from the limited agrarian reform of 1828. A new law gave Indians the
right to obtain property titles for the lands they occupied and opened up the possibility of buying
lands in the private market.388 This reform reaffirmed peasants’ rights to community lands and
strengthened their claims on lands that had been taken over by the church or landed elite. This
would also form the foundation for future claims of entitlement to contested lands by many
communities. In Ayacucho, however, local elites often ignored these reform laws, and
usurpation of peasant lands continued unabated, particularly in the north of the Department with
their large lowland haciendas.389
In the late19th century, severe economic crises, compounded by the devastating impacts of the
War of the Pacific, 1879-1883, gave way to a wool export boom. This led to a significant rise in
wool production in the highlands, and an equally significant rush by foreign and domestic capital
to seize the best lands from Indian communities for export production.390 In Ayacucho,
however, the economic growth taking place in other parts of Peru was not repeated. While some
rural estates were established in the late 19th century, Ayacucho began to see a long process of
economic decline in the landed estate sector in the northern half of the department and the
economic dislocation of the department’s trade patterns, as more dynamic economic poles to the
north and south of the department accelerated the process of drawing economic vitality outwards
from Ayacucho. Economic growth in Peru in the latter half of the 19th century, particularly from
1880 onwards, led to the slow stagnation of the northern half of Ayacucho and its agricultural
and manufacturing centres.391 Without an economic sector of significant dynamism to engage
foreign and national capital, economic activity in northern Ayacucho was displaced by
development in other regions. Manufacturing declined and even wheat exports to Lima, the
387 Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition, 108.
388 Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition, 124-5.
389 Eric Mayer, "State Policy and Community Conflict in Bolivia and Peru, 1900-1980," (PhD thesis, University of
California, San Diego, 1995), 260-1. 390
See Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition, chapters 5 and 6. 391
Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 28-9.
121
primary agricultural export of Ayacucho’s northern haciendas, began to lose ground to wheat
producers in the fertile central valley.392 Southern Ayacucho did see the expansion of wool and
cattle production in the highland grazing lands; however, trade patterns flowed south to Nazca,
Ica, and Chala, and not to northern Ayacucho and the department capital.393 In fact, road
penetration in the late 19th and early 20th century into northern and southern Ayacucho facilitated
the export of economic activity out of Ayacucho because no dynamic economic centre existed in
the department.394 This led to an increasingly fragmented Ayacucho, with the northern and
southern sectors economically subordinated to other neighbouring departments, and economic
flows pulling outward.395 The consequences of these developments for the central Ayacucho
provinces of Cangallo (which includes the D. Chuschi) and Victor Fajardo in the 19th and early
part of the 20th century were significant. Located in the isolated middle of the department, with
lands crisscrossed by steep river valleys and towering high-altitude grasslands, and lacking
adequate communication and road networks, these provinces found themselves in an economic
“no man’s land” with some of the worst poverty in the country.396
Patterns of economic development in Ayacucho in the 19th and early 20th century described
above thus conditioned the particular land holding structures in various parts of the Department
of Ayacucho– large haciendas with many peons in the northern half of the department produced
cereals or new crops like coffee, cocoa, or herbs in the moist eastern flanking jungles for Lima
and the central valley. In the south of the department, livestock production dominated the
highlands, as communities and small estates exported animals to the coast via southern routes.
In the isolated middle of Ayacucho, peasant smallholder communities competed for limited
arable land with a few estates, the peasants producing mostly for their own consumption, with
few linkages to the wider national economy aside from periodic livestock sales. These patterns
continued well into the 20th century and are reflected in land holding patterns during the crucial
392 Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 28-9.
393 Gutiérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 54; and Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 28-9.
394 Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 29-30.
395 Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 30-1.
396 Degregori, Ayacucho 1969-1979, 30.
122
transformations of the 1960s and 1970s when various agrarian reforms were implemented in
Peru.
The latter half of the 20th century witnessed the slow decline of the landed estate sector in
northern and southern Ayacucho, a process finalized by the 1969 Agrarian Reform. Much of the
land reverted to control of peasant communities. While it is difficult to pin-point the exact
moment when large estates began their slide into economic decline, patterns of unequal
landholding in Ayacucho that characterized the hacienda economy changed for good with the
1969 Agrarian Reform. According to the 1961 Peruvian census, those holding 500 hectares or
more land made up only 0.2% of total landowners, but they controlled almost two-thirds of the
productive land in Ayacucho – 57.6% of the cultivated area. By contrast, almost 32% of
landholders were farming less than 1 hectare of land, working only 1.7% of the total land area in
Ayacucho.397 Before land reform, a minority of large landholders in Ayacucho held most of the
productive land, while many peasants had tiny holdings.
By 1972, several years after agrarian reform, little seemed to have changed in Ayacucho. Those
holding less than 1 hectare of land accounted for 33.3% of the total landholders in Ayacucho, but
they collectively held only 1% of the cultivated land in the department. By contrast, those
holding more than 500 hectares of land accounted for merely 0.18% of total landholders in
Ayacucho, but held 72.6% of the cultivated land in the department.398 However, simple
comparisons of land holdings by size category do not directly speak to the degree of inequality in
landholdings in Ayacucho at this time because, by 1972, more than 60% of the properties over
100 hectares in Ayacucho were actually held communally by campesino communities –
principally as pasture land.399 Large landholdings that used to be held by a minority of landlords
now belonged to peasant communities. Although differences in the census figures make a direct
comparison with 1972 challenging, the 1961 census notes that less than 30% of the landholdings
over 5 hectares were held communally or by campesino communities – 28.4% of the total land
397 Dirección Nacional de Estadística y Censos, Volume V, 216.
398 Richard Webb and Graciela Fernández Baca, Perú En Números 1999 (Lima: Cuanto, 1999), 25.
399 Degregori, Ayacucho, Raices, 179.
123
area in Ayacucho – compared to the more than 60% held by these groups by 1972.400 By the late
1970s, the process of land reform during the late 1960s and 1970s had gradually eliminated the
old class of elite landlords with large estates that had dominated northern and southern Ayacucho
since conquest. Land reform had increasingly transferred the land in these areas into the
collective control of campesino communities.
In the Province of Cangallo, the process of land redistribution as a result of agrarian reform
probably had less of an effect than elsewhere in Ayacucho because Cangallo had one of the
lowest proportions of large estates among Ayacucho’s provinces, and a larger proportion of total
land held by “middle peasants” – those working from 0 to 5 hectares of land.401 Compared to
Ayacucho as a whole, Cangallo’s land distribution was much more evenly distributed both
before and after Agrarian Reform. In 1972, after the 1969 Agrarian Reform law, 85% of the land
owners in Ayacucho worked 5 hectares or less and farmed about 9.7% of the total land, while
2.6% of the
400 Strict comparisons are difficult because the two censuses counted landholding differently. In 1972, 58.5% of
communal or community holdings were greater than 2500 hectares, while the 28.4% figure of campesino holdings in
1961 was all land over 5 hectares. So, the 1972 percentages would be even larger if we counted all community or
communal holdings over 5 hectares. Further evidence for the general conclusion of a large increase in community
or communal holdings comes from examining the percentage differences in total land held communally or by
campesino communities between 1961 and 1972. By this measure, we see that large landholdings increased by
more than 80% for campesinos. (This figure is calculated by finding the percentage increase between landholdings
over 5 hectares held communally or by campesino communities in 1961 and comparing this with the area of land
over 2500 hectares held by campesino communities in 1972. So, again, it is a conservative estimate.) See Dirección
Nacional de Estadística y Censos, Volume 5, 227-228; Hector Maletta and Katia Makhlouf, "Perú, Las Provincias
En Cifras, 1876-1981," (Lima: AMIDEP, 1987), 41. 401
Degregori labels landholders holding 1-5 hectares of land as “middle peasants” (campesinos medios). Degregori,
Ayacucho, Raices, 84.
124
Figure 8
land owners with holdings over 20 hectares farmed around 88% of the land.402 By contrast, the
farming population of Cangallo was almost entirely made up of small or middle land-holders,
and Cangallo’s landholding distribution figures were little changed from 1961 to 1972. In 1961
90.5% of Cangallo’s landholders held less than 5 hectares, working just over 40% of the total
farmed area of the province. Those working landholdings larger than 500 hectares accounted for
402 Degregori, Ayacucho, Raices, Table 39, 179.
Upward slope of the line from left to right is a general measure of division in land holdings between large and small units.
The greater the slope from left to right, the greater the inequality in favour of large land holders. Lines that are largely
horizontal indicate greater evenness in landholding between large and small landholders. Data from: Hector Maletta and
Katia Makhlouf, Perú: las provincias en cifras, 1876-1981, Volumen III, Estructura Agraria, Series Estadísticas No. 2
(Lima: Universidad Del Pacifico/AMIDEP, 1987.
125
0.04% of landowners, farming 36.1% of Cangallo’s land.403 By 1972, about 92% of all the farm
units in Cangallo were less than 5 hectares in size, farming about 44% of the total land, while
less than 0.5% of the landholdings greater than 20 hectares farmed about 41% of the land.404 (See
Figure 8: Large and Small Landholding as a Percentage of Total Agricultural Land in 1961
&1972.)
Of all the provinces in Ayacucho, Cangallo had the largest proportion of total land owners who
were small holders or middle peasants.405 (See Figure 9 below.)
In addition, both before and after Agrarian Reform, Cangallo had the second lowest number of
very large land holders in Ayacucho – those holding more than 500 hectares. In 1972, land
holdings making up more than 500 hectares account for 37.38% of agricultural units in Cangallo,
403 Dirección Nacional de Estadística y Censos, Volume 5, 218.
404 Degregori Ayacucho, Raíces, Table 39, 179.
405 The rankings of those holding less than 5 hectares and more than 1 hectare are the same as the more general
category of those holding less than 5 hectares.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Per
cen
tage
of
Tota
l
Provinces Compared to Ayacucho Avaerage
Figure 9: Department and Provincial Comparison of Percentage of Land Held by Those With Less Than 5H, 1972
Total Land Area Land HoldersData: Degregori Ayacucho,
raices de una crisis, 179.
126
the second lowest percentage in Ayacucho after the province of La Mar, which has a little more
than 12% of the province in holdings over 500 hectares.406 And, by 1972, all the landholdings
larger than 2500 hectares in Cangallo were held by campesino communities, meaning that they
were part of campesinos productive resources in some way.
Figure 10
What this meant on the ground was that land was more evenly distributed in Cangallo than in
other provinces in Ayacucho, with the possible exception of the province of La Mar. While this
conclusion is largely based on land-holding patterns in the 1960s and 1970s, the patterns were
probably consistent with historical patterns.
406 Degregori Ayacucho, Raices, Table 39, 179.
127
Historically, there were few large haciendas in the province, and even these had mostly
disappeared by the time of the 1969 agrarian reform. Studies of the Province of Cangallo note
that by the mid-twentieth century, haciendas could only be found in eastern Cangallo, on the
west bank of the Rio Pampas, primarily in the districts of Concepción and Ocros, and to a lesser
degree in the district of Vilcas Huamán.407 (See Figure 10) These haciendas inhabited the deep,
warm valleys of the Rio Pampas, as the river spilled eastward into the warm, biodiversity-rich
high-altitude jungle that rings the Amazon – the “ceja de selva” or eye-brow of the jungle. These
haciendas produced sugar cane to make aguardiente and molasses, grew sweet potatoes, cotton,
and cultivated fruit trees like apples, oranges, custard apples, and mangos.408 Some of these
haciendas were in existence for centuries by the time scholars arrived in the area in the 1960s to
study Cangallo. The Hacienda Pomacocha, for example, was established in the mid-17th century
and run by the Monastery of Santa Clara de Huamanga until 1960 when the peasants of
Pomacocha and its annexes invaded and took over the hacienda lands.409 The takeover of
Pomacocha in the early 1960s signaled that the days of the landed estates were numbered in
Cangallo, though haciendas continued to exist in large numbers in the province of Huamanga to
the north until land reform in 1969.
To scholars and government officials, the dichotomy between northern and southern Ayacucho
and Cangallo seemed clear in the 1960s and early 1970s: in northern Ayacucho large landed
estates owned the bulk of land and largely conditioned unequal landholding relationships, while
in Cangallo the few existing haciendas in the eastern part of the province were on the way out.
Western Cangallo, including the D. Chuschi, appeared to be a stronghold of traditional, small-
407 Cesar Ramon Cordova et al., La Zona de Cangallo (Lima, Ministerio de Trabajo Y Comunidades, Instituto
Indigenista Peruano, 1967), 41. 408
Rufino Gonzales Calderón, "Estudio Geo-Económico Social de la Provincia de Cangallo Del Departamento de
Ayacucho," (Br., Fac. de Ciencias Económicas y Comerciales tesis, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos,
1962), 34. The Cordova et al. study lists the following haciendas in Cangallo: Pajonal, Ninabamba, Locería,
Oquechipa, La Colpa, Ayrabamba, Santa Rita, Pakomarca, La Mejorada, Pirwabamba, Astania, Oqenay, Ibias,
Matará, Pomacocha. Calderón lists some of these and also includes: Soccopa and Ccaccamarca. All these
haciendas were located in the eastern districts of the province of Cangallo. 409
César Ramón Córdova, “Estudio de los Problemas en Pomacocha,” Ministerio de Trabajo y Comunidades,
Instituto Indigenista Peruano, Ayacucho, Perú, 1968. It took until 1975 for community to finally take control of the
former hacienda lands. See Ulpiano Quispe Mejía, Relaciones de poder y violencia política en las comunidades
campesinas de Ayacucho, PhD Tesis, (Facultad De Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos,
2011): 43.
128
holder farmers, who lived outside of the pernicious influence of landed elites, especially when
compared to eastern Cangallo and the declining or disbanded estates in that region. (The D.
Chuschi’s land holding pattern is discussed in detail below in section 7.3.2.) By 1972, the few
large estates that had existed in the province and controlled almost a third of its productive land,
were in the hands of campesino communities, or divided among the former estate workers.410
This narrative of Cangallo and the D. Chuschi as a stronghold of campesino smallholders who
escaped the destructive clutches of landed estates has conditioned scholarly understandings of
the area for decades and distorted our understanding of livelihood change in the area in the past
100 years, as discussed below in section 4.2.2.2.
4.2.2.2. Communities in Conflict? Revealing the Impacts of Landed Estates and Mestizo Elites in Western Cangallo
Data from agricultural censuses and the historical record appear to indicate that farming in
Cangallo bore the legacy of the lack of large estates in the province over the preceding centuries.
More so than any other province in Ayacucho, farming was done by middle peasants, working
the land with fewer large estates around than in other parts of the department. This is partly a
function of the terrain in Cangallo, with plenty of steep mountain peaks and fewer flat plains or
valley zones that would have been attractive for large scale market agricultural production, and
thus attractive targets for usurpation by elites. As well, the area is distant from markets, being
located in the centre of the department, and even today 4-6 hours by car north or south of major
urban areas either in Ayacucho or in neighbouring departments.411 Chuschi and Quispillaccta
appear to be an ideal illustration of the landholding pattern in Cangallo, a fact picked up by
researchers who entered the area in the 1960s. Ethnographic work in the 1960s highlighted the
paucity of haciendas in the area, and made a point of noting the absence of pernicious influence
410 The number of campesino communities in Cangallo correspondingly increased from 1961 to 1981 as control of
former estates was shifted to newly formed campesino communities, or communities received their official
recognition. In 1961, there were 34 recognized campesino communities, which increased to 37 by 1972, and to 79
by 1981. Degregori, Ayacucho, Raices, 182. Interestingly, political conflict appeared much more severe in eastern
Cangallo’s districts than in western Cangallo districts like Chuschi, given recent accounts by Heilman in Before the
Shining Path. Political violence also appeared more severe in eastern Cangallo during the Sendero insurgency and
the government’s counter-insurgency operations in the area, according to recent accounts by Theidon. Whether the
presence or absence of landed estates in these two areas is key to these different trajectories remains an open
question. However, detailed histories of the Sendero insurgency in western Cangallo remain to be written. 411
Elderly informants recall the trip by foot to the capital Huamanga to sell livestock or buy commodities, a
grueling all-day hike
129
of elite landowner conflicts.412 In the early 1970s, for example, Isbell noted that “Chuschinos
have not felt direct hacienda domination” because the nearest haciendas are fifteen kilometers
away, in the neighbouring province of Huamanga.413 Her research noted only one conflict with a
landowner in grazing lands on the north-west border of the D. Chuschi and the neighbouring
District of Vinchos.414 (Discussed further below in section 5.3.2).
In light of the apparent equality of land-holdings, competition and conflict in western Cangallo
communities like Chuschi and Quispillaccta has been characterized by scholars as occurring in
the absence of landed estates – as a conflict over borders between communities of small holders
– and fairly typical of patterns of conflict in Cangallo where landed estates were scarce. The
conflict between peons and the hacienda Pomacocha was seen to be an exception in this
province, and more characteristic of the types of conflicts common in northern Ayacucho. As
Isbell was to later conclude, the D. Chuschi was “a region that had escaped many of the semi-
feudal relationships of the hacienda system.”415 This was a significant conclusion for debates
about whether semi-feudal land-holding relationships in Ayacucho contributed to the rise of
Sendero Luminoso because it corroborated the conclusions of influential scholars like Degregori,
who argued that Agrarian Reform had eliminated semi-feudal landholding relationships long
before Sendero’s insurgency, thus playing little role in Sendero’s rise.416 For Isbell, Cangallo’s
more egalitarian land-holding structure and paucity of landed estates probably explained why
Sendero chose the D. Chuschi to begin its armed struggle against the Peruvian state.
I believe that Sendero chose Chuschi for its initial military
operations precisely because of this absence of haciendas, which
allowed SL to experiment with peasant communities that had
strong communal structures, autonomy over their resources, and
whose experiences with capitalistic market penetrations were
minimal. By initiating their revolution in what they believed to be
412 Ramón C. César et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 28.
413 Isbell, To Defend, 51 & 181. Isbell did her first fieldwork in the D. Chuschi in 1967, before the Agrarian
Reform law was put in place, returning to district in 1969 and 1974. Gorriti, in an influential history of the Shining
Path’s early years, repeated Isbell’s conclusions about the lack of hacienda impact in the D. Chuschi. Gorriti,
Shining, 18. 414
Isbell, To Defend, 240-41. 415
Isbell, “Shining,” 78. 416
Carlos Iván Degregori, How Difficult it is to be God: Shining Path’s Politics of War in Peru, 1980-1999, Steve
J. Stern ed. (Madison WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012): 114-15.
130
a region that had escaped many of the semi-feudal relationships of
the hacienda system, Sendero perhaps hoped to avoid the mistakes
made by the guerrillas inspired by the Cuban revolution who failed
to gain the support of hacienda peons for their short-lived
insurgency in 1965.417
A closer examination of the historical record of land conflicts around Chuschi and Quispillaccta,
however, reveals centuries of conflict with landed estates in the area, disputes that continued
throughout the twentieth century and into the 1970s and 1980s, after Agrarian Reform.
Observers like Isbell noted some of these conflicts at the time, though the extent of their impact
was not understood at the time. At a minimum, these new findings alert us to the role that land
disputes played in conditioning local violence in the district, and possibly contributed to wider
violence in Ayacucho. Reconstructing the historical record of land conflicts in the district
reveals that several disputes over grazing and cultivated land did originate with hacienda
encroachment or outright seizure of lands claimed by the communities as part of their historical
patrimony. In several cases, mestizo elites seized lands from Chuschi and Quispillaccta for a
string of small estates that used to sit on the northern border of the communities, throughout the
Rio Cachi watershed. The southern holdings of these small haciendas or fundos encompass the
bulk of the northern Sunni zone in the current district – those areas in this portion of the Rio
Cachi watershed between 3500m-4100m (where cultivated pastures, tubers and grains grow),
along with adjacent higher altitude grazing lands. (See yellow Sunni zone in the northern sector
of the D. Chuschi, in Figure 13: Rio Cachi Watershed in Vinchos and Chuschi Districts.) These
haciendas are marked on topographical maps created in the late 1950s, though many had
disappeared by the late 1960s when researchers entered the area, having been taken over or
bought out by nearby communities (including Quispillaccta), or simply abandoned by their
owners. (The haciendas are marked on Figure 12: Major Land Disputes in the D. Chuschi in the
20th Century.) While it remains unclear when most of these estates were formed, their influence
on the conflicts within and between Chuschi and Quispillaccta has not been adequately studied
up to now.418 However, oral history, community records, and legal archives provide details of
417 Isbell, “Shining,” 78.
418 This may be a result of the level of analysis used by many scholars in the past. Most of the estates bordering
Quispillaccta and Chuschi to the north sit in neighbouring provinces like Huamanga. Scholars have tended to study
communities in the area by focusing on a province or district, so this approach may have obscured conflict patterns
across district or provincial boundaries. The first studies of the area were done in the late 1960s by the Instituto
131
the disputes between Quispillaccta and Chuschi and neighbouring estates. These conflicts later
figure into conflicts between Quispillaccta and Chuschi themselves, as will be explored below in
chapters 5 and 6.
The reassessment of the influence of landed elites and their allies in and around the D. Chuschi
described here dovetails with recent reassessments of the influence and impact of gamonales and
mistis on local relations in the district in the decades preceding the Sendero uprising.419
Gamonales are the abusive provincial landowners who dominated local power relations for much
of Ayacucho’s history. In Chuschi, wealthy local elites dominated the community’s authority
structures and dominated the district’s positions of power until well into the 1960s and early
1970s.
As discussed in the literature review, scholars have debated the extent to which gamonalismo “or
the old culture and methods of gamonalism” – abusive relationships by mestizo elites over
peasants – was still influencing Ayacucho in the years before the Sendero uprisings, and the
degree to which they contributed to the rise of Sendero.420 Degregori argues that in post-
Agrarian Reform Ayacucho the old gamonalismo system had largely crumbled by the time
Sendero engaged in violent insurrection, though “rural bossism (gamonalismo) … still existed
[in] small local fiefdoms.”421 The implication of Degregori’s findings are that gamonlismo and
the grievances it engendered had a limited influence as a cause of Sendero’s uprising, compared
Indigenista Peruano and by U.S. anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell. Both limited their focus to either the community,
the district, or the provincial level. Given that many districts and provinces were created in the area in the mid or
late 1800s, it appears that many estates and conflicts with neighbouring communities pre-dated the creation of
district and provincial borders in the area. Hacienda owners may have even manipulated the location of district
borders to further dilute claims or complicate legal challenges from communities like Quispillaccta and Chuschi
who found themselves in a different province or district. 419
Marté Sánchez Villagómez, (Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,; La Serna, The Corner of the Living. 420
Steve Stern, in How Difficult it is to be God, 16. Stern notes that, “Gamonalismo refers to rule by provincial
landowners and their allied merchants, authorities, and intermediaries over Indian peasants and servants. The term
evokes “feudal-like” relations of human ownership and physical abuse buttressed by ethnic hierarchies; the non-
Indians, or mistis, who became petty or grand versions of gamonal masters included mestizos and “whites” of
tainted social origin.” Stern, Shining and Other Paths, 16-7. In the D. Chuschi, according to Isbell, peasants did
not use words like gamonales or mistis. Instead, those residing in the district were referred to as either comuneros
(community members) or vecinos (neighbours). Quechua speakers referred to vecinos as qalas - literally, the
“naked ones”. However, other recent research notes district residents using the term mistis, including research by La
Serna, Sánchez Villagómez, and my 2004 fieldwork. The usage of misti discussed below in footnote 408. 421
Degregori, “Harvesting Storms,” 130.
132
to the impact of recent educational movements in Ayacucho and Sendero’s rigid ideological
presence in the face of a weak and abusive Peruvian state presence in the Department.422
This conclusion may be changing, however, based on the findings of new research of local
power relations in the years before Sendero’s uprising. As new micro-studies describe the local
realities in communities in the decades before Sendero’s uprising, scholars are now appreciating
the degree to which gamonalismo continued to operate in many communities up to the outbreak
of the Sendero uprising, including in parts of Ayacucho like Cangallo where scholars have
previously argued that there was a minimal presence of landed elites. Ulpiano Quispe Mejía’s
recent study, for example, points out that all of Ayacucho’s provinces had similar local power
structures – a majority of the best land was under the control of landlords, rural bosses, or
medium landowners.423 In districts like Chuschi, Quispe Mejía argues, the elite were composed
of landowners, medium landowners, and rich peasants who filled the positions of authority and
acted as liaisons between the community/district and provincial, department, and central
government elites. In addition to agricultural activities, these ‘mistis’ or ‘mestizos’, as they were
known to peasants, engaged in the cattle trade, operated as local merchants, transport sector, and
gradually came to enter the department’s public administration, particularly in the judiciary and
education sectors.424 Isbell’s study of Chuschi from the early 1970s notes a similar power
structure in the district. These mistis, or ‘Qalas’ in Quechua as community members in Chuschi
referred to them, “did not participate in communal rituals and reciprocal community exchanges
and did not define themselves first and foremost as Chuschinos, Isbell noted.425 In Chuschi,
these elites dominated the community for decades. At their worst, they grabbed some of the best
land, abused their authority positions, and tormented community members.426 While there were
422 Degregori, “Harvesting Storms,” 132; Degregori, “How Difficult it is to be God,” 114-5.
423 Quispe Mejía, Relaciones de poder, 66.
424 Quispe Mejía, Relaciones de poder, 66-7.
425 Isbell, To Defend, 71. Isbell notes that the derogatory usage of qala to refer to elites in Chuschi literally means
‘naked’ or ‘pealed’, in Quechua. “A Quechua-speaking informant told [Isbell] that qala used to refer to villagers
who had gone away and come back wearing shoes instead of sandals. Then, when so many mestizos took up
residence in Chuschi” and they didn’t participate in communal reciprocal traditions, the term qala was applied. The
qala, Isbell notes, “have peeled off their indigenous identity.” In Chuschi, qala and misti are used interchangeably
today, though Quispe Mejía ascribes the terms to different levels of elites. 426
La Serna discusses the recent history of some of Chuschi’s abusive mistis. See La Serna, The Corner of the
Living, 108-119.
133
no abusive mistis or qalas in Quispillaccta427, Chuschi’s abusive elite similarly negatively
impacted Quispillaccta by their control of the district municipal positions and the powers
associated with these positions for many decades.428 Finally, local mistis within the district and
in districts bordering the D. Chuschi had a significant negative impact on local livelihoods and
on the conflict between Quispillaccta and Chuschi, aggravating conflicts over land holdings in
the district for decades. The current study provides the most comprehensive discussion to date of
this last aspect and compliments recent work by La Serna to explore the pernicious impact of
mistis in the district.
The examination of the causes and consequences of resource and entitlement capture in the
district begins with an analysis of elite appropriation of cultivated lands fronting the Rio Pampas,
before exploring the long history of capture and conflict over high-altitude Sunni and Puna
grazing lands in the northern half of the district.
4.2.2.3. Elite Capture of Scarce Cultivated Lands in the District of Chuschi
Good cultivated land in the district is not abundant, as will be explored in more detail in chapter
7. This fact meant that elite seizure of cultivated land probably had an outsized impact on
427 Degragori notes that “[m]istis is a Quechua term that refers to mestizos, especially those linked to traditional
local powers.” Degragori, How Difficult it is to be God, 198, ft. 70. Interviews with Quispillacctinos note that there
were no abusive ‘mistis’ or ‘qalas’ in Quispillaccta who took advantage of community members like in Chuschi.
Some Quispillacctinos will tell you they never had mistis in their communities. Others will say that they had the
assistance of some Mistis, for example, but that the Mistis in Quispillaccta were not abusive like those in Chuschi.
In noting this fact, some Quispillacctinos tacitly distinguish between mistis or qalas – who are seen as abusive elites
– and mestizos, those Peruvians from inside and outside the community who do not engage in all communal
reciprocal traditions, but who also do not take advantage of Quispillacctinos with their activities. Arguedas, in his
study of Puquio, Ayacucho in the 1950s, noted a similar distinction. See José María Arguedas, Puquio: A Culture in
the Process of Change,” in José María Arguedas, Yawar Fiesta (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 159. The
1967 IEP study (Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 75) states that, “Quispillacctinos note with pride that
there are no “Qalas” in their community; they are all equal, indigenous comuneros, and that no one orders or
commands us.” My translation. Ninety-year old Victor Galindo Tucno, whose mother was from Chuschi and
whose father was from Quispillaccta, said that Quispillaccta’s Mistis included some from the family Romani and
Mamerto Pariona; however, they were not abusive. Chuschino shopkeeper Victor Calderon Jimenez (himself from a
well-to-do Chuschi family) agreed that Quispillaccta’s Mistis were not abusive, mentioning Lucho Romaní, Mariano
Alcoscer, and Mamerto Pariona as Quispillaccta’s notable Mistis. Pariona was one of Quispillaccta’s Personeros –
or elected community representatives – during the 1960 conflict with Chuschi. La Serna, The Corner of the Living,
68. Pariona was still living in Quispillaccta when I did my fieldwork in 2004. Though elderly, he participated in
communal work parties, such as planting fields for the ancianos organization. His appearance was strikingly
different from other Quispillacctinos – tall, fair, with a European facial structure. Unfortunately, he refused repeated
interview requests. 428
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, Ch 3.
134
communities in the area, though it is difficult to determine the extent of this burden. The
appropriation of some of the best cultivated and grazing lands in Ayacucho by mestizo elites and
the Catholic Church constituted some of the most frequent and long-lasting disputes with the
communities who laid claim to these seized lands. This legacy can also be found in Chuschi and
Quispillaccta. At some point after conquest, the Church in Quispillaccta and Chuschi
appropriated the yearly bounty of a number of cultivated land parcels in the district. Community
members cultivated these parcels for the Church, and the crops harvested from these fields, along
with livestock taken from similarly appropriated livestock herds, called cofradia herds, were
used to support various Catholic festivals in the district. This continued for many decades.429
Overall, the impact of resource capture by the Catholic Church was greater in absolute terms in
Chuschi with respect to cultivated lands than in Quispillaccta, particularly in the limited Quechua
natural region below 3,500m.
429 I have not been able to establish when the Church grabbed entitlements to the production of specific cultivated
lands.
135
Quechua lands are limited in the D. Chuschi. According to a recent survey of land use in the
district, lower Quechua lands best suited for maize make up only about 9% of the usable
agricultural land area of the district.430 (See Figure 11 & Table 1)
430 Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en
regions vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, Septiembre
2011: 19.
Figure 11: Agro-ecological Zones in the District of Chuschi
Source: Perú, Departamento de Ayacucho, Plan Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos Y
Prevención de Los Efectos Climatológicos Adversos del Distrito de Chuschi del Departamento de Ayacucho, N.P., 2006:
105.
136
Table 1: D. Chuschi Land-Use According to Agro-Ecological Zone
Agro-ecological
Zone (aka. Production Zone)
Altitude
(m)**
Agricultural Use Percentage of
Agricultural Land
Area (%)*
Area in Hectares
Semi-humid Puna 3900-4500m Pasture, camelid
husbandry, water
catchment
16 7872.8
Semi-dry Puna 3900-4500m Pasture and high-
altitude agriculture
55 27062.8
Suni 3600-3900m Rain-fed tuber and
pasture, partial
irrigated tuber and
grains
12 5904.6
Upper Quechua 3400-3600m Agriculture in
small areas
6 2952.3
Lower, arid
Quechua
2400-3400m Irrigated Maize
cultivation
9 4428.5
* Source: ABA, Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en regiones vulnerables de
Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, Septiembre 2011: 19. The
table in the source does not specify whether these figures represent the percentage of arable land in the
district, the percentage of land in use, or the percent of total district land area. I have used the total district
area, 49,205 hectares, to convert these percentages to area in hectares in the column to the left.
**Altitude designations were not originally included in the source from which this data is taken. There is
significant variation in the Peruvian Sierra in assigning altitudes to different agro-ecological zones,
depending upon the geographic zone one examines. However, the ABA study used agro-ecological
classifications based on the work of Mario Tapia, so it is reasonable to assume that the authors used Tapia’s
altitude classifications when calculating land area in different zones. As a result, Tapia’s corresponding
altitudes for the zonal classifications for the south-central Sierra are used in this table. These zonal
definitions are slightly different than those in the map of agro-ecological zones above. See Mario E. Tapia,
Ecodesarrollo en los Andes Altos (Lima: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1996): 67.
This recent figure is probably higher than the historical average because climate change and
peasant cultivation practices have altered growing patterns in the district, allowing maize, grains,
and bean crops to be grown at increasingly higher altitudes. (Discussed in more detail in chapter
7)
Research in the late 1960s indicated that the Church was entitled to the harvest of 7-10H of
irrigated maize lands in Chuschi, and about 1-2 H of land in Quispillaccta.431 This amounts to
431 Ramón C. César et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 27-8; Isbell 71-2. David Scott Palmer reported in 1972 that
the church held 40H of irrigated land in Chuschi. David Scott Palmer, "Revolution from Above": Military
Government and Popular Participation in Peru, 1968-1972," Unpublished Dissertation (Ithaca, NY: Latin American
Studies Program, Cornell University, 1973): 258. Even accepting Palmer’s higher figure, however, the Church’s
holdings of irrigated maize land is still only slightly more than 1% of total maize lands.
137
less than 1% of land in the lower Quechua zone of the district. The Church’s land-holdings in
Chuschi were distributed in about 10-12 fields in the prime maize growing area below the village
centre, while the Church’s Quispillaccta holdings were similarly south of the town centre and
spread over about 5 fields.432 Corn grown in these fields was used to celebrate various saint day
festivals in Chuschi and Quispillaccta.
Until the 20th century, when population levels returned to pre-Conquest levels, the impact on
livelihoods in Chuschi and Quispillaccta from the Church’s cultivated land entitlements was
probably modest. In the 20th century, demand-induced changes as a result of population growth
in the district increasingly pressured the supply of good cultivated land in the Quechua zone
(discussed in detail below in section 7.2). By the late 1960s, anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell
noted that the Catholic Church was the wealthiest landholder in the district.433 However, by this
time, ending the Church’s control over the irrigated maize land would have done little to alter the
paucity of cultivated maize lands that had developed in the district. Distributing the Church’s
holdings would have helped possibly a few dozen families produce more maize; a welcome
impact no doubt for those who benefited, but modest overall given that there were over 1400
households in the district by 1940.434 While food produced from church holdings in the maize
zone was distributed to community members during religious festivals, participation in the
festivals entailed significant costs to some community members, a burden that may have
hastened the decline of community participation in the Catholic Church festivals in the latter half
of the 20th centuries as livelihoods faced increasing stress in the district.435 The symbolic
432 Ramón C. César et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 27-8.
433 Isbell, To Defend, 71.
434 Ramón C. César et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 19. This study notes that there were 1,428 households in the
district according to the 1940 census. Isbell notes that each of the thirteen irrigated maize fields held by the Church
in Chuschi was roughly equivalent to the total amount of cultivated land held by each family in Chuschi, about 1-
2H. Isbell, To Defend, 72 & 192. The church’s holdings in Quispillaccta amounted to less than 1% of total maize
lands, if we use Coronel’s total of 240H of maize land in Quispillaccta. Given the expansion of maize lands up the
altitude slope in the last 50 years, it’s possible that the church holdings may have been proportionately larger in the
1950s and 1960s. The expansion of maize lands is discussed in detail below in chapter 7. 435
One informant noted that sponsors of Saint-day festivals faced significant personal costs for the prestige of
sponsoring, including killing animals and using precious harvests to feed fiesta participants. A 75kg sack of corn
was processed for chicha (corn beer), and several animals were slaughtered for meat. At times, sponsor-ship
burdens required community members to even sell land to provide food and alcohol for the fiestas. Over time,
community members realized the high costs of participating in Catholic fiestas and participation declined, a process
possibly accelerated and reinforced by increasing conversion of community members in the 1960s to Evangelical
Protestant sects, which prohibited alcohol consumption and did not require expensive outlays for religious fiestas.
138
importance of prime irrigated land being controlled by outsiders was a long-standing source of
grievance for many in the district.436 As the winds of change began to blow in the favour of
small-holder farmers in the 1960s, community members in both Quispillaccta and Chuschi began
to demand that the Church’s entitlement to these lands end. By the early 1970s, with Agrarian
Reform sweeping Peru, both Chuschi and Quispillaccta succeeded in taking back control of
church holdings of cultivated land.437 While some of this land continues to be used by the
community to produce maize for Saint-day festivals (see photo below), other uses have been
found by Chuschi and Quispillaccta. Some Chuschi lands formerly controlled by the Church
were used for the construction of the road into Chuschi in the early 1960s, and the construction
of additional schools in the Matriz in the 1960s and 1970s. Other parcels are now used directly
for community benefit, such as providing maize for disadvantaged members of the community.
(See photo below)438
Interview with Jacindo Tucno, Quispillaccta, 16 Oct., 2004. Isbell, writing in the early 1970s, noted that poor and
wealthy comuneros seemed particularly attracted to Protestantism: “With the Protestant ideology of personal
advancement, comuneros can escape the obligation of participation in the complex of reciprocity [between
community members] and displays of generosity [including when sponsoring fiestas] that consume so much of their
economic surplus.” Isbell, To Defend, 240. The relationship between the burdens of participating in the Catholic
fiesta system and the conversion to Protestantism seems clear. Conversion offered relief from the increasing
burdens of the fiesta system, particularly during the post-war period when pressures on land production were
increasing and households were increasingly interested in other priorities like education and purchasing consumer
goods. Mitchell came to a similar conclusion in his study of Quinoa, noting that people increasingly turned to
Protestanism in Quinoa in the 1970s and 1980s as a response to ecological and economic forces. Mitchell, Peasants,
171-77. 436
Isbell, To Defend, 239. 437
Isbell, To Defend, 238-9; Palmer, "Revolution from Above," 258-9. 438
At a communal assembly in Quispillaccta in 1979, parcels in the maize zone formerly held by the church were
formally assigned to various barrios in the community by lottery. Quispillaccta, Libro de Actas de las Assembleas,
1979-81, 20 Sept., 1979.
139
Above: Chuschi community members sowing the Señor de los Temblores (Lord of the Earthquakes) field
with maize, in Chuschi, October 30, 2004. Until the early 1970s, the Catholic Church controlled numerous fields like this one in the irrigated maize zone of Chuschi and Quispillaccta. This field is about 0.5H in
size, according to field measurement. The community continues to use the harvest from this field for
community fiestas. In the foreground stands former community President, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli. Photo by author.
Below: Communal planting in Quispillaccta of an irrigated maize field that used to be part of the Church’s
entitlement in Quispillaccta. When the community regained control of the land, this parcel was passed to
the barrio of Huertahuasi, which assumed responsibility for planting the field. Some of this field’s yield is
subsequently provided to the elderly citizens association in Quispillaccta, whose members are seen here
planting maize. October 20, 2004. Photo by author.
140
While the impact of resource capture of maize lands by the Catholic Church may have been
modest on its own, this impact was amplified by resource capture from mestizo elites of high-
quality irrigated land in Chuschi. The presence of mestizo elites in Chuschi probably dates back
to the colonial period, given Chuschi’s prominence among neighbouring villages as the parochial
centre of the Curato de Chuschi.439 Village priests were outsiders, assigned to the district by the
Catholic Church. For centuries, they wielded significant power in the village through their
control of spiritual matters, the religious-prestige hierarchy, and their management of religious
festivals.440 Chuschi’s designation as the headquarters of the newly created D. Chuschi in 1857
no doubt helped cement the presence of mestizos in Chuschi, because they occupied the key
administrative posts in district as Governor and Lt. Governor until the 1960s.441 The position of
Municipal Mayor in Chuschi was bureaucratically even more important in the district, given the
mayor’s role in allocating and managing the budget, village development, and maintaining
order.442 As with the district administrative positions, mestizos dominated the position of Mayor
until the early 1970s because it required that the office-holder be able to speak and write
Spanish, skills rare for peasants in Chuschi and Quispillaccta until the late 1960s or early
1970s.443 No records exist of mestizo elites holding maize lands in Quispillaccta. As noted
above, informants indicate that Quispillaccta never had mistis living in the community like
Chuschi. In Chuschi, however, mestizo resource capture of good cultivated lands is first
documented in the 1830s, when the hamlet of Cancha Cancha launched a lawsuit against
neighbouring Chuschi, claiming that mestizo elites with the support of community authorities
appropriated about 16H of land in the important maize zone around Callcabamba, an area that
lies between Chuschi and Cancha Cancha.444 Given the close kinship ties between indigenous
community members in Chuschi and Cancha Cancha, this lawsuit no doubt shows that
indigenous community members in Cancha Cancha were litigating against the mestizo elites then
439 An 1802 survey of Ayacucho listed 3,379 Spanish and Mestizos in the Province of Cangallo, the second lowest
level in the Ayacucho zone. Cited by Galdo Guttiérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 6. 440
Isbell, To Defend, 84-89. 441
La Serna, The Corner of the Living¸ 108. District authorities reported to bureaucratic authorities in the
provincial capital, Cangallo, and to the Prefect in the department capital, Huamanga. 442
Isbell, To Defend, 88-89. 443
Isbell, To Defend, 71; La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 108. 444
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 42.
141
controlling Chuschi and complicit in the seizure of cultivated lands around Callcabamba. Such
litigation was in fact fairly common in Ayacucho at the time.445
By the 1830s, we thus have documentary evidence of an active mestizo presence in Chuschi,
creating hardship and land problems for indigenous community members. Mestizos likely
further moved into the area after 1870 with the rise of new classes of commercial landowners
and businessmen in the southern half of Ayacucho, fueled by the wool boom and economic
linkages to the coast.446 In Chuschi, holdings of prime maize land by mestizo families
compounded the appropriation of maize land by the Catholic Church. By the late 1960s, 4
mestizo families owned about 12-13 hectares of land in Chuschi.447 In an interview, Ernesto
Jaime, a prominent mestizo authority in the 1960s and 1970s, reported that his father held about
5 hectares of land.448 While these mestizo holdings were probably distributed throughout
different ecological zones in the district, Isbell notes that one mestizo family that controlled 3-4
hectares of land held most of that land in the maize zone.449 Some mestizo holdings were even
organized into fundos.450 A topographical map of the D. Chuschi produced in the 1950s shows
one of the likely mestizo holdings, the Fundo Choccechanca, which sits in prime irrigated maize
land south of the town centre and fronting the Rio Pampas. (See Map: Topographical Close-up of
Chuschi District Maize Zone North of Rio Pampas)451 Most of the production from mestizo
holdings was destined for sale in the local or regional market452, thus removing the production
445 Gutiérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 53.
446 Degregori, Ayacucho1969-1979, 30. Jose Jaime, the wealthy uncle of prominent mestizo authority Ernesto
Jaime, came to Chuschi from southern Ayacucho, according to informants. Interview with Victor Calderon
Jimenez, Chuschi, 2 Nov. 2004, Field Notes, Book 2. 447
Ramón C. César et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 31. The holdings were in between 50-60 yugadas, which
their study defines as about ¼ hectare. 448
Interview, Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 18 Oct., 2004. Jaime indicated that his father held about 20 yugadas of land
in Chuschi, about 4 times the holding of the average community member. See details of average land holdings in
the next chapter. 449
Isbell, To Defend, 72. 450
Interview, Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 18 Oct., 2004. 451
I have not been able to find any information about who owned the Fundo Choccechanca. No evidence of this
fundo existed when I conducted my field work in the area in 2004. It could be one of the fundos referred to by
Ernesto Jaime in our interview. 452
Isbell, To Defend, 72.
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from the village. These holdings were modest compared to total maize lands in the district,
accounting for less than 1% of the total lower maize zone.
The livelihood impact of maize land appropriations by mestizos, like the Church appropriations,
was probably modest until the middle of the twentieth century. Even with the Church holdings
added, the cumulative livelihood impact of distributing this land to community members would
have only benefited a small percentage of households in the district. The impact was not equally
felt throughout the district, however. The resource capture of maize lands primarily impacted
peasants in Chuschi and Cancha Cancha, tying up dozens of parcels of prime land close to the
main village settlement. The material impact was thus greater on Chuschinos than on
Quispillacctinos, and heightened the symbolic grievance of outsiders controlling prime land as
livelihoods became increasingly squeezed in the latter 20th century. The manner of appropriation
no doubt further heightened grievances against mestizo elites in both communities. While a
detailed account remains elusive about how mestizo elites came to hold prime maize lands in
Chuschi, it most likely arose through a combination of extra-judicial actions, seizures, or forced
sales from the late 1800s.453 This was the typical pattern in the southern highlands. That the
holdings were so small by the mid-twentieth century demonstrates the isolation of the region,
and the paucity of good maize lands for elites to capture.
4.2.3. Conclusion
Landholding in the D. Chuschi appeared relatively egalitarian and free of elite domination,
according to scholars who first studied the district in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although
only a few abusive misti elites remained in the district, this chapter outlined the disruptive long-
term legacy of elite capture of cultivated and grazing lands going back to the pre-Conquest
period that altered peasant livelihoods in important ways, focusing settlements around relatively
scarce cultivated lands in the Rio Pampas zone. Some of the best Rio Pampas cultivated lands
were also captured by local elites and the Catholic Church following Spanish Conquest, further
marginalizing local livelihoods. Chapter 5 picks up this story to illustrate the impact of elite
453 Community members in both Chuschi and Quispillaccta noted that the sale of land to people outside of the
community was forbidden, given that the communities held communal title over land and distributed usufruct rights
to control land only to community members. While it’s not clear when this rule was formalized, its existence
highlights the illegal nature of mestizo and Church land holdings in the minds of community members.
143
capture of highland grazing lands in the district and the decades long conflicts by communities in
the district to regain control of these lands, conflicts that increasingly pitted communities in the
district against each other.
144
Chapter 5 Elite Capture of High-Altitude Pasture Lands in the District of
Chuschi
Introduction
The borders of the District of Chuschi were largely fixed when foreign and Peruvian
anthropologists entered the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s to study the district’s
communities. Those early studies noted continuing disputes between Chuschi and Quispillaccta
over borders between the two communities in three areas: grazing lands just north of the town
centre, in the north-east corner of the district, and in the north-west corner of the district.454 (See
Figure 12) These disputes were seen as part of the long-running rivalry between the two
communities, stretching back hundreds of years, and reaching a particular intensity in 1960
where a clash left dead and injured on both sides.455 However, reconstruction of the historical
record of grazing land control in the district shows that the late 1960s and early 1970s
represented the culmination of decades and even centuries of effort by indigenous community
members in both Quispillaccta and Chuschi to reclaim lands – especially grazing lands in the
northern parts of the district – that had been usurped since the colonial era by mestizo elites and
the Catholic church. Reconstructing both the efforts of communities to regain lands they felt
belonged to them and reconstructing the disputes that these efforts provoked provides important
insights into the sources of grievances and perceived injustices at the heart of conflicts between
district communities in the decades preceding Peru’s dirty war. This history not only helps to
explain the evolution of current population settlement patterns in the district today, but provides
partial explanations for why later government repression in the area during the Sendero
insurgency fell especially hard on Quispillaccta. Chapter 5 sets the scene by describing the
district’s high-altitude livestock zone and outlines the importance of herding to household
livelihoods. After piecing together the early history of elite capture of grazing lands in the
district, this chapter then focuses on disputes in the north-west and north-east portions of the
454 Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 26.
455 Isbell, To Defend, 49, 65-6.
145
district, leaving the account of disputes for grazing lands in the centre of the district for chapter
6.
Livelihoods and the high-altitude grazing zones of the district
The D. Chuschi is largely a zone of high-altitude grazing lands. While most of its cultivated
lands sit in precariously steep river valleys fronting the Rio Pampas in the extreme south of the
district, the district’s essential character is defined by vast expanses of semi-arid highland
grazing lands in sharply peaked mountainous terrain between 3600m and 4800m. While there is
considerable variation throughout the intermountain valleys of Ayacucho in terms of
precipitation, temperature, evaporation, soil quality, and vegetation type, the lower part of this
grazing zone marks the upper limits of the heavily exploited woodland zone where cultivated
crops predominate. The zone then transitions to the tundra or alpine meadow zone above the tree
Figure 12: Major Land Disputes in the District of Chuschi in the 20th Century
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
146
line known as Puna. In the Puna zone frosts can strike 9-12 months of the year, temperatures
generally average in the single digits Celsius, and rainfall is variable, depending upon the local
relief. During the early months of year (the Andean summer) rain or fog may predominate, but
hail is not unknown.456 Vegetation has adapted to these harsh conditions to hug the ground “in
rosette or ‘cushion’ form for protection from the cold” on well drained flat areas. Sloping
surfaces find a variety of bunch grasses growing that are used by animals and humans alike,
while in poorly drained areas “puna peat moors” or seasonal ponds – bofedales – predominate.457
Today, these high-altitude lands in the district are growing areas of population settlement and
principally hold communal and family herds of livestock for both communities and their
annexes. According to Table 1 above (D. Chuschi Land-Use According to Agro-Ecological
Zone), grazing lands in the D. Chuschi over 3600m make up over 80% of the land of the district
(Puna and Sunni area in blue and yellow respectively in Rio Cachi Watershed map, Figure 13).
Limited cultivated agriculture is also (increasingly) practiced in this zone, in the slightly lower
elevation Sunni lands, which cover the zone from approximately 3600m to 4100m (yellow zone
on map, figure 13).458 The yellow Sunni zone in the north-east of the district in the map below,
Figure 13, falls within the Rio Cachi watershed, while the yellow Sunni zone directly north of
the town center of Chuschi is referred to as the Kimsa Cruz area and drains south into the Rio
Pampas. In the northern half of the district, the Rio Cachi watershed flows north into the District
of Vinchos and becomes the Rio Chicllarazo. Entering into Vinchos, the watercourse flows into
a highly desirable, lower elevation Quechua production zone.
456 Kent V. Flannery, Joyce Marcus, and Robert G. Reynolds, The Flocks of the Wamani: A Study of the Llama
Herders on the Punas of Ayacucyho, Peru (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1989): 16-17. 457
Flannery et al., Flocks, 18-19. 458
The Map, Rio Cachi Watershed in Vinchos and Chuschi Districts, was created by combining portions of two
maps of the natural regions in Vinchos and Chuschi Districts. See: Perú, Departamento de Ayacucho, Plan Para el
Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos Y Prevencion de Los Efectos Climatologicos Adversos del
Distrito de Chuschi del Departamento de Ayacucho, N.P., 2006: 105; and Perú, Departamento de Ayacucho, Plan
Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos Y Prevencion de Los Efectos Climatologicos
Adversos del Distrito de Vinchos del Departamento de Ayacucho, N.P., 2006: 85.
147
Figure 13: Rio Cachi Watershed in Vinchos and Chuschi Districts
Throughout the Sunni lands of the district, cultivation of highland tubers and variable cultivation
of grains is common but risky. In parts of the Rio Cachi watershed the land is relatively flat and
suitable for planting potatoes and other Andean tubers, broad beans, and cereals. Maize
cultivation is negligible because of frequent frosts. In fact, in the higher areas of Sunni zone of
the Rio Cachi watershed all cultivated agriculture is risky because of frequent frosts. This area is
Source: Perú, Departamento de Ayacucho, Plan Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos Y Prevencion de Los Efectos Climatologicos Adversos del Distrito de
Chuschi del Departamento de Ayacucho; and Perú, Departamento de Ayacucho, Plan Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos Y Prevencion de Los Efectos
Climatologicos Adversos del Distrito de Vinchos del Departamento de Ayacucho.
148
instead primarily used for livestock production.459 In the lower Puna zone from 4100m-4800m
the only possible cultivation is the production of bitter potatoes, which are soaked and freeze-
dried to produce Chuño. Instead, the Puna zone is primarily used for livestock grazing lands.
Today, much of the Rio Cachi watershed in the district is controlled by Quispillaccta as grazing
lands for sheep and cattle. Quispillaccta also controls the high-altitude grazing lands around
Tuco to the south-west, in the Puna between 4000m and 4800m. These grazing areas are too
cold for raising cattle or sheep, but provide ample pasture for community and individual herds of
llamas and alpacas.460 Chuschi and its associated barrios also control large areas of high Puna
grazing lands in the north-west of the district, from Chicllarazo to the north-western borders of
the district, and in the eastern Puna zone of the district, between Kimsa Cruz and the
neighbouring district of Maria Pardo de Bello to the east. Depending upon the altitude and
landscape, cattle, sheep, llamas or alpacas graze in these zones.
In the past twenty years, climate change has been altering production possibilities in the highland
grazing areas of the district. Machaca reports that some farmers have successfully grown maize
in test fields in the Rio Cachi area for more than ten years, a feat previously unheard of, given
the extreme risk of frost and hail in the area.461 As well, during field work in 2004, I observed
broad bean fields in Tuco at an altitude around 4200m, production that was historically never
possible at such a high-altitude. Numerous comuneros indicated in interviews that the weather
has changed considerably in recent decades. The Puna zone, for example, has warmed
considerably in recent decades to allow vegetation and crops to grow in areas that were
previously too cold for such plants.462
459 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 30, 60, 177-8.
460 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 30.
461 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 125-6.
462 Interview with Roberto Human Machaca, Nov. 1, 2004; interview with Dionisio Conde, Tuco, Nov. 4, 2004.
Conde, who was 70 when interviewed, noted that there were few bushes and no trees in Tuco when he was young.
Now, however, they’ve expanded tremendously throughout the higher zone. Interview with Policarpo Casavilca
Quispe, Tuco, Nov. 5, 2004. Quispe indicated that in Tuco’s increasingly warm climate snow falls are now a rarity
when they were once very common. The warmer climate has allowed Quispe to plant broad beans for the past five
years, where they were once unknown in Tuco.
149
Alpacas graze in Tuco, Quispillaccta, at an altitude of approximately 4200m. Cultivated fields
visible on slopes in the background. Photo: Author, Nov. 5, 2004, Tuco, Quispillaccta.
150
For communities in the D. Chuschi, livestock are raised as a household risk management and
investment strategy, rather than a food source for consumption. While wool is used from sheep
and llamas, animals are rarely killed for food. Some animal products are regularly used by
households in the district. A district study in the late 1960s found that half of the milk and cheese
production and all of the wool production from livestock were consumed by families, and the
remainder sold.463 More importantly, Machaca notes that livestock represent wealth, an
emergency fund, and a source of savings for community members and for the community as a
463 Genaro Colchado A., La Ganaderia en Los Morochucos, Maria Parado de Bellido y Chuschi (Ayacucho:
Instituto Indigenisto Peruano, 1968), 70. Unsurprisingly, this study, which was focused on assessing the uses of
animal products in these districts in Cangallo and the limitations to increased commercialization of animal
production, found numerous limitations to the commercialization of animal production in the area. The study failed
to note the use of livestock as a risk management strategy for households and instead viewed them as under-utilized.
On the side of the mountain are fields of recently planted broad beans in the barrio of Tuco at an altitude of approximately
4200m, in the Puna zone. Tuco is the highest barrio in Quispillaccta. Changes in Tuco in recent decades illustrate how warming
has expanded cultivated agriculture possibilities in high, cold zones in the District to areas that were previously too risky for cultivated crops. In the foreground are walled-off fields for grazing livestock. The division of the puna into walled livestock
fields has expanded considerably in recent years. The area has also seen the increasing growth of large shrubs and trees, which
did not exist in past decades according to elderly informants. Photo: Author, Tuco, Quispillaccta, Nov. 5, 2004.
151
whole.464 In fact, herding is now the principal economic activity for households in the district;
the size of one’s herds, rather than the amount of cultivated land held, traditionally represented
the key indicator of wealth among households.465 Herding is a common part of household
livelihood strategies in highland Andean communities. Stephen Brush notes that in the
community of Uchucmarca, in the north central Andes, “beef, cheese, and milk are only rarely
consumed in the village, but over half the village households keep a few head of cattle as a living
bank account on the hoof, that can be converted to cash by selling to … itinerant
merchants…”466 In the D. Chuschi itinerant cattle merchants have long visited the communities
to buy cattle. Community members also sold animals themselves in Ayacucho if they needed
cash or goods.467 Household studies in the Andes indicate that herding requires more energy and
is less productive overall than cultivated agriculture; however, herding is less risky given crop
hazards and variability and more dependable for low rates of return for households.468 Benefits
to households are compounded by using children as herders, further saving adult time and energy
for other livelihood activities.469
Equally important is the community role served by livestock herds. Each community in the
district held community herds.470 For decades, most of these herds were controlled by the
Catholic Church (discussed further below in section 5.3.1). However, herds that escaped church
control or which were later recovered from the church were often used to help finance communal
projects. As well, individual households might be asked to sell an animal from their household
herds to help finance a community project. Machaca notes that at various times in the past,
464 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 177-8.
465 Isbell, To Defend, 200. Isbell’s research was primarily focused on Chuschi, but this conclusion is probably true
for Quispillaccta and the other communities in the district as well. Land-holdings do matter for determining wealth
and status, however, as Isbell herself notes in her research See page 74. In my own interviews with comuneros in
both Chuschi and Quispillaccta the amount of land held was clearly a part of their determination of whether or not a
community member was wealthy. In recent decades, economic activities in the district have changed somewhat,
making assessments of wealth somewhat more complex. 466
Brush, Mountain, 79. 467
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 30. She notes that these cattle purchases began in the community in the 1940s. 468
Mayer, Articulated, 17 469
Mayer, Articulated, 18. I also observed the use of children as herders among households in the Quispillaccta
barrio of Llacctahurán during my fieldwork. 470
In Quispillaccta some of the community herds were divided among various barrios in 1972, when control of the
communal herds was recovered from the Catholic church. Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 179, 183.
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Quispillacctino households were asked to sell one animal each to help finance the purchase of
former hacienda lands or to pay legal bills in on-going boundary disputes.471 Livestock herds
have also been actively used by communities to guarantee the sanctity and security of
community boundaries. Machaca notes that this is one of the oldest and most important roles of
the community’s livestock.472 Communities recognized that possession is nine-tenths of the law,
both in terms of ensuring no one usurped their grazing lands, and in helping to legitimize their
own disputed holdings.473
The history of elite capture of high-altitude grazing lands in the District of Chuschi
It is unsurprising that communities in the district developed strategies to forestall encroachments
on their important grazing lands because there is a long history of usurpation of community
livestock and grazing lands in the area. In some cases, grazing lands and entitlements to those
lands were captured outright by elites, while at other times community members were forced to
care for livestock herds while the benefits of those herds were captured by elites. This long
history of resource capture pre-dates Spanish conquest of Peru. Machaca notes that
Quispillaccta’s community herds descended from herds managed by the community but
designated for use by the Incas and the Sun deity.474 Spanish conquest led to the capture of
much of the grazing lands and herds in what is now the northern half of the district. This capture
went hand-in-hand with the reducción policy of Spanish Viceroy Francisco Toledo, which
concentrated the district’s population in the town centres near the Rio Pampas. Reducción
probably reduced the importance of pastoralism as a household livelihood strategy and shifted
much of household efforts to cultivated agriculture throughout the areas where it was
implemented. This not only facilitated control of the population and freed more peasant labour
471 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 185 & 236.
472 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 179-80.
473 This impulse has continued until recent decades. As recently as 1981, Quispillacctinos are recorded in
communal meetings encouraging their fellow community members to inhabit the land near their boundaries in order
to safeguard it for the community. Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, March 16, 1981. 474
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 185-6.
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for producing tribute, but it also facilitated the capture of livestock opportunities for the
Spanish.475
In the decades following Conquest, Spanish and mestizo elites captured much of the traditional
grazing lands of the communities in the area, establishing a string of small haciendas in the
northern grazing zone of the district. Almost all of the haciendas were located north of the
current district, in what is now the district of Vinchos and the neighbouring District of Chiara;
however, they also controlled extensive grazing and high-altitude cultivated lands in what is now
the northern half of the D. Chuschi.476 The haciendas were largely situated in valuable Quechua
and Sunni lands close to the Rio Apacheta, Rio Chicllorazo, and Rio Allpachaca. These three
rivers continue north and merge into the Rio Vinchos.477 (See map) While the detailed history
of how Spanish elites seized much of the grazing lands in the area in the post-Conquest period
remains unclear, by the early 1800s most of the high Sunni and lower Puna zone of the current
district had been incorporated into various haciendas. Communities now concentrated in the Rio
Pampas zone still had access to some puna grazing areas, but now grazing opportunities were
severely constrained and faced interference from elites. For much of the next century,
communities in the district faced constant battles with the haciendas over control of these lands,
and among themselves over efforts to regain control of these grazing and high-altitude cultivated
lands. As the hacienda economy declined in the area between the late 19th century and the mid-
20th century, the conflicts shifted to battles between communities over efforts to gain control of
hacienda lands as owners sold or abandoned their holdings.
The Rio Chachi watershed and the grazing and cultivated lands leading from this area to the
north-west are prime lands in the area, apart from the area immediately fronting the Rio Pampas.
Today, the area is also the site of a large regional water project, Proyecto Rio Cachi. Built in the
late 1990s, the Rio Cachi hydrological project provides a significant portion of water and
475 Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 268; Watters, Poverty and Peasantry, 57. Mayer writes: “The colonial
rationale behind reducciones was to reduce family access to production zones, limiting them to those required for
minimum subsistence levels in order to expand available labor time for tribute.” 476
In one case, the Hacienda Santa Catalina, the hacienda maintained a dwelling in the current district boundaries,
in what is now the barrio of Catalinayuq in Quispillaccta. Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 236. 477 Detailed information about the Rio Cachi basin can be found in Gobierno Regional De Ayacucho, Proyecto
Especial “Río Cachi”: Memoria (Ayacucho: Perú, 2006). The key haciendas are noted on Figure 12: Major Land
Disputes in the District of Chuschi in the 20th Century.
154
electricity to the capital city of Huamanga.478 These lands in the north-east of the current district
were the source of much of the conflict in the area from the mid-1800s to the late twentieth
century. By the early 1800s, the total area of the Rio Cachi watershed was controlled in several
small estates by the mestizo hacienda-owning families Villavicencio and Ruiz.479 The land
around the current Quispillaccta barrio of Catalinayuq, called Ñawpallacta by Quispillacctinos,
was controlled by the Villavicensio family in the Hacienda Santa Carolina.480 The Hacienda
Kikamachay controlled lands around Unión Portrero and Pillcoccasa.481 Lands around the
current barrios of Pampamarca and Cuchoquesera were controlled by the Ruiz family who
controlled the Hacienda Putaje.482 At the western edge of the Rio Cachi basin, sat the Hacienda
Yaruca, controlling lands at the north-west edge of the district and abutting Chuschi’s high-
altitude grazing lands. By the 1920s, this hacienda came under the control of Emilio Del Solar
and Manuela Flores.483 Other nearby haciendas like Milpo, Ingahuasi, and Allpachaca similarly
controlled lands in the basin that communities long considered their patrimony. These
haciendas and others like it in the area cultivated tubers and raised livestock like cattle, sheep,
horses, and mules.484
478 Quispillaccta ceded 392.88H of land in Cuchoquesera and Pampamarca to build the Rio Cachi reservoir,
significantly impacting communal grazing operations in these barrios. Some residents complain, however, that the
Ayacucho government failed to keep promises made in exchange for allowing the construction of the reservoir, for
irrigation and public works projects in the area. In fact, some argue that the project increased poverty in the area,
while providing benefits for communities downstream. Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla, Yakumama – Madre Agua
Lagunas de Lluvia y Comunidades Criadoras del Agua (Ayacucho: ABA- Ayacucho, 2014): 94-5; 102-3. 479
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 185. 480
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 236. 481
Machaca notes that old dwellings and corrals in Unión Portrero indicate that the land was controlled by mestizo
elites for about 7 or 8 generations, dating mestizo control in that area to the early 1800s. It is not clear who owned
Kikamachay (also spelled Quicamachay). According to Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 51, Fundo Pillcoccasa was
controlled by the Vivanco family, who sold the land to Luis Humberto Vasallo. He later sold the land to
Quispillaccta, as discussed below in section 5.3.3. 482
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 236; Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 52. This area was known in the
colonial era as San Jerónimo de Pampamarca and San Juan de Cucho Quesera. At some point in the 20 th century,
the Hacienda Putaje was controlled jointly by the Ruiz and Garcia families. Spelling for local place names varies
according to the source and can thus be confusing. For example, “Putaje” is also spelled as Putaqa or Putacca;
“Kuchukersera” is known as Cuchoquisera or Cuchoquesera. Where possible, I try to use the names and spellings
most commonly used by the communities in the district. 483
Miguel La Serna, "Los huérfanos de la justicia: Estado y gamonal en Chuschi antes de la lucha armada," in
Entre la región y la nación: nuevas aproximaciones a la historia ayauchana y peruana, Roberto Ayala Huaytalla
ed., (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2013), 248-9. 484
Gutiérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 49.
155
The limited agrarian reform in 1828 and the decline of the hacienda economy in Ayacucho
(discussed above) appeared to have led to efforts by communities in the district to regain control
of lands lost to haciendas in the area. As noted above, the reform allowed Indian communities to
buy and hold title to land for the first time. For hacienda owners in the area, both local and
regional economic trends were working against their continued existence. The small haciendas
in the centre of the Department, such as those in the Rio Cachi basin, became increasingly
isolated in the region as economic activity increasingly oriented outward from Ayacucho to the
north and south. At the same time, local hacienda operations appeared to be suffering from
mismanagement, making them increasingly uneconomical. Machaca notes that unsustainable
increases in herd size and little concern for overgrazing by the mestizo-controlled haciendas in
the Rio Cachi basin degraded the pasture lands of haciendas, leading estates to be increasingly
marginal economic operations.485 According to Machaca, this spurred the land owners
Villavicencio and Ruiz to propose selling parts of their holdings.486 The local ecological and
economic decline of the haciendas in the area helps to explain why some mestizo elites in this
area were increasingly getting out of the livestock business in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
while in other parts of highland Peru, elites were pouring capital into the livestock industry as the
wool boom took off and actively dispossessed many communities of their best grazing lands. As
increasingly marginal haciendas disappeared in Ayacucho throughout the first half of 19th
century, conflict trends began to shift away from community-hacienda conflicts to conflicts
between communities over borders and land holdings. This trend that scholars have identified
throughout Ayacucho played out in the D. Chuschi well into the 20th century.487
485 Machaca , “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 185. Jacobsen, Mirages, 308-310, notes that it was common for livestock
estates to pasture more animals than ecologically or economically viable on estates in the southern highlands at the
time. “Under conditions of high risk, insecurity, and disputed rights to resources, the efficient estate maximized
livestock capital, even if this approach lowered productivity,” Jacobsen writes. He notes that this often led to a
downward economic spiral on many estates at the time, particularly impacting small to medium estates. The small
estates in the Rio Cachi basin may have similarly suffered. 486
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 185. It is not clear when Ruiz holdings were sold. 487
Gutiérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 56.
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5.3.1. Community struggles to regain control of captured high-altitude grazing lands
While the record remains incomplete on how the communities in the area regained control of the
Sunni and Puna lands, by the 1840s Quispillacctinos appear to have first seized the opportunity
to buy the land of the declining haciendas – land they always considered to be their lands.488 In
1848 Quispillaccta began the process to purchase the lands of the Hacienda Santa Catalina from
the Villavicensio family, a sale that was completed in 1870.489 Each community member in
Quispillaccta contributed money or livestock to gather funds for the sale.490 In the decades to
come, Quispillaccta purchased other hacienda-owned lands in the upper Rio Cachi watershed,
including the lands around the hamlet of Unión Portrero – controlled by the hacienda
Quicamachay, and land around Puncupata, Ccochapampa, Chontalla, and the hamlets San
Jerónimo de Pampamarca and Cuchoquesera – all controlled by the hacienda Putaje.491 By the
early 1920s, Quispillaccta had purchased a string of former hacienda lands in the upper Sunni
regions of the Rio Cachi watershed, lands which now make up most of the north-east sector of
the D. Chuschi. Not only were these some of the best pasture and high-altitude cultivated lands
488 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 236. Machaca notes that a variety of lands in the Rio Cachi watershed
occupied by the haciendas Santa Catalina, Putaqa, Quicamaychay, Inga Wasi, Allpachaca, and others in the area
were sought to be recovered by Quispillaccta, meaning that the community believed that they had some historical
entitlement to these lands. 489
“Promesa de Venta,” 1848 y 1849, in Reproduccion textual y mecanográfica de los títulos de propiedad de los
terrenos del pueblo de San Juan de Quispillaccta, Toma 3, 1927: 34-5; “Escritura de Ratificación en una escritura
de venta que una compra-venta hecha por Don Mariano Villavicensio, a favor de la comunidad del pueblo de
Quispillaccta, de la Hacienda Catalina, situada en los confiles del pueblo de Chuschi,” 1886 y 1887, in
Reproducción textual y mecanográfica de los títulos de propiedad de los terrenos del pueblo de San Juan de
Quispillaccta, Toma 3, 1927: 40-1. Both documents in Quispillaccta community archives. 490
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 185 & 236. Machaca notes that each community member contributed 300
pesos and 300 soles to help purchase the Hacienda Catalina. 491
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 236. I have not been able to find specific details about when these
purchases were made. Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 51-2, notes that Puncupata, Ccochapampa, Cuchoquesera and
Chontalla were lands originally controlled by the Hacienda Quicamachay, but later usurped by the Hacienda Putaje
before being sold to Quispillaccta. She also says that San Jeronimo de Pampamarca was purchased from the Garcia
family. Later documents and court proceedings note their close association with the Ruiz family of the Hacienda
Putaje. Salomón Galindo said that Pampamarca was once the hacienda San Geronimo de Pampamarca; but known to
Quispillacctinos as Pataquisira. In the 19th century the area was controlled by the hacendado Antonio Sotomayor
until he was driven out of the area by the Chileans during the War of the Pacific with Chile in the early 1880s. He
never returned. Interview, Salomón Galindo Achallma, 77, Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004. A similar account,
also relying in part on Salomón Galindo, can be found in Oseas Núñez Espinoza in an online history of
Cuchoquesera, <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>, accessed 9-1-16.
157
in the area, their location in the head waters of the Rio Cachi meant access to important sources
of water for irrigation in the semi-arid highlands of Ayacucho.492
Unfortunately, these purchases failed to solidify their entitlements over what the community
believed were their traditional lands. Nor did it stem the illegal seizure of community assets and
lands by mestizo elites. Soon after beginning the purchase of the Hacienda Catalina in the late
1840s, Quispillaccta established a community herd of livestock on the newly acquired lands of
Catalinayuq. By maintaining community herds on purchased lands, Quispillaccta sought to
generate funds to benefit the entire community and also hoped to ensure the security of the newly
acquired lands.493 Similar community herds were established in the barrios of Cuchoquesera and
Tuco in the decades to come.494 In 1890, however, the Catholic Church used its ecclesiastic
powers to capture much of the benefits of Quispillaccta’s community herds. Community herds
in Catalinayuq and Tuco were unilaterally declared as cofradia or brotherhood herds for the
Church – herds designated for a particular Catholic Saint that would be controlled for the benefit
of the Archbishop of Ayacucho. The local parish of Chuschi was instructed to manage these
herds, while the community members in Quispillaccta were forced to continue the day-to-day
care of the herds for the Church.495 The Church had now stepped into the power vacuum created
by the disappearing haciendas to seize assets and entitlements from communities.496
The Catholic Church’s presence in the D. Chuschi dates to the colonial era. The burden of its
exploitation and abuse of the community members in the district was a long-held grievance for
many peasants. Accounts of the settlement of the current Matriz of Chuschi and Quispillaccta
492 Gutíérrez, "Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 52, notes that many of the conflicts over pasture lands in the Rio
Pampas area were also about controlling irrigation possibilities for these pasture lands. 493
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 183 & 185. 494
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 183. 495
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 29-30 & 53; Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 186. Gamboa notes that a
mestizo shop keeper in Chuschi helped to manage the Church’s cofradia. Machaca notes that the newly acquired
lands and community herds were “awarded” to the Saints, and in this way, the lands and animals came under Church
control. Castillo Gamboa notes that the herds in Catalinayuq benefitted Santos Elias and Santa Teresa; herds in
Tuco were designated for Santos Marcos and Virgen del Carmen, while a third in Qiwilla were designated for
Santos Lucas and Virgen del Rosario. I have been unable to locate Qiwilla or any additional information on this
herd. 496
This may have been a trend in several parts of Ayacucho. Records indicate that there were six cases of litigation
between communities and priests between 1886 and 1895 in Ayacucho, and none in the preceding years. Guttíérrez,
"Ayacucho: Economía y Sociedad,” 53.
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indicate the crucial role of the Catholic Church. The construction of a chapel in Chuschi’s
village centre in 1554 was key to the relocation of the communities as part of the reducción
strategy employed by Spanish authorities in the mid-16th century. A similar chapel was built in
1555 a short distance away, in what was to become the town centre of Quispillaccta.497 The
existing Catholic church in Chuschi was built in 1774, and Chuschi became the colonial
ecclesiastic centre for several villages in the surrounding area.498
Capturing the entitlements of Quispillaccta’s newly purchased Sunni and Puna lands was no
doubt an additional blow to the community following the colonial reducción policy. Two of the
three community herds in Quispillaccta were no longer available for the community’s needs.
Only the small communal herds in Cuchoquesera escaped appropriation by the Church.499
The Church similarly captured entitlements from the community herds in Chuschi and its annex
Cancha Cancha for decades. Like Quispillaccta, community members in Chuschi and Cancha
Cancha also struggled for decades to recover and maintain entitlements to herding lands
threatened by elites from the Hacienda Yaruca and Milpo respectively. (Discussed below in
section 5.3.2) The capture of some of these entitlements by the Catholic Church was thus
another galling imposition of elite resource capture to comuneros.500 The Church had long
controlled a cofradia from Chuschi’s community herds in the puna of Chicllarazo, appropriating
497 Isbell, To Defend, 65; Municipalidad Distrital de Chuschi, Reseña Histórica del Distrito, web page, accessed 4
Oct., 2013, http://www.munichuschi.gob.pe/portal/ciudad/reseniahistorica.html. 498
Isbell, To Defend, 65. 499
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 186. A 1923 legal complaint, discussed below in footnote 490, notes that
there were only 48 head of cattle in Cuchoquesera when they were seized by the Hacienda Putaje. This is small
compared to the hundreds of animals that were kept in barrios like Tuco. 500
It is not clear when the Catholic Church began to control Chuschi and Cancha Cancha’s community herds – the
herds that became the cofradia herds of the Church. In 1972 Chuschi expelled the Catholic priest from the
community and seized the cofradia for the community. In an interview with Isbell, the priest indicated that he was
“mystified” about the reasons for his expulsion, believing that he had served the community well for fifteen years.
He also characterized the seizure of the Church’s herd as stealing from the Church, claiming that documents proved
Church control of the herd since colonial times. “However,” Isbell noted, “comuneros felt that the Church had
illegally taken what had belonged to their ancestors. The community was therefore receiving what had been theirs
all the time.” Isbell, To Defend, 239. Isbell was probably speaking to Father Carlos Eulogio Chávez Abad, who was
the parish priest in Chuschi from 1963 to 1972. His abuses and conflict with Chuschinos are discussed in Miguel La
Serna, “In Plain View of the Catholic Faithful: Church-Peasant Conflict in the Peruvian Andes, 1963-1980,”
Hispanic American Historical Review 95(4), 2015: 631-657. As with other La Serna writings, his heavy reliance on
legal petitions as documentary records of historical events in the district should be accepted with caution.
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the benefits of the herd until the early 1970s.501 In the late 1960s, one study assessed that
Chuschi’s cofradia herd consisted of approximately 1000 head of sheep and 250 to 300 cattle.
Sales of livestock were used to finance repairs to the local chapels and to provide food and drink
for saint day festivals throughout the year.502
The Catholic Church’s control of community herds throughout the district continued well into
the 20th century, and no doubt significantly impacted the well-being of the communities in the
district. Valuable assets were taken from community members at a time when rising population
in the district (discussed in detail below in section 7.2) and the increasing penetration of market
forces were presenting new challenges and opportunities for the communities as the 19th century
waned and in the first decades of the 20th century. While individual families often still controlled
their own small family livestock herds in many communities, the continuing drain of resources
from the cofradia herds removed assets and labour that could have been used to deal with
community challenges in the early to mid-20th century, like the lack of potable water, limited
education resources, and the paucity of income for investment in the communities and their
agricultural activities – needs subsequently identified when outside experts entered the
communities in the late 1960s.503 The Church’s resource capture also heightened competition for
the remaining Sunni and Puna lands in the area, particularly in areas where hacienda land had yet
to be recovered by communities, and on the boundaries between communities where overlapping
claims to the same land had yet to be resolved. This will be discussed below in the remainder of
chapter 5 and in chapter 6.
The recovery of some former hacienda lands by the early 20th century did not end the
exploitative practices and outright resource capture by those remaining haciendas in the area. At
various times communities in the district continued to deal with robbery and illegal seizure of
their lands and livestock by the remaining hacienda elites in the area. These cases of resource
capture similarly threatened limited community resources and drained scarce monies from
501 Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 27-8; Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 34-5. It is not clear where
Cancha Cancha’s cofradia was kept. Cancha Cancha had a long-term grazing presence around Choccoro, in an area
north-west of Unión Portrero, straddling the northern boundaries of the district, and this may have been the location
of their cofradia herd. 502
Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 27-8. 503
Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 152.
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community coffers because of the associated legal expenses. These cases demonstrated that
communities in the district continued to struggle directly with haciendas or the legacies of area
haciendas well into the 20th century. For example, in January, 1923, authorities in Quispillaccta
charged that Don Manuel Ruiz Condomino, the owner of the Hacienda Putaje ordered his men to
invade the Quispillaccta barrio of Cuchoquesera and capture the community’s herds.504
Quispillaccta’s Cuchoquesera herd was the only community herd that escaped Church control.
While Quispillaccta’s livestock were led to the neighbouring Hacienda Putaje, Ruiz ordered
Putaje’s livestock to be pastured freely throughout Cuchoquesera. It took a judicial complaint
and days of pleading by Quispillacctinos to reverse the invasion and illegal seizure of their
communal herd, though Ruiz kept several heads of cattle seized from Quispillaccta.505
Incredibly, legal proceedings that sprang from this land invasion would wind their way through
courts in the Department for 49 years before being settled in Quispillaccta’s favour in 1972.
Chuschi similarly confronted the abuse of hacendados during this period. In the early 1920s, the
Del Solar family controlled the Hacienda Yaruca and began to extend the boundaries of Yaruca
at Chuschi’s expense by forging land titles and seizing lands in the extreme north-west of the
district, around the areas of Rumichaca.506 The lands in dispute include high-altitude grazing
lands but also some of the only Sunni and low Puna lands in the area. Chuschi’s struggles
against the Del Solar hacendados would last even longer than Quispillaccta’s battles with the
Ruiz family, with unresolved legal issues remaining until the late 1990s.
By the early decades of the twentieth century, both communities thus still struggled with
landowners to reclaim assets they considered to be their traditional patrimony, while feeling the
pinch of the Church’s capture of community herds. Chuschi’s dispute with the Hacienda Yaruca
504 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 46.
505 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 48-9; Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 46.
506 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 249. La Serna notes that the Del Solar family took control of the hacienda in the early
1920s. However, information from Isbell’s account of the conflict with the hacendados suggests that the same
family controlled the hacienda for many decades before the 1920s. She relates that in 1975 the son of Emilio Del
Solar, who controlled Yaruca in the 1920s, claimed that the land had been purchased by his great grandfather.
Isbell, To Defend, 241. If correct, this suggests that Yaruca was in the Del Solar family for two generations prior to
the 1920s. The precise boundaries of the disputed territories cannot be located on maps. Topographical maps from
the 1950s show the Hacienda Yarua, which is likely the hacienda controlled by the Del Solar family. Isbell notes
that the disputed lands were near Niñobamba, which can be found at the extreme north-west tip of the district’s
boundaries on the map.
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would continue for decades and consume considerable community resources, as discussed below
in section 5.3.2. It threatened their main area of high-altitude grazing lands in the northwest of
the district. For Quispillacctinos, too, Putaje’s invasion of Cuchoquesera was a significant threat
to their community’s only communal herd and grazing zone in the Rio Cachi watershed.
Members of both communities must have worried that the actions of the hacendados were a
prelude to the complete usurpation of their grazing lands, given how the pattern of invasion
conformed to the typical way that hacienda usurpation of land happened throughout the southern
Sierra. Jacobsen notes a description of how violent hacienda usurpation typically happened in
Azángaro province, in the Department of Puno at the turn of the century:
The grabbing of land from Indians begins with the act of daily
placing cattle and mules belonging to the usurper in the pastures
and cultivated fields of the Indian. In this the colonos and
employees of the latifundista use force, and they proceed to kill the
few head of livestock of the Indian for their own consumption.
Alternatively, they drive the Indian’s livestock to the latifundia’s
central building complex, [kill the animals there], and distribute
most of the meat and hides among themselves, while reserving the
carcasses of the best-fed animals for the patron (hacienda owner)
or as gifts to the provincial authorities. … In the following days the
looting of the Indian’s hut begins with the object of weakening his
economic situation. This goes on until, under the pressure of this
display of force, the owner decides to sign the bill of sale. As a
sale price they receive a small sum in money or kind according to
the whim of the land grabber.507
While Quispillaccta’s success in recovering Cuchoquesera and most of their cattle illustrates how
the fortunes were declining for some haciendas in the area by the mid-1920s, both communities
would continue to struggle for decades against hacienda abuses in the area.
Struggles with the Hacienda Yaruca and Hacienda Putaje in the 1920s took place in a period of
remarkable unrest in the southern highlands, presaging the decline of the hacienda economy in
the coming decades. The wool boom of the late 19th century and the price spikes sparked by
increased wool demand during World War One set off a land grabbing frenzy at the turn of the
century in the southern highlands.508 This accelerated peasant militancy in the southern
507 Jacobsen, Mirages, 236.
508 See Jacobsen, Mirages, chapter 6.
162
highlands to their highest levels in over a hundred years in the decade between 1915 and 1925.509
Instability in wool markets following WW1 and into the 1920s exacerbated the social unrest in
the southern highlands. “A ‘seismic wave’ of rebellions and other forms of peasant resistance
engulfed nearly every highland province of Puno and Cuzco departments between 1920 and
1923.”510 Ayacucho similarly witnessed “a broad range of rural mobilizations against abusive
authorities in rural Ayacucho[,]”511 and the spread of a wide-ranging indigenous rights political
movement in the Department – the Tawantinsuyo movement.512 In Cangallo, the Tawantinsuyo
movement “coalesced into a broad program of action and protest throughout much of the
province,” particularly in eastern district of Carhuanca in 1923, where people rebelled against
abusive authorities, unfair taxes, and lack of indigenous rights.513 The rising unrest and growing
awareness of the ‘Indian problem’ pushed the Peruvian central government to undertake some of
the most extensive reforms in over 100 years, recognizing Indian communities in the constitution
in 1920, establishing a Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1921, creating investigative commissions to
examine the unrest in the southern highlands, and increasingly inserting themselves between
clashing highland peasants and landlords – all of which dovetailed with its own commitment at
the time to modernizing Peru’s capitalist state.514 As the unrest worsened in the early 1920s –
partly stimulated by the promise of reform that remained largely unfulfilled – the government
grew increasingly worried that peasant unrest was getting out of control. A violent backlash was
unleashed by the Peruvian military and local elites on peasant protesters and communities in the
509 Jacobsen, Mirages, 337.
510 Jacobsen, Mirages, 344; Watters, Poverty, 245.
511 Jaymie Patricia Heilman, "Under Civilian Colonels: Indigenous Political Mobilization in 1920s Ayacucho,
Peru," The Americas 66, 4 (April 2010), 502. 512
Jaymie Patricia Heilman, Before the Shining Path: Politics in Rural Ayacucho, 1895-1980 (Stanford: Standord
University Press, 2010), chapter 2. 513
Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 47. Though Heilman argues that the Tawantinsuyo protest movement was
present in much of Cangallo, her book actually only offers evidence of unrest in the eastern part of the province, far
removed from the District of Chuschi. 514
Thomas M. Davies Jr., "Indian Integration in Peru, 1820-1948: An Overview," The Americas 30, 2 (1973), 195;
Watters, Poverty, 245; Jacobsen, Mirages, 345. Some of the government’s initiatives were a terrible step backward,
however, such as its road building program throughout the country that forced all men between 18-60 to build roads
in the highlands – a program that essentially reinstated forced labour for road building and killed thousands of
mostly indigenous Peruvians in the 1920s. See Davies Jr., “Indian Integration in Peru,” 198-199.
163
southern highlands, killing thousands.515 In eastern Cangallo, provincial authorities called in the
Peruvian military, which put down the Carhuanca rebellion with brutal force, killing many,
looting and burning homes, and stealing livestock.516
While the Peruvian state was still unwilling in the early decades of the twentieth century to
overturn the power balance among landlords and peasants in the countryside, modest reforms in
the rights of indigenous communities in 1920s were somewhat expanded by legislative changes
in the 1930s. These changes codified the formal recognition of indigenous communities,
guaranteed the protection of community lands, promised a legal code, and required
representation in local government.517 By the early 1940s, Peru’s institutions were increasingly
recognizing and codifying the existence of indigenous communities in the highlands. The
process of officially recognizing indigenous communities included submission of information
about community land holdings. In the context of overlapping and contested claims by
neighbouring communities and large land owners, however, extending official recognition
potentially risked inflaming long-running land disputes in the highlands.
In the D. Chuschi, these government reforms appear to have had two important impacts. First,
the changes encouraged Quispillaccta and Chuschi to obtain formal community recognition in
the 1940s, no doubt with the hope that recognition would help to consolidate control over
existing land holdings and claimed land holdings. This helped provoke over forty years of direct
conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta over the high Sunni and Puna lands directly north of
the Matriz, including very violent inter-community clashes in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.
Second, both communities sought to expand their grazing land holdings through additional
purchases of lands in the Rio Cachi basin. Quispillaccta’s August, 1942 purchases of lands in
the north-east corner of the current district set off decades of conflict with the hacendados of
Putaje and the peons and peasants working these lands, many of whom had kinship links to
Chuschi. Chuschi’s attempt one month later, in Sept., 1942, to purchase a large portion of the
hacienda Yaruca also began decades of legal battles that remained unresolved to the present day,
515 Jacobsen, Mirages, 347-8. More than 2000 peasants were killed in the two Cuzco provinces of Huancané and
Azángaro alone, according to Jacobsen. 516
Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 50. 517
Davies Jr., “Indian Integration in Peru,” 201-2.
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both with the owners of Yaruca and with the hacienda peons who later claimed the land. The
details of these conflicts are reconstructed below, along with an account of deeper background
causes in later chapters that exacerbated the conflicts in the high-altitude zones of the district,
such as the causes of population movements to the area in the mid-20th century.
5.3.2. Chuschi’s Yaruca dispute on the north-west borders
Chuschi’s aborted purchase of portions of the Hacienda Yaruca appears to have worsened the
already troubled relations between Chuschi and hacienda owners, the Del Solar Flores family,
setting the stage for several decades of conflict over grazing lands in the north-west of the
district. Frustrated by decades of conflict with Yaruca, Chuschi decided in 1942 to buy back
control of almost half of the land controlled by the hacienda from Emilio Del Solar, the family
patriarch. In addition to useful high-altitude grazing land, the area under dispute included some
of the only Sunni lands in this portion of the upper Rio Chachi watershed bordering the Rio
Apacheta, providing important sources of cultivated land and water for comuneros in the area.
Figure 14: Disputed Territory Between Chuschi and
Hacienda Yaruca in NW of District of Chuschi
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
165
However, the sale was annulled by an Ayacucho judge because of competing ownership claims
by other mestizo elites.518 Chuschinos considered the land as their own, so the annulment of the
sale must have been particularly galling to the community. In the wake of the aborted sale,
Emilio Del Solar’s sons Cesar Flores and Javier Del Solar set out in the following decades to
tighten their control of the disputed lands and attempted to steal even more land from Chuschi.
With land invasions and limited land reform happening in other parts of Peru in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, the community must have felt that it was only a matter of time before the land
would be returned to them. The 1968 military coup in Peru and promises by the leader of the
controlling military junta, Gen. Juan Velasco, that agrarian reform was coming to Peru surely
heightened expectations that the disputed lands would return to Chuschi. The greater the
portents of reform, however, the more the hacendados increased their legal and violent
harassment of Chuschinos on the borders of the disputed territories, to try to coerce control of
more land for Yaruca, to cement control of the land they held, and to intimidate Chuschi into
relenting to the hacienda’s control of the disputed land. Between 1968 and 1975, the hacendados
filed several spurious legal complaints about supposed Chuschino attacks and damage of their
property as a cover for their own campaign of intimidation, violence, and abuse of Chuschinos
and destruction of Chuschi property in the areas bordering the disputed lands. When not leading
the assaults themselves, the hacendados often compelled their own peons undertake the violence
and intimidation against Chuschi, possibly hoping to provoke a violent counter-response from
Chuschi that would portray the Del Solar family as the victims. 519 They paired the strategy of
violent intimidation with a vigorous legal defence that attempted to question the cultural, moral,
and legal legitimacy of Chuschi’s land claims.520
Chuschinos maintained restraint and patience in the face of continued violence and provocation
from Del Solar for several years after the 1968 coup. However, as years passed without
resolution to the dispute, the community turned to direct action to regain control of the disputed
518 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 249. A legal petition in 1978 by the Del Solar family noted that the land under
dispute comprised 650 hectares. Chuschi’s legal filings refer to this land as Yaruca-Ingaflorida. Isbell notes that the
disputed lands are adjacent to Chuschi’s communal grazing lands in Inga Wasi. See Sánchez Villagómez,
"(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 43-4; Isbell, To Defend, 241. 519
La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 261-3. 520
La Serna, 256-8.
166
territory. In the first years following the new government’s announcement of agrarian reform in
Peru, the community put its faith in the bureaucratic reform process to regain their land,
cooperating with various regional government officials to detail their land holdings.521 Perhaps
buoyed by the quick expropriation of the nearby Hacienda Milpo in Oct. 1969, 522 for
Chuschinos, the Del Solar family’s days in control of Yaruca must have seemed numbered. In
mid-1972 the community launched a formal lawsuit to regain the disputed lands. The trial
continued for years without a resolution, hearing a variety of evidence from both sides about who
rightfully controlled the contested lands.523 Frustrated by the continued control of Yaruca’s
lands years after Velasco had promised agrarian reform, in 1975 the Chuschinos decided to
engage in direct action to pressure the government’s agrarian reform office to speed up the
decision on its lawsuit.524 Without warning, over 50 Chuschino men herded hundreds of animals
from the community’s recently recovered cofradia lands onto the disputed territories, trampling
Del Solar’s potato crops in the process in an otherwise peaceful invasion of the territory.525
While this invasion did speed up the review process of the litigation by convincing the
government to dispatch a land judge to the area a few weeks later to gather evidence,526
Chuschinos would have to wait until mid-1976 before the court decided in their favour and
awarded them the disputed territory.527
Unfortunately for Chuschi, legal victory did not resolve the dispute. Over the next two years the
hacienda owners used a variety of legal subterfuge and delaying tactics to try prevent Chuschinos
from actually taking physical control of the disputed lands. Given the shifting national political
context at the time, with the deposing of Peru’s President Velasco in a coup in August, 1975, the
reversal of progressive policies by the new leader, and the ending of agrarian reform in 1976,528
the hacendados perhaps thought that by refusing to relinquish control of the disputed territories,
521 La Serna, 254 & 263-7.
522 The expropriation of the Hacienda Milpo is described in David Scott Palmer, "Revolution from Above," 247-49.
523 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 254-5.
524 Isbell, To Defend, 240.
525 Isbell, To Defend, 240. Isbell notes that it happened on April 16th, 1975, and was a largely peaceful invasion,
aside from the shooting of a Chuschino’s dog by a hacienda employee. 526
Isbell, To Defend, 241. 527
La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 274. 528
Watters, Poverty, 359-60.
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they could outlast or reverse the court’s decision. First Del Solar tried to claim that the disputed
lands actually belonged to other relatives, thus invalidating the court decision. Then, the family
tried to argue that they needed the land for their personal use, and that the Agrarian Reform laws
prevented ‘peasants’ from seizing lands used by Del Solar for personal use. They also tried to
change the name of the disputed territory and claim that Chuschi was trying to illegally seize the
land. There were also claims that Del Solar was bribing the land judge to prevent the
handover.529 Hand in hand with the legal stalling tactics, Del Solar continued to use violent
intimidation on Chuschinos in the area to maintain control of the land.530
By late 1978, Chuschi’s patience had run out that a legal route would finally return the disputed
territory to the community. The community again decided to take direct action to enforce the
court’s decision. Hundreds of Chuschinos invaded the disputed lands, capturing Javier Del Solar
in the process. Del Solar was allegedly captured with equipment for processing cocaine on the
Yaruca estate. He was forcibly marched to jail in Huamanga by community members, and later
faced charges of manufacturing cocaine.531 Unfortunately, for Chuschi, the community was
ordered by police to leave the disputed territory soon after, again putting into doubt the resolve
of the state to enforce the court’s decision on the land dispute. Time, however, was running out
on the Del Solar family, because Sendero was becoming increasingly active in the area in the late
1970s. By 1981, when the area was firmly under Sendero control, the Del Solar case was
abandoned, the hacendados presumably having fled the region. The dispute appears to have
continued into the late 1980s during the Sendero insurgency, even though the hacienda-owning
Del Solar Flores family had by then been replaced as the plaintiff in the conflict by the
community of Yaruca, in the neighbouring District of Vinchos.532 It is possible that Yaruca’s
peon’s were leading the legal case against Chuschi at the time, either in a bid to win control of
the hacienda’s lands for themselves, or at the behest of the hacendados. The latter seems
possible given that the Del Solar family reappeared in litigation against Chuschi in the late
1990s. According to La Serna’s 2007 interview with former community President Juan
529 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 274-279; Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 44.
530 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 277-8.
531 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 278-80.
532 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 42-7.
168
Carhuapoma, the Del Solar family continues to frustrate Chuschi’s efforts to regain the contested
lands.533
5.3.3. Quispillaccta’s dispute over Hacienda Quicamachay lands on the NE borders
The Chuschi-Del Solar dispute is particularly interesting because the conflict endured long after
the mestizo hacienda owners disappeared from the area with the entry of Sendero. The shift in
the conflict during the 1980s to a conflict between Chuschi and the former hacienda peons and
community members from nearby hamlets happened in other areas of the district as well. The
most serious example of this concerned the conflict between Quispillaccta and the Hacienda
Putaje over lands purchased by Quispillaccta in the mid-20th century from the Hacienda
Quicamachay. After decades of battling the hacendados of Putaje, Quispillaccta found itself
struggling in the 1970s with former hacienda peons and community members from nearby
communities for control of their purchased lands. In this case, when entitlement conflicts with
mestizo elites began to wane in the twentieth century, the conflicts shifted to entitlement
conflicts between communities, with lasting impacts of enmity between communities in the D.
Chuschi.
In August, 1942 the community of Quispillaccta bought several thousand hectares of land from
the Hacienda Quicamachay in an area on the north-east border of the current district. This
purchase would trigger decades of conflict and legal battles with the owners of the nearby
Hacienda Putaje and with peasants farming and living on the land at the time of the purchase.
Quispillaccta’s eventual victory in this conflict would leave a lasting legacy of ill-will among
those involved and worsen relations between Quispillaccta and Chuschi. Quispillaccta’s 1942
purchase of over 5000 hectares of former hacienda lands from Humberto Vasallo Barbaran and
Sara Bedoya Palomino de Vasallo, the owners of the Hacienda Quichamachay was, in the
community’s eyes, another step to recover lands long seized by mestizo elites. The sale
encompassed areas around the Fundo Pillcoccasa and near Ccochapampa.534 About 300-400H of
533 La Serna, Los Huerfanos, 281. Sánchez Villagómez’s study appears to have mistakenly concluded that Chuschi
won their disputed lands back. 534
I have been unable to locate the exact location of the purchased lands, but have estimated the location on the
map, Figure 15, based on place names and similar map names.
169
the purchased land was being occupied by the Hacienda Putaje, according to a clause in the sale
document.535
However, the owners of the Hacienda Putaje, Vidal Ruiz Tello and César y Rodolfo García
Espinoza, challenged the sale less than a year later, saying that the land really belonged to the
Hacienda Putaje. Quispillaccta’s legal complaint against the Putaje Hacendados was eventually
decided in the community’s favour in 1947 when the Dirección General de Asuntos Indígenas
(Bureau of Indian Affairs), ruled that the purchased land belonged to Quispillaccta.536 The
535 Oseas Núñez Espinoza in an online history of Cuchoquesera, <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-
PE018555.html>, assessed 9-1-16. Núñez Espinoza says that the Quicamachay sale brought the lands of
Cuchoquesera to Quispillaccta. However, it is not clear if he means some or all of the lands now part of the barrio of
Cuchoquesera. As noted above, Quispillaccta had a cofradia of animals in Cuchoquesera since the early 20th century
and clashed with the Hacienda Putaje in the 1920s, according to Sánchez Villagómez. So, the timeline remains
unclear on when ownership of Cuchoquesera was established by Quispillaccta. It is possible that part of the
purchased Quicamachay lands added to Quispillaccta’s earlier holdings in the area. 536
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 49; Ministry of Agriculture archives, Ayacucho, Folio 97-
230.
Figure 15: Disputed Territory in Land Conflict Between Quispillaccta and
Hacienda Putaje in NE of District
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
170
government’s decision failed to settle the dispute, however. In 1951, frustrated by continued
invasions of their lands at the hands of “hacendados and others” Quispillaccta decided to raise
money to make a formal survey of their landholdings and send this to the Ministry in Lima.537
The conflict over the Quicamachay lands continued, however, in August 1965 when Putaje’s
owner Vidal Ruiz Tello alleged that when Quispillaccta bought Quicamachay from Vasallo-
Bedoya, 2900H of the 5300H sale was sold in error. This land actually belonging to the
Hacienda Putaje, according to Ruiz’s complaint. This allegation was rejected by the court, but
appealed by the Ruiz family and continued throughout the late 1960s.538
By the early 1970s, the hacendados of Putaje were no longer a party to the dispute. As occurred
with land disputes with Yaruca in the north-west of the district, Quispillaccta’s battle to retain
control over the purchased Quicamachay lands now continued with those peasants and peons
who had taken over the Hacienda Putaje’s land holdings.539 In the intervening years, the national
and local political context had radically changed in Peru with disruptive consequences in the
area. The Peruvian military’s Agrarian Reform efforts sought to finally eliminate the old land
holding system in the country and replace it with modern agrarian cooperatives. However, in
places like the Rio Cachi watershed, where the hacienda system had long been in decline, it
appears that the Agrarian reform accelerated the scramble among peasant communities in the
area to consolidate control over contested lands, lands they considered their historical patrimony,
or over lands that they had long worked as hacienda peons. Multiple competing agendas spurred
conflicts in the area as each group sought to secure their interests and goals – from other
communities in the area, from former hacienda workers, from government reform officials, from
local elites, and from land owners struggling to maintain control over their holdings.
537 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1947-62, Municipal Archives: meeting 15 April, 1951.
538 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 50. In an interview, Cuchoquesera resident Salomón
Galindo Achallma said that the trial ended in 1970 in Quispillaccta’s favour. Galindo said that the hacendados of
Putaje unsuccessfully tried to influence Agrarian Reform officials and use their influence to distort the Agrarian
Reform process to their advantage to take control of the disputed land. Interview, Salomón Galindo Achallma, 77,
Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004.
539 According to Cuchoquesera resident Salomón Galindo, Putaje’s hacendados had told their peons that part of
Quispillaccta’s 1942 land purchase belonged to the Hacienda Putaje. So, when those Putaje peons took control of the
hacienda in the Agrarian Reform in the early 1970s, they took over the claim to some of the disputed lands as well.
Interview, Salomón Galindo Achallma, 77, Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004.
171
In some cases, the government’s agrarian reform only exacerbated conflicts in the area, as
happened with the Hacienda Milpo, located in the Rio Cachi basin. The military government
expropriated the Hacienda Milpo outright in October 1969 and sought to give all the land to the
hacienda’s peons. The government also planned to create a massive collective farm with the
asset of twelve haciendas in the Rio Cachi basin.540 However, this move only furthered unrest,
uncertainty, and conflict in the area. The hacienda’s owners engaged in protracted legal battles
with the Peruvian state that left the hacienda’s peons in a legal limbo for years, with no clear
ownership or control of hacienda lands. The government sold the hacienda’s saleable assets
while the court case continued. The impoverished peons struggled to maintain their livelihoods
in the face of non-existent assistance from the government, succeeding only in further degrading
the hacienda’s lands with poor practices.541 New conflicts also arose with neighbouring
communities like Cancha Cancha, which long held grazing lands nearby in the area in
Huaillaccasa, and with Quispillaccta over areas like Ñahuipuquio and Accoccasa.542 As
discussed above in the literature review, Agrarian Reform measures aggravated long standing
conflicts between communities in many areas of the highlands.543
In the case of the disputed Quicamachay lands, Quispillaccta suddenly confronted a much more
complex series of conflicts when agrarian reform displaced the hacendados of Putaje. The
Quicamachay conflict now morphed into three different disputes. Two of the disputes – over
lands in Ccochapampa and around Pillcoccasa – revolved around struggles with peasants who
had lived on or near the purchased lands when they were still controlled by Huberto Vasallo of
Quicamachay. The third dispute involved former peons from the Hacienda Putaje over lands
purchased by Quispillaccta as part of the 1942 Quicamachay purchase, but also claimed as part
of Putaje.
540 David Scott Palmer, "Revolution from Above," 247-49.
541 David Scott Palmer, "Revolution from Above," 247-49.
542 The land conflict between Cancha Cancha and the Milpo hacienda continues to this day in the form of litigation
between the former hacienda peons of Milpo who have formed the campesino community of Milpo and the
community of Cancha Cancha. Roger Maquera, Las Comunidades Campesinas en la región Ayacucho, (Lima:
Asociación SER/ Grupo Allpa, 2009): 18. <http://www.allpa.org.pe/publicaciones/las-comunidades-campesinas-en-
la-regi%C3%B3n-ayacucho >. 543
See Linda J Seligmann, Between Reform & Revolution: Political Struggles in the Peruvian Andes, 1969-1991
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 60-1.
172
The Pillcoccasa dispute began when Quispillaccta purchased the approximately 200H of land
around the Fundo Pillcoccasa in 1942 as part of the Quicamachay sale. At the time, the area was
home to 43 families who served the Fundo as colonos. These employees worked and lived on the
land for the hacienda, and were originally community members from Chuschi’s annex, Cancha
Cancha.544 Cancha Cancha had relatively little grazing land available in the Colonial era, so for
many decades some Cancha Cancha residents worked and settled in the hacienda lands of Putaje
and Quicamachay, cultivating crops and raising livestock for the haciendas, while others paid the
haciendas for the right to graze their own livestock on hacienda lands.545 Castillo Gamboa
argues that Cancha Cancha residents considered the Pillcoccasa lands as part of their
community’s historical patrimony, having controlled the area before haciendas were established
in the area.546 Rocky, unirrigated, and with poor access, Pillcoccasa was not immediately settled
by Quispillaccta after its purchase in 1942.547 Instead, the land was purchased along with all the
colonos living on the lands. These colonos were allowed to continue living there in the decades
to come to watch over it and help secure it for Quispillaccta.548 To the colonos, however,
Quispillaccta’s purchase allowed them to reclaim control over lands they long considered their
own.549 Castillo Gamboa claims that the conflict over Pillcoccasa accelerated in the 1960s, as
544 Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 50; interview with Pablo Conde, Quispillaccta, 25 October, 2004.
545 Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 36. A Chuschino informant I spoke to also noted that Cancha Cancha
comuneros used to live in Pillcoccosa, and that some of those former colonos now live in the matriz of Cancha
Cancha. Interview with Marcelino Roca, Chuschi, 24 Oct., 2004. 546
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 50. 547
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 51 and 54. 548
Interview with Pablo Conde, Quispillaccta, 25 October, 2004. Conde notes that the colonos of Pillcoccasa paid
Quispillaccta authorities in sheep every September for the right to continue living in Pillcoccasa. 549
According to interviews with colono descendants done by Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 50, the hacendado
Vasallo Barbaran first proposed selling Pillcoccosa to the workers living in Pillcoccosa; however, when the colonos
couldn’t collectively agree to buy the land, Quispillaccta offered to buy the land along with the colonos.
Descendants of these colonos claim that they contributed funds to help Quispillaccta purchase Pillcoccasa. However,
I cannot find any record of this in the Quispillaccta records. “The hacienda owner Vassallo Barbaran had proposed
the sale of Pillcoccasa to the settlers (colonos),” Castillo Gamboa quotes the son of one colono. “In that time one of
the settlers was my father, Jesús Quispe [and] my uncle José Quispe, but the people were not in agreement over the
idea of selling one cow per person to reach the price of Pillcoccasa. The oqes Quispillacctinos found out about this,
and they proposed to buy the land together with the settlers. The settlers answered very well and accepted the offer
and in this manner they bought the land together with the oqes Quispillacctas, giving the money to the Vassallos.”
Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 50. “Oqes” is an expletive used by Chuschinos to refer to Quispillacctinos as “darkies.” It
harkens back to the different ethnic identity between Quispillacctinos and Chuschinos. The frequent swearing in
reference to the Quispillacctinos in this quote displays the disdain and hatred of the colono descendant for
Quispillaccta. See also the discussion about Quispillactino Occes, as La Serna spells it. La Serna, The Corner of the
Living, 62.
173
Quispillaccta sought to consolidate greater control over their purchased lands, and as the area
opened up to greater commercial exchange and improved transport with the completion of a road
to the district in the mid-1960s.550 As noted above, however, continued disputes with the
hacendados of Putaje in the mid-1960s also spurred Quispillaccta to consolidate control over
their land holdings. It also appears, however, that the colonos and peasants from Cancha Cancha
increased their efforts in the late 1960s and early 1970s to take control of Pillcoccasa, perhaps
emboldened by the rhetoric and actions unleashed by agrarian reform in the area. Increasing
numbers of peasants from Cancha Cancha began to settle in the area and refused to leave as
Quispillaccta attempted to secure the land.551
Another dispute with former workers from the Hacienda Quicamachay centred around lands near
the peasant community of Ccochapampa that Quispillaccta long considered their own.552 As in
Pillcoccasa, the former hacienda workers (referred to as feudatarios in legal filings) were
allowed to stay on in the land after it was purchased by Quispillaccta, on the condition that they
would integrate themselves as members into the community of Quispillaccta. However,
Quispillaccta claimed that the former feudatarios from Quicamachay did not follow through on
their promises and instead looked to integrate themselves into the nearby community of
550 Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 51. Isbell, To Defend, 46, notes that the road from Huamanga to Chuschi was
completed in 1966, entering the district from the south-east via Pampa Cangallo and along the Rio Pampas. A road
into the district through the Rio Cachi watershed in the north east was completed some years later. 551
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 52. In an interview, Quispillactino Pablo Conde remarked that as numbers of
those living in Pillcoccasa increased, they became emboldened and refused to pay rent to Quispillaccta, seeking
instead to obtain control of the land. Interview with Pablo Conde, Quispillaccta, 25 October, 2004. Oseas Núñez
Espinoza says that the Cancha Cancha dispute was complicated by the actions of a former foreman of the Hacienda
Quicamachay, Darío Ochoa, and his decedents, who worked land in the area called Incacapilla that was claimed by
Quispillaccta. Darío Ochoa’s descendants married comuneros from Cancha Cancha, further enmeshing Ochoa’s
dispute with Quispillaccta with conflicts between Quispillaccta and Cancha Cancha over Pillcoccasa. The Ochoa
family’s involvement in the conflict continued well into 1981, when Sendero began to operate in the area. Oseas
Núñez Espinoza, online history of Cuchoquesera, <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>,
assessed 9-1-16. There is no clear history of the conflicts, disputes, lawsuits, and land conflicts in the north-east
corner of the district. 552
In an April 1975 community meeting in Quispillaccta, community members affirm that the disputed area was
always Quispillaccta’s land, and was formerly referred to by the community as Rograhuaycco. A 1979 legal filing
by Quispillaccta noted part of the dispute with Ccochapampa revolved around a 1x5km parcel of land beside the
creek Ñahuipuquio, passing through Rupa-quesera until Almapampana-ccasa. Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando
Lo Olvidado, 53. The area appears to lie to the north of the Cerro Chontalla on topographical maps.
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1973-75, Municipal Archives: meeting April 1975.
174
Ccochapampa, seizing control of the disputed lands and destroying property belonging to
Quispillacctinos in the area.553
A third dispute nearby with former feudatarios from the now defunct Hacienda Putaje centred on
pasture land in an area near the territories under dispute with Ccochapampa.554 Reigniting the
long-running disputes with the Ruiz family, this conflict led to a one-day physical conflict
between residents of Quispillaccta and Putaje in 1974.555
In community meetings in 1974, Quispillacctinos expressed their frustration with ongoing land
conflicts around the Quicamachay lands. The community decided to again undertake a survey of
Quispillaccta’s territories and to press SINAMOS (the Sistema Nacional de Movilización Social
or National System for Social Mobilization) – a newly formed bureaucratic organization formed
by the Velasco military government to advance and control revolutionary change in rural areas –
to help Quispillaccta find a definitive resolution to the disputes with its neighbours.556
Ultimately, entreaties to the government failed to find a resolution to the community’s disputes
in the area. Communities continued to seek definitive resolutions through the court system or by
affecting realities on the ground. After several years of legal battles and government
intervention, the conflict with Putaje was settled in 1976, largely in Quispillaccta’s favour.557
However, disputes with Cancha Cancha over Pillcoccasa and Ccochapampa heated up and
continued for years throughout the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. Both Cancha Cancha and
Ccochapampa revived the arguments of the hacendados Ruiz that the Quicamachay lands
553 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 51-2. Sánchez Villagómez dates the dispute to 1976;
however, there are references several years earlier to the dispute in the records of Quispillaccta’s community
assembly. The conflict was clearly on-going for several years in the late 1960s and early 1970s before formal legal
filings were made in 1976, as indicated in the above note. 554
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 50-1; Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 47 and 53; and
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1973-75, Municipal Archives. The area is referred to as Chontaya
in Castillo Gamboa (Chontalla on topographical maps), and as Rupa quesera Huayco in Sànchez Villagómez. It may
be referring to lower areas of the Rupaquesera brook, since Huayco is Quechua for valley and the lower elevation
areas of the brook Rupaquesera flow toward Putaje’s lands in the Sunni zone. 555
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 53. 556
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1973-75, Municipal Archives: meetings 17 Feb. 1974, 27
April 1974, & 20 August 1974. 557
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 51; Salvatierra et.al., La Vida, 205.
175
Quispillaccta purchased from Vassallo were never Vassallo’s to sell, thus invalidating the
legitimacy of the 1942 purchase by Quispillaccta.558
Several times in the late 1970s, rival community groups attacked crops and settlements in
disputed areas, and then planted their own crops and built their own settlements to assure the
legitimacy of their claims. This often provoked a legal and physical counter-attack in a tit-for-tat
dynamic that went on for years. In 1976, large groups of Quispillacctinos entered disputed areas
in Pillcoccasa on two occasions, plundering and destroying the huts and corrals of the Cancha
Cancha residents, and then staking their own presence in the area, building huts, planting crops,
and pasturing animals throughout the disputed areas.559 Two years later, in January 1978, the
entire community of Cancha Cancha responded by gathering together to counter-invade the
disputed area, resulting in a serious physical clash with Quispillacctinos in the area. Charges and
counter charges led to trails over the land invasion and assaults that lasted for several months in
1979 before Cancha Cancha abruptly abandoned the legal cases in early-1979, leaving
Quispillaccta victorious.560 Little more than a week after Pillcoccasa was occupied by
Quispillaccta in Sept. 1976, former feudatarios from Ccochapampa entered into disputed
territories in their conflict with Quispillaccta, occupying lands and destroying 14 huts belonging
to Quispillaccta community members.561 With no formal legal title to prove their ownership,
however, Ccochapampa lost the legal fight over the disputed lands in mid-1977 and was forced
to pay a large fine to Quispillaccta in compensation.562 The dispute with Ccochapampa did not
end, however. In 1978 the community convinced regional authorities to allow it to separate from
Quispillaccta and the D. and become part of the District of Vinchos. In early 1979,
Ccochapampa residents again invaded Quispillaccta territory in the disputed area. Legal appeals
558 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 52 and 56.
559 Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 54; Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 55-57.
560 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1976-79, Municipal Archives: meeting 17 May, 1979;
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 55. I have not been able find any details about why Cancha
Cancha suddenly quit their legal efforts to regain control of Pillcoccasa or how the dispute was resolved. Salvatierra
et.al., La Vida, 205, says that the dispute with Cancha Cancha was resolved in 1982 through extra-judicial
conciliation. 561
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 51-2. 562
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 52; Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1976-
79, Municipal Archives: meeting 13 July, 1977. The community meeting notes that Ccochapampa has given
Quispillaccta 200,000 Soles in compensation for legal expenses.
176
by Quispillaccta failed to settle the dispute, and trials over boundaries continued well into 1981
and 1982, the period when Sendero began operating in the area.563 Perhaps frustrated by the lack
of resolution of the conflict, in early 1982 Quispillacctinos in the area responded by seizing
control of cattle and land in the disputed area, leading Ccochapampa to file a legal complaint.564
Outside political events, however, finally appeared to be making an impact on the long-running
dispute. By the beginning of 1982, the insurgency and counter-insurgency against the Shining
Path was heating up in the Rio Pampas and Rio Cachi area. In October and November 1981,
Sendero shuttered the Chuschi municipality, leading all the local officials to resign their posts.565
At the same time that Sendero celebrated taking control of the district, Peru’s paramilitary police
forces began a counter-offensive in Ayacucho, declaring a state of emergency in the province of
Cangallo in October, 1981, significantly increasing patrols in the area, and arresting suspected
militants.566 All the communities in the area began to feel pressure from both the Shining Path
and the Peruvian security forces to settle communal disputes once and for all, as will be
discussed further below in Chapter 8. In March 1982, community records note that Quispillaccta
and Ccochapampa met to define the final boundaries in the dispute. In the coming months, the
long history of land invasions and legal appeals ends.567
High altitude grazing lands in the Rio Cachi zone of the D. Chuschi have been an essential part
of household livelihoods in the area for centuries. However, the communities in the district have
had to confront centuries of capture of these lands by mestizo elites and the Catholic Church.
This chapter has outlined the long history of the capture of puna lands in the north of the district,
and the conflicts of Chuschi and Quispillaccta to regain control of these lands, particularly in the
twentieth century. Lingering disputes over seized hacienda lands have enmeshed both
communities in decades of litigation and frequent clashes on the ground over disputed territories
563 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1976-79, Municipal Archives: meeting 15 Feb., 1979;
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives: meeting 11 August 1979; 31 Jan.,
1982. 564
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1982-85, Municipal Archives: 4 March, 1982. 565
Isbell, To Defend, 84. 566
Gorriti, Shining, 143. 567
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1982-85, Municipal Archives: 8 March 1982; Sánchez
Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 52; Salvatierra et.al., La Vida, 205, say that the deal with Ccochapampa
was sealed on 23 April, 1982.
177
in the north-west of the district and north-east of the district. These clashes and contentious
litigations continued right up to the outbreak of Sendero activity in the district. Chuschi’s
conflict seemed to abate when Sendero became active in the community, but reignited with the
former hacienda peons (perhaps fronted by the hacendados) when Sendero was driven out of the
District. Quispillaccta was largely successful in conflicts and litigation in the late 1970s over
disputed lands in the north-east of the district, outcomes that no doubt grieved the losing parties
on the eve of Sendero’s activities in the district.
178
Chapter 6 Controlling the Centre: The Struggle to Control the High Sunni
and Puna Zones of the Rio Cachi Basin in the District
Introduction
By the middle of the twentieth century, long term structural changes in the D. Chuschi combined
with pressures released by national legislative changes to set the stage for bloody land clashes
between the communities of Quispillaccta and Chuschi in the 1960s and 1970s. The proximate
cause of these clashes revolved around gaining control of high-altitude grazing and cultivated
zones immediately north of the district Matriz and south of the Quispillaccta barrios of
Puncupata and Unión Portrero. These lands were grazing and marginal cultivated zones that
were seeing increasing permanent settlement from the district Matriz, and were important
sources of water for downstream barrio lands around Puncupata, Catalinayuq, Cuchoquesera, and
Unión Portrero to the north, and water for upper cultivated zones above the district Matriz.
While the evidence appears to indicate that this area was long inhabited by a few comuneros
from both Quispillaccta and Chuschi (and its associated barrios), growing settlement of these
areas by mid-20th century set the stage for increasingly fierce legal and physical clashes for
control in the latter half of the 20th century.
This chapter outlines the nature of these clashes and the origins of intra-district migration from
both Quispillaccta and Chuschi during the twentieth century that aggravated conflicts for control
of this zone. Various factors that increasingly drew comuneros to permanently settle in this zone
are also discussed, such as the desire to increasingly focus on livestock husbandry, increasing
educational opportunities in the area, and better linkages to Huamanga to the north. The chapter
also examines clashes in the 1960s and 1970s between Chuschi and Quispillaccta over this zone,
and the outcome of those clashes. The chapter concludes by examining the historic peace
settlement between Chuschi and Quispillaccta in late 1981, which conclusively settled this long-
running conflict. The implications of this settlement and other land conflicts in the Rio Cachi
puna zone are explored in the chapter’s conclusion. In the end, the settlement was a major
success for Quispillaccta, solidifying their control over much of the disputed territory in the
centre of the district, both grazing lands and high-altitude sources of water for these areas.
179
Disputes in the 1940s and 1950s to control the centre
Conflicts over the centre of the district raged for decades over the high punas and mountain
peaks that divide the Rio Pampas watershed in the south from the Rio Cachi watershed in the
north. Formal legal clashes over these areas first appear in the documentary record after the
community of Chuschi sought to obtain official community recognition in late 1940. This effort
inflamed disputes between Chuschi and Quispillaccta over each community’s claimed
landholdings. Quispillaccta denounced Chuschi for usurping lands “that had belonged to them
‘since time immemorial’” but which had been taken by the haciendas Putaje, Quicamachay, and
Figure 16: Disputed Zone between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, 1940
Shaded area of the 1940 disputed zone is approximated based on a copy of a topographical map of the disputed territories
found in César et al. 1967. The original map was produced by the community of Quispillaccta, and listed as being in the
possession of the legal representative of Quispillaccta. The date of the original is unclear. The map may have been the
outcome of a community decision in April 1951 to survey their lands, as recorded in the records of Quispillaccta’s
community decisions. The Quispillaccta barrios (in blue lettering) of Unión Portrero and Yuraqcruz are shown in their
current locations. These settlements appear to have been expanded after the conflicts with Chuschi between the 1940s and
1970s, as discussed below in chapter 6. Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1947-62, Municipal Archives:
meeting 15 April, 1951.
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
180
Allpachaca. 568 For this reason, Quispillaccta asked that it too be recognized and registered as
Chuschi had.569 This event, in fact, is the first modern legal complaint between Chuschi and
Quispillaccta, and the precursor to four decades of direct conflict between the communities. The
1940 dispute centred around a 40 km2 portion of the district that lay between Quispillaccta’s Rio
Cachi land purchases in the north and the district Matriz in the south. An official sent by the
Ministry of Indigenous Affairs who was sent to the area in October, 1941 to try to settle the
dispute noted that the area in dispute lay generally to the east, northeast, and southeast of Kimsa
Cruz.570
As noted above, these were primarily lower puna grazing lands, with limited and risky cultivated
potential. These lands were significant to both communities for two reasons. First, these lands
provided relatively close access to highland grazing zones from the Matriz for both Quispillaccta
and Chuschi and from the increasingly settled Quispillaccta barrios to the north. Chuschinos
main grazing area lay several hours walk to the north-west, while Cancha Cancha had a small
communal grazing zone around Huaylla Ccasa and Choccoro, in an area on the north-central
border of the district.571 The livelihood opportunities to access this pasture zone was especially
important to those living in Chuschi’s associated barrios of Uchuyri, Cancha Cancha, and
Chacolla, located in the extreme south-east of the district, near the Rio Pampas. Barrios like
Cancha Cancha had less grazing land than Quispillaccta and Chuschi.572 Having access to
grazing zones above the Matriz could also save hours in travel time to and from pastures and
make the difference between having livestock or not for a family.573 So, for Chuschi and its
associated hamlets, it was highly advantageous to have pastures located close to the main
568 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 65; Archivo del Ministerio de Agricultura, Ayacucho, Tomo 1, Folio 42.
These haciendas all controlled Rio Cachi lands that currently sit in the north-east of the D. Chuschi, and lands in
neighbouring districts to the north-east. 569
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 65. 570
Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 59. 571
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 34-5. 572
Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 35. 573
Castillo Gamboa quotes one elderly community member from Cancha Cancha who noted the historically limited
grazing opportunities for Cancha Cancha residents compared to Quispillacctinos: “Before there was good
agricultural production, but livestock were few. We did not have much; there were 80 cows among 4 families. Now
there is nothing; not even one. The families that have the most have up to 5 cows. There is not much in comparison
with what Quispillacctinos have; they produce a great quantity of livestock and have a communal livestock business.
They are doing well.” My translation. Castillo Gamboa, “Conflictos,” 36.
181
cultivated zone in the district. For Quispillacctinos, access to nearby grazing zones for those
living in the Matriz or those settling in the barrios of Unión Portrero, Puncupata, Pampamarca,
and Catalinayuq, was similarly beneficial.
The contested lands were also significant because they provided control and access to important
sources of water for the Quispillaccta barrios to the north, and for agriculture and pasture zones
north of the Matriz for both communities. Water resources are technically owned by the
Peruvian state, according to the 1969 General Water Law.574 But in remote districts like
Chuschi where the Peruvian state has historically had little presence, functional and
administration control of water resources has been contested by communities. Some
Quispillacctinos contend that the Spanish colonial reducción policy stripped Quispillaccta of its
water resources, leaving Quispillaccta water poor, while neighbouring Chuschi was rich in water
resources.575 Quispillaccta’s purchase and settlement of areas in the north-east of the district in
the 19th and 20th century brought the issue of access and control of water resources to the
forefront. These barrios lay several hundred meters lower than the surrounding peaks, which
form the headwaters of the Rio Cachi basin in this area. Streams and high-altitude wetlands
provide important water sources for pastures and lower cultivated zones for these barrios. Some
areas, like Catalinayuq, had little water in the lower Sunni areas and relied on water flowing
from higher altitude zones to the south to supplement resources in dry months.576 Streams and a
canal brought water from Ingahuasi for consumption and irrigation in Catalinayuq to the north,
for example.577 The barrios of Catalinayuq and Cuchoquesera were the site of two of
Quispillaccta’s communal herds – the former under the control of the church, while the latter was
the only livestock herd under the sole control of the community of Quispillaccta until the 1970s.
Further to the south, streams around Cconchulla, located at the head of the Qunchalla/Chuschi
574 Paul Trawick, The Struggle for Water in Peru: Comedy and Tragedy in the Andean Commons (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2003), 37. 575
ABA, Yakumama – Madre Agua Lagunas de Lluvia y Comunidades Criadoras del Agua, 49. 576
ABA, Yakumama – Madre Agua Lagunas de Lluvia y Comunidades Criadoras del Agua, 101-2. 577
César Ramón Córdova, Estudio de la Vivienda en los Centros Poplados de Inkaraqay, Chuschi, y Catalinayoq,
Ministerio de Trabajo y Comunidades (Instituto Indigenista Peruano, Ayacucho, 1968), 37. Even in years when the
rains were good, the streams and canal from Ingahuasi would often dry up for several months from August to
October, according to local informants quoted in the ABA study. This has changed now that ABA has helped
develop rain-water harvesting projects in the area. ABA, Yakumama – Madre Agua Lagunas de Lluvia y
Comunidades Criadoras del Agua, 101-2.
182
valley, similarly provide key springs for cultivated agriculture to the fields below, located above
and around the Matriz.578 Informants indicate that Quispillaccta struggled to obtain sufficient
water in the past for the fields above the Matriz, often clashing with Chuschi for control of
shared waters in the area. Juan Galindo recalled that in Totora des Huascarumi, Chuschi built a
canal to divert water from springs in the area for their use, forcing Quispillaccta to divert water
from Cconchulla for their fields.579 Pascuali Huamani noted that there was a dispute over the
Milluyacu spring, located in the area below Mutuma, when Chuschi diverted it for their fields.
Quispillacctinos had to divert the spring for their own use secretly at night.580 Disputes over
shared water sources in the area, particularly as demand-induced pressures increased with
increasing settlement of the Sunni and Puna zones, were a key dimension of the conflict between
communities and would arise again in the 1960s when the conflict heated up.
Government intervention to solve the conflict between Quispillaccta and Chuschi produced an
agreement in November 1941, but failed to put an end to the competition to control the lands
around Kimsa Cruz. After legal representatives from both communities were summoned to Lima
in May, 1941, months passed before an official government representative arrived in the
communities in October 1941 to hammer out an agreement. The government’s representative
failed to determine conclusive ownership of the disputed lands, so he proposed to solve the
conflict by simply dividing the disputed zone in half.581 Importantly, however, the agreement
failed to deal with the fate of comuneros from both communities living within the disputed area.
Comuneros from each community were allowed to remain in place, even if they now found
themselves in lands controlled by the other community.582 While this solution avoided the
difficult problem of transferring populations from one side to the other of the line of control, it
simply set the stage for future conflicts as settlement of the area from both communities
increased over the next twenty years.
578 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 22-3.
579 Interview with Juan Galindo, Oct. 11, 2004.
580 Pascualia Huamani, interview, 12 Oct., 2004. The areas of disputed water resources are noted on the
topographical map, underlined in red. Huamani is the widow of Sebastian Mendíete Tucno, a Quispillactino killed
along with his brother Martin in the 6 May, 1960 confrontation with Chuschi discussed below in section 6.4. 581
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 65-7. 582
Three provisions of the agreement are outlined by Sánchez Villagómez, "(Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado,” 58-9.
183
While the Peruvian government lauded its own efforts to reach a “definitive end”583 to the
conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, the boundary remained “imaginary” because the
government did not implement the agreement on the ground by marking boundaries in both
communities.584 In fact, disputes on the ground about land ownership during the next twenty
years further inflamed relations between communities in the area. In April 1951, Quispillaccta’s
community assembly approved a plan to collect money from community members in order to
have a blueprint of their landholdings drawn up. Frustrated that their lands continued to suffer
invasions from “hacendados and others,” the assembly vowed to send the plan to the Ministry of
Indigenous Affairs in Lima and to the Department prefecture.585 Two years later, Quispillaccta
successfully petitioned Department authorities for full administrative and economic autonomy
from Chuschi, complaining that Chuschi’s district authorities were failing to cooperate with
Quispillaccta on district public works projects.586
Factors drawing district members to settle the high Sunni and Puna zones
Until the late 1950s, there were few legal complaints between Chuschi and Quispillaccta over
lands around Kimsa Cruz. For a time, the conflict appeared to have subsided, even while both
communities faced challenges on other fronts in the district. Developments both nationally and
locally, however, were setting the stage for renewed conflicts in the 1960s. As peasants around
Peru began to agitate for agrarian reform and popular peasant movements began to seize land in
the central Sierra in the late 1950s, increasing numbers of comuneros from both Quispillaccta
and Chuschi were settling permanently in the high Sunni and Puna zone north of the district
Matriz, moving from nuclear settlements near the Rio Pampas to barrios spread out in the Rio
Cachi watershed. Various push and pull factors encouraged this trend during the middle
decades of the twentieth century. This settlement transformation in the district would have
important consequences for intercommunity conflict in the second half of the 20th century.
583 Quoted in La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 67.
584 Ministry of Agriculture archives, Ayacucho, Chuschi Tomo 1, Folio 252-279.
585 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1947-62, Municipal Archives: meeting 15 April, 1951.
Unfortunately, this volume was damaged in storage, destroying important records of this decade. Community
records in Chuschi were similarly destroyed when Sendero burned the district municipal building in the early 1980s. 586
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, .67.
184
While push factors will be examined in the following chapter exploring supply and demand
pressures in the district, in this section I will focus on the pull factors that drew settlers to these
previously lightly settled zones.
Arriving in the D. Chuschi today from the north, through the Rio Cachi watershed, a visitor
encounters an area heavily settled compared to what it looked like one hundred years ago. The
settlement change is especially pronounced in the Sunni zone of the Rio Cachi watershed
controlled by Quispillaccta, where today a majority of Quispillacctinos have settled permanently
in areas that were previously almost devoid of permanent residents. According to 1993 Census
data, almost 60% of Quispillaccta’s residents live in the high-altitude barrios of Tuco, Unión
Portrero, Yuraqcruz, Pampamarca, Puncupata, Catalanayoc, and Cuchoquesera.587 Many
Quispillacctino families who live permanently in these barrios still have homes in the Matriz, but
these are used only occasionally when tending fields in the lower maize zone or by the elderly
and younger family members who need to be close to schools and social services offered in the
Matriz. Settlement in Chuschi’s high-altitude Sunni and Puna zones has somewhat increased
over the past century, but not to the same degree as in Quispillaccta. Over 80% of residents of
Chuschi and its associated barrios of Cancha Cancha, Chacolla, and Uchuyri still live in nuclear
settlements near the Rio Pampas that date from the colonial reducción resettlement.588
The district’s high-altitude Sunni and Puna zone was largely devoid of permanent settlements
until the middle of the 20th century, according to informants. Belasario Galindo Conde, 96 when
interviewed in 2004, recalls coming to Pampamarca as a teenager in the 1920s. At that time,
there were no permanent residents or settlers in Pampamarca, he noted. People simply came to
the area temporarily to care for animals.589 Nearby, few people were living Cuchoquesera when
587 INEI, Censos Nacionales 1993: IX de Población y IV de Vivienda, Centros Poblados 1993, Lima. Peruvians
were increasingly returning to their former highland residences by the time of the 1993 census, with the end of
violence in the region from the civil war. This continued throughout the 1990s. I visited a community in Huanta in
2000 that was only just returning to build houses after most of the community fled the region during the civil war.
However, population levels in the District of Chuschi were fairly stable by 1993. The total district population was
only a few hundred people higher in the 2007 INEI census – 8080 in 1993, compared to 8281 in 2007. 588
INEI, Censos Nacionales 1993: IX de Población y IV de Vivienda, Centros Poblados 1993, Lima. Based on
1993 INEI census data, about 13% of residents of Chuschi and its associated barrios live in settlements in the high-
altitude puna zone of the Rio Cachi basin. 589
Interview, Belasario Galindo Conde, Pampamarca, 29 October, 2004. Chuschino Victor Galindo Tucno, 99
when I interviewed him in 2004, said few people lived in the upper zones when he was young. With a mother from
185
Putaje’s Hacendado Manuel Ruiz ordered the illegal seizure of Quispillaccta’s independent
communal herd in 1923. Only a handful of families lived in the barrio when Pablo Conde was
born in Cuchoquesera in the early 1930s.590 Salómon Galindo said that his father came to
Cuchoquesera around 1918. The notable livestock farmer and one of the founders of Evangelical
Protestantism in Quispillaccta was born in Cuchoquesera in 1927. Even into the 1940s, few
lived permanently in the area, he said. Instead, families had corrals in the wide-open pastures
and rotated through the area with their animals at different times of the year. Galindo and his
family split his time between the Llacta (town centre) and Cuchoquesera until 1970, when he
settled permanently in Cuchoquesera.591 The shepherd in charge of Catalinayuq’s cofradia was
the first permanent settler in that barrio, according to an informant.592
By the early 1940s and into the 1950s, settlement in the high-altitude Sunni zone of the district
increased substantially. Both Quispillacctinos and Chuschinos began to increasingly build
permanent housing in areas that were previously only temporarily settled to care for livestock. In
the early 1950s there were about thirty people living permanently in Catalinayuq when Emilio
Rejas moved there to live with his in-laws.593 Belasario Galindo built his house in Pampamarca
in the early 1950s, when only a handful of residents were living there at the time (six or seven).
What is now the main barrio centre was then empty pampa without trees, he said. However,
settlement increased in the area after this time.594 Settlement also began to increase in the barrio
of Unión Portrero in the 1950s, according to José Espinoza Flores.595 By 1961, according to
1961 census figures, 720 Quispillacctinos were living in the Rio Cachi annexes, which was a
Chuschi and a father from Quispillaccta, Galindo Conde would often travel to the area when visiting his relatives in
Quispillaccta. Interview, Victor Galindo Tucno, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 590
Interview, Pablo Conde, Cuchoquesera, 25 October, 2004. 591
Interview, Salómon Galindo, 77, 28 October 2004. In an interview, Galindo told me that he was 80. However,
in a video interview, Galindo says that he was born in July, 1927. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQWVvPP4-
pM, accessed 6 September, 2018. 592
Interview Emilio Rejas Casavilca, Catalinayuq, 29 October, 2004. 593
Interview Emilio Rejas Casavilca, Catalinayuq, 29 October, 2004. Pascualia Huamani noted that about twenty
families lived in Catalinayuq in the early 1950s. Interview, Pascualia Huamani, Quispillaccta, 12 October, 2004. 594
Interview, Belasario Galindo Conde, Pampamarca, 29 October, 2004. 595
Interview, José Espinoza Flores, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004.
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little more than a quarter of Quispillaccta’s population.596 In other high-altitude Sunni and low
Puna zones in the district, outside the Rio Cachi basin, settlement was also increasing.
Settlement was increasing in the 1940s and early 1950s in Quispillaccta’s south-west barrios of
Tuco, Huertahuasi, and Llacctahurán .597 About 20 people lived permanently in Tuco in the late
1940s, mostly to care for livestock, according to Roberto Huaman Machaca.598 Others only came
to the area for short stays to care for livestock. But permanent settlement had increased to
several dozen residents by the 1957, when Tuco resident Policarpo Casavilca Quispe left the area
to work in Ica and other cities.599 By 1961, according to 1961 census figures, 628
Quispillacctinos were living in the high-altitude annexes of Tuco, Huertahuasi, Pirhuamarca, and
Llacctahurán.600
596 Data in Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 12. The Rio Cachi barrios add up to about 28% of
Quispillaccta’s total population. However, the data does not include population figures for the small, isolated Rio
Pampas barrio of Soccobamba. So, the proportion in the Rio Cachi was probably slightly lower. 597
Only about fifteen people lived in Uchupata, above the barrio of Llacctahurán, in the 1930s and 1940s, when
Fermín Qallocunto Tomaylla was a boy. In the late 1940s and 1950s, he noted increasing numbers of permanent
houses were being built in Llacctahurán. Interview, Fermín Qallocunto Tomaylla, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004;
Huertahuasi was largely empty in the early 20th century, according to Pedro Conde Nuñez, while Melchor Quispe
Nuñez noted that about thirty people lived there in the 1940s. Settlement increased slowly in Huertahuasi in the
latter half of the century. Interview Pedro Conde Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004; interview Melchor
Quispe Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004. 598
Interview, Roberto Huaman Machaca, Tuco, 1 November, 2004. 599
Interview, Policarpo Casavilca Quispe, Tuco, 5 November, 2004. 600
Cited in Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 12. Residents from the small barrio of Socobamba,
in the extreme south-west of the district fronting the Rio Pampas, were not counted by the 1961 census.
187
Table 2: Quispillaccta’s 1960 Population: Main Town and Annexes
Quispillaccta’s Matriz Population 1215 (1961 Census)
Quispillaccta Annex Population (1961 Census)
Cuchoquesera 133
Pampamarca 42
Yuraqcruz 83
Catalinayuq 187
Puncupata 130
Unión Portrero 145
Tuco 180
Huertahuasi 109
Pirhuamarca 121
Llacctahurán 218
Total 2563
Source: 1961 Census data cited in Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 12.
Changes in Chuschino settlement of the Rio Cachi high Sunni zone are difficult to reconstruct
because today these areas are almost entirely controlled by Quispillaccta and the communities
sometimes gave different names to the same area. However, informants from Quispillaccta
noted that some Chuschinos had long lived in high zones above Unión Portrero and Puncupata,
in Dos Corras and east to Ingahuasi, where Chuschinos had built a chapel and kept cofradia
livestock. They also had some settlements and pastured livestock to the south around Pucacoral
(near current-day Yuraqcruz) and Cconchulla.601 These areas linked to Chuschi’s livestock areas
above the Matriz, around Condorbamba and Acco.
601 Interview, Quispillaccta, 16 October, 2004; Interview, Chuschi, 2 November, 2004. A Chuschino told me that
Chuschi notable Ernesto Jaime used to pasture his animals in Cconchalla (Cconchulla in map below, Figure 17) like
it was his own hacienda.
188
On topographical maps we can see that Chuschino settlement of parts of the high Sunni zone was
linking its high-altitude grazing lands to the north-west, with its puna holdings above the Matriz.
Chuschi’s territory was long separated with Quispillaccta in the middle, and Chuschi sought to
control these lands to link these areas together, according to a Quispillacctino informant.602
Regardless of whether there was a deliberate plan to settle the high Sunni zone above the Matriz
to form continuous Chuschino holdings, settlement patterns in the mid-20th century and the
location of conflicts in the early 1960s, illustrate that the key conflict over the upper Rio Cachi
basin was precisely those lands between the two dynamic centres of each community. See
disputed zones in map below, Figure 17.
602 Interview, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004.
Figure 17: Disputed Zone between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, late 1950s to 1980s
.
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
189
Informants in both communities noted that increasing settlement from the Rio Pampas zone to
the high Sunni and Puna zones in the 1950s and 1960s was a necessary strategy in order to
ensure community control of the land. Again, as in other disputed zones, the idea that possession
is nine-tenths of the law held sway, given the uncertain legal status of the disputed territories.
Numerous informants noted that people moved to the high zones with the encouragement of
communal authorities in both communities.603 With legal battles being waged by Chuschi in the
north-west and by Quispillaccta in the north-east of the district, increasing settlement in
Quispillaccta’s newly purchased lands was thought to help cement claims of ownership.604
Establishing or moving communal livestock herds to newly purchased or disputed areas was
another strategy employed by the communities to ensure control of the land. Quispillaccta had
done this in the late 1800s and early 20th century in Catalinayuq and Cuchoquesera. According
to Quispillacctino informants, the same approach was used in Tuco, where the authorities moved
the communal herd further up the valley in the 20th century to ensure control of the land, and
with the establishment of a communal herd in Jelluy (Jelluy Huayjo), in an area that later became
the barrio of Yuraqcruz.605 Quispillaccta’s strategy to encourage settlement in order to cement
community control of contested lands continued off and on for decades, up until the early 1980s.
In 1979, Quispillaccta’s communal authorities, encouraged peasants from the land-poor barrio of
Pirhuamarca to move to the Yuraqcruz area in order to help consolidate control over lands
claimed by Quispillaccta but still being occupied by Chuschinos.606 Chuschi pursued a similar
strategy with the establishment of a communal herd in Llachocc, where they also built a small
603 Interview, Llacctahurán, 9 October, 2004; interview Quispillaccta, 9 October, 2004; Interview Ernesto Jaime,
Chuschi, 19 October, 2004. 604
Interview, Llacctahurán, 9 October, 2004. 605
Interview, Jacindo Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 10 October, 2004; Interview, Emilio Conde Achalma, Quispillaccta, 11
Oct. 2004. 606
Oseas Núñez Espinoza in an online history of Cuchoquesera, <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-
PE018555.html>, accessed 9-1-16. Peasants from Pirhuamarca had also established a neighbourhood in
Cuchoquesera. The Sankaypata massacre survivor whose story is told in the preface was a shepherd of the
community livestock herd in Cuchoquesera at the time of his capture. However, he self-identified as a resident of
the barrio of Socobamba in my interview (which is very close to Pirhuamarca), and was identified as a member of
the Pirhuamarca barrio in Cuchoquesera. Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 259. So, there was sufficient migration from
Quispillacta’s stressed Rio Pampas barrios to the high puna barrios of the district in the late 20 th century to establish
identifiable migrant identities in the new settlements, even though they all considered themselves Quispillacctinos.
190
stone chapel, another strategy both communities used to try to cement ownership of a disputed
area.607
Encouragement and entreaties to protect community land would not have been enough, in and of
themselves, to convince comuneros in Quispillaccta and Chuschi to settle high Sunni and Puna
zones of the Rio Cachi basin in the mid-20th century. Making risky livelihood decisions to
permanently move to these areas also required that comuneros see tangible livelihood benefits
from the move. For those who chose to make the move, the benefits were the prospect of
obtaining abundant pasture land for ever-more valuable livestock herds, the realization through
experimentation that cropping of tubers and grains was risky but provided the benefits of
excellent harvests, and the promise that services like schools and roads would soon reach the
area – particularly in the early 1960s.
The prospect of obtaining abundant pasture lands for increasingly valuable livestock herds was a
strong draw to bring Quispillacctinos and Chuschinos to the high Sunni and Puna zones of the
Rio Cachi basin in the district in the mid-20th century. Jose Nuñez explained in an interview that
he moved to Catalinayuq in the 1940s from the Matriz near the Rio Pampas because there was
land there for cropping and grazing opportunities. Quispillaccta’s authorities were allowing the
land to be distributed and divided.608 By the early 1960s, however, there was little land left in
Catalinayuq for new settlers, according to Jaoaquin Conde Pacotaype.609 Census figures from
1961 list 187 residents in Catalinayuq in 1961 – or about 30-35 families.610 Cropping was risky
in the district’s Rio Cachi zones. However, increasing experimentation by new settlers showed
promise and also helped to draw resident to the area. “There was an element of experimentation
to cropping the high zones,” Emilio Conde Achalma explained in an interview. “People
experimented with fields, saw that production was good, and increasingly moved to the high
607 Interview, Jose Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 16 October, 2004; La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 69. La Serna notes
that Chuschinos also had a small chapel in the Suyoccacca area. Quispillaccta also built chapels in disputed areas, in
Jelluy Huayjo, and attempted to build one in Llachoc early in the 1960 hostilities. The historical record is unclear
about when these chapels were built in the central disputed zone, a point La Serna makes about Chuschi’s Llachoc
chapel. 608
Interview, Jose Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 16 October, 2004 609
Interview, Joaquin Conde Pacotaype, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004. The informant was a community
authority in Quispillaccta in the early 1960s. 610
Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 12.
191
zones.”611 The prospect of available grazing and crop lands in the district’s Rio Cachi zone was
thus providing a viable livelihood option for residents based in the Rio Pampas community
centres and helping to draw settlers north.
Further enhancing the pull to the Rio Cachi zone in the mid-20th century was the prospect that
commodity prices were increasing in Peru in the second half of the 20th century, potentially
increasing the livelihood benefit from making the risky decision to put more effort into livestock
and crop activities in the higher zones of the district. From the early 1950s, the real value and
sale price of cattle increased in Peru for about a decade, before stagnating in the 1960s and
1970s.612 Cattle herds increased sharply in the early 1950s in Ayacucho, before stagnating in the
1960s. Cattle numbers in Peru, however, continued to generally increase in Peru up to 1980.613
(See Figure 18 below.) Both Chuschi and Quispillaccta raised cattle for occasional meat sales or
barter trade, according to a survey in 1966.614
611 Interview, Emilio Conde Achalma, Quispillaccta, 11 Oct. 2004.
612 Republica Peruana, Dirección de Investigación y Desarrollo, Estudio de la Política de Abastecimiento y Precios
de la Carne de Vacuno (Lima: Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas, Marzo 1972): Graph 6, 71. 613
Ministerio de Agricultura, Compendio Estadístico Agrario, 1950-1991 (Lima: Ministerio de Agricultura,
Oficina de Estadística Agraria, 1992): 522. With the exception of sheep, production of all major animal
commodities increased in the 1950s – fowl, alpaca, goats, llama, porcine, and cattle. See tables on page 526. 614
Saramiento Medina et al., Los Distritos de Vischongo, Chuschi, Y Ocros, 34. The smaller annexes of Chuschi -
Cancha Cancha, Uchuyri, and Chaqolla - did not sell their cattle for commercial sales, but consumed their meat,
according to the IEP study. No doubt due to their limited access to grazing land, these annexes probably only
occasionally sold livestock for cash.
192
Figure 18
Crop prices also climbed between the 1940s and late 1970s throughout Peru. However, the
increasing cost of living and regional differentiation in commercial commodity production
during this period meant that the real value of crops produced provided little monetary benefit
for most peasants.615 One important exception to the slow or stagnant growth in commodity
values in the 1960s and 1970s was dairy products. The value of dairy products continued to
increase substantially in the 1960s and 1970s.616 This led many peasants in Peru to shift
615 Watters, Poverty, 153; Klaren, Peru, 310-11. In one study of Cuzco noted by Watters, after a short increase in
the early 1950s, peasants faced declining terms of trade up to 1980. See Watters, Poverty, figure 9.1, 156. 616
Watters, Poverty, 153. Watters cautions that the data for Peruvian livestock production and prices are
problematic for this period.
Data Source: Ministerio de Agricultura, “Compendio Estadístico Agrario, 1950-1991,” (Lima:
Ministerio de Agricultura, Oficina de Estadística Agraria, 1992): table 5.146, 522.
193
production away from subsistence or foodstuff production to dairy cattle.617 District residents
produced cheese for sale; however, milk was not sold commercially outside the district but
consumed locally because of the lack of refrigerated storage and transport.618
For district residents, therefore, rising commodity prices in the early 1950s and the prospect of
further increases were a definite draw to secure grazing lands in the Rio Cachi zones of the
district. While crops and cattle meat production became risky by the 1960s because of
stagnating prices, increasing imports, and price controls, the risk was partially offset by the
increasing demand and increasing value of dairy products. Commodity price and demand signals
thus provided strong lures to settle grazing areas of the district in the early decades after World
War 2.
Further enhancing the draw to the district’s Rio Cachi zone was the prospect of infrastructure
development in the area. Educational opportunities for district residents were expanding from
the 1940s to the 1960s, reflecting a national trend of strong demand for expanded educational
opportunities.619 In fact, the largest social movement in Ayacucho in the 1960s and 1970s was a
movement composed of secondary school students seeking free education.620 While the politics
of education and literacy in Ayacucho was complicated in the 1940s and 1950s, many peasants
saw education as integral to notions of progress and development, and essential for casting off
decades of oppression and manipulation by educated elites.621
School construction was as an important priority for the comuneros in the D. Chuschi; however,
schools were mostly located in the Rio Pampas region until the late 1950s and 60s when efforts
617 Klaren, Peru, 310.
618 Saramiento Medina et al., Los Distritos de Vischongo, Chuschi, Y Ocros, 34. Cheese and milk production were
commonly observed during field work in 2004; though, production and sale of fresh milk was limited by the lack of
refrigeration in the district. 619
Klaren, Peru, 333; Degregori, How Difficult it is to be God, 161. Klaren notes that postwar economic growth,
middle-class expansion, and increased pressure from peasant, migrant, and union groups drove the push for
educational expansion during this period. However, Degregori notes that from 1960, education spending began to
decline in real terms in Peru, leading to a growing gap between popular aspirations for education and the Peruvian
state’s fulfillment of those education desires. 620
Degregori, How Difficult it is to be God, 115. 621
Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 96-7; Degragori, How Difficult it is to be God, 95-97; Isbell, To Defend, 69-
70.
194
began to locate schools in distant annexes. In early 1947, Quispillacctinos approved a motion to
build a new school next to the small, aging structure in the Matriz that served as the community’s
only school.622 But, with little support from the state and the expectation from authorities that
community members would provide all the labour and some material for construction, progress
was slow and demanding. More than ten years later, as tensions began to increase in the Rio
Cachi zone between Quispillaccta and Chuschi, Quispillaccta’s new school was still without a
roof. Community tensions may have spurred Quispillaccta to new sacrifices to complete
construction. Between Dec. 1959 and August 1960 – a period that saw massive violent clashes
between Quispillaccta and Chuschi - Quispillacctinos voted to suspend community celebrations
three times and use the saved money to complete the school’s construction.623 While the vast
majority of the more than 700 students in the district in the mid-1960s still attended schools
located in nuclear settlements near the Rio Pampas, Quispillacctinos could reasonably expect
that further settlement of the Rio Cachi zone would lead to schools being built in the area.
Quispillaccta had already built a small school in Catalinayuq to serve community members in the
area as settlement increased. Julian Vilca Mejía told me that when he returned to the district in
1961, after spending twenty years working in Lima, Catalinayuq’s school was helping to draw
settlers to the Rio Cachi zone.624 By 1966, it had 34 students.625 Services were slowly following
settlement, and community members in the early 1960s no doubt believed that the trend would
continue in the future.626
622 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1947-62, Municipal Archives: meeting Feb. 1947. There
were several additional schools across the river in Chuschi which also served Quispillaccta’s families. Salmon
Galindo told me that the first primary school in Quispillaccta was built in 1938. Interview, Salomón Galindo
Achallma, 77, Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004.
623 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1947-62, Municipal Archives: meetings Dec. 1959, January
1960, and 31 August, 1960. 624
Interview, Julian Vilca Mejía, Llacctahurán, 8 October, 2004. 625
Saramiento Medina et al., Los Distritos de Vischongo, Chuschi, Y Ocros, table 1, 60. I have been unable to
determine when the school was built in Catalinayuq, nor when the schools were built in the Matriz. A survey in
1968 found about 50 families living in Catalinayuq. César Ramón Córdova, Estudio de la Vivienda en los Centros
Poplados de Inkaraqay, Chuschi, y Catalinayoq, 26. 626
Studies of education in the district done in 1966 by IEP showed that the 1960 clashes led to hundreds of students
leaving schools located in the Rio Pampas region, with the majority leaving from Chuschi and Quispillaccta’s
schools in the Matriz. Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 130. Quispillaccta families had long sent their
children to schools in Chuschi’s Matriz, a trend that continues to this day. Parents no doubt pulled their children
from school out of fear for their safety following the clashes in 1960, a trend that probably increased demand for
new schools in the settled Rio Cachi zones. As well, land for new schools in the Rio Pampas settlements was scarce
given the limited supply of valuable arable land in the area, while there was abundant land for new schools in the
195
The prospect of road construction into the district, and particularly into the Rio Cachi zone, also
helped to draw settlers to the area in the 1950s and 1960s. Isbell’s early research on Chuschi
noted the impact of road construction in opening up the communities in the district, both
commercially and culturally.627 The expectation of increasing road development in the district no
doubt contributed to community residents making livelihood decisions that would position them
to take advantage of new commercial opportunities once the road was completed, including
settling in the Rio Cachi basin to pursue expanded herding opportunities. Based on the
experience with road construction in the southern portion of the district and attitudes observers
recorded about expanded road construction in the Rio Cachi zone of the district, road
construction probably contributed to increasing settlement of the higher zones in the late 1950s
and early 1960s.
Roads first entered the district from the south-east in 1961, though residents no doubt knew that
they were coming a few years before. In 1961, the government of Ayacucho completed a road to
Cancha Cancha, via the Rio Pampas to the east. The road was completed to Chuschi that same
year by communal labour. An extension of the road to the Matriz centre of Chuschi and
Quispillaccta’s came in 1966.628
Chuschi’s new road link increased the town’s commercial importance in the area, and widened
livelihood opportunities for comuneros and elites in the district.629 The changes brought by road
access also increased conflict in the communities of the district, particularly between comuneros
and elites. Some informants noted that various mestizo elites in Chuschi opposed the building of
new permanent settlements in the Rio Cachi zone. The scarcity of arable land in the Quechua zone of the district
was another factor that argued for new school construction to take place in the high-altitude grazing zones.
Additional schools in the Rio Pampas zone were not built, in fact, until the 1970s, when both communities used land
confiscated from the church holdings in the area to build new schools. To this day, new infrastructure projects in the
Rio Pampas zone generate conflict when they force the expropriation of valuable and limited Quechua zone lands.
During field work in October and November 2004, the district’s road system was being expanding to various barrios
that had no road links. In a community meeting in Chuschi on October 24th, several comuneros complained about
losing precious Quechua zone lands to community-approved development projects. Heilman’s study of Carhuanca,
Ayacucho noted similar disputes around school construction. Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 102. 627
Isbell, To Defend, 22 and 33. 628
Ramon et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 11; Isbell, To Defend, 46. There is some dispute among authors about
the date when the road reached Chuschi. The IEP study from 1967 says that the community completed the section
of the road from Cancha Cancha to Chuschi in 1961. Isbell, by contrast, says that by 1961 the road had only reached
Cancha Cancha and didn’t reach Chuschi until 1966. 629
Isbell, To Defend, 49; Palmer, Revolution from Above, 256.
196
the road because they feared that the changes it brought would undermine their power.630 Other
research shows that these same elites were also best placed to take advantage of commercial
opportunities brought by the road. According to Palmer, some elites in Chuschi took advantage
of the road to monopolize commercial transport to and from Chuschi for several years in the
early 1960s.631
In the early 1960s, district residents also looked forward to the new road connections in the
northern, Rio Cachi zone. A few kilometers north of the district, the Via de los Libertadores
(Highway of the Liberators) was being built, “connecting [Huamanga] directly with the coast at
Pisco for the first time.”632 Communities south of the highway began building spurs to connect
with the new highway, opening up a more direct route to the markets in Huamanga for
commodities.633 The prospect of a northern route into the district excited residents and no doubt
helped spur migration to the area in anticipation of new livelihood opportunities. In 1967,
Quispillacctinos told researchers that they were very excited about the conclusion of the
Huamanga to Ica highway. It would permit easier trips to Huamanga and the coast, and possibly
allow them to establish a weekly market in the barrio of Tuco that would draw community
members from the D. Chuschi and the neighbouring districts of Paras and Totos.634 Tuco lies on
the western edges of the district. So, for Quispillacctinos, a road into the Rio Cachi zone would
enable them to have their own transportation link from the far corners of their community to
major urban areas outside the district. Controlling the key Rio Cachi zones of the district
therefore facilitated these linkages to occur. Emerging road networks in the early 1960s thus
provided important livelihood imperatives for settling and controlling the Rio Cachi zones of the
630 Interview, Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 18 Oct., 2004. Jaime noted that Chuschi’s priest also worked with Chuschi’s
Misti elites to oppose road construction to the town, attempting to frighten Chuschinos by saying that road
construction would bring more thieves to Chuschi. His account was confirmed by Chuschino Alejandro Allcca
Vilca, who said that Jaime argued in assemblies that the proposed road was good for the people. Allcca said that
Jaime was hated by Chuschi’s Mistis for his constant agitation and education of comuneros against Misti
domination. Mistis derisively called Jaime, “Llama cejo” – Llama eyebrow. Interview, Alejandro Allcca Vilca,
Chuschi, 23 October, 2004. 631
Palmer, Revolution from Above, 256. 632
Palmer, “Rebellion in Rural Peru: The Origins and Evolution of Sendero Luminoso,” 134. 633
Palmer, Revolution from Above, 247. Palmer notes that the owners of the hacienda Milpo built a road in 1967 to
connect to the Via de los Libertadores. Marked on the topographical map, the road sits only a few kilometers north
of the northern boundary of the District of Chuschi. 634
Saramiento Medina et al., Los Distritos de Vischongo, Chuschi, Y Ocros, 13.
197
district, particularly for Quispillacctinos, who did not have direct access into their community
lands up until this time without crossing into the territories of Chuschi and its annexes. Given
centuries of conflict between the communities, the importance of new road access to their
community free of interference from neighbouring communities cannot be overstated.635
Inter-community clashes in 1960 over control of disputed high Sunni and Puna zones
The rising peasant unrest in the late 1950s throughout highland Peru, but particularly in the
central Sierra, also contributed to altering the opportunity structure for peasants in the district by
raising expectations of agrarian reform in the years to come. While peasant movements in Peru
the 1950s and early 1960s have been discussed above, their impact can be seen in the increasing
clashes that they helped spawn between communities and landholders in and around the district
in this period. Every Peruvian political reform to affect peasants since the early 1830s had
repercussions in the district, in the form of clashes, livelihood changes, petitions to the state, etc.,
as peasants maneuvered to create livelihood opportunities in the changing political context,
particularly in relation to securing more permanent tenure and entitlement rights to the land they
believed belonged to their community. In light of the attractions of settling the Rio Cachi
regions of the district discussed above in section 6.3, and the pressures pushing residents to the
area from the Rio Pampas settlements, discussed below in chapter 7, the stage was set for more
aggressive attempts to assert control over the region by competing communities.
Over the course of about two months from late March to early May 1960, serious violent clashes
erupted between Quispillacctinos and Chuschinos (including affiliated annexes) over control of
three regions of the central sections of the Rio Cachi Sunni and Puna zone in the district: an area
around Loreta, on the north-west border between Chuschi and Quispillaccta; an area on the west
of the disputed zone stretching from Yuracc-Coral, Suyoccacca to Cconchulla, at the top of the
valley with the Matriz; and an area in the east of the disputed zone stretching from Ingauasi,
Pallcca, Llachocc, Tapacoccha, Kimsa Cruz, and Arapa. (See map.) Determining which
community escalated the conflict in the late 1950s was challenging for regional authorities at the
635 Road building continues in the district today. During fieldwork in 2004, a road was under construction from
Quispillaccta’s barrio of Llacctahurán to the Matriz. Since then, new roads have been built to connect even the most
isolated barrios like Socobamba to the Matriz.
198
time, as La Serna points out.636 It remains difficult to point to one side or the other as the
instigator of the conflicts, given the slow migration to the area over many years. Authorities
from both Chuschi and Quispillaccta claimed in various official complaints that residents from
both communities engaged in land invasions, crop plantings, and corral construction on land
claimed by the other. Quispillacctinos complained of invasions between 1957 and 1958 around
Loreta and in the western disputed portion of the Rio Cachi basin, stretching from Cconchulla to
Jeulla. Their complaints included claims that Chuschino settlers were laying claim to
Quispillaccta’s water resources in the area, water that fed land in Puncupata and Unión
Portrero.637 In late 1959 they added complaints against Chuschino invasions to the east, around
Accopampa.638 Chuschinos claimed similar violations in late 1959, including threats of physical
violence, by Quispillacctinos in an area called Huacctacancha.639 As Ernesto Jaime – the district
Mayor in 1960 and a key leader of Chuschi’s violent response to Quispillaccta’s mobilizations –
explained to me in 2004, Chuschi had more land as the district capital and was thus the target of
invasions by the annexes. “Why are you invading this land? This land belongs to Chuschi,” he
would tell the invaders. “We need the land,” came the reply.640
636 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 68-9. La Serna’s account of the conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta
in 1959 and 1960 relies almost entirely on court records of complaints and counter-complaints by the communities.
This is problematic history, because he writes a history of the clashes using these records as if the details described
in the complaints were fact. Little research is done on the wider historical context of these events in La Serna’s
research. Clearly, there is tremendous room for exaggeration, over-statement, and outright lies by both communities
in official legal complaints. Both were trying to convince authorities of the veracity of their claims and portray
themselves as victims of the other’s actions. We should be careful of accepting the details of legal complaints as
fact, as La Serna does in several publications without multiple sources of confirmation. La Serna’s account is also
published in Miguel La Serna, “To Cross the River of Blood: How an Inter-Community Conflict is Linked to the
Peruvian Civil War, 1940-1983,” in Christine Hunefeldt and Misha Kokotovic eds., Power, Culture, and Violence in
the Andes (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2009): 110-144; and Miguel La Serna, The Corner of the Living:
Local Power Relations and Indigenous Perceptions in Ayacucho, Peru, 1940-1983, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
San Diego, CA, 2008). 637
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 68-9. Interview with Pedro Conde Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004 638
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 68. 639
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 68. I am unable to locate this area on various maps of the disputed region. 640
Interview, Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 18 Oct., 2004. Numerous Quispillacctinos noted that Jaime was a key
planner and leader of Chuschi’s violent response, a conclusion that agrees with La Serna’s analysis. Informants also
named Roberto Miranda as a key leader of the violence. His role is not discussed by La Serna. Interview,
Quispillaccta, 12 October, 2004.
199
At the end of 1959, provincial authorities told both sides to refrain from land invasions and
property destruction in the disputed zone until an investigation could be completed.641 However,
several months later, in April and May, 1960, the bloodiest clashes to date erupted. In early
April 1960, Quispillacctinos decided to take matters into their own hands and forcefully push out
Chuschino settlers from some disputed areas. Between March 30th and April 3rd, hundreds of
Quispillacctinos pushed Chuschinos from the central and eastern portions of the disputed zone,
around Accoccasa, Lachocc, Yuracc-coral, Pallcca, and Ingahuasi. Settlements were destroyed,
corrals were demolished, and even Chuschi’s chapel at Lachocc was raised to the ground.642 A
few days later, between April 5th-7th, hundreds of Quispillacctinos again attacked, clearing away
Chuschino settlers in the western and south-central portions of the disputed lands, Suyuccacca,
Qenhua, Tapaccocha, Quimsacruz, Pachanca, Cconchalla, and again at Lachocc.643 These
widespread and spontaneous mobilizations of Quispillacctinos to seize disputed Rio Cachi lands
provoked a violent response from Chuschi.644
In the weeks that followed Quispillaccta’s mobilization, Chuschi’s Misti authorities met to plot
their revenge on Quispillaccta and to mobilize Chuschi’s comuneros masses.645 On 16 April,
1960, in an assembly in Chuschi, dozens of Chuschinos pledged their support to initiate litigation
against Quispillaccta for their actions, and vowed to defend their lands “materially or personally
until the end of the litigation.”646 Quispillacctinos even heard rumours during these weeks that
Chuschinos were purchasing handgun ammunition, according to accounts dictated to provincial
authorities several months later.647
Chuschi’s response to Quispillaccta’s mobilizations came a few weeks later on May 5th and 6th
with attacks on Quispillacctino settlements in Ccullahuaycco in the south-west of the disputed
641 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 68-9.
642 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 69-70.
643 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 70.
644 Don Pastor Galindo Ccallocunto, from Puncupata, noted in an interview that the Quispillaccta mobilization was
not organized by Quispillaccta authorities, but was a spontaneous mobilization of community members. Galindo, in
his early 20s at the time of the conflict, was an authority in Quispillaccta in the 1970s. Interview Pastor Galindo
Ccallocunto, 11 October, 2004. 645
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 116. 646
Quoted in La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 116-117. 647
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 117.
200
zone and around Kimsa Cruz in the east. Almost 200 hundred Chuschinos on foot and on
horseback first destroyed the small ranching settlement of Ccullahuaycco, in an area that is now
part of the barrio Yuraqcruz.648 Some residents of the area fled to Tuco for assistance, according
to Juan Galindo. “Cculla doesn’t exist anymore,” they said.649 The next day several hundred
Chuschinos confronted hundreds of Quispillacctinos at Kimsa Cruz. When the bloody day’s
confrontation was over, three Quispillacctinos lay dead from gunshots, while at least a dozen
more were wounded by gunshots.650 Dozens of other community members on both sides were
wounded in the melee by clubs and rocks.651 Quispillacctinos would get their own fatal revenge
two years later, chasing down two Chuschinos in the Rio Cachi zone and beating one to death.
Both may have played a role in the violence of May, 1960; the dead man, Miguel Pacotaipe, had
a dwelling destroyed when Quispillacctinos cleared Suyoccacca of Chuschi settlers.652
The outcome of the violence between 1959 and 1962 clearly benefited Quispillaccta’s interests
in controlling the Rio Cachi basin of the district. Both sides will tell you that Quispillaccta’s
superior numbers during the clashes turned the tide in their favour, despite the use of fire arms by
Chuschi’s mistis. Chuschi managed to destroy holdings in Ccullahuaycco and draw blood in
Kimsa Cruz in 1960, but they were unable to reverse Quispillaccta’s clearing of Chuschino
settlers in much of the high zones of the Rio Cachi basin, particularly in the western section. In
the eastern section of the disputed zone Quispillaccta also made gains, particularly in the
highlands above Pampamarca, while further south both communities faced each other across a
tense line of division from Llachocc, Pallcca, to Kimsa Cruz. Ccullahuaycco remained in
Quispillaccta’s hands, along with gains in Cconchulla to the east, above the main valley. The
state proved unable to mediate a permanent solution to the 1960s clashes; in fact, they were even
incapable of prosecuting anybody from either Chuschi or Quispillaccta for the death, bloodshed,
648 La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 119.
649 Interview with Juan Galindo, Oct. 11, 2004.
650 The Quispillactino dead included brothers Martín and Sebastien Mendieta, and Antonio Galindo Espinoza. I
interviewed Sebastien Mendieta’s widow, Pascualia Huamaní, in 2004. 651
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 119-120. 652
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 121-124.
201
and property damage suffered.653 While litigation continued in the next decade by both sides to
cement gains or reverse loses, control on the ground was all that mattered in the end.
Détente and maneuver – continuing struggles to control disputed zones between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, 1960s and 1970s
In the almost two decades between the bloody events of May, 1961 and the takeover of the
district by the Shining Path in late 1981, the dispute over the Rio Cachi disputed zone flared
repeatedly, resisted attempts during the Agrarian reform era to find a peaceful solution, and again
threatened to lead to all-out conflict between the two communities. While many community
members simply tried to get along in order to make a living, at various times in the 1960s and
early 1970s, incidents of property destruction, violent threats, and land invasion were recorded in
the judicial record – primarily from the Loreta zone in the north-west of the disputed area,
around Ccullahuaycco and Conchulla in the south-west of the disputed area, and around the line
of division in the east between the two communities, particularly around the grazing area of
Llachocc, where high-altitude streams feed Pampamarca and Catalinayuq.654 The events of 1960
had by no means settled the conflict, though large-scale open conflict instead gave way to
isolated incidents of hostility between the communities over disputed territories.
National agrarian reform in the early 1970s introduced new dynamic opportunities in the
highlands for campesino communities, motivating many to seek control of disputed or usurped
lands. As discussed above, the reality of land reform rarely matched the results; however, the
promise of a more sympathetic government led many peasant communities to seek redress for
past injustices and settle outstanding land issues. During the agrarian reform years in D. Chuschi,
community members from both sides made several attempts to involve the reformist bureaucracy
in an effort to resolve the dispute between Quispillaccta and Chuschi. Chuschino Marcelino
653 The lack of state capacity and presence in the area in the early 1960s was reflected by the failure to hold anyone
responsible for the violence of 1960. While a few community members on both sides spent a small amount of time
in jail, no one was ever prosecuted for the murders, shooting, or beatings that took place. Chuschino Victor Galindo
Tucno told me that after the Kimsa Cruz violence, he remembers Chuschi’s lawyer laughing at Chuschi’s
comuneros, and telling them that they could have killed 20 Quispillacctinos and nothing would have happened.
Interview, Victor Galindo Tucno, Chuschi, 24 Oct., 2004. The lawyer’s comment also reflects the long-standing
reality in the highlands that Mistis in the district could abuse and even kill comuneros with near impunity. 654
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 126-7.
202
Rocha Cayllahua, who was among the group of authorities that settled the conflict with
Quispillaccta in 1981, recalled a failed attempt in 1971 by the Liga Agraria (Agrarian League) to
resolve the dispute.655 Quispillacctinos also looked to the new reformist government for
solutions to the dispute, agreeing in 1972 to participate in an effort organized by SINAMOS (The
National System for the Support of Social Mobilization) to find a resolution to the land disputes
between the communities. As in the past, the community may have calculated that the new
reform bureaucracy could help solidify land claims in contested areas. Quispillacctinos were
angered when Chuschinos spurned the SINAMOS peacemaking effort.656 This may have led the
community in early 1973 to ask SINAMOS to undertake a census of their land, animals, and
community members.657 A census could provide some legitimacy for their holdings.658 These
and later efforts at reconciliation throughout the 1970s failed, however. Chuschinos rejected
attempts at conflict resolution and continued to appeal to provincial and court authorities to try to
seek redress for their claims that Quispillaccta usurped their lands.659 As one Chuschi
community leader later told me about Chuschino views at the time, “Chuschinos weren’t
interested in finding a solution in the 1970s.”660
In mid-May, 1980, four students from the University of Huamanga entered Chuschi’s town hall
and burned the ballot boxes for the upcoming national elections. This act of anti-regime violence
is often held up as the first shot in the Shining Path’s insurgency in Peru.661 However, in the D.
Chuschi, tensions had already begun to heat up weeks before Sendero militants attacked the
voting office. Since March 1980, conflict was again erupting in the disputed Rio Cachi zone
between Quispillaccta and Chuschi. Over the course of the next eighteen months, hundreds of
Quispillacctinos and Chuschinos were involved in back and forth land invasions, violent threats,
655 Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 Oct., 2004. The Liga Agraria was a new national body of
peasant federations set up during then President Velasco’s agrarian reform efforts. This failed conciliation the Liga
Agraria was confirmed by Emilio Nuñez of Quispillaccta in an interview in 2004. 656
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 127. 657
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1973-75, Municipal Archives: meeting 21 January, 1973. 658
Peru’s first national agrarian census was released in 1972. It is also possible that the Jan. 1973 entreaty to
SINAMOS was an attempt to correct what the community felt was their faulty representation in that census. Some
Peruvian scholars note that there were various flaws in the 1972 agrarian census. 659
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 127. 660
Interview, Chuschi, 2004. Identity protected. 661
Gorriti, The Shining Path, 17-20.
203
the destruction of property, and the creation of new settlements in disputed areas. Both
communities filed numerous legal petitions to provincial authorities as a result of the renewed
hostilities. This time the conflict was concentrated in the north-west of the disputed zone,
around Loreta, and in the eastern section of the zone – areas around Ingahuasi, Pallcca, Llachocc,
Tapacocha, Arapa, and Quimsa Cruz.662
National and regional political developments were again providing a structural opening for
peasant actions in each community. With national elections in 1980, Peru was emerging from
more than ten years of military control of national politics, a retreat from power by Peru’s
Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces that began in 1977.663 Most of Peru’s leftist
parties joined the political process and were actively courting rural voters with their platforms of
change. Ayacucho’s countryside saw vigorous political competition among competing leftist
groups. In Cangallo, however, the Shining Path, which had rejected participation in the election
and had been organizing armed insurrection for several years in rural communities, deployed its
militants to harass and intimidate other leftists groups stumping for voters in communities up and
down the Rio Pampas.664 In eastern Cangallo they took advantage of the absence of all local
police forces, which had been withdrawn from the area in 1978 by Department police officials
after days of violent clashes with students and teachers over high school reform. The school
reform violence had an important impact on the political atmosphere in Cangallo, according to
Heilman: “The … strikes triggered an immediate radicalization of politics throughout Cangallo
province and particularly in the eastern districts of Vischongo, Vilcashuamán, Huambalpa, and
Carhuanca … Senderistas throughout eastern Cangallo took the 1978 police retreat as their
opportunity to finalize their preparations for war” over the next two years.665 Community
members in the D. Chuschi were no doubt aware of the political winds swirling around them as
each resorted to direct action to gain control of the disputed Rio Cachi zone in 1980 and 1981.
The extent of the invasions, property destruction, and mobilizations by each side reached levels
comparable to the conflicts in 1959-60. Tensions appeared to be nearing their peak, in June
662 La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 130-135 gives details of the legal claims and counterclaims of violence
and destruction from each event. 663
Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 174. 664
Gorriti, The Shining Path, 10-13. 665
Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 176.
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1981. According to a Chuschino complaint to provincial authorities at that time, Quispillaccta
had even approved in a general assembly a plan to invade the disputed lands around
Loreta/Huaracco, Ingahuasi, Pallcca, and Pucahuasi666 – disputed areas in the north-west and
eastern portions of the contentious Rio Cachi zone. The stage appeared set to repeat the deadly
clashes of 1960.
Peace in the midst of civil war – final settlement of land disputes in the District of Chuschi and the impacts of this settlement in the context of Sendero’s insurgency in the area
6.6.1. The 1981 peace agreement between Chuschi and Quispillaccta
As the planting season began in the district, violence between Quispillaccta and Chuschi
appeared to escalate in September and early October, 1981.667 But suddenly, on Oct. 16th 1981,
Quispillaccta’s communal assembly was informed that a formal agreement had been reached
with Quispillaccta to mark the boundary in the disputed zones of the high Sunni and Puna.668
Months of behind-the-scenes efforts by community authorities dramatically shifted the district
toward a historic peace settlement. We now know that the peace agreement came together over
several months, from May to October 1981, at the same time that violent confrontations in the
Rio Cachi zone were reaching their peak. Existing scholarly accounts of the rising conflict
between Chuschi and Quispillaccta in 1980-81, during those initial months of Sendero activity in
the district, have failed to describe the peace settlement and explain its wider significance for
conflict and violence in the area during the first years of the Sendero insurgency.669
The ground work for the agreement was laid by community leaders in both Quispillaccta and
Chuschi several years earlier, and by changing attitudes toward maintaining the high costs of
666 La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 132. I did not find any record of such a decision in Quispillaccta’s
community records. 667
La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 130-35.
668 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 16 October, 1981. La Serna’s
account of the clashes in 1980-81 outlines records of complaints in the back and forth clashes between the
communities up to 12 October, 1981. His account ends there, however, curiously omitting any discussion of the
peace agreement that was signed only days later. 669
None of the scholarly accounts of events in the D. Chuschi during 1980-83 – Isbell, Sànchez Villagómez, or La
Serna - give an account of the peace agreement and its significance.
205
continued litigation.
Quispillaccta’s President at the time
of the 1981 deal, Emilio Núñez,
said that his predecessor as
President, Armando Tomaylla,
started to talk to Chuschinos about
a solution in 1978-9.670 When
Núñez took over as Quispillaccta’s
President in 1980, he found a
receptive partner on the Chuschi
side for negotiating a deal in
Chuschino President Marcelino
Rocha. Both were young
community leaders, in their early
30s, and tired of the long conflict that continued to drain community coffers. Foreign
development professionals working in the area at the time also noted that campesinos were
increasingly aware of the lost development opportunities from spending scarce community funds
on continued boundary litigation.671 In an interview, former Chuschi President Juan
Carhuapoma noted that Chuschinos were keenly aware of the drain on community coffers from
the on-going litigation with the Hacienda Yaruca and its former peons. This helped to motivate
670 Interview, Emilio Núñez Conde, Quispillaccta, 13 October, 2004.
671 Vera Gianotten and Ton de Wit, "Organizacion Popular: El Objetivo De La Investigacion Participativa,” Boletín
de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 35 (December 1983), 115. Gianotten and de Wit worked on rural
development programs for the Netherlands’ Royal Tropical Institute in the D. Chuschi between 1978 and 1983.
Their article discusses their experiences in trying to design and deliver rural development programs in the district, as
part of Huamanga University’s Centro de Capacitación Campesina (Peasant Training Center, CCC) a program for
rural extension assistance and training that was part of the University’s Allpachaka research station. The CCC
worked with various peasant communities in the Rio Pampas and Rio Cachi river basins, in cooperation with foreign
development agencies like the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development COSUDE (Agencia Suiza para el
Desarrollo y la Cooperación). The Allpachaka research station was a former hacienda north-east of the D. Chuschi,
noted on topographical maps of the area. The lands making up Allpachaka were claimed by many peasant
communities in the area, including by Quispillaccta, according to informants. Allpachaka’s destruction by Sendero
in 1982 marked an important and controversial moment in Sendero’s attempts to take over Cangallo. A detailed
discussion of Allpachaka and its destruction can be found in, Michael L. Smith, Rural Development in the Crossfire:
The Role of Grassroots Support Organizations in Situations of Political Violence (Ottawa, IDRC, 1991), 33-43. See
also Kurt Burri, Los Inicios de la Cooperación Técnica del Gobierno Suizo, 1964-1974 (Lima: Agencia Suiza para
el Desarrollo y la Cooperación (COSUDE), 2000).
Peacemakers: Quispillaccta President Emilio Núñez Conde (left) and Chuschi
President Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua (right), who were instrumental in negotiating the 1981 peace agreement between Chuschi and Quispillaccta. Photo
sources: Salvatierra et. al., 205; https://solucionespracticas.org.pe/aprendiendo-a-
construir-su-propia-casa.
206
Chuschi to make peace.672 These changes no doubt helped set the stage for the efforts of
Chuschi’s and Quispillaccta’s authorities to make peace.
While various legal and political officials urged the leaders to strike a deal, tensions on both
sides made it difficult to find a solution collectively.673 As conflict continued in the contested
areas, representatives had to overcome community skepticism and their own suspicions of the
other side. According to Quispillaccta authority Emilio Núñez, Ernesto Jaime, the former
District Mayor and Chuschi leader in the 1960 conflict, laughed at them when they sought to
begin negotiations, saying that the conflict was unsolvable.674 One meeting in early 1981 in
Huamanga between Chuschino and Quispillacctino authorities devolved into fisticuffs in the
Plaza de Armas.675 Rocha and Nuñez, however, committed to working together, with minimal
outside interference, to try to find a solution to the conflict.676 In spite of the skepticism of some,
the vast majority of Chuschinos were in favour of starting the peace process.677 Quispillaccta’s
support for the process is recorded in the records of the community assembly in May 1980,
where the community approved a statement for the record committing each side to putting forth
two representatives to analyze and negotiate a peaceful resolution of their problems.678 The
representatives were even going to explore the possibility of ‘unification’ of the communities.679
672 Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
673 Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi’s President after Rocha, said that lawyers from each community first
suggested that the Presidents of Chuschi and Quispillaccta meet in Huamanga to try to solve the dispute. Interview,
Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. Both sides also mentioned the mediation attempts of a student,
Gerardo Allcca Nuñez, who tried to participate in the dialogue to find a solution. 674
Interview, Emilio Núñez Conde, Quispillaccta, 13 October, 2004. 675
Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. Rocha says that Huamanga police and
Chuschino Victor Galindo, who was a Liga Agraria member, calmed the authorities and chastised them for the fight.
“How long is this going to continue?” Galindo asked them? Rocha said that Galindo’s comments made him think
more seriously about finding a peaceful solution. 676
Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 677
Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. Carhuapoma said that 90% of Chuschinos were
in favour of beginning the process to find a solution. 678
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 10 May, 1980. 679
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 10 May, 1980. The
voices for peace were not unanimous. One Quispillactino, who at the time was Quispillaccta’s Justice of the Peace,
is recorded in the minutes of the meeting as rejecting unification and calling on Quispillaccta to return Tapacocha to
drive out Chuschinos.
207
In early 1981, Quispillaccta’s official community records show that the community remained
committed to finding a negotiated solution to the problems with Chuschi, even as conflicts began
to escalate in the disputed zone.680 Tensions had flared in a new area in the south-west of the
district, where Quispillaccta’s Tuco barrio holdings abutted Chuschi’s high puna grazing zone.
Herminio Nuñez told Quispillaccta’s assembly on March 16th, 1981 about the destruction of his
house and corrals in Huiscahuaycco.681 It is possible that the back and forth invasions in the
months leading to the final agreement and the opening of a new front in the conflict in the south-
west were unsanctioned maneuvers by community members on each side to claim as much
territory as possible before a final agreement was signed. In a community meeting soon after an
early March 1981 incursion by Chuschi, Quispillacctino Antonio Huamani reiterated the
importance of inhabiting Quispillaccta’s land near their boundaries, no doubt to protect against
invasions by their neighbours.682
As the July/August dry season passed to the beginning of the planting season in September and
October 1981, tensions in the district began to increase significantly. Sendero was increasingly
active in the community, with its moralizing and conscious-raising efforts.683 In August,
Sendero militants had executed two Quispillacctino cattle thieves in Chuschi’s main plaza.684
Invasions and property destruction in the disputed zones increased significantly in September
and early October. On October 16th, however, Quispillaccta’s community assembly was told that
a formal agreement had been reached with Chuschi.685 They agreed to have both sides leave the
disputed areas so that both communities could quickly define the final boundaries. Provisions
680 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 16 March, 1981.
Chuschi’s records of their community assemblies were destroyed when the Shining Path burned the district office on
April 9, 1983. This act is noted by Marté Sánchez Villagómez, "El Horror Olvidado. Memoria E Historia De La
Violencia Política En Ayacucho (1980-2000)" (Tesis Doctoral defendida en la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona,
2015), 284. 681
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 16 March, 1981. On
the topographical map of the area included above, Huiscahuaycco is spelled Huiscahuayocc, and is highlighted in
the far west of the disputed zone. 682
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 16 March, 1981. The
Chuschino incursions of 3 March 1981 are described in La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 135. 683
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 83. 684
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 83. 685
An open question is whether the violence and invasions of September and October pushed both sides to
recognize that they had reached a hurting stalemate, and that continuing violence would be unbearable?
208
were also agreed upon for penalties in the event of violations of these borders. As well, all
outstanding official complaints or claims were to be dismissed by both sides once the agreement
was reached.686 In another assembly in Quispillaccta on October 18th, President Nuñez informed
the community that both parties had reached an agreement on most issues, but they needed to
finalize the agreement to make it a reality by defining the borders. This process would start with
Pucahuasi first, before dealing with Huancarumi, Ingahuasi, Pallcca y Conyacalle, Huaracco, and
Kimsa Cruz – the latter encompassing the lands in the north-west and eastern area of the Rio
Cachi disputed zones.687
Some Quispillacctinos were unhappy about the peace process, their complaints recorded by the
assembly minutes. Several barrio presidents complained that Quispillaccta was losing out in the
deal because they did not have enough land compared to their neighbours in other barrios. Nuñez
dismissed these complaints, saying that continuing a trial was too expensive and that both
communities suffer by continuing legal actions. In the end, the assembly voted to continue with
the peace process.688 Some Chuschinos were similarly unhappy with the deal. In an interview,
Rocha said that some Chuschinos accused him of selling out to Quispillaccta for some bulls –
that he was bribed into making the deal. Others, thanked him for making the deal, however. 689
Negotiators moved quickly in late October and early November 1981 to settle the disputed
boundaries. On 22 October they defined the boundaries for Pucahuasi and Huancarumi, setting
out the agreement first in text, with markers to be placed later.690 On October 28th they met in
686 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 16 October, 1981. The
penalty set out in the records in the event of a violation is that each side would forfeit their entire claims, to be ruled
upon by a land judge. This is a significant penalty and ensures that each community would police its own citizens to
protect its claims. 687
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 18 March, 1981. I have
been unable to locate Pucahuasi, Huancarumi, or Conyacalle on community maps. Pucahuasi and Huancarumi are
probably in the south-west of the community, where Quispillaccta’s Tuco barrio lands abut Chuschi’s high puna
grazing zone and where clashes broke out in early 1981. In this area, the topographical map notes Pucruhuasi and
Cerro Pucamachay, so it is reasonable to conclude that these disputed areas are nearby. The map shows numerous
high-altitude wetlands, which were typically the areas fought over because they provided water and pasture areas
when some wetlands dried up in the dry season. In retrospect, it was smart to begin the boundary marking in this
area, because the depth of tensions on both sides was likely least evident in the area where conflict had only recently
arisen. 688
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, meeting 18 March, 1981. 689
Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 690
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 22 October, 1981.
209
Kimsa Cruz, the site of the May 1960 violence that claimed the lives of three Quispillacctinos,
and set the boundaries from Kimsa Cruz to Ingahuasi.691 A fight almost broke out among
negotiators as they set out the Kimsa Cruz boundary, according to Chuschi authority Juan
Carhuapoma. However, tensions cooled on both sides, partly with the assistance of a Swiss
NGO representative who was present at the meeting. Both sides agreed to suspend the process
for a bit to let tempers cool. 692 The next week, on November 4th, boundaries were set from
Ingahuasi to Pallcca.693 Two weeks later November 18th, the final boundary in the disputed zone
in the north-west was set, between Chuschi’s Huaracco barrio and Quispillaccta’s Unión
Portrero.694 In less than one month, authorities from Chuschi and Quispillaccta defined
boundaries that had been a source of conflict for decades. The complex process of defining the
boundaries was complicated by the legacy of resource and entitlement capture in the area from
the colonial era. Carhuapoma noted that at times during the boundary marking there were
obvious overlapping claims from community land titles to the same area, so negotiators had to
compromise and split the difference, using natural boundaries to complete the demarcation in
many places.695
With all the boundaries now settled, each community presented the final peace agreement to
their community assemblies at the end of November 1981. The communities agreed to present
the ratified peace deal to Peruvian government authorities in December. Opposition to the deal
continued from some in both communities, however. Remarkably, former Quispillaccta
President Armando Tomaylla Nuñez from barrio Catalinayuq, who had initially broached the
idea of a deal with Chuschi during his time as community president, now condemned the deal,
calling on President Emilio Nuñez to quit so that a new community president could press for
more land.696 Some Quispillacctinos, particularly those from Catalinayuq barrio were upset that
691 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 28 October, 1981.
692 Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
693 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 4 November, 1981.
694 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 18 November, 1981.
695 Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
696 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 30 November, 1981. Oseas
Núñez Espinoza’s online account of events at that time notes that Tomaylla did not want to give up an inch of
Quispillaccta’s land to Chuschi during his time as community president in the late 1970s, a statement that somewhat
210
Quispillaccta had made concessions in the boundary demarcation that gave Chuschi part of
Pallcca and Arapa.697 These highlands contain the headwaters that feed the pastures of
Catalinayuq, an area where water is limited. President Nuñez responded that Catalinayuq was
welcome to continue the litigation if they had a basis to continue. In the end, when the proposed
agreement was put to a vote, the peace agreement was ratified by Quispillaccta’s assembly.698 In
Chuschi, some community members also continued to voice opposition to the deal at the
ratification meeting. In the end, however, the momentum for sealing a deal prevailed and a
majority of Chuschinos voted to ratify the final boundary agreement, according to authority Juan
Carhuapoma.699 When the ratification was concluded, both communities held a communal feast
in Quispillaccta to celebrate.700 The agreement would eventually be presented to Peruvian
government authorities and a formal plan drawn up with government officials in Lima, according
to Quispillaccta’s assembly records.701 The last entry about the settlement comes from late
January, 1984, a little more than a year after the Peruvian military had begun its brutal counter-
insurgency campaign in the district, when Quispillacctinos were informed that the formal plan of
the agreed boundaries had been completed with government officials.702
In the final accounting, the deal that finally solved centuries of conflict between Chuschi and
Quispillaccta largely favoured Quispillaccta in its outcome. Even though Quispillaccta made
concessions in the eastern zone around Pallca, Tapacocha, and Arapa, they were largely
successful in pursuing claims to Loreta – near Unión Portrero, in areas now part of Yuraqcruz,
and north of the main valley around Conchulla and Kimsa Cruz. Most Quispillacctinos feel that
they came out of the conflict ahead, though they always maintain that the disputed territories
contradicts President Núñez’s account above. <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>,
assessed 9-1-16. However, as noted above, 697
This point is made by Oseas Núñez Espinoza in an online history of Cuchoquesera,
<http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>, assessed 9-1-16; Jose Nuñez, from the barrio of
Catalinayuq, blamed Emilio Núñez for giving Chuschi Pallcca. Interview, Jose Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 16 October,
2004. 698
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 30 November, 1981. 699
Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 700
Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 701
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1979-81, Municipal Archives, 30 November, 1981. 702
Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1982-85, Municipal Archives, 25 January, 1984.
211
were always theirs to begin with.703 Certainly, when one examines the official boundary
between communities set out in the 1981 agreement, Quispillaccta controls the main central
portion of the disputed Rio Cachi high Sunni and Puna zones, creating a contiguous community
from the Rio Pampas in the south to the borders of district in the north-east Rio Cachi zone. (See
map, Figure 19: Current boundaries of Quispillaccta (black) within the District of Chuschi
overlaid with historic conflict zones.) Chuschi is essentially divided in two, with a small high
Sunni-Puna zone in the south-east connecting to their Matriz holdings on the Rio Pampas,
separated from significant holdings of high pastures in the north-west of the district which
connect to the Matriz by a trail through Quispillaccta’s land.704 Some Chuschinos are still stung
by their loss of holdings in this zone, apparent in interviews that I conducted in 2004. Numerous
informants repeated that Quispillaccta stole their land, and became angry when asked about the
conflicts in 1960 and 1980-1, something that I never experienced when talking to
Quispillacctinos about the land dispute.
703 This point is made repeatedly to me in interviews and a similar sentiment is expressed by Oseas Núñez Espinoza
in an online history of Cuchoquesera, <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>, assessed 9-1-
16. Núñez Espinoza says that Catalinayuq lost control of parts of Pallcca and Arapa because they didn’t completely
inhabit the land, allowing an opportunity for Chuschinos to encroach upon the territory and later claim it as their
own. 704
Oseas Núñez Espinoza also makes this point. <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>,
assessed 9-1-16.
212
In the end, the weight of realities on the ground, the high costs of continuing litigation over
disputed territories, and the explosive political context in the region at the time served to support
the visionary leaders on both sides who sought to end the long and costly conflict. Even though
Chuschi had pushed back in 1980 and 1981 by invading some of the disputed areas earlier
occupied by Quispillaccta, the community was not able to occupy and settle as much of the
disputed territory as Quispillaccta. Quispillaccta had larger numbers in their favour and had
been using these numbers to their advantage to settle the disputed zones since the 1940s.705
705 The question of whether population growth in Quispillaccta was faster than in Chuschi and whether this played a
part in tipping the balance on the ground is explored in the next chapter below in section 7.2, examining supply and
demand-induced resource pressures. Certainly, early studies of the district made in the mid-1960s noted that
Quispillaccta was going through a “demographic explosion.” Ramon et al. La Comunidad de Chuschi, 151. Though
Figure 19: Current boundaries of Quispillaccta (black) within the District of Chuschi
overlaid with historic conflict zones
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
213
Chuschi’s President at the time of the agreement, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, admitted that
Chuschinos felt like they were losing with the agreement because they were fewer in number.706
As well, in the major confrontation between communities in 1960 and 1981, the legal records
cited by La Serna noted greater numbers of Quispillacctinos involved in the fights.707 Both sides
were also tired of spending precious community treasure to continue seemingly endless legal
battles over disputed territories, as discussed above. Chuschino Juan Carhuapoma noted that
debilitating financial impact of the decades-long Chuschi litigation against the hacendados of
Rumichaka-Yaruca was particularly influential in convincing Chuschinos that the time was ripe
to settle with Quispillaccta.708 Quispillacctinos were also aware that the costs of continued
litigation would drain funds that could be used to address the needs of both Quispillaccta and
Chuschi. As then Quispillaccta President Emilio Nuñez said in support of the peace deal:
“We’re all poor, we’re all campesinos. How long will we continue fighting! We should be
preoccupied with bringing progress to our communities. We settle this peacefully and we make
history.”709
Finally, the extraordinary structural conditions that community members found themselves in
from 1978 onwards cannot be under-estimated for its influence on pushing the communities to an
agreement; though, the precise impact remains contested. At the moment when Peru’s most
violent insurgent group was planning to initiate armed conflict against the state by direct action
in the D. Chuschi and the surrounding districts, community leaders decided the time was ripe for
settling one of the longest documented inter-community conflicts in Peru. While there is likely a
connection, the influence of Sendero on the impetus to reach peace remains unclear today. The
evidence about Sendero’s role is contradictory. La Serna claims that Sendero chose Chuschi as
the historical demographic data is not very good for each community, my reconstruction of demographic trends in
each community seems to confirm that Quispillaccta’s birth rates in the 1950s and 60s exceeded those of Chuschi.
Migration trends (also discussed below in section 7.4.1) obviously also influenced demographic trends in the
district, and it appears that out-migration was higher in Chuschi than in Quispillaccta for much of the post-war
period. 706
Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 707
This is also not conclusive; Quispillaccta could have simply been better at mobilizing their community
members, speaking to higher community cohesion than Chuschi, which had been for decades hobbled by the impact
of abusive Misti elites controlling the authority positions. 708
Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 709
Quoted in Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 205. My translation.
214
the start of the violent insurgency “because they hoped to channel inter-village hostilities into the
violence of armed struggle.”710 By this logic, Sendero would not have been in favour of a peace
deal. La Serna presents no evidence to support this claim, however, and the evidence that exists
seems to contradict his claim. If Sendero was looking to aggravate the inter-village hostilities for
their own violent struggle, negotiating a peace deal would seem risky for community leaders.
Arguments are more persuasive that Sendero was in favour of a deal; though solid evidence of
this remains elusive. Isbell believes Sendero chose Chuschi to start the insurgency because the
district’s communities would probably be more receptive to their message, given their “strong
communal structures, autonomy over their resources,” and minimal experiences with “capitalistic
market penetrations.”711 If this was the case, Sendero would have likely supported a peace
agreement if it would facilitate community members being more receptive to Sendero’s message,
and help create a more consolidated cadre of supporters.712 Recall that Sendero’s first violent
actions in the district aimed to solve community problems – eliminating thieves, bullies, and
adulators – demonstrating the value of their organization and strength to community members.
So, acting as a peacemaking in inter-community conflicts logically fit with their early actions. It
is possible that the Sendero cadres working on consciousness raising in the district helped push
the communities to make peace for their own interests to build support among community
members in the service of their larger war aims against the Peruvian state. However, there is no
documentary evidence for this “soft persuasion” influence on the deal-makers.
A related reason why the communities felt that the time was ripe for a deal was that they
believed it dangerous to continue the conflict in the face of impending civil unrest. In this case,
the communities may have calculated that the risks of hostilities and violence breaking out in a
time of heightened political unrest made continuing with the conflict dangerous. Leaders may
have realized that they were nearing a precipice – that continued conflict could lead to much
710 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 158. More recently, based on new interviews with Elena Iparraguirre, the
imprisoned number two leader of Sendero, it appears that Sendero chose this area to begin the armed struggle
because of the region’s high poverty. See Starn and La Serna, The Shining Path, 87. 711
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 78. Isbell’s argument focuses on the same factors that Eric Wolf
hypothesized for the strata of peasants most likely to rebel. See Wolf, Peasant Wars, 291. 712
I call this the “house divided” thesis – in Sendero’s logic, if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot
stand in its fight against the Peruvian state.
215
worse violence or catastrophe. Negotiation experts note that such moments are opportune for
initiating a negotiated settlement.713 Self-preservation, therefore, may have spurred the move to
peace. Again, however, we have no evidence of this.
A similar reason why communities may have felt the dangers of continuing the conflict were
unbearable is that they were directly threatened into making an agreement, either by Sendero or
by the Peruvian State. Field work in the D. Chuschi provided intriguing but somewhat
inconclusive evidence on this explanation. When interviewed about the peace deal, Chuschi’s
then-President Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua said that the ranking Sendero commander in the
Chuschi zone, Comrade Medina, came to district in July or August of 1981 and threatened both
sides to settle the conflict or face consequences. Medina, Rocha said, told them that “now no
one will fight for land because we are in a time of war.”714 Meeting with community leaders and
teachers in the district, Medina said that they would “hear from him” if they did not reach an
agreement. The obvious implication is that this threat thus motivated the parties to expedite the
efforts to find a solution.715 Chuschi’s next President, Juan Carhuapoma, confirmed that
Sendero’s threat motivated the parties to find a solution, though he was not present at the
meeting with Medina, he told me.716 If true, Sendero’s threat would go a long way to
understanding why an agreement was reached in the district at that particular time, and would
directly contradict La Serna’s analysis.
However, there is no evidence to prove the veracity of the claim of Sendero threats towards
Chuschi’s leaders; we can only take Chuschino informants at their word, even though there are
good reasons to question whether claims of Sendero threats are in fact a way for Chuschino
leaders to seek political cover for their deal. Chuschi’s leaders faced criticism for making the
deal, as noted above, so claims Sendero threats ‘motivated’ a deal would partially exonerate
Chuschi’s leaders from any criticism or censure from their own community members about
making the deal. In such a circumstance, they simply had no choice but to make a deal given
713 William Zartman and Saadia Touval, “International Mediation,” in Leashing the Dogs of War, eds. C. Crocker et
al. (Washington: US Institute of Peace Press, 2007), 445. 714
Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 715
Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 716
Interview, Juan Carhuapoma Llalli, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
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Sendero’s threats. Unfortunately, evidence about Sendero threats to force a deal only come from
interviews with Rocha and Carhuapoma; in numerous interviews with Quispillaccta’s past
authorities and with community members in both villages, no one mentioned Sendero’s threat.
Had such a threat taken place, one would expect that it would have been widely known and made
to both communities, precisely because a public threat makes the threat more powerful to restrain
community members from rash actions in the disputed zone. In addition, a threat in July or
August of 1981 fails to explain why violence escalated as it did in September and October,
1981?
There is evidence, however, that the Peruvian military threatened community leaders in 1983
with violence if clashes between communities continued. Quispillaccta’s assembly archives
record a meeting in June, 1983, between a Captain from Peru’s Army – likely the infamous
Captain Chacal - and the authorities of Quispillaccta, Chuschi, Cancha Cancha, and Uchuyri.
The military warned community leaders that there must not be fights of any kind between
communities, or else the authorities would be punished. Furthermore, all district residents were
to be guaranteed the right of free transit across any community lands, according to Quispillaccta
records.717 Given that the military had, by this time, killed dozens of community members in its
vicious counter-insurgency campaign, this threat to community authorities was obviously taken
seriously. It was a tangible reason for maintaining and implementing the peace agreement
ratified the year before. While threats from Peru’s military had nothing to do with the push to
finalize an agreement in 1981, military threats were no doubt partly responsible for the
implementation and adherence to the agreement in the years that followed.
Conclusion
Various structural changes both within the D. Chuschi and wider trends in Peru and abroad
helped condition the momentum for reversing resource capture in the D. Chuschi in the latter
half of the 20th century. As populations in the communities recovered to levels approaching pre-
Conquest numbers and economic opportunities increased for livestock and agricultural product
sales in the late 19th and early 20th century in the highlands, elite and church control of lands
inside the communities meant that communities had to look elsewhere to expand production. As
717 Quispillaccta, Libros de Actas de las Assembleas, 1982-85, Municipal Archives, 12 June, 1983.
217
popular pressure for agricultural change built during this time, Quispillaccta, Chuschi, and many
other communities in the area began a long process to recover lands they historically claimed as
community patrimony, or sought to purchase lands from mestizo land owners looking to sell
small estates of marginal or declining economic viability. These changes, in addition to
pressures discussed below in chapter 7, triggered increasing migration from the colonial
population centres on the Rio Pampas to new settlements in the Rio Cachi zone of the district.
However, unclear or overlapping land claims, particularly in the Sunni and Puna grazing areas
where boundaries between community holdings many never have been clearly demarcated, along
with the legacy of interference and resource capture from small haciendas, set the stage for
serious inter-community clashes at various points in the 20th century, particularly in 1961 and the
late 1970s. Elite capture of precious cultivated land in the Rio Pampas zone probably
exacerbated these tensions in the twentieth century, until the land reform pressures in the 1970s
pushed the last abusive elites out of the district.
When conflicts were settled in the late 1970s and early 1980s over the Rio Cachi zone lands in
the district and over the Quicamachay lands, more than one hundred years of efforts to regain
control of seized lands in the Rio Cachi basin by communities in the D. Chuschi largely came to
an end. While all the communities in the district had sought to gain control of Sunni and Puna
lands in this zone, Quispillaccta was clearly the beneficiary of these struggles, significantly
expanding its presence in the upper Rio Cachi basin from the late 1800s to the 1980s. Much of
the land Quispillacctinos considered as their historical patrimony was regained, though holdings
from the Hacienda Ingahuasi and the Hacienda Allpachaca remained beyond their control.
Chuschi, by contrast, remained frustrated in their attempts to seize contested lands in the north-
west contested with hacendados from the Yaruca estate. The desire for further expansion in the
Sunni zones of the Rio Cachi watershed was, by the latter half of the twentieth century,
increasingly clashing with the reality of other communities and former hacienda feudatarios
living in these areas. There is little doubt that peasants living in the area hungered to establish
control over more land for their communities, as the continued border disputes in the early 1980s
indicated. Any opportunity for further expansion of community land-holdings was seized. The
reportedly 2000 peasants who, at Sendero’s urging, invaded the University of Huamanga’s
experimental agricultural station at Allpachaca in August 1982 to plant crops and seize
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livestock718 were likely just as motivated by the opportunity to seize control of additional grazing
and cultivated lands from the former hacienda, as they were by Sendero’s ideological
exhortations to collectivist struggle.
However, the process of reclaiming lands lost to Spanish and Mestizo usurpers was not
beneficial to every group involved. There were clearly winners and losers on both sides in the
long historical struggle to regain high-altitude grazing lands. Communities members in Chuschi,
Cancha Cancha, Putaje, and Ccochapampa lost out to Quispillaccta in the contests described
above. When efforts to gain control of these lands were abandoned or settled in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, their claims were left unfulfilled and their aspirations unrealized. Added to that
were grievances born from decades of damage done to peasant livelihoods from the destruction
of property during back and forth community clashes. The arrival of Sendero and the Peruvian
military in the early 1980s temporarily froze the enmity among some over their decades-long
efforts to gain control of the disputed lands, until it spilled out in a new direction during the
counter-insurgency campaign.. Similarly, there were also losers on Quispillaccta’s side who
may have been angered by settlements reached with Chuschi and its annexes. Some barrio
residents in Catalinayuq and Puncupata smarted from the loss of parts of Pallcca, Arapa, and
Tapacocha, as noted above. As well, other Quispillacctinos from barrios near disputed zones
may have harboured resentment for the casualties, damage, and losses suffered in the land
invasions and conflicts during the 1960s and 1970s. La Serna, for example, notes how the sons
of Martin Mendieta, who was one of the three Quispillacctinos killed in the May 1960 battle at
Kimsa Cruz, rustled cattle from Chuschinos in revenge for their father’s killing. This sparked
deadly revenge against one of their associates by Chuschinos during Sendero’s initial killing of
thieves and moral degenerates in the district.719
In the end, resource and entitlement capture in the district had consequences that echoed for
centuries. These impacts were aggravated by supply and demand-induced resource pressures
discussed in the next chapter. Resolving the impacts of resource and entitlement capture was a
messy process in the D. Chuschi that generated decades of conflict between communities in the
718 Isbell, To Defend, 85. According to Isbell’s interviews, this event is remembered fondly by many peasants, who
know doubt welcomed what the return of these former hacienda lands to peasant control. 719
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 160-1.
219
area for several decades in the 20th century, up to the early years of the Sendero uprising.
Changing local, regional, and national contexts significantly complicated efforts to recover lands
that communities believed were rightly theirs. The causal influences extended beyond the
capture of valuable lands and the riches that flowed from them, as is discussed in chapter 8. The
land conflict helped to condition patterns of violence during the bloody months of 1983 when
Peru’s Army finally confronted Sendero in the district.
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Chapter 7 Supply and Demand Pressures in the District of Chuschi
Introduction
The struggles in the latter half of the twentieth century to regain control of high-altitude grazing
lands in the D. Chuschi described in the preceding chapters stemmed from a variety of causes at
the local, regional, and national level, as political, economic, and social changes swept the
highlands for several decades. The analysis provided thus far, however, provides only a partial
answer about why these contests between communities in the district became so heated and
violent in the second half of the twentieth century. Gradual changes to peasant livelihood
opportunities from at least the start of the twentieth century also began to increasingly challenge
households in the district by mid-century. Supply and demand changes began to impact the
natural assets held by many households, and increasingly constrained peasant livelihood returns
from cultivated lands. Households adapted to these increasing strains on cultivated assets in
various ways, including diversifying household activities through commodity production,
intensifying production on cultivated lands, migration, and shifting to focus efforts on livestock
husbandry in the higher zones of the district.
These adaptations did not happen in isolation to the local demand and supply pressures but also
responded to regional and national policy trends as the Peruvian government introduced various
development policies. In the context of local supply and demand pressures on natural assets in
the first half of the twentieth century, livelihood adaptations that included shifting more
household efforts to livestock husbandry in the high puna zones of the district made good sense
to many households. Livelihood adaptations to pressures on natural assets thus increased the
political stakes for communities to establish control over contested Puna grazing areas described
in preceding chapters.
This chapter begins by outlining demand-induced pressures on natural assets, pressures that
stemmed in part from local population growth in the first half of the twentieth century, which
reduced cultivated land availability and increased the intensity of household exploitation of local
natural assets like land. Evidence suggests that these pressures increasingly stressed household
cultivated crop returns in the twentieth century. Impacts did not happen in isolation, however.
People adapted to these pressures, sometimes in ways that worsened impacts on local natural
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assets, and in other ways that increasingly diversified household livelihood activities. This
chapter also outlines the extent of these household adaptations, and their implications on local
livelihoods. Although diversification activities by households enabled many to deal with the
stresses from demand and supply pressures on natural assets, they were not without
consequences as increasing internal migration to the high puna zones of the district heightened
tensions between communities over access and control to increasingly important grazing areas of
the district.
Demand-induced pressures on livelihoods in the District of Chuschi
In January, 1967, a group of anthropologists and government experts from the Instituto
Indigenista Peruano (IIP), part of the Ministry of Labour and Communities, traveled to the D.
Chuschi to conduct an intensive survey of the district and its needs. Like many remote Andean
regions, the D. Chuschi’s limited interaction with the Peruvian state up to that point meant that
much was not known about livelihoods in the district. Over the course of the next month, their
study provided an important snapshot of the livelihoods and cultural traditions of residents in the
district. Anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell arrived in the district soon after and built on this work
as part of her multi-year study of the peasant community of Chuschi. Taken together, these
efforts provide a rich scholarly foundation to study the state of livelihoods in the D. Chuschi,
compared to other nearby districts.
As snapshots of livelihoods in the district in the mid-1960s, however, these studies do not
provide a long-term perspective to understand how trends in key livelihood assets and
capabilities changed over time. In particular, snapshot studies in the 1960s found the district
well into several decades of strong population growth, with attendant impacts on the availability
of some natural assets like cultivated land and associated impacts on livelihood adaptations like
migration. By reconstructing demographic trends in the district over many decades we can begin
to appreciate the impact and adaptation to demand-induced pressures on natural assets in the
district.
The extent of the dramatic increases in the D. Chuschi’s population in the 20th century is only
evident in examining long-term population trends. According to Isbell, the main town of
Chuschi was experiencing several decades of population decline in the late 1960s, even while the
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wider district population continued to increase over the same period. Chuschi’s population
decline was attributed to out-migration to Lima and other areas where education and economic
opportunities were increasingly available.720 Isbell’s focus on the declining population of
Chuschi’s main town, however, ignored equally important long-term trends in the district
showing a rapid increase in the district’s population in the early 20th Century and strong growth
in the second half of the 20th century. While all of Ayacucho experienced rapid population
increases in the late 1800s, according to demographic reconstructions, Cangallo’s demographic
take off began somewhat later and was steeper in the early years of the 20th century. By the mid-
1960s Cangallo’s population growth was slowing; however, this was capping off a tripling of the
province’s population in less than one hundred years. (See chart, Figure 21: Population of
Department of Ayacucho and Province of Cangallo, 1791-2007. Unless noted on chart, data and
720 Isbell, To Defend, 68.
223
sources for charts in this chapter can be found in Appendix 2: Population of Peru, Ayacucho,
Province of Cangallo, and D. Chuschi)
Figure 20:
224
Population trends in the D. Chuschi similarly showed strong increases in the early decades of the
20th century, though the D. Chuschi’s steep take-off in growth was somewhat later than the wider
province and department.721
721 District population figures are somewhat uncertain before 1940, and should be taken with some caution. The
steep increase noted in the early 20th century could be a function of the available data.
Figure 21:
225
(See graph, Figure 22: Population of Province of Cangallo and D. Chuschi, 1876-2007.) The D.
Chuschi’s population trajectory also differed from provincial trends in the latter half of the
twentieth century, with Cangallo showing declining rates of growth in the 1960s and then
absolute population declines in the 1970s. The rate of increase in the district’s population did
slow somewhat in the 1960s when researchers first entered the area. However, population
growth rates took off again in the 1970s and continued for the next three decades, with total
population in the district growing by almost 25% by the mid-1990s. (See chart, Figure 23:
Population of Province of Cangallo and D. Chuschi, 1940-2007.) From 1940 to 1980, on the eve
of Sendero’s insurgency in the area, population growth in the D. Chuschi had increased over
20%, in spite of out-migration from the area over this same period (out-migration from the
district is discussed in more detail below in section 7.4.1) and in spite of over a decade of
declining population in the rest of the province. The data thus indicate that population trends in
the district differed markedly from wider trends in Cangallo.
Figure 22:
226
As well, in contrast to Isbell’s observations about declining population trends in Chuschi’s main
town in the late 1960s, population growth continued in areas outside of the main town in the
district over the latter half of the twentieth century. The district’s population at mid-century was
overwhelmingly located in areas outside of the town centre, according to researchers.722 Total
population continued to grow until early 1990s, in spite of the upheaval in the decades before
and during Sendero's uprising.
The data also appear to indicate that Quispillaccta’s population growth outpaced the growth of
the community of Chuschi and its annexes in the latter half of the twentieth century. Population
data below the district level is difficult to obtain because Sendero burned the municipal archives
722 Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 18. Some families also shifted their residences depending on the
time of the agricultural season, particularly in Quispillaccta, where families appeared to have stronger ties to barrios.
Thus, the effort by census takers to tie residents to one town or barrio was problematic because it did not consider
the shifting household residency as agricultural demands caused families to move around the district. Isbell’s
general observation about declining residency in the town of Chuschi due to migration was thus somewhat
questionable without more detailed observations of people’s livelihoods.
Figure 23:
227
in Chuschi in the early 1980s, destroying birth and death records for the community. Limited
birth and death records are available for Quispillaccta from their community Public Registry
archives. This data has been supplemented with baptismal records for both communities held by
Chuschi’s Catholic Church in order to reconstruct population patterns from the mid-1800s to the
start of Sendero’s insurgency. Baptisms were very important to the Catholic faithful, and
families were keen to baptise children soon after birth for fear that ever-present illnesses would
take the lives of their children before they could attain baptismal salvation. Baptismal records
can thus serve as a proxy for birth records in the district for Quispillaccta and Chuschi, with
some caveats.723 Their value declines after the late 1950s for several reasons. First, Evangelical
Christian sects began to penetrate the district in the early 1960s and families turned away from
the Catholic Church, particularly in Quispillaccta. The reluctance of Quispillacctinos to baptise
their children in Chuschi’s church, a function of the enmity between communities, also
somewhat undermines the utility of this data for Quispillaccta, particularly when tensions
between the two communities heated up in 1960. These conflicts tended to discourage
Quispillacctinos from dealing with Chuschi and its Catholic Church.724 Finally, a number of
conflicts between comuneros and Catholic priests in Chuschi in the late 1950s and 1960s may
have further discouraged community members from baptising children in the church.725 The
baptismal record is thus most useful in noting the rise in births in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
When baptismal records are combined with existing birth records to reconstruct sub-district
population trends, it is clear that communities in the district were experiencing strong population
growth from the early 20th century, and that Quispillaccta’s growth began out-pacing growth by
723 Jacobsen makes a similar point in his study of the province of Azángaro, in the Department of Puno. Jacobsen,
Mirages, 26. In counting baptisms in Quispillaccta and Chuschi, I have grouped together the main town and
affiliated annexes for each community from the district, using the cultural and kin-group affiliations described above
for Quispillaccta and Chuschi. Because latter conflicts over land in the puna zone saw each side face off with
affiliated annexes as allies and integral parts of their community self-identity, it makes sense to group together birth
data in this way. Chuschi’s birth figures thus also include births that took place in Cancha Cancha, Uchuyri, and
Chacolla. I excluded Sarhua and its annexes, though they were identified by informants as cultural allies of
Chuschi, because Sarhua and its annexes separated from the District of Chuschi in 1910 with the creation of the
province of Victor Fajardo. 724
Quispillaccta had its own Catholic Church, but the Parochial centre of the District was in Chuschi’s church. By
the mid-twentieth century, Quispillaccta’s Catholic Church did not have a regular attending priest, unlike in
Chuschi, so many families would have had to go to Chuschi’s church for baptisms. 725
These conflicts are discussed in Miguel La Serna, “In Plain View of the Catholic Faithful: Church-Peasant
Conflict in the Peruvian Andes, 1963-1980,” Hispanic American Historical Review 95(4), 2015: 631-657.
228
Chuschi and its annexes after the 1950s. (See graph, Figure 24: Chuschi and Quispillaccta:
Births and Baptisms, 1850-2000.) Observers at the time similarly noted these developments,
with informants attributing Quispillaccta’s successes in the 1960s Kimsa Cruz conflict in part
due to their greater numbers, as discussed above. As well, IIP researchers noted in the mid-
1960s that Quispillaccta was undergoing a major demographic explosion, with much higher
growth compared to Chuschi.726
Demographic trends in the D. Chuschi thus demonstrate that population growth took off in the
early decades of the 20th Century, with Quispillaccta’s growth apparently outpacing Chuschi and
its annexes after mid-century. The district’s growth somewhat lagged growth in Cangallo,
Ayacucho, and Peru generally, raising the prospect that the impacts of this growth in the district
similarly lagged impacts in areas outside of the district.
726 Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 151.
Birth data is taken from surviving Municipal registers, and baptism data is taken from records held in Chuschi’s Catholic Church.
Figure 24:
229
The causes of population growth in the district, and in Peru more generally from the late-1800s,
are a likely outcome of Peru’s progression through the epidemiological transition during this
time. The epidemiological transition “describes changing patterns of population distributions in
relation to changing patterns of mortality, fertility, life expectancy, and leading causes of
death.”727 Epidemiological transition theory was first proposed by Omran in 1971, and argues
that population dynamics during the transition moved from a period of high and fluctuating
mortality rates and variable population levels, primarily as a result of the impacts of infectious
diseases, to an “age of receding pandemics” where fewer people died because of diseases, seeing
instead an increasing shift in mortality causes to “chronic” diseases like cancer.728 General
mortality rates declined as pandemics declined, leading to increased average life expectancy and
more sustained population growth with the transition.729 The specific reasons why infectious
diseases declined during the transition are multifaceted, but scholars particularly emphasize our
increasing understanding of germ theory in the late 1800s and the wave of public health and
medical interventions that swept through developing countries during this period to provide
cleaner water, basic sanitation services, and changes in medical practices.730
The epidemiological transition in Peru in the late 19th and early 20th century kick-started long-
term population growth in the country, leading the country’s population to increase from 2
million in 1876 to more than 7 million by 1940. Up until this time, with few Peruvians living in
urban centres, high rural fertility and low life expectancy kept growth slow.731 The country’s
annual average growth rate between 1791 and 1850 was 0.8%; however, between 1876 and 1940
that growth rate had increased to 1.5%.732 While immigration played a small but important part
in this growth, Contreras argues that the introduction of new Peruvian health policies were
largely responsible for the country’s population growth in the early decades of the twentieth
727 Robert E. McKeown, “The Epidemiologic Transition: Changing Patterns of Mortality and Population
Dynamics,” American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine; 3(1 Supplement), 1 July 2009: 19S. 728
McKeown, “The Epidemiologic Transition,” 20S. 729
McKeown, “The Epidemiologic Transition,” 20S. 730
McKeown, “The Epidemiologic Transition,” 20S. 731
Paul Gootenberg, "Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions,"
Latin American Research Review, 26(3), (1991): 129. 732
See Appendix 2: Population of Peru, Ayacucho, Province of Cangallo, and District of Chuschi.
230
century.733 Public health advances in the late 1800s were promoted by Peruvian elites as part of
a broader civilizing and modernizing drive in the country.734 Mortality reduction campaigns
began in 1870 with medical personnel from the Peruvian military being sent to each province. In
1887 the Peruvian government released its first health regulations, and in 1896 created a
government health Directorate, changes spurred by various epidemics that swept the country in
the 1870s and 1880s. The Directorate worked on areas of hygiene and demography and sought
to reduce the mortality rate and increase population in Peru through public education and
hygiene improvements.735 Vaccination efforts also began to take off in the country in the last
decade of the 19th century and the first decades of the twentieth century, with vaccination
officials travelling to provinces across the country, along with an expansion of health care
workers nationwide.736 The Health Act of 1905 established mandatory vaccinations, inoculating
150,000 of Peru’s 3 million residents that year.737 Progress was slow in the early years of the
twentieth century; higher in major urban centres, and slower in rural highland areas where the
bulk of the highland population lived.738 However, by the 1920s, Peru’s annual rate of growth
was around 2%, almost ensuring that the country’s population would double in 35 years. By the
1940 census, the national mortality rate had decreased to 27.1 per 1000 from 40-50 per 1000 in
1879.739
In the D. Chuschi, public health facilities were limited until the early 1970s. A rudimentary
public health post was established in mid-1960s, staffed with a trained, bilingual health worker
who dealt with minor illnesses, preformed home visits, and conducted vaccination campaigns.740
733 Carlos Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes de la Explosión Demográfica en el Perú: 1876-1940, Documento de
Trabajo No. 6 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994): 17. 734
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 17-18. 735
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 19. 736
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 19-20. 737
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 23. 738
According to Contreras, officials at the time reported that many highland families, fearing the vaccinations,
appeared to have fled before government officials entered their communities, hampering public health efforts.
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 19-20. 739
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 21. The official 1879 figure is 32.5 per 1000, but Contreras argues that this was
probably underestimated by at least 10, and probably even higher in remote rural areas. 740
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 119; Fanny Bolívar de Colchado, “Actitud de los Campesinos
Frente al Personal Auxiliar de Salud,” in Instituto Indigenista Peruano, Dos Estudios en la Zona de Cangallo
231
In fact, the IIP researchers in 1967 urgently recommended the establishment of a health clinic
and a public health education campaign in the district, noting that district inhabitants were still in
the habit of depositing human excrement in the streets.741 While historical data on public health
interventions in the D. Chuschi before the 1960s are sparse, it is likely that these limited public
health interventions helped spur population growth in the district during the twentieth century.
One informant told me that practically every family lost one or more children due to illnesses,
especially in winter. But this slowed when the health post appeared.742 Mortality declines during
the epidemiological transition spurred population growth widely in Peru in the early decades of
the twentieth century743, but the impacts appeared to take a little more time to filter to remote
regions like the D. Chuschi. Strong population growth by the 1940s was evident in the district
and sustained for several decades, with attendant impacts on household livelihoods discussed
below in section 7.3.
Demand-induced impacts on livelihood resources in the District of Chuschi
Population growth does not automatically lead to stress on peasant livelihoods. This conclusion
from reviews of theoretical and empirical literature discussed above is affirmed when the
implications of population growth in the early twentieth century in the D. Chuschi are examined.
Mitchell is correct in noting the distinction between population growth and population pressure,
where population pressure refers “to the entire relationship between population and resource
production.”744 A demand-side focus on population growth in relation to some ecological
threshold or attempts to draw conclusions about livelihood impacts from growth rates or per
capita resource availability would be simplistic unless contextualized within the range of
livelihood assets and activities of households over time. In order to understand the impact of
population growth on community members in the D. Chuschi, we need to examine how this
growth impacted key livelihood assets and opportunities for community members as the
(Ayacucho, 1968): 24. A doctor might only be present in the district during vaccination campaigns, according to the
IIP study. Isbell notes that a health centre was being built in the district in the 1970s. Isbell, To Defend, 220. 741
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 152. 742
Interview with José Espinoza Flores, Unión Portrero, 31 October, 2004. 743
Contreras, Sobre los Orígenes, 28. 744
Mitchell, Peasants, 19.
232
population pressure increased over the twentieth century, and the livelihood adaptions of
households. As discussed above, various livelihood adaptations and institutional changes can
ameliorate the impacts of population pressure. Andean smallholders are skilled at adapting to
their circumstances, within the limits available to them in terms of assets, capabilities,
entitlements, and structural constraints.
Untangling impacts and adaptations at the household level is extremely complex, however,
particularly in the context of incomplete historical data, as is evident with this study’s focus on
the D. Chuschi. Historical generalizations about impacts and adaptations for entire communities
or groups in the district in this case cannot offer certain conclusions, only suggestions of patterns
and consequences. In the D. Chuschi, cultivated land and animal husbandry was probably
sufficient for most livelihood needs before rapid population growth in the twentieth century, in
the context of a diminished post-Conquest population in the area. As growth accelerated in the
twentieth century, the always limited resource base of cultivated land was spread more thinly
among district residents and worked more intensively in ways that sometimes undermined the
quality of the resource, leading to declines in some crop yields, and increasing degradation of
some cultivated land. These trends show up in archival and fieldwork data in reduced per capita
cultivated land over time in households, reduced yields per parcel, declines in the quality of
yields, along with evidence of erosion problems in the heavily cultivated areas of the district near
the Rio Pampas.
These impacts did not necessarily lead to household crisis for many in the district, however.
Negative impacts were never preordained because some households could still apply their
indigenous knowledge to work the land more intensively to maintain decent yields. For others,
the impacts instead stimulated various livelihood adaptations in household economic and social
activities that enabled many community members to continue to survive and thrive with a
diminished stock of cultivated land assets – adaptations like permanent or temporary migration,
shifting labour to other economic activities like livestock husbandry and/or commodity
production, and increasing demands for the elimination of social-political drains on peasant
livelihoods - like the impacts from abusive elites and religious authorities and the abandonment
of cultural practices such as Catholic fiestas that drained precious resources. Parallel
development trends outside of the district, such as increasing opportunities for wage labour in
urban areas, in export plantations on the coast, or in the tropical lowlands to the east, enabled
233
particular kinds of adaptive responses. However, these livelihood opportunities also worsened
stresses on natural assets for some community members because they pulled cultivators away
from the district at times, contributing to labour reductions in production zone activities in the
district that reduced investments in maintaining productive assets like cultivated lands. Some of
these adaptions thus helped to worsen supply constraints for some community members. Many
households also chose to adapt by increasingly moving to the high Sunni and Puna grazing zones
to settle, to take advantage of new and expanding livelihood opportunities in that area. These
demand and supply-side pressures thus contributed to inter-community conflicts over control of
these areas discussed above.
7.3.1. Perspectives on the peasant household
A remarkable transformation has taken place over forty years on views about the livelihood
sustainability of the Andean peasantry, from the time when outside experts first began to study
highland communities in rural Peru in the late 1950s. At that time, the Peruvian government’s
regional development plan for the southern Sierra described a “bleak, denuded region” crowded
with unproductive subsistence farmers working tiny plots in tradition-bound ways that offered
little hope for improvements in development or welfare levels.745 The report attributed the
peasantry’s condition in the southern Sierra to the fact that many farmers were confronting a
scarcity of good land – partly a result of severe inequality of land holdings - and using backward
agricultural approaches oriented toward subsistence production, rather than producing for a
market economy.746 This neo-liberal diagnosis of the peasantry’s woes, buttressed with a strong
dose of Neo-Malthusian analysis, has been transformed by the work of dozens of
anthropologists, economists, and agricultural specialists in the ensuing decades.
Instead, Andean peasants are now seen to have “skillfully fashioned” adaptations to their highly
diverse Andean environment over thousands of years, allowing them to take advantage of
different crop species and ecological zones in ways that minimize or balance risk and maximize
the livelihood opportunities for highland communities.747 Farmers use crop and species diversity
745 Watters, Poverty, 40-1.
746 Watters, Poverty, 40-1.
747 Watters, Poverty, 34; Brush, Mountain, 18; Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 25-6. See also, Pierre Morlon,
“Peasant strategies to deal with risk,” LEISA Magazine 7(1&2), May 1991: 7-8; Earls, “The Character of Inca and
234
to take advantage of the diverse micro-climates and ecological zones of Andean regions, where
every 100m increase in altitude is like a ten degree difference in latitude.748 Animal husbandry is
also widely employed by peasants, a low energy activity with returns that can result in higher
energy exchanges for households.749 Combined agricultural and livestock activities also “make
the best possible use of available labor throughout the year” for households.750 Rather than
living in subsistence isolation, peasant households are now seen to have survived and persisted
because they are “articulated with other households, their communities, and the commodity
markets” to varying degrees, thereby maximizing diverse livelihood opportunities.751 Before
access to capitalist markets was common, households connected and traded through barter
networks, economic relationships that continued as market transactions grew more common in
the twentieth century.752 By the early 1970s, most peasant households were already deeply
integrated into the market economy, analysts have now concluded, a process that accelerated
from the early 1950s and continued into the 1980s.753 As Caballero summarized:
…the dominant opinion among economists and economic
anthropologists who have concerned themselves with the Andean
peasantry is that … their economy is efficient. Aspects that at first
sight may appear to show inefficiency, such as widespread
fragmentation of land, are found on closer inspection to be
consistent with a strategy that makes best possible use of
microecological variations, tends to diversify risks, and plans
activities in such a way that labor requirements are not
concentrated in certain weeks. The technology is better adapted to
the local milieu than is usually assumed … Recent research has
shown the importance of seasonality and risk … it is the
articulating element of much of the peasant economic and social
life, especially the sequence of activities and temporary migrations.
Equally fundamental are the attempts to reduce risk in order to
Andean Agriculture,” Unpublished paper, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Pontificia Universidad Católica del
Perú, 1998: http://macareo.pucp.edu.pe/~jearls/documentosPDF/theCharacter.PDF; and David L. Browman, “Agro-
Pastoral Risk Management in the Central Andes,” Research in Economic Agriculture 8, 1987: 171-200. 748
Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 15-16. 749
Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 17-8. 750
Jose Maria Caballero, “Agriculture and the Peasantry Under Industrialization Pressures: Lessons from the
Peruvian Experience,” Latin American Research Review 19(2), 1984: 26. 751
Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, xiii. 752
See Mayer’s chapter on barter, Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 143-171. 753
Caballero, “Agriculture,” 20-1.
235
ensure survival. Fragmentation of plots, especially at different
ecological niches, diversification of activities, and even certain
types of resistance to the usage of modern inputs, can, and
probably should be, interpreted as a way in which peasants
confront risks.754
The conclusions above from Caballero, Mayer, and other Andean scholars thoroughly explain
complex adaptations that make up the “mode of livelihood” of small-scale farmers in the Andes
today.755 Their work also accurately describes how community members in the D. Chuschi made
a living on the eve of Sendero’s uprising. However, for our purposes, as a guide to how the
transformation of Andean livelihoods evolved to reach the state it was in before Sendero’s
uprising, their analysis is incomplete. We must resist the temptation to see the state of the
peasantry on the eve of Sendero’s uprising as static – as if that was the way in which peasant
livelihoods were always organized. In fact, the degree of fragmentation of household land
parcels, the degree of diversification of livelihood strategies, and the vulnerability of households
to market or climatic vulnerability, have not always been as analysts above described them (and
to be fair, analysts of Andean livelihoods would acknowledge this truth). Outlining the long-
term trends that have led Andean households to the economic lifestyle that defines their current
survival strategies means outlining the pressures that have molded various adaptive strategies
among households – pressures such as those that led to the increasing fragmentation of cultivated
land over time, pressures that have undermined the quality of some cultivated lands, pressures
that have shifted cultivation or animal husbandry toward market commodity production, etc.
7.3.2. Trends in declining land availability
Land is a key resource for subsistence and semi-substance agriculturalists - one of the key
elements determining the economic lifestyle of peasants according to Caballero, along with their
social organization, need to satisfy household necessities, and relation to the market.756 “In the
Andes” Caballero writes, “nature is decidedly heterogeneous with respect to climate and soils,
with pronounced microclimatic variations, market seasonality, and diverse risks (drought, frost,
754 Caballero, “Agriculture,” 24-5.
755 This is Mayer’s expression of the question analysts have been trying to answer for the past 50 years. Mayer,
The Articulated Peasant, xiv. 756
Caballero, “Agriculture,” 24.
236
landslides). The ecology is “vertical,” that is, mountainous, and land is scarce and of poor
quality.”757 Most analysts of Andean peasant livelihoods take for granted that farmers have had
to provide for their households in an environment where sufficient, good quality agricultural land
for crop cultivation is scarce.758 But while this may describe the late 20th century reality for
many Andean peasants, in some areas cultivated lands may have remained sufficient for many
until the early decades of the twentieth century when Peru’s population recovered to pre-
Conquest levels, particularly in remote regions where market penetration and elite resource
capture of peasant lands for market production was less evident, like the western Rio Pampas
zone. While high fertility and high mortality characterized Peru’s demographic profile before the
impacts of the late 19th century epidemiological transition, Gootenberg notes that high fertility
“was abetted by a relative abundance of economic resources, chiefly accessible land” after the
colonial demographic crash, thus providing ample food supply for the population growth of the
late 19th and early 20th century.759 Adequate endowments of land sufficient for subsistence needs
were likely a reality for many peasants at the start of the 20th century, even in the context of
widespread resource capture by Mestizo elites which severely impoverished other peasants.760
757 Caballero, “Agriculture,” 24.
758 Interview, Alberto Pasco Font, Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo, GRADE, Lima, Perú, 24 August, 1999.
759 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity,” 130. Ample supplies of land as a result of the devastation of Conquest
may have long been a reality in the highlands. Mayer quotes a villager from Tancor, Huánuco – in the Central
Andes – speaking to Spanish tribute inspection officials in 1562, explaining why he farms in his wife’s village of
Tancor and not in his home village of Chacapampa: “Not that there is no land in Chacapampa; with so many people
dying off there is plenty of land all over… There is land everywhere because our people are diminishing very
quickly, and because the Inca is gone and does not force us to produce food here in the villages for his tambos and
storehouses.” The villager’s account makes clear, however, that colonial tribute obligations were putting crushing
obligations on his livelihood at the time. Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 81. 760
I do not want to downplay the impact elite resource capture of peasant lands in inflicting livelihood hardship on
peasant communities. The tremendous diversity of experiences in Peru makes generalizations about the scarcity or
availability of land at any given time difficult. The key point is that population crash after conquest did loosen
constraints on land resources for many, though elite capture of many of these same lands for market production also
impoverished many as well. Each local experience must be carefully evaluated before conclusions are drawn. At a
minimum, there appears to be evidence to support the conclusion that in some places conquest loosened the
availability of land for some, even in the face of resource capture by Mestizo elites, trends that would change again
as communities regained usurped lands, populations grew, and new market realities developed in the 19th and 20th
century. Jacobsen’s careful analysis of the province of Azángaro, in the Department of Puno, similarly describes a
situation where peasants found themselves in an era of abundant land with low population densities. In Azángaro,
Jacobsen notes, peasants probably controlled more than 50% of the agriculturally useful land in the late 18 th century
– the late colonial period. In spite of this situation, however, Jacobsen notes that government officials at the time
spoke of the severe problems of precarious peasant livelihoods and land scarcity. Jacobsen, Mirages, 95. Officials
attributed the hardship of the herding communities in the area to the “stagnation” of their herds, a result of the
“infertility of the altiplano’s soil and [officials] assumed that the pastures simply could not support more animals.”
Jacobsen, Mirages, 95-6. In reality, Jacobsen’s study concludes, peasant livelihoods were at risk in Azangaro
237
In the D. Chuschi, it appears that families began to feel the pinch of inadequate cultivated land
endowments after mid- 20th century, compared to more abundant pasture lands in the higher
zones of the district. This conclusion is supported both by interview evidence from elderly
informants and through an examination of population and land-use data. About 27% of the
district’s land is suitable for cultivated agriculture, according to a recent survey, with only about
9% of the total agricultural land making up the Quechua zone between 2400, and 3400m where
maize production is possible. Agriculture in the 16% of agricultural land not in the maize zone is
common but risky, mostly composed of rain-fed tuber and grain production.761 The Spanish
reducción located the town centres of Chuschi and Quispillaccta around 3000m, in the middle of
the Quechua and Sunni zones.762
Interviews with older residents in Quispillaccta and Chuschi recall a time in their youth when
land was more abundant and parcel sizes were larger in the district. Inheritance practices of
splitting a household’s land among the offspring, however, have steadily eroded land availability
for households. Like many places in the Andes, parallel inheritance usually is practiced in the
district, with mothers passing land to daughters and fathers to sons.763 With a limited supply of
because elites imposed severe labour and tribute obligations on peasants in addition to seizing the best lands for their
own estates, obligations that made it extremely difficult for peasants to secure sustainable livelihoods. Land and
legal reforms in the early 1800s described above opened the door for peasant communities to reclaim seized lands in
the decades to come, no doubt easing livelihood stresses for some; however, the wool export boom of the late 1800s
and early 20th century forestalled benefits for many others. Jacobsen, Mirages, 125. In areas of marginal or
declining highland estates, like around the D. Chuschi, as communities recovered lands this eased pressures,
particularly at a time of low population densities. But as communities grew in size in the first decades of the 20 th
century, livelihood pressures on increasingly less abundant cultivated lands no doubt increased. 761
See Chart, District of Chuschi Land-Use According to Agro-Ecological Zone, in chapter 3. As explained above,
calculations for total cultivated land in the district are probably higher today than in the early 20th century because of
climate change. 762
Isbell cites Chuschi’s altitude as 3154m; however, topographical maps show the main square of each community
at just below 3000m. 763
Isbell, To Defend, 38. When inquiring about land holdings I did not specifically ask informants to detail land
holdings by each parent. Specific questions about the amount of land held by family members is a fairly sensitive
subject, given the fear that the information might be used against households by the government. Mitchell,
Peasants, 55, found a similar situation when inquiring about land holdings for his study of Quinua, Ayacucho. So,
informant statements about land holding are uncertain. In many cases, male heads of households explicitly spoke of
land holdings and historical land holdings in terms of the male lineage. When informants used this language, I
repeated the information in the text below. If informants spoke of family holdings, I repeat this information in the
text.
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land and multiple children in each household, inheritance practices can result in processes
creating ever smaller parcelization of landholdings for households – or, minifundismo, as it is
referred to in Peru.764 The 1967 IIP study of the district found that this process was driving the
increasing division of household land holdings, and that requests for land from land-poor
households had exhausted available communal holdings in the communities.765 IIP’s researchers
assumed five-member families in the D. Chuschi, which would suggest between 3-5 children per
family.766 However, census surveys in the 1970s found that the total fertility rate in Ayacucho
was 7.4 in 1975, suggesting that families of five or more were common before the 1970s.767
Juan Galindo, 80 years old when interviewed, said that when he was young “the harvest was
good enough that when they opened a new chacra (field), the grandfathers would say that this
was enough because they couldn’t carry all the harvest.”768 Fermín Qallocunto Tomaylla of
Quispillaccta, who was also 80 when interviewed, similarly noted that when he was young they
would never sow potatoes in a 1 yugada field (around 1/7thH), only smaller chacras because
these were sufficient.769 Others noted that some families did have large maize fields many years
ago. “In the old days families would have chacras of one or two yugadas in size,” Julian Vilca
Mejía told me, referring to when he was a young man in the 1940s and 1950s. “But population
growth and inheritance have decreased the size of the fields. Today only a small number of
people have chacras that size.”770 Chuschino elders also confirmed in an interview that declining
parcel size was a problem that was leading people to struggle to make a living. Almost no one
764 Watters, Poverty, 88. “Minifundism is a system of agriculture that depends on a number of tiny, fragmented
pieces of land that are worked primarily for subsistence. As it exists in Chilca [Cuzco], it is primarily a consequence
of land hunger, which in turn is a result of the extensive ancient exploitation of land by surrounding haciendas and
the rapid rate of population increase.” 765
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 27. IIP’s researchers quoted the district’s governor as saying that,
“the community’s communal lands had been distributed for years to community members who asked for land, and
now there was no more land to distribute.” 766
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 18. 767
Pablo Sanchez Zevallos, La Sierra Peruana: Realidad Poblacional (Lima: AMIDEP, 1988), 61. The national
fertility rate in Peru was 5.6. By 1987, Ayacucho’s total fertility rate had fallen to 5.8, compared to a national rate of
4.5. 768
Interview, Juan Galindo, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004. 769
Interview, Fermín Qallocunto Tomaylla, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004. Yugada size is discussed below. 770
Interview, Julian Vilca Mejía, 8 October, 2004. A yugada is a traditional Andean measurement unit, usually
referring to the amount of land that can be plowed in one day. While this obviously varies from parcel to parcel,
Andean researchers in the 1960s estimated one yugada to be approximately 2500m2, or about ¼ hectare. There are
strong reasons to suggest that this is an over-estimation, however, as I discuss below.
239
has 1H of land anymore, they told me. The barrios are fighting between each other today, they
said, because there isn’t enough land.”771 “Splitting land among offspring has really hurt the
amount of land in each family and now there’s not enough for families, especially if a family
wants to pass on land to their kids,” 73 year-old Marcello Tomaya told me. Instead, he
encouraged his kids to get an education to be able to get other jobs.772 Nemesio Nuñez’s father
had lots of land in various parcels all over the community, he told me in an interview. But when
it was divided among his 6 children, there wasn’t much left for each child, he said. Nuñez’s
children don’t feel that they have enough land to live, so many have gone to the cities.773
Gregory Conde Nuñez, of the Quispillaccta barrio of Pirhuamarca, agrees that inheritance
practices have reduced land availability, as shown by his family. His father had about 4H of
land, but with six sons, he has been left with 3 yugadas of land. He’s now looking to buy land.774
Chuschino informants similarly described how inheritance reduced their family’s landholdings.
Eighty-year old Victor Esteban Caillahua Mikuylla of Chuschi related that his grandfather’s 2-3
yugadas of land was sufficient for their family. Inheritance reduced his father’s holdings to 1.5
yugadas, but with two sons, Don Victor himself inherited only 1 yugada.775 By contrast,
Chuschino Leon Huaman Conde noted that he has 4 yugadas of land, like his grandfather,
because both his grandfather and father only had one son.776 Similarly, 75-year old
Quispillacctino Roberto Huaman Machaca explained that he has 3 yugadas of land, like his
father, who had only one son.777 Clearly, many community members believe that inheritance
practices that divided land among offspring reduced land availability for households in the
district during the twentieth century, in the context of a rising population in the district.
771 Interview with representatives of Chuschino Ancianos group, Chuschi, 15 October, 2004.
772 Interview, Marcello Tomaya, Quispillaccta, 9 October, 2004.
773 Interview, Nemesio Nuñez, Unión Portrero, Quispillaccta, 18 October, 2004.
774 Interview, Gregory Conde Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 20 October, 2004. Conde Nuñez was 45 when interviewed, so
his father’s 4H of land would have certainly put the family among the larger land-holders in Quispillaccta in the
second half of the twentieth century. However, as his family history shows, moving from land abundance to limited
land resources could happen very quickly if a family had many offspring. 775
Interview, Victor Esteban Caillahua Mikuylla, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 776
Interview, Leon Huaman Conde, Chuschi, 31 October, 2004. Huaman Conde’s name betrays that he had
relatives from Quispillaccta, like several of the Chuschinos interviewed for this study. In fact, my first research
assistant, Quispillactino Hereberto Nuñez, was surprised during our interviews to come across so many Chuschinos
with Quispillactino relatives. 777
Interview, Roberto Huaman Machaca, Quispillaccta, 1 November, 2004.
240
Detailed land-holding data does not exist for the D. Chuschi before the 1960s. However, piecing
together the available data appears to show that district residents had access to ever-smaller
amounts of cultivated land throughout the second half of the twentieth century, with per capita
averages of around 1H per household likely common by the early 1970s. Calculations of
population over time compared to
available cultivated land show marked per capita declines in cultivated land in the early half of
the twentieth century.778 (See Figure 25: Cultivated Land (H) Per Capita in the D. Chuschi.)
Survey data suggest that cultivated land holdings were even smaller than indicated above. In
1967, IIP researchers found that Chuschino families had between 6 to 8 yugadas of land per
family, or about 1.58H of land using their calculations of 2250m2 per yugada. Holdings in
Quispillaccta (Matriz/town centre) were smaller, with each family possessing 4 to 6 yugadas of
land, or about 1.12H.779 Annexes to Chuschi and Quispillaccta, however, had smaller holdings.
Chuschi’s annexes of Cancha Cancha, Chaqollo (Chacula on the topographical map), and
778 Data is drawn from ABA chart, District of Chuschi Land-Use According to Agro-Ecological Zone, in chapter 3,
and compared with population figures noted above. As discussed above, population data for the district before 1940
is less reliable than later census data. 779
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 31-2.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Figure 25: Cultivated Land (H) per Capitain the District of Chuschi
Maize land (H)/cap Tuber-Grain Land (H)/Cap
Log. (Maize land (H)/cap) Log. (Tuber-Grain Land (H)/Cap)
241
Uchuiri (Uchuyri on topographical map) had 3 to 4 yugadas of cultivated land, while
Kallcabamba (Callcabamba on the topographical map) had 4 to 5 yugadas of land.780 Annexes in
Quispillaccta had even less land. Three barrios of Quispillaccta surveyed by IIP researchers,
Unión Potrero, Cuchoquesera, and Llacctahurán had average landholdings between 1 to 2
yugadas.781 In fact, another IIP study of the province of Cangallo found that every population
centre in the D. Chuschi, aside from Chuschi’s main town, had less than 1H of land on average
in 1967.782 The 1972 Peruvian agricultural census, conducted only a few years after the IIP
studies, found that, of those holding less than 1H of land, the majority of Cangallo’s residents,
had on average about 4.7 parcels.783 This means that many residents of the district had several
parcels of land, generally less than ¼ hectare.
When we carefully consider how IIP researchers came up with land holdings estimates, however,
there are strong reasons to suggest that their calculations also over-estimate household
landholdings in the district. The IIP data on land holdings is based on the supposition that there
are approximately four to five yugadas per hectare in the D. Chuschi, or that one yugada is about
2250m2.784 This measure is used in all their community studies in the province of Cangallo in
the mid-1960s. It is also close to the 2500m2 measure used in other communities in Ayacucho
and in Peru’s 1972 agricultural census.785 However, closer examination of this yugada measure
and comparisons with field-size measures by other scholars indicate that the size of 1 yugada is
less than 2250 m2, and that the size of average land-holdings is also smaller. A yugada is defined
780 Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 17.
781 The first two are located in the Rio Cachi watershed, with only high-altitude cultivated lands but ready access to
abundant pasture lands. Llacctahurán is located in the Rio Pampas zone, on the edge of the maize zone, so its lack
of cultivated land per capita is more serious from a household livelihoods perspective. 782
Ramon Cordova et al., La Zona de Cangallo, 40. This somewhat contradicts the data in the IIP study by
Saramiento Medina et al., noted above, for holdings for Quispillaccta’s Matriz and for Kallcabamba. However, in
both cases, the average was very close to 1H. Land holdings for the district, aside from Chuschi’s main town, were
actually fairly representative of Cangallo as a whole, according to the study by Ramon Cordova et al. They found
that more than 83% of Cangallo’s population centres had average land holdings of less than 1H per family. Less
than 17% had land holdings between 1 and 5H. 783
Maletta and Makhlouf, Perú, las provincias en cifras, 1876-1981. 784
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 32. 785
Mitchell, Peasants, 55 & 224, footnote 224. Peru’s 2012 Agrarian Census does not list yugada as an indigenous
measure for Ayacucho, but instead lists a yunta. Like a yugada, a yunta is measured at 2500m2. See INEI, Informe
Final de Actividades Consistencia, IV Censo Nacional Agropecuario 2012 (Lima: INEI, 2013): 7.
242
as “the quantity of land that can be plowed in one day.”786 This type of measure goes by other
names in other parts of Peru. In Cuzco, Watters notes that community members still use the
colonial term topo, while in the province of Azángaro, Puno, the term masa is used by peasants
to refer to “the amount of land that a work party of three men can plow, sow, or harvest in one
day,” according to Jacobsen.787 Variation in yugada size is to be expected, depending on factors
such as the slope, the quality of the land, and the efficiency of the plowing team. In Cuzco,
Watters found a topo equivalent to about 3200m2, while Jacobsen found one masa be about
760m2.788
In Ayacucho, comparative evidence suggests that IIP researchers over-estimated yugada size in
the 1960s, and thus over-estimated land-holdings of households in the D. Chuschi. To arrive at
their calculation that 1 yugada equals 2250m2, IIP researchers surveyed various community
members and mestizo elites, and were told that there were about 4-5 yugadas in a hectare. They
also measured a parcel that one community member indicated was one yugada to be 2240m2.789
Other researchers, however, have found that a typical yugada is often much smaller than a
quarter hectare. Mitchell measured multiple fields in the Ayacucho community of Quinua, and
found an average of 0.1294 hectares per yugada, or about 1298.7m2 per yugada.790 Renzo
Salvador Aroni Sulca, studying the community of Huamanquiquia, in Víctor Fajardo province,
just south of Chuschi, notes that 1 yugada is equivalent to 1800m2.791 Alejandro Tumbay
Maldonado, studying the community of Pomabamba, in the District of Maria Parado de Bellido,
30 minutes west of Chuschi, similarly found 1 yugada equivalent to 1800m2.792 Another study in
the District of San Marcos y Chavín de Huantar, in the Department of Ancash measured 1
786 Mitchell, Peasants, 55.
787 Watters, Poverty, 347; Jacobsen, Mirages, 410, footnote 15.
788 Watters, Poverty, 347; Jacobsen, Mirages, 410, footnote 15.
789 Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 32.
790 Mitchell, Peasants, 55.
791 Renzo Salvador Aroni Sulca, Campesinado y violencia política en Víctor Fajardo (Ayacucho), 1980-1993,
Unpublished Thesis, Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos, Lima, 2009: 57. There is no explanation in this
study for how the 1800m2 /yugada figure was calculated. 792
Alejandro Maldonado Tumbay, Zonificación y Priorización del Potencial de Recursos Naturales de la
Comunidad Campesina de Pomabamba, Distrito María Parado de Bellido – Ayacucho, Unpublished Thesis,
Facultad De Geología, Minas, Metalurgia y Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos, Lima, 2002:
n.p. There is no explanation in this study for how the 1800m2 /yugada figure was calculated.
243
yugada at about 1700m2.793 Fieldwork in Quispillaccta and Chuschi similarly found that 1
yugada was far less than the 2250m2 standard used by IIP. A field near Quispillaccta’s Matriz
belonging to Antonio Huamani Galindo, a Varayoc Mejor – or traditional village authority – was
measured to be approximately 2850m2. Don Antonio believed that this chakra, which had a
slope between 6 and 12 degrees, was about 2 yugadas, meaning that 1 yugada is about
1425m2.794 If we use the conversion of 1 yugada=1425m2 to assess landholdings during the IIP
1967 study of the D. Chuschi, we find that households in Chuschi’s annexes had an average of
less than ½H of cultivated land, while residents of Chuschi’s main town had about 1H on
average. Residents of Quispillaccta’s Matriz had about 2/3H of cultivated land; however, its
annexes had less than 1/3H. Quispillaccta’s households, particularly in the annexes, appeared to
have very small holdings of cultivated lands by the late 1960s.
Adaptations and their impacts
7.4.1. Migration
Confronting increasingly limited endowments of cultivated land in the D. Chuschi, residents
adapted by intensification and extensification of production in cultivated land zones, adopting
new technologies when available, and diversifying household income activities – including
through temporary or permanent migration. Some of these adaptations worsened the supply of
available cultivated land, as is evidenced by erosion of soils and land slides in the Rio Pampas
zone, declines in the quality of crop yields for some over time, and falling yields of some
cultivated crops. These developments are discussed in more detail below in section 7.6.
793 Orlando Cajamarca Chávez, Proyecto Desarrollo Agropecuario En La Cuenca Del Mosna: “Proyecto Mosna,”
CARE Perú, 2001: 14. The author found that households had an average of 1.5 yugadas each spread among 5.8
chacaras, or about 3420m2 per household. 794
Field measurement and interview with Antonio Huamani Galindo, Quispillaccta, 1 November, 2004. An even
smaller unit of measure commonly used in Quispillaccta and Chuschi is the melga. Few farmers have parcels of 1
yugada in size in the lower cultivated zones, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century. So, a smaller field
measure makes sense. A melga was measured by Quispillactino and agricultural engineer Gualberto Machaca to be
about 250m2. In my interviews I mostly used yugadas, though informants sometimes responded to questions by
using melgas. Gualberto Machaca Mendieta, Conservación y Recuperación de Suelos en Tres Microcuencas del Rio
Pampas, con Énfasis en la Comunidad Campesina de Quispillaccta (2675-4780 m.s.n.m.) Ayacucho, (Ingeniera
Agrónomo Tesis, Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga, 1997), 68.
244
As population growth and demand pressures on cultivated land in the district increased in the
twentieth century, many households sought to diversify livelihood activities. Temporary or
semi-permanent migration was one strategy that many households pursued. While migration
was not the only out-of-district livelihood diversification strategy to be pursued, it was one of the
most important strategies because it provided a vital source of cash.795 However, migration also
worsened labour availability for some in the district, with negative consequences for land
management. Migration trends from the district thus deserve discussion in this chapter.796 It is
important to note, however, that district residents did not migrate solely because of supply and
demand pressures; reasons for migration were varied and complex. Migration offered an
opportunity for households, relative to constraining opportunities for cultivated agriculture in
lower parts of the district – particularly from the end of WW2 to the late-1960s.
Peru was transformed by a massive rural to urban movement of people beginning in the late
1940s and lasting into the early 1970s, stimulated by population growth in in the mid-twentieth
century and post-WW2 economic liberalism. The proportion of migrants in Peru’s population
increased from 9.5% in 1940, to 23.3% in 1961, and to 26.4% in 1972, Klaren notes.797 Public
works projects and export-driven economic policies put in place by the Odria military
dictatorship were a magnet for attracting poor peasants from the Sierra to coastal urban centres
like Lima.798 Between “1940 to 1961,” Klaren notes, “the number of inhabitants of metropolitan
Lima exploded from almost 600,000 to nearly 2 million, an average of just over 5 percent a year.
A large portion of these inhabitants were migrants from the countryside, mainly from the
departments of Ancash, Ayacucho, and Junin, who settled in barriadas (squatter settlements)
795 Mitchell makes the same point about the community of Quinoa. Mitchell, Peasants, 111.
796 Space constraints do now allow me to examine other strategies of livelihood diversification that district residents
pursued, such as weaving or other commodity production activities. Nor do I examine economic activities in the
livestock sector in the district in great detail. Textile production and the production of livestock-derived products
like cheese are important activities for some households. Along with animal production, these activities have only
increased in importance in the latter 20th century. However, this study is particularly concerned with the transition
over the twentieth century to put more household emphasis into these activities, the reasons why the transition took
place, and the consequences for conflicts in the district. As a result, I do not explore the livestock and herding
economy aspects in as much detail in this dissertation as the cultivated agriculture sector. Ramón C. et al., La
Comunidad de Chuschi, 52-55, discusses commodity production and livestock derived products in the district in the
mid-1960s. 797
Klaren, Peru, 301. 798
Klaren, Peru, 302.
245
that increasingly ringed the city on three sides.”799 These patterns of rural to urban migration
began to slow in the 1970s, partly due to the Agrarian Reform and partly due to the economic
stagnation and crisis that the country faced, particularly after 1975. Movements of migrants to
major urban centres like Lima dropped somewhat in the 1970s, while smaller movements to
small urban centres like department capitals or to newly opened lands in the Amazonian
lowlands and the eastern slopes of the Andes increased.800
These general migration patterns, however, mask significant variability in both the duration of
migration and the destination of migrants from the D. Chuschi. Informant interviews highlight
that district residents have a long history of temporary, seasonal, or semi-permanent migration to
urban areas like Lima, Huamanga, and Ica – stays that sometimes lasted the winter months of
July and August, and sometimes lasted for years. Isbell says that the first Chuschino to migrate
to Lima left in the late 1930s.801 Interviews suggest that many district residents may have
journeyed to Lima and other urban areas before or around this time. A detailed history of
migration in the district remains to be completed.802 More than half of the district residents
interviewed during field work in 2004 had migrated at some point in their lives, with the vast
majority of these trips being to Lima. This is consistent with historical data. A study in 1966
found that almost 70% of district residents who emigrated between January and August traveled
to Lima.803 A few travelled to other highland departments to work as agricultural labourers,
while a small number travelled to the Amazonian lowlands to work in plantations. A small
number also worked in highland mines, while three Chuschinos spent several years in the Army
799 Klaren, Peru, 301.
800 Ann Brigid Ackelmire, Agrarian reform and internal migration in Peru, Unpublished M.A. Thesis, The
University of Arizona, 1987, 64-5. 801
Isbell, To Defend, 180. 802
My informant evidence contradicts some of the existing scholarship on migration in the district. For example,
96-year-old Belisario Galindo Conde of Quispillaccta told me that he first went to Lima when he was 15, and
seasonally for a few weeks or months for many years afterward. Interview, Belisario Galindo Conde, Quispillaccta,
29 October, 2004. In another example, 90-year old Chuschino Basilio Chipana Nuñez said that he was about 15
when he first went to Lima. Interview, Basilio Chipana Nuñez, Chuschi, 2 November, 2004. Obviously, these
interviews were capturing residents who chose to come back to the district after their time away; many others left
and never returned. So, this is, at best, a partial glimpse into the reasons and dynamics of out-migration from the
district. 803
Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 16. Her data also confirms the informant data on other
migrant destinations: about 15% of migrants travelled to Huamanga; and about 8% travelled to the mining centre of
La Oroya and to the Amazonian low-lands (Selva Satipo).
246
around the time of the 1941 war with Ecuador.804 Informant evidence and studies by IIP in the
mid-1960s indicate that migrants were mostly young district men or teens.805 More than half of
those interviewed said that their migration was preceded by other family members. Recent
studies suggest that poorer migrants in Peru will avoid migrating to large distant cities, where
travel and expenses are beyond their means, and instead migrate closer to home, to nearby urban
or rural areas.806 These insights probably say more about current migration trends out of the
district than about migration in the boom period after WW2, when work was abundant and living
expenses cheap for migrants in Lima. One young informant did tell me in 2004 that would like
to migrate to Lima, but that he could not afford it because he has little money and there’s no
work in Lima. He said that he’d rather have the little that he has in Quispillaccta than take the
risk of migrating.807 Richer district members had much more flexibility about destinations,
length of stays, and reasons for migration. Some rich district elites had long sent family
members to urban areas like Huamanga for education, a trend that later spread among
community members in the 1960s and 1970s.808 Among non-elites, about one third of
informants were away for more than one year, in some cases almost two decades, before
returning to the district. The vast majority of people interviewed, however, engaged in various
forms of temporary or seasonal migration lasting between a few weeks to a few months.809
This temporary seasonal migration aligns most closely with rural livelihoods in the district; their
temporary migration is partly an adaptation to supplement rural household activities in the
804 Two Chuschinos spoke of being press-ganged into the Army after being caught by authorities in Lima without
proper documents. 805
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 24. Temporary migration was usually men who left their wives and
children in the district, according to the IIP study. If that temporary migration status changed, then other family
members would also travel to urban areas. Other family members in the district would take care of land and
livestock left behind for a portion of the harvest. However, IIP researchers did report young women migrating to
work as household help or as fruit vendors. 806
Ackelmire, Agrarain, 70-1. 807
Anonymous interview, Quispillaccta, 12 October, 2004. 808
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 24. Notable Chuschino Misti Ernesto Jaime told me that he was
sent to Huamanga for schooling until his late teens, and then went into the Army at 23. His military service was a
formidable experience that gave him the confidence to return to Chuschi and successfully challenge the abusive
elites that ran the district and oppressed community members. Interview, Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 19 October, 2004.
His military experience also helped him in the deadly role he played for Chuschinos in the 1960 Kimsa Cruz
violence, according to Quispillactino informants. 809
Isbell also reported this type of migration was common. Isbell, To Defend, 182.
247
district. Estimating how many migrants left during this period is almost impossible due to data
limitations. The 1966 IIP study noted above counted 393 district residents migrating out
between January to August, evenly split between Quispillaccta and Chuschi.810 When compared
with population estimates for the 1960s, these figures give a very rough estimate of 5-10% of
each community’s population migrating temporarily or permanently in the 1960s.811 While their
specific reasons for leaving varied, a majority indicated that they wanted to make money to be
able to buy things – cloths, tools, etc. – because wage labour was not possible in the district.
Few district residents in the mid-twentieth century were integrated into the cash economy of
Ayacucho. As noted above, most were subsistence or semi-subsistence farmers who sold little
for cash, though they did often engage in the barter economy. Temporary migration for wage
labour offered an opportunity to generate cash income that did not exist in the district.
Interestingly, few explained their decision to leave because of push factors in the district, such as
increasing land pressures. This is not unusual. While they sometimes characterized their reasons
for leaving as a lack of opportunity in the district, subtle pressures like land stress might not be
consciously recognized by community members as a reason behind their decision to migrate.
What is clear, however, is that migration offered an opportunity for rural residents to link their
rural livelihoods to urban livelihood opportunities without completely severing rural lives and
identities.812
7.4.2. Extensification and intensification of land use
The expansion of cultivated lands to use all available fields in the Quechua and lower Sunni zone
was probably one of the first household adaptations by many in the district. Extensification later
810 Bolivar de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 16. I have counted Chuschi and its annexes together –
Chuschi (60), Cancha Cancha (110), Chaqolla (12), Uchuiri (16), while the figures for Quispillaccta (195) are not
broken down by population centre. 811
IIP estimated that the population of the district in 1966 was 7507, which gives an outmigration rate of about 5%
(using 393 counted migrants) for the 8 months in 1966 when they tracked out-migration from the district. Their
1966 population figure, however, is an extrapolation based on 1961 census data. So, it is not a solid estimate. If we
estimate Quispillaccta’s 1961 population at about 2600 and assume a similar migration number given for 1966
(195), we get an outmigration rate of about 7.5% (1961 census figures cited by Bolivar de Colchado’s IIP study for
Quispillaccta - population centre (Llacta) and all its annexes except Socobamba - give a population of 2563 (Bolivar
de Colchado, Estudio Distrital de Chuschi, 12); so, 2600 is a fair estimation.). It thus seems reasonable to assume an
outmigration rate in this period between 5-10% for each community. 812
This linking of urban and rural livelihoods is brilliantly explored by Karston Paerregaard, Linking Separate
Worlds: Urban Migrants and Rural Lives in Peru (Oxford: Berg, 1997).
248
spread to higher Sunni and Puna zones, as more high-altitude lands were brought under
cultivation in the latter half of the twentieth century. These adaptations were more acutely
necessary in Quispillaccta because of greater supply and demand pressures, though Chuschi and
its annexes also faced similar pressures during this period.
Cultivated land in Quispillaccta was always much more limited than in Chuschi and its annexes.
So, the rapid increase in the community’s population meant that people had to work what land
they had as intensely as possible. In Quispillaccta, only about 2% of their land is cultivatable,
with only about 240H of maize land available to households.813 For most of the twentieth century
the majority of land cultivation in Quispillaccta took place in the Rio Pampas zone around the
town centre and to the west. The low-altitude area fronting the Rio Pampas is known as
Mollebamba, and the fields around Mollebamba were historically the main maize growing zone
for Quispillaccta.814 The earliest aerial photos the district’s maize and cultivated areas from the
mid-1950s show extensive cultivation and little unused land in this area, compared to the late
1990s.
813 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 73. Tirso A. Gonzalas, “The Cultures of the Seed in the Peruvian Andes,”
in Stephen B. Brush ed., Genes in the Field: On Farm Conservation of Crop Diversity (Ottawa: Lewis Publishers,
International Development Research Centre, and International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 2000): 205; José
Coronel et al., Estudio Comparativo de Comunidades Campesinas Altoandinas: Ayacucho (Ayacucho: Centro
Internacional de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo/Asociación Peruana para el Fomento de las Ciencias Sociales,
1990): 29. Machaca notes that there are 470.48H of cultivated land in Quispillaccta – about 2.17% out of a total
landholding of 20,989.48H. In last decades of the twentieth century, there has been an expansion of cultivated lands
both to higher altitudes in the Rio Pampas zone and within the Rio Cachi zone, as discussed above. So, the 2.17%
figure and Coronel’s figure of 240H of maize lands are probably higher than they were in the mid-twentieth century.
According to 1960 census figures, there were about 500 families in Quispillaccta (if we use the conservative 5-
person/family figure), which translates to less than 1/2H of maize land per Quispillactino household. 814
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 21.
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1955 aerial photo of maize zone of Chuschi and Quispillaccta. Rio Qunchalla/Rio Chuschi divides land holdings in the valley. The land is heavily cleared in all but
the steepest slopes, with very little vegetation evident in the cultivated areas. Photo is from August, 1955, at the height of the dry season, several months after harvest.
Land use patterns are similar in the 1974 aerial photo below. However, the 1997 photo below shows extensive abandonment and regrowth of brush in lower zone
fields. (Source: Servicio Aerofotografico Nacional, Peru. Annotations added by author.)
250
1974 Aerial photo of District’s maize zone. This photo was taken in May, at the height of the harvest. (Source: Servicio Aerofotografico Nacional, Peru.
Annotations added by author.)
251
1997 Photo of Quispillaccta’s traditional maize zone, illustrating extensive abandonment of fields and regrowth of vegetation. Ground-truthing in this area
during field work in 2004 confirmed the widespread abandonment of cultivation in the area. Photo taken in June, 1997, at the start of the dry season. (Source:
Servicio Aerofotografico Nacional, Peru. Annotations added by author.)
With maize land limited, these areas were either never fallowed or fallowing quickly disappeared
as land demand increased over the past century. Informants in both communities note that these
lands between 2450 and 3600m fronting the Rio Pampas were usually never fallowed in years
past, but cropped year after year. Generally, continual cropping is an indication of the
intensification of agricultural activities. However, as in other parts of the Andes, the limited
availability of maize land may have meant that these lands were rarely fallowed in the past or
252
else fallowing ended when land demand increased at some point in the distant past.815 Juan
Galindo does not remember families fallowing land in the lower corn growing zone, though he
allowed that perhaps some families did fallow. He noted that harvests used to be very good in
the lower zone, but they fell terribly in the late 1960s and 1970s, a factor he attributed to greater
heat in the area.816 Nemesio Nuñez said that his family never fallowed their maize fields or
added livestock manure (guano in Spanish) in the maize fields of Mollebamba.817 Adding
fertilizer like manure is an intensification strategy. Traditionally, some communities in the
district like Quispillaccta seasonally rotate their livestock herds from upper zones to the lower
zones after harvest to feed on crop stubble and to help fertilize the fields with their manure.818
However, individual households also learned to add manure to their individual plots at the time
of planting to deal with declining soil fertility. But this practice was not widespread nor
historically common according to informants until later in the twentieth century, suggesting that
it was an intensification strategy pursued by some households as land pressure increased.
Chuschino elders similarly noted that maize fields were not fallowed in the days of their youth
and manure never added because the area is too far from their livestock zone in the far north-
west of the district.819 Leon Huaman Conde says that his field in Chuschi’s maize zone has
never been fallowed, and now it does not produce like it used to produce when he was young.
815 Machaca notes that low-zone maize lands in Mollebamba were fallowed for ten-year periods (Machaca,
“Vigencia y Continuidad,” 20); however, none of my informants remember these lands being fallowed. Mayer notes
that in the Mantaro valley, low-zone maize lands were cropped continuously when he studied the area. He
speculated that in the past the maize zone in his study area may have had long cropping cycles and short fallow
periods. However, few fallowed these lands at the time of his study in the 1970s, partly because of need but also
because fallowed fields at these low elevations quickly become filled with difficult to remove, invasive African
Kikuyo grass. I did not find evidence of Kikuyo grass in the District of Chuschi, suggesting that land need probably
ended any fallowing of maize lands long ago. Enrique Mayer, Land-Use in the Andes: Ecology and Agriculture in
the Mantaro Valley of Peru with Special Reference to Potatoes (Lima: CIP, 1979): 67 & 70. 816
Interview, Juan Galindo, 80, Quispillaccta, 11 Oct., 2004. 817
Interview, Nemesio Nuñez, 55, Quispillaccta, 18 Oct., 2004. Several other Quispillactino informants similarly
noted that they never fallowed their fields in the maize zone. However, one informant indicated that he rests his
maize field fronting the Rio Pampas whenever he judges that it needs to be fallowed, about every ten years or so, for
about 2-3 years. Interview, Marcello Tomaya, Quispillaccta, 9 October, 2004. Another field I examined in
Suytucoral, facing the Rio Pampas and owned by Don Theodosio Flores Galindo, had just been fallowed for one
year and was now being planted in tubers. Galindo was planting corn in the upper portion of the field and tubers in
the lower portion, indicating that in some areas, the division in cropping zones between tubers/grains and maize is
not clear-cut. Interview, Don Theodosio Flores Galindo, Quispillaccta, 8 October, 2004. 818
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 57. 819
Interview with representatives of Chuschino Ancianos group, Chuschi, 15 October, 2004. The 1967 IIP study of
the District of Chuschi, however, noted that community members used livestock manure on their crops, particularly
on their maize crops. Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 36.
253
He also thought that the heat was greater today.820 While fallowing fields in the district’s lower
maize zone appeared uncommon, farmers did undertake activities in this zone to try to maintain
soil fertility, particularly given the steep gradient of the zone. Terracing is widespread in the
area, and terraces require constant attention to maintain retaining walls and irrigation
channels.821 When labour availability permitted, households would have regularly expended
effort to maintain their terraced fields.822 As well, other forms of cultivation were practiced in
the area along with maize to bolster soil fertility - inter-cropping with associative species like
wheat, broad beans, amaranth, and squash, or even adding ash to the soil when chemical
fertilizers were unavailable.823 These activities were no doubt practices with a long history in the
Andes; however, in the context of increasing pressure on a limited land base, their adaptive
importance became especially relevant.
Many informants noted that the need to add manure to their cultivated fields showed the
increasing stress on their cultivated assets, particularly because adding manure to fields was not
something traditionally done by households until the latter half of the twentieth century. Juan
Galindo of Quispillaccta’s barrio of Huertahuasi said that he first saw someone adding guano to
their fields in the mid-1950s. From then, little by little, they added more guano. Now, he notes
that households are constantly moving guano around from grazing areas to their cultivated
fields.824 Pablo Conde noted that guano was never added to maize crops when he was young;
however, today, even with manure and artificial fertilizer cob size and quality is poor.825 Victor
Galindo Tucno, one of the oldest community members interviewed, noted that they did
820 Interview, Leon Huaman Conde, 79, Chuschi, 31 October, 2004.
821 Trawick argues that the primary purpose of terraces according to peasants themselves is water conservation,
rather than to maintain soil fertility. “Erosion control and soil conservation are benefits that people recognize [with
terraces], but they do not usually mention these results on their own.” Trawick, The Struggle for Water in Peru, 92-
3. 822
Abandoned terraced fields, however, are a source of soil erosion, as discussed above. 823
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 125-130 & 130; Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 36. Machaca
does not indicate whether ash was “added” to field by burning crop stubble, though this could be inferred. Later
studies of soil erosion in the district by Gualberto Machaca Mendieta note that burning fields was considered a sign
of poor land management; so, burning may have been discouraged. 824
Interview, Juan Galindo, 80, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004. Various informants from both villages noted that
adding guano to fields became common practice in the 1950s. 825
Interview, Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004. Changes in crop harvest quality is discussed
further below in section 7.6.
254
sometimes add guano to the “head” of the field when he was young, but that this wasn’t
necessary if one’s land was good and fertile.826 Clearly, the move to increasingly add manure to
fields mid-century indicated increasing pressure on cultivated assets for many households. This
increasing supply scarcity was confirmed by former Chuschi authority, Ernesto Jaime who said
that land started to decline in quality in the late 1940s and early 1950s.827 Jaime said that these
developments worried comuneros who turned to their authorities for help. But it wasn’t until the
late 1950s when authorities in the district were able to offer assistance with the introduction of
chemical fertilizers to the district. Artificial fertilizers helped to provide good harvests at first,
according to Jaime. However, their use also introduced new agricultural problems after a few
years, as discussed below in section 7.6.828 Fertilizer and pesticide use were still not widespread
when IIP undertook their study in 1967. They reported that only a handful of mestizo elite
agriculturists used artificial fertilizers on their fields, and only a few cultivators sprayed their
crops with pesticides to prevent plagues.829
Cultivated lands higher up the altitude slope, where maize gives way to tuber and cereal
production – the Sunni zone and low Puna zone - were similarly never fallowed, according to
interviews with district residents, because cultivated lands were growing ever scarce. However,
in these areas, farmers increasingly adapted by adding natural and artificial fertilizers and by
maintaining crop rotation. As Chuschino Emilio Guillen Ballon commented, “When you have
big chacras you can fallow parts of them, but with small chacras we need to work them all the
time, like now; but we do rotate crops.”830 Chuschino Victor Esteban Caillahua Mikuylla
concurred: “We didn’t fallow our maize chacras, but we did rotate other chacras, planting
potatoes after wheat,” for example.831 Quispillacctino Joaquin Conde Pacotaype noted that he
826 Interview, Victor Galindo Tucno, 99, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
827 Interview Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 19 October, 2004.
828 Interview Ernesto Jaime, Chuschi, 19 October, 2004. Quispillactino Pablo Conde noted that he first began using
pesticides on his crops in the early 1960s, when Swiss NGO technicians showed them how to use them. Interview,
Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004. 829
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 36 & 41. IIP noted that there were two households that employed
backpack pesticide spray units, and their success had inspired several other households to seek to acquire these tools.
It is likely that other households in both communities employed small numbers of fertilizer and pesticides on a small
scale from the early 1960s, but that this use was not examined by the IIP researchers. 830
Interview, Emilio Antonio Guillén, Chuschi, 19 October, 2004. 831
Interview, Victor Esteban Caillahua Mikuylla, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
255
used to never rotate crops when he was young. He first started rotating crops in the late 1980s
and now they do it out of necessity.832 Machaca’s study notes that crop rotation is used in
Quispillaccta predominately in the Sunni zone between 3600m and 4000m, and is only rarely
used in the higher parts of the maize zone (Qichwa) and the lower parts of the puna zone
(Sallqa).833 In her studies of household cultivation, crop rotation – following tuber cultivation
with broad beans, barley, garlic, or wheat crops – was usually practiced for 4-5 years before
fields were fallowed for 3-10 years.834 IIP’s 1967 study of the D. Chuschi similarly noted crop
rotation in high-altitude tuber fields, but does not mention crop rotation or fallowing in maize
fields. IIP noted that potato crops were followed in rotation by broad beans, other Andean tubers
like oca and olluco, and then by wheat, before fields were fallowed for 1 to 3 years. Following
the next crop rotation cycle, IIP reported, fields were fallowed for a longer period, between 4 to 8
years.835 Fallow periods varied according to when cultivators determined that fields had
sufficiently recovered to be planted again.836 Some households clearly did not fallow their fields,
suggesting that decisions to fallow were partly dependent upon a household having sufficient
land or livestock endowments, as informants noted above. Crop rotation was likely always used
in some zones, and after some time in newly opened chakras when new lands were available. But
decisions to fallow were likely dependent upon the extent of asset endowments. As land
endowments faced demand pressure, the frequency of fallowing likely declined for many
households in the district.837
These patterns are consistent with evidence in other parts of the Andes. Mayer’s study of the
sectoral fallow system in the Mantaro Valley – a community organized fallow rotation system,
832 Interview, Joaquin Conde Pacotaype, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004.
833 Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 143. “Qichwa” zone is another spelling for the Quechua zone, the lowest
elevation maize zone between 2400m and 3600m outlined above in chapter 4. 834
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 144. 835
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 36. 836
Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 36. 837
This conclusion is also supported by a 2006 study of the challenges of climate change and sustainable
development in the District of Chuschi. In areas of rain-fed cultivation in the district, the study noted that historic
crop rotation patterns of these lands have changed with the increase in population pressure, leading to the
elimination of fallowing on these lands. Gobierno de Ayacucho, Plan Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos
Naturales Altoandinos y Prevención de los Efectos Climatológicos Adversos del Distrito de Chuschi, Provincia de
Cangallo del Departamento de Ayacucho, (Huamanga, Ayacucho: 2006), 78.
256
where every household followed a set system of crop rotation and land fallow – found that
pressures associated with “population growth and increasing land scarcity, independization of
agro-life zones, and privatization of land” led to the progressive dismantling of the community
controlled sectoral fallow system in the 20th century and an increase in land under cultivation.838
As land became less available because of population growth or as households decided that
market opportunities made it advantageous to intensify production for monetary production,
extensification and intensification of land cultivation was practiced, and fallowing was reduced
or abandoned. In many areas, community organized rotation and fallow systems were
completely abandoned in favour of systems where individual households made decisions about
rotation cycles or fallowing.839 Similarly, a study of sectoral fallow systems in the Central
Andes by Orlove and Godoy also suggested that potato or maize fields where fallowing was not
being practiced was an “unfortunate consequence of land fragmentation,” and that these areas
were “former sectoral fallow systems.”840 By the latter half of the twentieth century, this type
of situation also prevailed in the D. Chuschi, with limited or reduced fallow periods among some
households indicating agricultural intensification at the expense of soil quality.
Given the limited endowments of maize lands in the D. Chuschi by mid-century, particularly for
Quispillacctinos, it is not surprising that informants said that maize lands were never fallowed by
households. As maize land holdings declined for households, there were few options but to work
the land continuously.841 This pattern likely held in the district until the 1970s when many
households, particularly in Quispillaccta, began to conclude that it was increasingly not worth
expending effort in the lower maize zone compared to opportunities in other production zones.
Aerial photos of the area from 1974 show the lower maize zone being heavily used; however,
photos from 1997 show widespread abandonment of many lower zone fields. As Julian Vilca
838 Mayer, Land-Use in the Andes, 67.
839 Mayer, Land-Use in the Andes, 68.
840 Ben Orlove and Ricardo Godoy, “Sectoral Fallowing Systems in the Central Andes,” Journal of Ethnobiology
6(1), 1986: 174. Orlove and Godoy do not specifically note the causes of land fragmentation; however, among
Andean specialists, demand-pressures like population growth and increasing market production are widely attributed
as the causes of land fragmentation in the twentieth century. 841
Maize was never sold by households but always consumed or used for the production of chicha – corn beer.
Mayer also notes that maize land in the Mantaro Valley communities he studied was also rarely, if ever, fallowed.
257
Mejía explained, “the lower zone was heavily used, and they learned to crop pastures and crops
in the upper zone.”842
Learning and gradually improving climatic conditions at higher altitudes in the district were
allowing community residents who had little land or declining crop opportunities in the lower
zones to shift cultivation to higher production zones.843 This shift should also be seen as part of
the extensification strategies used by peasant households to adapt to pressures faced in lower
production zones, processes also noted by Mayer in communities in the Mantaro Valley.844
However, this strategy has always been risky because higher altitudes require longer growing
periods and frost can heavily damage crops at higher altitudes. Field interviews with
Quispillacctinos and research by Machaca indicates that maize cultivation became increasingly
possible at higher altitudes in the D. Chuschi in the latter half of the twentieth century. Maize is
now regularly being grown in areas where it was previously rarely grown, like the barrios of
Llacctahurán (3,750m) and Pirhuamarca (3,800m), above the widely accepted 3,500m altitude
limit.845 In some parts, Machaca notes that it is possible to come across maize fields at altitudes
of 4,000m.846 There are local variations of a few hundred meters for the maize zone in many
places in the district, given the extremely high agro-ecological diversity in the Peruvian Andes
and depending on the particular local micro-climate. The relationship between altitude and
temperature can have a significant impact on crops like maize. The altitude temperature gradient
842 Interview, Julian Vilca Mejía, Quispillaccta, 8 October, 2004.
843 According to Mayer, a production zone is “a community managed set of specific productive resources in which
crops are grown in distinctive ways. These zones include infrastructural features, a particular system of rationing -
resources (such as irrigated water and natural grasses), and rule-making mechanisms that regulate how the
productive resources are to be used. Complementing the management of these resources are individual production
units (such as households) that hold access rights to specific portions of these resources.” Mayer, The Articulated
Peasant, 245. 844
Mayer writes that, “[p]opulation expansion and greater need for food crops resulted in the growth of permanent
villages at higher altitudes than the nucleus. These anexos (annexes), still subject to the “mother village,” became
specialized in the production of crops adapted to the intermediate zone.” In some cases, Mayer noted, annex
villages completely specialized in specific agro-ecological production zones, eliminating long-held patterns still
evident in the District of Chuschi, where households engage in agricultural or livestock activities across multiple
agro-ecological production zones at various altitudes. Mayer, Land-Use in the Andes, 58-60. Emphasis in the
original source. 845
The 3500m maize limit is similarly noted by Mayer in the Mantaro Valley communities he studied. However, he
similarly notes that some households grew maize in the “intermediate altitude and climate range, with low yields.” Mayer, Land-Use in the Andes, 52. 846
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 21.
258
in the district illustrates the risks of pushing cultivation to higher zones. Based on studies in
Ayacucho, Earls calculated, for example, that an altitude increase of 10C results in a 9-day
extension in the maturation cycle for maize.847 So, efforts to grow maize at higher altitudes in
the district faced various micro-climate and altitude challenges. For this reason, establishing
typical local patterns of agro-ecological limits through research and interviews is important to
charting change over time in the district. Community members in Quispillaccta noted in
interviews that maize was not grown in Llacctahurán before the 1950s.848 Machaca, who uses
3,600 as the normal limit for the maize zone in Quispillaccta, also notes that some farmers have
successfully grown maize for more than a decade in “test” fields in the Rio Cachi watershed, in
the upper puna zone of the district, close to the barrio of Unión Potrero at 3,700m. This is an area
that historically never saw maize cultivation because of frequent freezes and unreliable
precipitation.849 Clearly, the need for maize land and increasingly favourable climate conditions
– likely a result of climate change since the early 1970s – have led community members to
successfully introduce maize cultivation at higher altitudes in the community. As Nicolás
Machaca noted, “where are we going to go if not up to the puna to plant corn, because our soil is
quite reduced, especially in the Qichwa zone.”850
847 Earls, “The Character of Inca and Andean Agriculture,” 16.
848 Interview with members of the Quispillactino Senior’s Group (ancianos), 9 Oct., 2004.
849 Interview with members of the Quispillactino Senior’s Group (ancianos), 9 Oct., 2004, and Machaca, “Vigencia
y Continuidad,” 125-6. 850
Quoted in Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 22.
259
Mayer concluded from studies in other parts of the north-central Andes that lower zones, where
land can be more intensively worked, are likely to eschew organized fallow systems and instead
be cropped continually with maize.851 In such zones, when extensification of land holdings is
851 Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 257.
Altitudinal Shifts in Maize zone in District of Chuschi
Topographical Close-up of Chuschi District Maize Zone North of Rio Pampas
The highlighted yellow area indicates the zone below 3,600m traditionally suitable for maize cultivation, according to
Machaca’s study of Quispillaccta. These fields fall steeply towards the Rio Pampas to the south, which runs west to east. At
altitudes of 3,600m or below, Machaca’s crop surveys indicated maize as the dominant crop. Given that Machaca’s study
was completed in 1991, her surveys have probably captured climate change-induced shifts of maize cultivation to higher
altitudes. 1. The highlighted yellow areas of the map show that maize was possible up to the barrio of Llaqtahurán
(Llactauran), because much of the barrio is in the yellow zone; however, informants indicate it rarely grew there until recent
decades. 2. In the valley holding the Chuschi and Quispillaccta town centres (Matriz), informants also note that corn rarely
grew above the point indicated by the arrow, where the road into Chuschi turned south. Above this altitude, broad beans,
potatoes, and barley were traditionally grown. 3. Now, however, corn often grows to Matuma, indicated at point 3, an
increase of several hundred meters in altitude. When the map was produced in the 1960s, cartographers coloured green those
areas visibly under cultivation from aerial photographs. Green areas include areas above 3,600m where various non-maize
grains and tubers are grown. 4. Fundo Choccechaca in prime irrigated maize zone of Chuschi. (Source: Machaca pp. 123-4;
Interview with Emilio Conde Achalma & Pedro Condé Nuñez, 11 October, 2004.)
1
1
1
3
1
1
2
1
1
4
1
1
Rio Pampa
s
1
1
Figure 26:
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
260
impossible because there is no more land to bring into production, the limitations on continuous,
intensified cropping are instead likely to be the availability of irrigation, and the complex
calculations of labour availability and household production zone priorities.852 Such factors were
also operating in Quispillaccta’s maize zone, providing incentives for households to turn away
from investing effort in the lower maize zone. Decreasing yields, limited or reduced access to
water – both irrigated water and rainfall according to informants, and the comparatively better
opportunities for cultivation and herding in higher zones, led many to increasingly abandon or
limit cultivated activities in the lower zone after the 1970s. A field visit to Mollebamba in late
2004 – Quispillaccta’s low maize fields close to the Rio Pampas - during what should have been
the prime maize planting period instead found field after field abandoned and overgrown. No
new crops had been planted, and numerous fields of stunted corn and wheat from previous year’s
planting remained unharvested. Farmers had not even bothered to feed the stunted crops from
the previous year to their animals. Many fields were heavily overgrown, obviously unplanted for
years. If the rains are good, some may still plant these chacras, according to my research
assistant Hereberto Nuñez.853
852 Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 258 & 261.
853 Field visit, Mollebamba zone, Quispillaccta, October 10, 2004.
261
Water is especially important for maize cultivation, particularly on the western slopes of the
Andes where there is a frequent shortage of moisture throughout the growing season.854 Some
maize areas in the district have seen less water availability and more precipitation variability in
recent decades, impacting cultivation activities in the maize zone, particularly in the lower maize
zone of Quispillaccta. The fields fronting the Rio Pampas in this area have the highest
temperatures in the district, so water availability is key. “Maize plants have certain critical
periods,” Earls notes. “For instance, the plant’s water requirements increase drastically at
flowering time. If it does not receive adequate water at this time yield can be reduced by 50-
60%.”855 Respondents from both communities noted the impact of both decreasing rainfall and
increased precipitation variability in the area. Pedro Conde Nuñez said his family does not farm
in Mollebamba anymore because the rain is not like it was in years past.856 Emilio Conde
854 Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 258.
855 Earls, “The Character of Inca and Andean Agriculture,” 16.
856 Interview, Pedro Condé Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004.
Aerial photo of Quispillaccta’s historic maize zone from Google Earth, 2016. The abandonment of cultivated fields has continued to grow in this area, though a
small concentration of fields in Mollebamba continue to be cropped. The Santa Rosa landslide area is also clearly visible in this photo. (Source: Google Earth.)
Historic landslide
area
New roads to Llacctahurán
and Soccobamba. The
upper road was being built
during my fieldwork in
2004.
Mollebamba
Mollebamba
Rio Pampas
262
thought that there is now less rain in this area now, which is why there is little corn grown in this
area. This weather change has impacted this area’s crops.857 Juan Galindo of Quispillaccta said
that the heat in Mollebamba is the problem. In the old days, the harvest there was good. But
from the 1970s, the harvest there fell terribly and they stopped sowing there.”858 Gregory Conde
Nuñez agreed that heat is the problem in Mollebamba, and even if there is rain there, production
is half what it used to be.859 Joaquin Conde Pacotaype noted that the quality of rainfall had also
changed along with the more intense heat in the lower zone: “In the old days, the rain was soft
and now the rain and wind are hard and strong, and the sun is intense like in the city. It’s almost
as if the sun is coming down closer to the ground,” he said. “Because of the weather, only
chacras (fields) with irrigation do well; the others don’t do well and there is no security in
cultivation, especially cultivating on the slopes, compared to the greater security with harvests in
the old days.”860 Chuschi’s elders concurred that both rainfall patterns and the heat in the lower
maize zone appears to have changed in recent years, impacting rainfed cultivation: “Forty years
ago, the rains always seemed to start in September; but now there’s more variability. There’s not
much rain now during sowing in September and October. The heat seems more intense in this
zone. In those chacras where there’s no irrigation, sowing depends on the amount of rain, and if
there’s no rain, they don’t sow them. So, there’s abandoned fields. Chuschinos are increasingly
working the lower fields with fruit trees.”861 Such insights are consistent with maize field
experiments done by Earls that show the importance of climatic conditions in the first month
after sowing for the length of the vegetative cycle. Reduced water availability or increased
uncertainty about water availability in the first month can dramatically alter the risks for maize
crop yield and quality. 862 Cultivators in the district have had to adapt in the latter half of the
twentieth century to uncertainties and risks in their cultivation in the lower maize zone,
sometimes by shifting livelihood activities to other zones or crops.
857 Interview, Emilio Condé Achalma, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004.
858 Interview, Juan Galindo, 80, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004.
859 Interview, Gregory Conde Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 20 October, 2004.
860 Interview, Joaquin Conde Pacotaype, Villa Vista,
861 Interview with representatives of Chuschino Ancianos group, Chuschi, 15 October, 2004.
862 Earls, “The Character of Inca and Andean Agriculture,” 17.
263
A lack of adequate irrigation created additional uncertainty in Quispillaccta’s lower maize zone
and may have helped to limit maize production in this zone. For centuries, this area was served
by an irrigation channel drawn from the stream dividing Quispillaccta and Chuschi. The
mountain directly west of Quispillaccta, which has historically been extensively cultivated, is
criss-crossed with five main irrigation canals. Irrigated land is highly important for households.
Economist José María Caballero believes that irrigated land is equivalent to twice as much rain-
fed land.863 The lowest canal on the mountain, called Itanawayqu by Quispillacctinos, brings
water from the Rio Qunchalla/Chuschi, beginning around 3200m to the south-west fields
fronting the Rio Pampas.864 Unfortunately, at some point in the mid-twentieth century, a major
land slide blocked this canal, cutting off irrigation to the lower maize zone of Quispillaccta.865
Hiking through the area today, the site of the land slide is evident, as a massive portion of the hill
appeared to give way. The slide area is easily visible on the earliest aerial photographs from the
863 José María Caballero, Economía Agraria de la Sierra Peruana: Andes de la Reforma Agraria de 1969 (Lima:
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1981): 97. Caballero argues that 1H of irrigated cultivated land is equivalent to 2.1H
of rain-fed cultivated land. 864
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 22-24; Coronel et al., Estudio Comparativo, 57. Machaca notes four main
channels and one sub-channel in her diagram of the irrigation canals, Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 22, while
Coronel’s diagram shows four active canals, but does not show the damaged Itanawayqu canal. 865
Machaca, writing in 1991, noted that the landslide happened “more or less 20 years ago.” However, the slide’s
visibility on aerial photos from 1955 demonstrate the slide more likely happened in the mid-twentieth century.
264
area, dating the landslide to before the first aerial photographs in 1955. With irrigation
unavailable and ever-precarious rains in the area, many Quispillacctinos like Joaquin Conde
Pacotaype, have given up farming in the lower maize zone fronting the Rio Pampas. He says
that he abandoned his chacra in the low zone (Chiwaypata) about forty years ago – in the late
1950s or early 1960s – because there is no irrigation there and not enough rain. “In the mid-
1950s many people abandoned their chacras in the low zone,” he said, “because the Santa Rosa
cliffs collapsed and wrecked the canal that brought water to this area. The authorities never
rebuilt the canal because they were afraid of another land slide in this steep area. So, they looked
for pipes to bring water to the area, but never found any.”866
866 Interview, Joaquin Conde Pacotaype, Villa Vista, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004. Another Quispillactino,
Melchor Quispe Nuñez of Huertahuasi, said that he has not sown a crop in the low zone (Chuihapata) for two years
Close-up of landslide area in lower maize zone of Quispillaccta, taken from 1974 aerial photo. The slide site is also visible in the 1955 aerial photo; however,
the resolution is much better in the 1974 image. Some farmers returned to planting their fields on the edge of the slide zone, as is evident in the photo. But a
large portion below the new cliffs remain uncultivated. The Itanawayqu canal destroyed by the slide used to flow above and to the left of the river course,
bringing water to fields in Ruqruqa and then onto Mollebamba in the lower left of the photo. These relatively flat fields front the Rio Pampas. (Source: Servicio
Aerofotografico Nacional, Peru. Annotations added by author.)
265
More intense use of cultivated land in Quispillaccta that accompanied population growth in the
mid-twentieth century also cleared trees and brush from many hillside areas in the cultivated
zone. These trends probably increased soil erosion and may have contributed to destabilizing the
soil to trigger the Santa Rosa cliffs landslide in the lower maize zone. Many informants noted
that the land in the cultivated zone was much more heavily cleared in the mid-twentieth century,
both because of the need for firewood and building material to supply an expanding community
and because of the need for firewood for preparations for community fiestas.867 Community
members in both Chuschi and Quispillaccta noted that they often had to travel to the steep slopes
on the other side of the Rio Pampas to gather firewood because there was none in the district.868
Tomás Conde Quispe, from the remote Quispillaccta barrio of Soccobamba, fronting the Rio
Pampas in the south-east of the district, said that when he was a boy the sides of the hills used to
be bare. “There were fewer bushes and trees around this area because many people came from
Llacta (main village) to gather wood.”869 Extensification and demand pressures led to increasing
land clearing, probably worsening the stability of cultivated land.
Other evidence also indicates that the intensification and extensification of cultivated agriculture
that accompanied growing populations in the district in the 20th century worsened land
degradation on cultivated lands. Multiple assessments of soil erosion - by Peruvian experts over
the last thirty years, through field measurements during field work in 2004, and from
conversations with community members – indicate that it aggravated land degradation for some
now because the yields are poor and the land is tired. Barley and wheat are also poor there, he said. “Now just
grasses and bushes grow there. The land used to be irrigated by a little irrigation channel that came from a spring.
But now the spring comes out somewhere else; too low. And the cliffs in the area are sliding too much.” Interview,
Melchor Quispe Nuñez, Huertahuasi, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004. 867
Interview, Theodosio Flores Galindo, Llacctahurán, Quispillaccta, 29 September, 2004; Interview Pedro Conde
Nuñez, 11 October, 2004. Conde Nuñez said that the mountain above Quispillaccta’s main town used to be
completely covered in fields, up to the high areas like Qispipata; however, now they don’t farm this area anymore.
Don Theodosio noted that since the fiestas have ended in Quispillaccta, the trees have recovered because they are
not cut anymore, and certain bushes like cerqa have recovered because they don’t use them anymore for home
construction because there are tin roofs. 868
Interview with representatives of Chuschino Ancianos group, Chuschi, 15 October, 2004; Interview, Victor
Galindo Tucno, 99, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004; Interview, Emilio Condé Achalma, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004. 869
Interview, Tomás Conde Quispe, Socobamba, Quispillaccta, 3 November, 2004. In his 40s when interviewed,
his recollections would date these observations to the late 1960s or early 1970s.
266
in the cultivated zone in the district during the 20th century, both from heavier cropping of
cultivated lands, but also because households increasingly abandoned the lower maize zone and
shifted efforts to higher sunni and puna zones. These trends were particularly important for
Quispillacctinos, who had less land on average than Chuschinos, and higher demand pressures
by the mid-twentieth century. Soil erosion is challenging to assess with confidence in highly
heterogenous agricultural zones like those found in the D. Chuschi, particularly given wide
variations in cropping capacities among cultivators. The following insights are thus not
definitive proof, but provide another layer of evidence about land degradation trends in the
district during the 20th Century.
Soil erosion is held up by some as the single best proxy for various aspects of land degradation,
and a major cause of falling agricultural productivity.870 However, “since the effects of soil loss
vary depending on the underlying soil type, soil loss, by itself, is not an appropriate proxy
measure for productivity decline.”871 Deep soils that are rich in nutrients can withstand soil loss
better than thin, poor soils. Soils in the D. Chuschi are highly variable; however, there are
significant areas where soils are thin and face significant erosion risks. General erosion studies of
the district found erosion to be moderate grade 2 when fields are being cultivated. Erosion rates
rise to unsustainable levels between 3-5 when fields are not being cultivated.872 The soils in the
lower maize zone of Quispillaccta in Sunnipampa, close to the historic slide area, were found to
be low in fertility, according to an analysis in the late 1970s.873 Fields around the heavily
cultivated hill to the west of Quispillaccta’s Matriz have thin soils that have been exposed to
erosion processes on the steep slopes over the decades of rain-fed agriculture, according to
Marcela Machaca.874 In a study of the Rio Pampas watershed in the district in the late 1990s,
including the major tributaries feeding into the Rio Pampas, Gualberto Machaca determined that
870 Michael A. Stocking and Niamh Murnaghan, Handbook for the Field Assessment of Land Degradation
(London: Earthscan, 2001), 8. 871
Stocking and Murnaghan, Handbook, 14. 872
Coronel et al., Estudio Comparativo, 12. 873
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 54-55. Machaca notes that the soils in the low, Quechua zone of the
district are classed as clay-loam, sandy loam, and silt loam. They have a PH between 5.74 to 8.45, and are high in
calcium and salts. 874
Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 67-8. This includes the high areas around Quispipata and steep areas
around the barrios of Llacctahurán, Pirhuamarca, and Socobamba.
267
erosion varied from light to severe, depending upon the area examined.875 Soil loss in his
experimental measures varied between 0.5 TM/H/Y to almost 3 TM/H/Y, within the FAO’s
permissible range.876 However, Machaca notes, these rates are still worrisome because of the
thin soils in the area.877
Field assessments in 2004 in various chacras in Quispillaccta’s maize zone similarly found wide
variation in soil erosion rates, depending on location, slope, cultivation practices, etc. A field
assessed near Llacctahurán , at the upper end of the maize zone and with a slope of 10 degrees,
provided an estimated soil loss of 9.6 TM/H/Y – at the upper end of acceptable erosion for
annual cropping areas.878 Multiple measures in another parcel in Quispillaccta’s maize zone
fronting the Rio Pampas found much higher rates of soil loss. Two portions of the parcel were
assessed; both had slopes between 10-15 degrees, though slopes were greater in the portion with
higher soil loss. One small area had a very high loss rate of 138 TM/H/Yr, while a different
portion of the field had loss rates slightly higher than acceptable, at 21 TM/H/Yr. 879 Another
interesting measure of soil loss came from a small maize field outside of Quispillaccta’s Matriz.
This small field about 250m2 (about 1 Melga) has always been planted with maize, according to
Quispillacctino Esteben Nuñez. A large rock in the field has increasingly been exposed over
decades of cropping. “It’s as if the rocks have grown from below,” Sr. Nuñez said, commenting
on the growing exposure of rocks in his field over the years.880 Calculations of soil loss
875 Gualberto Machaca, Conservación y Recuperación de Suelos, 125.
876 Gualberto Machaca, Conservación y Recuperación de Suelos, 128.
877 Gualberto Machaca, Conservación y Recuperación de Suelos, 128.
878 The figure is the average of two measurements of Field 1, belonging to Theodosio Flores Galindo, Oct. 1, 2004,
using tree root exposure and rock exposure. Factors that could lead to both overestimation and underestimation of
soil loss using this method are discussed by Stocking and Murnaghan, Handbook, 54-55 & 62. Field measurements
noted here and below were conducted through 15 measures of soil degradation spread across 8 different fields in the
Quechua and Sunni zone of Quispillaccta, including tree root exposure, waterfall effect, rock exposure, pedestals,
build-up against barriers, and build-up against tree trunks. Assessments were made according to the methodology
and guidelines set out by Stocking and Murnaghan. See Appendix 1 for a table outlining the various field
measurements of soil erosion used. 879
Both measures were done in Field 4, belonging to Virginia Nuñez, Oct. 2, 2004, using build-up against a barrier
methodology, outlined in Stocking and Murnaghan. Factors that could lead to both overestimation and
underestimation of soil loss using this method are discussed by Stocking and Murnaghan, Handbook, 68.
880 Interview, Esteben Nuñez, Quispillaccta, 6 Oct., 2004. Jon Hellin found similar reactions among farmers in
Honduras, who often failed to recognize that soil erosion was taking place in their fields. “In Honduras, he writes,
“it is not uncommon to hear farmers talk about ‘rocks growing out of the hillside’. Soil loss rates as high as 20 to 40
tonnes per hectare per year result in an annual lowering of the soil surface by less than 0.3 mm. As farmers cannot
268
measured from rock exposure over the past 50 years show soil loss rates of about 69T/H/Y, a
troubling loss rate that is not sustainable.881 Sr. Nuñez says that he now often adds manure to
fertilize the soil of this field, either at the top, on the borders, around the plants early in the
growing cycle, or where he thinks that the soil needs additional fertility. He plants rows of corn
up and down the slope of the field if he’s planting by himself. Labour shortages are a challenge
for him; he doesn’t plant parts of the field where it is harder to work the land or where
production is marginal, such as the steepest slopes. His yield of corn in this field is several times
smaller than a similarly sized field in Llacctahurán, cropped by notable farmer Theodosio Flores
Galindo, though Don Theodosio has more family assistance in his efforts. These variations in
cropping ability and yield potential illustrate the wide variability in both erosion rates and
cropping outcomes depending on prevailing conditions, labour availability, opportunity, etc.
Given the steepness of many parcels, particularly in the Rio Pampas zone of the district, high
rates of soil erosion can be expected, even for skilled cultivators. Measurements in a 13 degree
sloped portion of a field facing the Rio Pampas show high erosion rates of 81T/H/Y.882 The
measurements were made against a barrier constructed by the farmer only one year previously;
an obvious attempt to preserve the soil at the top of his field.
While we cannot say for certain whether soil erosion led to increasing land degradation for
households farming this area in the mid-twentieth century as demand pressures intensified in the
area, the challenges of cultivated agriculture in this erosion prone area were an additional risk
that households had to manage. Soil erosion risks likely added to land degradation pressures
noted above to worsen supply scarcities in the Rio Pampas cultivated zone for households.
Certainly, assessments of soil erosion in the latter decades of the twentieth century noted
widespread problems in the district, particularly in the steep zones of the Rio Pampas area, as
see this erosion occurring, the explanation of rocks growing is a logical explanation for rocks becoming exposed.”
Jon Hellin, “From Soil Erosion to Soil Quality,” LEISA Magazine 19(4), December 2003: 10. 881
Assessment of erosion was made in Field 6, belonging to Esteben Nuñez, Quispillaccta, on 6 Oct., 2004,
employing rock exposure methodology outlined by Stocking and Murnaghan. Factors that could lead to both
overestimation and underestimation of soil loss using this method are discussed by Stocking and Murnaghan,
Handbook, 61-2. 882
Assessment of erosion was made in field 8, belonging to Theodosio Flores Galindo, Llacctahurán, on Oct. 8,
2004, employing build-up against a barrier methodology outlined by Stocking and Murnaghan. Factors that could
lead to both overestimation and underestimation of soil loss using this method are discussed by Stocking and
Murnaghan, Handbook, 68.
269
indicated by the pink erosion areas on the land-use map of the district below, Figure 27. Historic
zones of steep Quispillaccta cultivation in the Rio Pampas zone to the west of the Matriz show
widespread erosion, along with widespread erosion in puna grazing zones. In fact, a 2006
district plan on climate change and sustainable development listed most of the historic
cultivation lands in the low Sunni and Quechua zones fronting the Rio Pampas as unsuitable for
cultivated agriculture because of their steepness, erosion risk, and low natural fertility. Instead,
the plan recommended that this historic centre of cultivated agriculture in the district be
transformed into forestry plantations.883
883 Gobierno de Ayacucho, Plan Para el Uso Sostenible de los Recursos Naturales Altoandinos y Prevención de los
Efectos Climatológicos Adversos del Distrito de Chuschi, Provincia de Cangallo del Departamento de Ayacucho,
75-6.
Figure 27: Land-Use in the District of Chuschi Pink area shows eroded land. Source: Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio
climático en regiones vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, Septiembre 2011: 19.
270
Erosion problems in the D. Chuschi’s maize zone led to extensive planting of eucalyptus, a fast-
growing foreign species, on steep hillsides above the town centres of Chuschi, Cancha Cancha,
and Chacola, and in a small area above Quispillaccta’s Matriz, as indicated in teal on the map
above. Such plantings created additional problems, however, and may have worsened land
degradation in the district. Eucalyptus
were originally introduced into Peru’s
south-central Sierra in the mid-to-late
1800s as a source of fuel and timber.884
Informants recall eucalyptus first
appearing in the district in the late
1950s, often planted on the borders of
family fields.885 Dickenson notes that
such plantings are common because
farmers “can take advantage of water
destined for irrigating crops.”886
Authorities in the district began to
promote the planting of eucalyptus trees
in the late 1950s to stabilize soil and to
deal with the scarcity of wood as a
result of the widespread clearing of
brush and trees described above.887 Areal photos of the district Matriz from 1962 show the steep
slopes above Chuschi’s town centre crowded with fields; however, by 1974 the same area is
increasingly overgrown as a young eucalyptus plantation takes root, apparently the first large
scale planting of the trees for soil stabilization in the district.888 Gade notes that Peru’s Agrarian
884 Joshua C. Dickinson III, “The Eucalypt in the Sierra of Southern Peru,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 59(2): 1969, 296. 885
Interview, Emilio Condé Achalma, Quispillaccta, 11 October, 2004. 886
Dickinson, “The Eucalypt,” 298. 887
Interview, Nemesio Nuñez, Unión Portrero, Quispillaccta, 18 October, 2004. 888
Today this eucalyptus forest towers above the town centre of Chuschi. Former Chuschi authority Marcelino
Rocha Cayllahua told me that the community planted the eucalyptus above Chuschi in 1971. Interview, Marcelino
Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004.
Four large eucalyptus trees planted on the border of a field belonging to Don Theodosio
Flores Galindo, outside Llacctahurán. Don Theodosio said that these trees have ruined
this corner of the field, soaking up most of the rain that falls here. Interview, Theodosio
Flores Galindo, Llacctahurán, Oct. 1, 2004. Photo by author.
271
Reform government promoted eucalyptus for community agro-forestry plantations in the late
1960s and early 1970s.889 Interviews with district residents show that eucalyptus plantations also
became an additional source of dispute in the long-running land conflict between Quispillaccta
and Chuschi in the 1970s. Several informants describe an event in the mid-1970s when
Quispillacctinos, under the cover of darkness, ripped out hundreds of eucalyptus seedlings
planted by Chuschinos in a disputed area around Matuma, in the Kimsa Cruz disputed zone.890
To community members, eucalyptus did more than just stabilize the soil; they signified and
guaranteed land ownership and control. Such conflicts over tree plantations continued into the
early 1980s.891
Land and erosion control aside, however, eucalyptus trees also damage nearby crop production
because of their heavy water usage and allelopathic effects from leaf litter and roots.892 The
tendency of farmers to plant eucalyptus on the borders of their fields – a practice that informants
noted also helped to mark boundaries and protected against people cutting their trees –
negatively impacted surrounding crops by harming yields and reducing water availability for
crops.893 In fact, given their impacts, it is highly questionable whether eucalyptus should have
889 Daniel W. Gade, Spell of the Urubamba: Anthropogeographical Essays on an Andean Valley in Space and Time
(New York: Springer, 2016), 180. 890
Interview with Quispillaccta Ancianos Association members, Quispillaccta, 9 Oct., 2004. 891
Conflicts over eucalyptus continued as part of the inter-community struggle between Chuschi and Quispillaccta
into the early 1980s, with both sides accusing the other of ripping out seedlings on contested land. See La Serna, To
Cross the River of Blood, 130 and 132. 892
Studies show that the allelopathic impacts of eucalyptus trees negatively impact grains like maize and wheat in
planted fields, reducing seedling germination, and stunting plant and root growth. M.A. Khan, “Allelopathic Effect
of Eucalyptus on Maize Crop,” Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences 2(1), 1999: 390-93; D. Blaize et al., “Effects
of Eucalyptus on wheat, maize, and cowpea,” Allelopathy Journal 4(2), 1997, 341-344; As well, the fast growth of
eucalyptus comes at a cost of significant water usage. In Kenya, the heavy water usage character of eucalyptus is so
well known that they are named “drinking water” trees in the Mukungugu and Embu languages. Brandy Garrett
Kluthe and Diana Chen, “Eucalyptus sp. at the intersection of environment and culture in Kenya,” Ethnobiology
Letters 8(1), 2017: 18; If eucalyptus roots reach the groundwater table, Martin von Roeder notes, their annual
evapotranspiration rates may be higher than annual rainfall, gradually depleting groundwater. “In cases where
eucalyptus plantations replace grassland or shrubby natural vegetation,” von Roeder continues, “the water use of the
plantations is in most conditions higher than the use of the original vegetation.” Martin von Roeder, The Impact of
Eucalyptus Plantations on the Ecology of Maputa Land with Special Reference to Wetlands, Unpublished M.Sc.
Thesis, Faculty of Landscape Planning, Technische Universitat Munchen, Munich, Germany, November 2014: 10. 893
Numerous informants spoke of the negative impacts of eucalyptus trees on crops. In late 2004, during my field
work in the district, the NGO ABA was encouraging Quispillacctinos to cut down Eucalyptus trees for home
construction and replace them with native species that do not harm crop production. Dickinson also notes the
planting of Eucalyptus to mark the borders of fields in the early 1960s in the Central Valley of the Sierra. Dickinson
“The Eucalypt,” 302.
272
ever been planted for erosion control in semi-arid climates like Ayacucho. “Under dry
conditions ground vegetation is suppressed by root competition,” from eucalyptus trees, the FAO
noted, making eucalyptus ill-suited for erosion control.894 Thus, “dense plantations of eucalyptus
… are usually not recommended for erosion control, particularly in semi-arid climates.”895
Attempts to manage land degradation by introducing eucalyptus probably had negative
livelihood impacts for cultivators in the district in the latter decades of the twentieth century.
Precipitation and temperature changes
Decreases in water availability are particularly important in the semi-arid environment of the D.
Chuschi. Water impacts from eucalyptus plantings have been compounded by changes in
weather noted by informants in cultivated zones in the district. These weather changes have
increased uncertainty among cultivators in the district, particularly in the lower Rio Pampas
zone. Melchor Quispe Nuñez, of the high-altitude barrio of Huertahuasi, said that “the rains used
to be on-time and the hail and freeze used to be sparse. In June and July, they used to sometimes
get snow. But now the rains are sporadic. Sometimes they get rains; sometimes they don’t,” he
said. “Snow doesn’t reach the lower zones anymore,” he said, “only the high parts of
Huertahuasi.”896 Victor Galindo Tucno, 99, said that now the rain is crazy, the heat intense, and
the hail more frequent than in the old days.897 Belisario Galindo Conde, 96, has spent most of
his life in the Rio Cachi barrio of Pampamarca. He said that the weather is less predictable now.
“People knew the days when the freeze would come, as if it had an appointment; they also knew
when the hail would come. And the heat was never too intense; rain was gentle. But now the
rain is stronger and with lots of wind, and the heat is stronger and harder to take,” he said.
“People knew when the snow would fall,” he said. “Now, there’s no snow, but there’s more hail.
The snow didn’t harm the crops like the hail does now.”898 Villager after villager from both
894 M.E.D. Poore and C. Fries, The Ecological Effects of Eucalyptus, FAO Forestry Paper 59 (Rome: Food and
Agricultural Organization, 1985), 54. 895
Poore and Fries, The Ecological Effects of Eucalyptus, 21. The FAO also notes on page 54 that eucalyptus will
reduce the water yields in catchments when planted in areas without exiting trees, particularly when the trees are
young and growing rapidly. Such impacts are particularly notable in the dry, cleared slopes the district’s Rio Pampas
zone. 896
Interview, Melchor Quispe Nuñez, Huertahuasi, Quispillaccta, 31 October, 2004. 897
Interview, Victor Galindo Tucno, 99, Chuschi, 24 October, 2004. 898
Interview, Belisario Galindo Conde, Pampamarca, 29 October, 2004.
273
Chuschi and Quispillaccta commented on the change in the weather in recent decades – the
absence of gentle, predictable rainfall between September and November essential to
successfully sowing crops; the more frequent intense rainfalls and winds that damage crops and
wash away soil from the fields; more intense heat in lower zones and less cold and snow in the
high zones; and more frequent and unpredictable freezes and hail storms.899 Other studies have
recorded similar observations from district informants.900 Recent scholarly research on observed
and predicted climate change in the Andes has found that impacts are somewhat consistent with
observed and predicted impacts from climate change in mountainous high-altitude zones like the
D. Chuschi. One study of climate change in the Andes found temperatures had increased
between 0.1 and 0.20C since 1969.901 Similarly, a recent review of climate change impacts in the
Andes found an increase in average temperatures over the past 60 years and that temperatures in
high-altitude zones have increased at a faster rate than sea-surface temperatures.902 The review
found no clear trends in annual precipitation, however, suggesting that increasing temperatures
are driving water stress impacts in many areas, as is evident with melting glaciers, for
example.903 Scientists acknowledge that the significant variability of the Andean region, data
899 Policarpo Casavilca Quispe of Tuco, 63, offered other additional interesting comments: “In the old days, the rain
came in September and October for the sowing. But now the regular rain doesn’t come until November. Now it
can rain any time with much variability. There used to be lots of snow in the old days from Tuco to Llacctahurán
(Quispillaccta’s western barrios). They used to make big snow balls.” He showed that snow balls around half a
metre in diameter was normal. “But there is hardly any snow now; only in the high peaks. The heat is definitely
greater today than in the old days when they were used to the cold. In the old days there was lots of freeze and they
couldn’t plant anything in Tuco, only potatoes in Huertahuasi. But now they plant broad beans in Tuco. There’s
also more hail now; and it’s much more variable than in the old days.” Interview, Policarpo Casavilca Quispe,
Tuco, 5 November, 2004. 900
Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en
regions vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, September
2011: 12-13. 901
Imtiaz Rangwala & James R. Miller, “Climate change in mountains: a review of elevation-dependent warming
and its possible causes,” Climatic Change 59(Issue 1 &2): 531. 902
Austrian Development Cooperation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Mountains and
Climate Change: A Global Concern, Sustainable Mountain Development Series, (Switzerland: Centre for
Development and Environment (CDE), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Geographica
Bernensia, 2014): 16-17. There is evidence from North America that global warming may result in more frequent
damaging hail storms, as many community members reported - a seemingly counter-intuitive impact of global
warming. I have not found studies about hail frequency and intensity in the Andes, however. Julian C. Brimelow et
al., “The changing hail threat over North America in response to anthropogenic climate change,” Nature Climate
Change 7(July 2017): 516-523; and John T. Allen, “Hail potential heating up,” Nature Climate Change 7(July
2017): 474-475. 903
Austrian Development Cooperation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Mountains and
Climate Change, 16-17. Another study found declines in annual precipitation and rainy season precipitation in
274
limitations, and complexity in modeling climate impacts and projections in the area mean that
large uncertainties remain in our understanding of the impacts and future path of climate change
in the Andes.904
The limited historical scope of data and interruptions in data collection caused by the 1980s civil
war leave an incomplete record of temperature and rainfall in the district. Records of average
annual rainfall from a station situated near Chuschi’s town square show high variability but no
clear decline in the 1960s and 1970s. The average of four stations in the upper Rio Cachi zone
southern Peru between 1950 and 1994. However, the authors thought that the impact was localized and probably
not significant. Mathias Vuille et al., “20th Century Climate Change in the Tropical Andes: Observations and Model
Results,” Climatic Change 59(Issue 1 &2): 81-2. 904
Wouter Buytaert, “Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on Mountain Hydrology: Development of a
Methodology Through a Case Study in the Andes of Peru,” Mountain Research and Development, 32(3), 2012: 385-
386.
275
record somewhat higher annual average precipitation in the 1990s and 2000s, but also a great
deal of variability from year to year, as noted above in graph, Figure 28: Average Annual
Rainfall, Chuschi Station and Rio Cachi Basin Stations.
Rainfall data from the station near Chuschi’s town square show slight decreases in precipitation
in October and November between 1963 and 1981, as illustrated in the graph below, Figure 29:
Chuschi Station Precipitation, 1963-1981.905 This limited local data provides only partial
support for observations from community members about changing weather in the district in the
latter half of the twentieth century. Historical temperature data is unavailable for much of the
905 Data from Servicio Nacional de Meteorología E Hidrología. ONI chart from http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm,
based on NOAA data.
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
Average Annual RainfallChuschi Station and Rio Cachi Basin Stations (mm)
Total Precipitation-Chushi Total Precipitation -Cachi
Chuschi Mean Precipitation Cachi Mean Precipitation
Figure 28:
276
district, unfortunately. Data from the Rio Cachi zone for the 1990s and 2000s does not
conclusively show a rise in temperatures in that zone.906
Climate change impacts are likely to have only begun to be felt in the early 1970s, when many
households had already switched much of their economic activity to the Rio Cachi zone. So, the
actual impact of changing weather patterns on household decisions to shift their focus to the
higher zone may have been limited. However, the observed and recorded changes added to
906 Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en
regions vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, September
2011: 12.
Precipitation data from Chuschi station, located a few hundred metres from Chuschi’s town square, shows slight declines in October and
November precipitation (dotted lines, lower figure). If you remove the tremendously high Dec., 1981 rainfall data point, December’s trendline is also slightly downward. Important Niño events are overlaid, but do not correlate with major peaks or declines in rainfall.
(Source: Data from Servicio Nacional de Meteorología E Hidrología. ONI chart from http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm, based on NOAA data.)
Figure 29:
277
existing strains for cultivators in the lower zones of the district, and probably helped cement
household choices to centre their livelihood activities in the higher zones.
Declining agricultural yields and crop quality
Decreases in the quantity and quality of agricultural yields in the latter half of the twentieth
century provide another piece of evidence of growing land degradation in the district in the
decades before Sendero’s uprising. Declines in crop yields, Stocking and Murnaghan note, “may
be an indicator that soil quality has changed, which in turn may indicate that soil and land
degradation are occurring.”907 Interviews with dozens of district cultivators demonstrate that
yields of maize and tuber crops like potatoes declined over the past half century as agricultural
intensification and extensification spread through the cultivated zones. These developments
further disadvantaged livelihood strategies focused on the lower cultivated zone in the district.
Researchers in the late 1960s and early 1970s reported low yields of key crops like maize and
potatoes from the district. In 1966, IIP researchers interviewing selected residents recorded an
average of just over 2.5 sacks/yugada (fanegas/yugada) of maize and 7.5 fanegas/yugada of
potatoes.908 Figures from Peru’s 1972 agricultural census were even more worrisome, with
average yields in the province of Cangallo at a little over 1 fanega/yugada of maize and about 1.7
fanegas/yugada of potatoes.909
However, we should be wary of seeing one or two years of low yields as proof of increasing
supply scarcity for district households for several reasons. First, numerous scholars have noted
that actual yields obtained from field measurement or careful interviews with cultivators are
always higher than provincial, department, or national averages.910 Some of these differences
may stem from methodological problems with government data collection. Mitchell says that the
peasants he studied in Quinoa, Ayacucho feared the 1972 agricultural census as a prelude to land
907 Stocking and Murnaghan, Handbook, 11.
908 Ramón C. et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 34. Three district residents were asked yields in sacks per yugada.
However, no information is provided to explain how these residents were chosen. 909
See table 48, Degregori, Ayacucho, raices de una crisis, 193-94. 910
Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 20; Mitchell, Peasants, 77.
278
seizures or taxation, and systematically mislead census takers on land holdings, yields, etc.911
Similar dynamics may have also been at work in the D. Chuschi. Second, crop yields are highly
variable in the Andes, given the heterogeneous environmental and cropping conditions.912
Morlon notes that “[r]isks, especially climatic ones, inevitably cause marked variations between
years and, in the same year, between fields exposed to these risks to a greater or lesser extent.”913
To deal with risks, according to Morlon, farmers in Peru use two complementary strategies: 1)
“reducing the risk level, and 2) spreading the risks as much as possible.”914 They reduce the
level of risk by using different types of agricultural knowledge and techniques, like terracing or
inter-cropping, while spreading the risks in time and space as much as possible through different
allocations of household labour in various livelihood activities and by working different
ecological zones.915 Attempting to manage risk inevitably results in highly variable yields,
Morlon notes, with high yields some years and low yields other years:
The result of this risk-spreading strategy is the multiplication of the
number of farming combinations: cultivated sites (soil, climate,
topography) multiplied by ways of working the soil, multiplied by
species and varieties, multiplied by sowing dates etc., so that at
least some of these combinations will be productive. Thus, the
divergent yields (their dispersal in statistical terms) of the various
fields cultivated by the same family result from the peasant
strategy of risk spreading and from complementary use of different
ecological environments. As the climate is unpredictable, the
peasant cannot foresee which of the combinations will prove best
… and, in fact, in any one year only a small proportion of these
combinations prove to be "optimal" and produce high yields.
Return from the other cultivated plots can be very low, and
therefore the average yield, too.916
911 Mitchell, Peasants, 77.
912 Morlon, “Peasant strategies,” 8. Morlon writes that, “In the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, observations and
measurements in the field reveal that yields are sometimes far higher than given in official statistics or obtained by
quick surveys. Above all, they show the extreme variability in the yields of all crops, firstly, between years;
secondly, between different categories of producers and even between producers within each category; and thirdly,
between the different plots cultivated by one and the same family in different "production zones.” 913
Morlon, “Peasant strategies,” 8. 914
Morlon, “Peasant strategies,” 8. 915
Morlon, “Peasant strategies,” 8. 916
Morlon, “Peasant strategies,” 8.
279
Furthermore, some farmers may decide not to work some lands as intensely or thoroughly in
order to redirect household assets toward other livelihood opportunities. Their actions may lead
to falling yields and worsening land degradation because they ignore labour intensive land
management practices like repairing terraces or expending time and energy to bring animal
manure to fertilize distant fields. Mayer’s 1974 study of peasants in Tangor, in the Department
of Pasco, showed that households decided to export labour to the cash economy, rather than
intensify agricultural efforts for commodity production because off-farm work paid better.917
“Low returns on work effort compared to off-farm returns,” Mayer wrote, “lead to the
abandonment of less productive lands in a country where agricultural land is scarce … The
demand for outside money obtained from wages probably has a long-term negative impact on the
ecosystem stability of Andean farm landscapes because they increasingly neglect maintenance
work.”918 Yields thus reflect the vast range of high and low agricultural outcomes and reflect a
range of possible livelihood and agro-ecological-climatic variables. They are not solely a
function of land productivity and should not be considered solely a supply indicator – an
indicator of the health of the resource, because they are actually a social-ecological outcome.
Agricultural yield data can still provide insights about the extent of land degradation and
household impacts. To overcome the limitations discussed above, however, long-term yield
trends and the range of socio-ecological factors behind those trends need to be determined.
Ideally, yields should be tracked at the household level over time; however, decades-long local
surveys are not practical and were not possible in the D. Chuschi. This study has instead
supplemented yield data from IIP and Peru’s census with cultivator interviews about yield
changes over time. Two complementary strategies were employed. First, interviews were
conducted with dozes of elderly district residents, to determine how yields of maize and potatoes
– the two most important crops in district households - have changed from the time of their youth
to the present day. Responses have been plotted below in box and whisker plots for maize and
potatoes to highlight the range of possible yields noted by respondents. Two groups of historical
yield figures have been assembled for each graph, depending upon the age of informants, with
informants over 70 years of age providing data before 1950, while younger respondents provided
917 Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 26.
918 Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 27.
280
yield insights for the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. Respondents were asked to compare
historical yields to contemporary yields; these are plotted in the third category. Additional
historical and contemporary yield data for the district are plotted on the graphs where data it is
available. (For additional details about the boxplots used below, see Appendix 3: Notes on the
Use of Box and Whisker Plots.)
Interviews with dozens of the district’s oldest residents comparing historical and contemporary
yields of maize and potatoes demonstrate that yields have fallen for many over the past half
century. From the 1930s to the 1970s, median corn yields fell by almost one quarter, before
declining to less than half of historical yields in the present day, according to interviews (See
Figure 30: Comparison of Historical and Contemporary Corn Yields in Sacks/Yugada in
Quispillaccta and Chuschi According to Interviews). Potato yield declines were similar, with
yields falling about a quarter from the 1930s to the 1970s, before falling in the contemporary
period to about a quarter of the yields considered normal in the 1930s to 1950.919 (See Figure
30: Historical Potato Yields in Sacks/Yugada in Quispillaccta and Chuschi According to
Interviews.) Interestingly, the continued decline in the 1950s to 1970s occurred concurrently
with the introduction of Green Revolution technology to the district. These declining yields no
doubt added additional livelihood stress on district households and pressure to find adaptive
responses to challenges in cultivated agriculture. Given yield variability, these figures should
also be read as an indicator that some households were probably also shifting effort to other
livelihood activities, as outlined above.
919 Interview data have been ordered and organized into three time periods, as explained in Appendix 3. When a
range of yields was given by informants, an average yield was calculated. Respondents were asked to provide yield
figures in fanegas/yugada (sacks/1425m2). Maize yields were estimated as whole cobs and kernels. These are gross
yields and do not account for seed maize and seed potatoes used in planting.
282
Figure 31
Memories can be faulty, however. So, comparisons of the interview data have been made with
data collected by other researchers in the district, and by other studies in Ayacucho. This
evidence suggests that the interview data on yields from the district is credible. Huamanga
University agronomy professor Antonio Diaz Martinez, visiting the district in the late 1960s,
found maize yields averaging less than 3.5 F/Y, and potato yields of about 20 F/Y.920 Along
with the 1966 IIP yields noted above, researchers in the late 1960s were finding maize yields
much lower than reported in this study’s field interviews, and potato yields within the range
reported by district residents for the period. Some of the most careful yield studies were done by
William Mitchell in the community of Quinoa, Ayacucho. Mitchell notes one farmer’s maize
920 Antonio Díaz Martínez, Ayacucho: hambre y esperanza (Ayacucho: Ediciones "Wamun Puma," 1969), 147.
Díaz Martínez was radicalized in the years following his work in Ayacucho’s communities in the late 1960s. He
later joined Sendero Luminoso and died in a prison riot in 1986. See Colin Harding, Antonio Díaz Martínez and the
Ideology of Sendero Luminoso, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 7(1), 1988: 65-73.
283
yield in 1974 between 500 and 800kg, or a yield average of 650kg average - a little over 8.5
fanegas, which is very close to the median yield reported as normal by district informants
between the 1950s and 1970s. Other informants Mitchell talked to said that this farmers yield
was normal.921 Mitchell’s 1974 informant also harvested between 1000 and 2000kg of potatoes,
working out to an average of 1500kg – or 20 fanegas, which is in the higher quartile of the yields
in the district reported by my informants for this period.922 Based on these results and other
surveys, Mitchell concluded that, in Quinoa, 1 yugada produces about 450-750kg of maize in a
good year (6-10 fanegas), and between 1000-2000kg of potatoes (about 13-26.5 fanegas).923
These figures correspond very well to the median yield values reported by Chuschino and
Quispillacctino informants for this period.
Field assessments in 2004 also support the interview estimates of contemporary maize yields in
the district. A field belonging to the Quispillaccta barrio of Huertahuasi, located below the
Matriz and facing the Rio Pampas, was being planted with maize during our visit in October,
2004. This field’s yield that season was promised to Quispillaccta’s Ancianos organization, to
help supplement to the food supply of the community’s elderly residents. Multiple informants
noted during planting that day that this field today produces about 4-6 F/Y of maize with cobs,
while in decades past it produced almost 14 F/Y.924 Assessments of two Chuschino fields that
are now worked collectively in order to provide maize for Catholic feast celebrations also
supports contemporary interview estimates. The Dulce Niño Jesus field, in Chuschi’s maize
zone fronting the Rio Pampas, produces about 12 F/Y of maize, at the higher end of
contemporary maize estimates.925 Chuschi’s Santos Temblor field in the Rio Pampas maize zone
(pictured above in chapter 4 as Chuschinos collectively planted it with maize) used to give about
10 F/Y of maize, but now yields less than half, about 4.5 F/Y. Again, these estimates closely
921 Mitchell, Peasants, 79. Mitchell more carefully surveyed yield figures, including determining the weight of
seed maize used in the plot. This figure above is the average of the yield range cited by this farmer, before
deducting seed weight. The figure is the total dried and husked cob weight – maize with cob. 922
Mitchell, Peasants, 79. 923
Mitchell, Peasants, 79. Mitchell notes that these figures do not account for post-harvest food losses, which have
been calculated at about 15% of production for developing countries. 924
Interviews and field measures of Ancianos chakra, Quispillaccta, 20 October, 2004. This field was estimated at
about ½ yugada, so I have converted the yield estimates to 1 yugada equivalents. 925
Interviews and field measures of Dulce Niño Jesus chacra, Chuschi, 30 October, 2004.
284
align with contemporary interview data. Gualberto Machaca’s study of soil erosion in the Rio
Pampas zone of Quispillaccta in the early 1990s, however, reported potato yields much higher
than those reported by this study’s informants for the contemporary period. His reported yields
are comparable to yields reported by informants in the mid-20th century.926 Reconciling
Machaca’s data with interview data about contemporary potato yields is difficult. It is possible
that with labour requirements higher for potatoes than maize, the lower averages reported by
elderly informants may reflect the challenges older residents have in planting potato fields. We
know little about the cropping history of the fields Machaca measured; they may have also
benefited from being fallowed when many residents abandoned the district during the 1980s civil
war.927 Between 1990 and 1998, the Ayacucho average of potato production was about 13.5F/Y,
higher yields than reported by informants in the district, but on the lower end of Machaca’s yield
data. 928 Again, these different data reports may be reporting a range of possible potato yield
outcomes from the district. Machaca’s data aside, however, the evidence assembled from field
assessments in the district and scholarly assessments in the 1960s and 1970s appear to confirm
the trend of falling yields of maize and potatoes in the 20th century, as identified by elderly
informants in the district.
926 Gualberto Machaca, Conservación y Recuperación de Suelos, 109.
927 During fieldwork, we came across farmers working fields in the Rio Pampas area that had been abandoned for
decades. We watched as Abraham Vilca Hachalma sowed tubers in a field opposite Llacctahurán in Lucerohaha,
fronting the Rio Pampas, which he cultivated in 2003 for the first time in about 50 years. This small, high field,
little more than 1/3 of a yugada produced 3 fanegas of tubers last year – or about 9 fanegas/yugada. That yield is
higher than most of the interview yields provided by elderly residents and more in line with lower yields reported by
Gualberto Machaca. So, it is reasonable to assume that higher yields are possible today in well-managed or well-
rested fields in the Rio Pampas zone. Interview and field visit, Abraham Vilca Hachalma, Llacctahurán, 6 October,
2004. 928
Rolando Egúsquiza B., La papa: producción, transformación y comercialización (Lima: Universidad Nacional
Agraria la Molina, 2000: 9.
285
Falling yields over many decades went hand-in-hand with gradual declines in the quality of crop
harvests. Declining crop quality – smaller and more diseased potatoes and maize – is another
indication of increasing supply stress on land assets of households in the district. The consensus
was nearly universal among respondents in both Chuschi and Quispillaccta that crop quality
today is much worse than in decades past, with size, taste, and crop quality all having declined.
Elderly Chuschinos in their seniors (Anciano) group noted that corn cobs are much smaller today
than they used to be, forcing them to often buy corn
from other communities to make chicha – corn
beer.929 In an interview, Pablo Conde of
Quispillaccta pulled out a cob from the previous
year’s harvest to show a typical example of the best
cob size today, about 11cm. This size is after
adding artificial and natural fertilizers like guano,
which wasn’t necessary in decades past. Now they
harvest lots of rotten corn, Conde noted, so they
give it to their chickens.930 Quispillacctino Roberto
Huaman Machaca thought that the size of corn cobs
today is about ½ to ¾ of historical corn cobs.931
Basilio Chipana Nuñez, 90 years old when interviewed, also agreed that cobs in decades past
used to be much bigger with huge grains. He noted that some varieties have disappeared from
the community because they don’t produce well anymore.932 Pablo Conde noted that potatoes
plants used to be so big that they could wander around a field and almost get lost among the
leaves. Large potatoes were much more frequent in decades past, with some the size of softballs.
However, they never see potatoes that size anymore.933 Today their harvest is also more
929 Interview with representatives of Chuschino Ancianos group, Chuschi, 15 October, 2004.
930 Interview, Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004.
931 Interview, Roberto Huaman Machaca, Quispillaccta, 1 November, 2004.
932 Interview, Basilio Chipana Nuñez, 90, Chuschi, 2 November, 2004.
933 Several farmers noted that softball-sized potatoes were common in their youth, compared to their absence today.
Interview, Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004; Interview, Roberto Huaman Machaca, Quispillaccta, 1
November, 2004; Interview, Victor Calderon Jimenez, Chuschi, 2 November, 2004.
Diseased potatoes infected by the potato tuber moth
(Phthorimaea operculella); informants say this is typical
of the quality problems farmers confront today in their
yields. Photo by author.
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frequently attacked by pests and diseases or the potatoes are hollow.934 Farmers have to take
care to pick out the wormy potatoes or their entire harvest will be infected in storage.935 The
taste is also inferior compared to decades past, according to numerous informants. Some said
that they often taste like green potatoes or garlic now when harvested. However, Salomón
Galindo, a well-known farmer from Cuchoquesera, did not think that the crop taste had changed.
He did say that people are now eating different varieties of potatoes, and that the older varieties
of potatoes used to be sweeter. 936 Galindo also observed that native varieties produce little
today, compared to hybrid varieties. While the quality of native crop varieties is often better, he
thought that most people today chose quantity over quality.937
The causes of crop quality declines are complex, but there is evidence that both agricultural
intensification and the adaptations that intensification spawned may have worsened crop quality
for some households. Reductions in crop rotation and fallowing described above encourages
pest growth, particularly of nematodes and Potato Weevils. So, production pressures to keep
land in use as land became less available over the twentieth century may have had damaging
impacts on crop yields and soil health.938 The disappearance of sectoral fallow systems of
cropping in the district may have further worsened pest infestations because the move to
individual household decision-making about when or if to fallow a field has consequences for
nearby fields. If a household chooses not to fallow, pests in their fields will likely to migrate to
their neighbour’s field, even if that field has been fallowed. Sectoral fallow systems probably
increased the efficiency of pest control by ensuring comprehensive pest management across
agricultural sectors in the community. Thus, the disappearance of these systems likely worsened
934 Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en
regions vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, September
2011: 13. 935
Interview, Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004. Andean Potato Weevils and Potato Tuber Moths
are the most common pests attacking potato crops in the district, according to informants. 936
Interview, Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004; interview, Victor Esteban Caillahua Mikullya, 80,
Chuschi, 24 October, 2004; Interview, Salomón Galindo Achallma, 77, Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004. 937
Interview, Salomón Galindo Achallma, 77, Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004. Galindo worked with Swiss
agricultural extension workers in the late 1960s and in the 1970s on various Ayacucho government programs to
improve native pastures and livestock practices. He is photographed in a history of Swiss agricultural extension
efforts in Quispillaccta in a recent history of Swiss development efforts in Peru. Burri, Los Inicios, 88. 938
Andean Potato Weevil, Integrated Crop Management Toolbox, CIP, <
https://research.cip.cgiar.org/confluence/display/icmtoolbox/Management+APW>, accessed 1 Nov., 2018.
287
pest damage to crops in the district.939 Marcela and Gualberto Machaca and their colleagues at
ABA have also made convincing arguments that the loss of traditional cultivator knowledge –
both in cropping practices but also the loss of traditional crop biodiversity – have had negative
impacts on the ability of households to manage pest damage to crops.940 Though communities in
the district remain reservoirs of high crop biodiversity compared to other highland
communities,941 the increasing use of hybrid and introduced monoculture crops after the 1960s in
the district may have also increased pest damage to crops.942 Finally, while the introduction of
pesticides and artificial fertilizers likely helped to increase yields for many, problems with
increasing pesticide resistance have been noted by informants in the district and may have eroded
yield gains for some.943 Pablo Conde of Cuchoquesera said that he was introduced to pesticide
use by Swiss agricultural extension workers in the early 1960s. At first, Conde said, they only
needed a little pesticide. But now they use it and “the bugs are like friends with the pesticide.”944
Declines in crop quality have thus exacerbated yield declines faced by many households in the
district.
Conclusion
In the end, the assembled evidence suggests that many cultivators increasingly faced supply and
demand constraints of productive assets in the latter decades of the 20th century, particularly in
the Rio Pampas zone of the district where several different indicators of land degradation
939 Orlove and Godoy, “Sectoral Fallowing Systems,” 180. The authors note that controlling potato pests does not
necessarily require the fields to be left completely unused, because planting non-tuber crops like grains in a field
also effectively acts to reduce tuber pests. So, non-tuber plantings are like fallow years when it comes to tuber pest
management practices. 940
Gualberto Machaca, Conservación y Recuperación de Suelos, 68-9; Machaca, “Vigencia y Continuidad,” 163-4;
ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en regions vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú:
Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, 45. The causes of losses in cultivator knowledge are complex,
but include the impacts of migration, cultural discrimination and racism against indigenous knowledge, the
breakdown of communal agricultural management systems, etc. 941
Coronel et al., Estudio Comparativo, 14-15, note Quispillaccta’s relatively high crop biodiversity. 942
The relationship between increasing crop monoculture and biodiversity loss and rising pest damage is well
established. See Miguel A. Altieri et al., Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1995), 270-1. 943
This is a global pattern noted by experts promoting “ecoagriculture” approaches to farming. Jeffrey A.
McNeely and Sara J. Scherr, Ecoagriculture: Strategies to Feed the World and Save Biodiversity (Washington D.C.:
Island Press, 2003), 70. 944
Interview, Pablo Conde, 70, Quispillaccta, October 25, 2004.
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developed in the latter half of the twentieth century. Land degradation is “an ‘umbrella’ term”
describing various ways “in which the quality and productivity of the land may diminish from
the point of view of the land user (and of society at large).”945 Cultivated agriculture in the Rio
Pampas area of the district is inherently variable, and over several decades households faced
resource degradation as a result of the consequences of existing steep slopes, thin soils, water
shortages, extensification and intensification impacts during the twentieth century, and
differences in household capabilities. Diminishing asset holdings as populations increased and
the risks that households faced in their production activities in this zone resulted in many instead
refocusing assets and capabilities to the higher zones and the Rio Cachi watershed areas of the
district. Off-farm opportunities and adaption options reinforced these trends. Supply and
demand pressures thus helped to stimulate the increasing settlement of district residents in the
disputed high-zones.
Importantly, however, we should note that supply and demand pressures were not solely
responsible for driving district residents to shift effort to higher zones. Wider structural changes
in Peru’s economy were also crucially important. A complex calculation of opportunities, risks,
and costs convinced many households to put less effort into cultivated agriculture in the Rio
Pampas zone. Many others, however, continued to work these lands and adequately provide for
their families. As notable farmer Theodosio Flores Galindo told me on our final walk back to the
Matriz from Llacctahurán, past many chacras (fields) that were over-grown and unused, the
lower Rio Pampas zone chacras were not abandoned because the land was poor. With proper
effort and knowledge, these lands can be very productive. Some have been abandoned for
almost 50 years, while others only a few years, he said. Many have been abandoned for 20-30
years. The reasons ranged widely, according to Don Theodosio. Some parcels were too close to
the footpath and suffered too much animal damage. Others were owned by older residents who
lived in distant barrios; working them wasn’t worth their effort. While other parcels were owned
by recently deceased comuneros whose kids lived in distant cities.946 Don Theodosio was well
aware of my inquiries with his fellow community members about increasing land scarcity and
land degradation pressures. While not blind to these impacts, he was also confident in his ability
945 Stocking and Murnaghan, Handbook, 6-7.
946 Interview, Theodosio Flores Galindo, Llacctahurán, 7 November, 2004.
289
to work the land successfully, given enough assistance and his deep knowledge of traditional
agricultural practices.947
In many ways, Don Theodosio’s perspective epitomized the conflict between Neo-Malthusian
pressures and Cornucopian responses in the district. Adaptation and coping with risks and
pressures was certainly possible, in Don Theodosio’s view. Other households, however, faced
the same pressures and instead chose different paths for adaptation that reduced their reliance on
cultivated agriculture in the Rio Pampas zone. Depending on the assets and capabilities at hand
for households, various livelihood pathways were possible. Don Theodosio’s wisdom and the
record of supply and demand pressures outlined above on the district’s Rio Pampas cultivated
fields, confirm that binary arguments between Neo-Malthusians and Cornucopians around the
impacts of environmental scarcities over-simplify livelihood realities. Both outcomes are
possible, and some outcomes are in the messy middle; household assets and capabilities can lead
to a range of possible pathways with different impacts.948 Today, many households continue to
devote a great deal of energy to cultivated agriculture in the Rio Pampas zone. However, the
shift by many others to settle the Rio Cachi zone of the district in the latter half of the twentieth
century was certainly influenced by supply and demand impacts on household assets over many
decades. This settlement aggravated conflicts between Quispillaccta and Chuschi in the latter
decades of the twentieth century, with particularly severe consequences in the early 1980s, as
discussed in Chapter 8.
947 Don Theodosio was also a relatively well-off farmer, with more cultivated lands than the average household in
Quispillaccta. So, his cultivator optimism was also based, in part, on his abundance of household assets. 948
This theoretical debate in the environment-conflict literature and my conclusions about this debate are covered
in more detail in Deligiannis, “The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-Conflict Research,” 44-51.
290
Chapter 8 Living Between the Sword and the Stone
Introduction
In early 1983, the ink was barely dry on the historic agreement to settle centuries of land conflict
between Chuschi and Quispillaccta when the outbreak of violence in the district soon led to
Quispillaccta being labelled as a hotbed of support for Sendero Luminoso. Other long-running
conflicts with Chuschi’s annex Cancha Cancha and with neighbouring communities in the
northeast of the district had also only recently ended. Reconstructing the history of the early
months of the violence in the district strongly suggest that the terrible violence in early 1983
cannot be decoupled from the outcome of historical land conflicts in the district. Decades of
efforts to purchase and settle disputed lands in the Rio Cachi zone, described in Chapters 4, 5,
and 6, led to increasing conflicts between Quispillaccta and neighbouring communities, as each
sought to consolidate control over disputed lands. Supply and demand pressures on household
livelihoods in the Rio Pampas zone of the district, described in Chapter 7, led to livelihood
adaptations that increased settlement of disputed lands in the district, further heightening
conflicts between Quispillaccta and other communities. Despite the efforts of community
leaders in Quispillaccta and Chuschi to settle their long-running land conflict differences in the
early 1980s, these conflicts re-emerged in the orgy of violence undertaken by the Shining Path
and Peru’s security forces in 1983 and 1984.
This chapter begins by outlining the dynamics of violence in the district in late 1982 and early
1983, as Sendero began to kill those in the district who did not conform to their demands for
obedience and support for the new Maoist project. As in other parts of Cangallo, authorities
reluctant to commit to Sendero were the new targets of deadly retribution. These actions,
however, were soon followed by a vicious Peruvian government counter-insurgency operation in
the area, which sought to root out and destroy Sendero militants and their supporters. The
following account illustrates that this violence was not indiscriminate, but targeted with
particular harshness against Quispillacctinos, particularly in the recently consolidated Rio Cachi
zone. Evidence is presented that suggests this targeted violence was in retribution for
Quispillaccta’s land struggle victories. The chapter then assesses scholarly explanations of
violence in the district to argue that prevailing interpretations have failed to adequately
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appreciate the extent to which Quispillaccta was unfairly victimised for their land struggle
successes with neighbouring communities. Certainly, every community suffered terribly
attempting to find safe space between Sendero’s stone and the Army’s sword. But the extent of
Quispillaccta’s suffering suggests that particular revenge dynamics were conditioning violence
patterns during the civil war.
Violent revenge and the Peruvian Government’s counter-insurgency campaign in 1983
After years of clandestine efforts in Ayacucho to indoctrinate residents and recruit community
members into Sendero’s cause, the insurgent group turned more forceful in establishing control
of the region in late 1981 and 1982.949 With few police or government officials in the D.
Chuschi, it was relatively easy for Sendero to force the closure of the district’s municipal offices
in October 1981. Surrounding districts were similarly heavily infiltrated by Sendero and there
was little government presence in much of the province of Cangallo at the end of 1981.950 After
executing local cattle thieves and whipping delinquents in the D. Chuschi in 1981 and 1982, as
described above, in late 1982, Sendero more forcefully moved to seize control of the district and
eliminate local authorities reluctant to commit to the insurgency cause.951 On July 1st, 1982,
armed Sendero militants moved to take control of the town centres in the district. They blew up
the post office in Cancha Cancha, sacked the Artisanal House in Chuschi, beat anyone who
resisted, and threatened to kill Chuschi’s Governor, only to be convinced to spare him in the face
of community opposition.952 One month later, on August 2nd, a Sendero column and hundreds of
949 CRV, Inform, Volume 7, Section 2.2, 39-40.
950 Isbell, To Defend, 84-5.
951 CRV, Inform, Volume 7, Section 2.4, 35. Sendero’s first incursions into Cancha Cancha came in 1982,
according to Peru’s TRC, when Sendero warned authorities to yield to Sendero and they whipped three residents for
committing offenses against the community. La Serna’s account of the fatal punishment of thieves and delinquents
in the district – something generally accepted by all the communities in the district - is the most comprehensive and
is generally corroborated by other scholars like Sánchez Villagómez, Isbell, and my own interviews. It does not
suffer from the speculative failings of his claims about greater Sendero support in Quispillaccta. See La Serna,
2012, Chapter 4. 952
Isbell, To Defend, 85. Sánchez Villagómez, "El Horror Olvidado,” 277- 282. A Quispillacctino communal
authority at that time said that the Sendero militants were outsiders, unknown to the authorities, according to an
interview with Sánchez Villagómez. Sánchez Villagómez notes that three district officials were captured by
Sendero that day: Deputy Mayor Francisco Vilca; district Governor Bernardo Chipana; and Ramón Infanzón. All
three were Chuschinos. Interestingly, according to informants, Infanzón comes from a family identified by
informants in the communities as part of the district’s Mistis. Chuschi’s district authorities were targeted because
292
peasants from nearby communities looted and destroyed much of Huamanga University’s
Allpachaka rural development research station, located a short distance from the contested lands
in the north-east of the district.953 In early December, 1982, according to Isbell, Sendero
organized a celebration in Cancha Cancha to mark the birth of the Popular Army. Participants
arrived from all the surrounding communities, according to information obtained by Isbell, and
five prisoners were put on public trial by Sendero, two from Cancha Cancha, and three from
Chuschi. All were petty bureaucrats accused of abusing their positions of authority. Among
those tried and later driven from the district was Chuschi’s Governor.954 By early 1983, Sendero
planned to implement their third military plan, “Conquering Bases of Support,” between May
1983 and February 1984, with operations that would deepen the policy of destruction of local
structures of state or traditional power and replace them with commissars appointed by the
party.955 Now Sendero was prepared to use deadly violence against any remaining authorities or
community members who opposed Sendero’s control of the district.
Conflict with district authorities and around Cancha Cancha would prove to be the key that
unleashed terrible violence in the district from both Sendero and Peru’s military forces, with two
Sendero incursions into the area in early 1983 leading to brutal Peruvian military counter-
insurgency operations in May. Cancha Cancha’s reluctance to yield to Sendero, bolstered by the
presence of a Peruvian military veteran who was an authority in the community at that time,
made it a lynch-pin for killings in the district once the military counter-insurgency operations
began. In late February 1983, Sendero militants returned to Cancha Cancha during the Catholic
carnival celebrations; however, community members expelled the Sendero militants.
Recognizing that their actions against Sendero increased risks for community members,
district Governor Chipana removed Sendero flags that had been put up in the town square a few days before. The
removal of the flags was witnessed by a Chuschi school teacher, who was also a secret Sendero supporter, thus
leading to Chipana’s targeting by Sendero, according to Sánchez Villagómez. Pio Taquire, a caretaker of the
Artisanal House and Chuschi’s school was also beaten and tied up by Sendero for resisting their attempts to trash the
Artisanal House and distribute the House’s tools to the community. Taquire had been a previous target of Sendero
in Chuschi, condemned to wear a sign around his neck for philandering and wife beating, sometime before 1982.
Sánchez Villagómez, "El Horror Olvidado,” 279-281. 953
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 85; Smith, "Rural Development in the Crossfire,” 38-9.
Allpachaka is a four hour walk from Cuchoquesera, according to Núñez Espinoza, Online history of Cuchoquesera,
<http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>, accessed Sept. 16, 2019. 954
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 86; La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 155. 955
CRV, Inform, Volume 7, Section 2.4, 35.
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especially given the lack of police and military presence in Cancha Cancha, the community
organized a peasant surveillance and patrol system to warn against further Sendero incursions.956
This defiance by authorities toward Sendero was increasingly being met with savage violence in
early April in Ayacucho. On April 3rd, a large Sendero column massacred 67 comuneros in the
community of Santiago de Lucanamarca, in Huancasancos province, several hours south of
Chuschi. The killings in Lucanamarca were disciplinary revenge by Sendero against the
community, which had formed a militia to oppose Sendero and killed the local Sendero
commander in late March.957 In the D. Chuschi, Sendero again targeted those who dared to defy
its military plan. On April 8th, a large Sendero column again entered Chuschi’s town centre,
killing the traditional mayor (alcalde vara) Juan Cayllahua Tucno and several other community
members, and burning several government buildings.958
Peru’s military soon responded to violence and threats against district authorities with brutal
repression. Peru’s security forces entered the D. Chuschi in late 1982, initiating their counter-
insurgency efforts in the area. In early April, 1983, Peru’s military established an Army base in
the nearby District of Totos.959 Soldiers based at the Totos base would be responsible for much
of the counter-insurgency bloodshed in the D. Chuschi.960
May would turn out to be the bloodiest month in the district during the Sendero insurgency as
Peru’s military entered the conflict unleashing several waves of massacres – primarily of
Quispillacctinos – during repeated sweeps of the district to search for Sendero militants.961
956 CRV, Inform, Volume 7, Section 2.4, 35.
957 Starn and La Serna, The Shining Path, 149-153
958 Sánchez Villagómez, "El Horror Olvidado,” 284-85. Peru’s TRC says that Sendero’s attack took place on April
8, leading to the death of Chuschi’s Governor and four peasants. CRV, Inform, Volume 7.2, Section 2.5, 39.
Sánchez Villagómez says that the armed Sendero militants were accompanied by hundreds of peasants. However,
we don’t know anything about who these peasants were or where they came from. This is an important historical
gap in the story of the back and forth violence in the district in early 1983. 959
CRV, Inform, Volume 7, Section 2.8, 66. 960
CRV, Inform, Volume 7.2, Section 2.5, 39. 961
Testimony before Peru’s TRC and from survivors indicates that these Peruvian military operations in May were
led by Captain Chacal (Jackal) – later identified by Peru’s TRC as Captain Santiago Alberto Picón Pesantes.
Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, “Conference by Doctor Salomón Lerner Febres, President
of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at the submission of a complaint on the death of four peasants in the
locality of Totos, Province of Cangallo, Department of Ayacucho in April, 1983,”
http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/informacion/discursos/en_conferencias02.php, accessed 16 Sept., 2019. Decades
294
Quispillaccta’s high-altitude barrios were targeted in these sweeps - operations led by the
Peruvian military, accompanied by dozens of residents of Chuschi and its associated annexes like
Cancha Cancha. On May 14, 1983, an army patrol entered the Quispillaccta hamlet of
Yuraqcruz, located in the centre of the district, in the hills above the main town. The group
consisted of ten or fifteen soldiers, escorted by a group of Chuschi community members,
pursuing a Sendero column that had carried out actions against Cancha Cancha. In Yuraqcruz,
the soldiers forced the residents they encountered to lie on the ground while they checked their
identification. Chuschi community members took advantage of the opportunity to loot the
Yuraqcruz homes. Nine residents of Yuraqcruz were bound and led away. The next day, eight
were later slaughtered by the military near Uchuryi, while one prisoner escaped by jumping into
a ravine.962 Located in the puna above the main town, Yuraqcruz was one of the areas
successfully seized by Quispillaccta in the land disputes with Chuschi in recent decades.
Sendero’s response a few days later again led to tragedy for Quispillaccta. On May 19th militants
entered Quispillaccta’s Rio Cachi barrio of Cuchoquesera and press-ganged several community
members into their plans to again attack Cancha Cancha. Sendero militants operating in the area
forced community members from Cuchoquesera to participate in their actions, according to
survivors.963 The next day, eight of the Cuchoquesera residents managed to flee from Sendero
later, investigators in Peru obtained an arrest warrant for the former Army Captain, to answer for his crimes in the
Districts of Chuschi and Totos. Despite attempts by Peruvian legal NGOs to locate him, Picón Pesantes has fled
justice. This is not unusual, but part of a pattern of former Peruvian military human rights abusers disappearing in
the face of attempts to bring them to justice or escaping conviction. See Glatzer Tuesta, “Veinte años de
impunidada y barbarie: Tras los pasos del Chacal,” Ideele 153(March 2003),
http://www.idl.org.pe/idlrev/revistas/153/153chacal.pdf, accessed 16 Sept., 2019. See also:
https://elperuano.pe/gespoboletinfiles/2018/12/19/1721524_1.pdf, accessed 16 Sept., 2019. 962
CRV, Inform, Volume 7.2, Section 2.5, 39-40. The captured comuneros were Narciso Achallma Capcha,
Antonio Carhuapoma Conde, Valentín Núñez Flores, Julián Núñez Mendoza, Pedro Núñez Pacotaype, Reynaldo
Núñez Pacotaype, Hilario Núñez Quispe, Máximo Vilca Ccallocunto, and another person, whose name is kept in
reserve. According to Peru’s TRC, the prisoners were being walked to the provincial capital of Pampa Cangallo
when the massacre took place. On route, the military let three other non-Quispillacctino prisoners continue under
guard to the provincial capital but stopped on the road to torture the Quispillactino residents for information about
Sendero. During the torture, one prisoner leaped into a ravine to escape, leading the soldiers to shoot the remaining
8 Quispillacctino prisoners. The military’s actions clearly indicated that they were targeting residents of
Quispillaccta as suspected Sendero militants and sympathizers. The TRC’s account gives no details about the
Sendero actions in Cancha Cancha that the military was responding to with their May 14th operations. 963
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 275-6. That same day, Sendero killed four other residents of Quispillaccta’s Rio
Cachi barrios for various reasons, including being opposed to Sendero’s agenda. See Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 246
and 270.The militants forced authorities in Cuchoquesera to cook for them and to kill a special Swiss cow that was
being raised by the community livestock development organization, which had been established with Swiss aid,
according to Salvatierra, Méndez, and Núñez. It is not clear how many Cuchoqueseran residents were forced into
295
when the militants came under pressure from a combined force of Peruvian military soldiers and
Cancha Cancha community members. However, the escapees were then captured by residents of
Cancha Cancha and handed over to the military, only to be later killed and buried in a secret
grave.964 On May 21st, approximately 100 Sendero militants from platoon number 9 of
Sendero’s Cangallo-Victor Fajardo Zonal Committee stormed back into Cancha Cancha,
shooting, detonating explosives, and lighting houses on fire near the village square. Four
community members were brutally killed by Sendero, including one community member who
later died of his wounds.965 Two days later, on their way to the nearby provincial capital of
Pampa Cangallo to denounce the attack, several community members from Cancha Cancha were
surprised by a group of Sendero militants in the neighbouring town of Pomabamba. Cancha
Cancha’s President, Indalecio Conde Quispe, was captured and killed.966 Outraged by the
slaughter of their community president, Cancha Cancha residents took off in pursuit of the
Pomabamba Sendero militants, catching up with them in Quispillaccta’s barrio of Cuchoquesera.
In the ensuing melee, one Canch Cancha community member was killed - Albino Tacuri Condori
– and several Senderistas were captured and handed over to the Peruvian police.967 Their fate
remains unknown.
The Peruvian military’s response between May 28th and May 31st unleashed waves of killings
and property destruction in Quispillaccta’s high puna barrios, including the Sakaypata massacre
of 15 peasants in early June whose survivor testimony is detailed in the preface. Dozens of
Quispillacctinos were captured, beaten, and some killed during the operations or soon after, as
soldiers accompanied by community members from Chuschi and its annexes swept
the Cancha Cancha attack. Salvatierra, Méndez, and Núñez say that about 15 people were forced to participate;
however, only 8 were later captured and killed by Peru’s military and community members in Cancha Cancha.
Sendero frequently forced peasants into working and fighting for them in the early years of the insurgency in
Cangallo. Heilman notes similar activities in the District of Carhuanca, which was then in eastern Cangallo.
Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 189. 964
Paz y Esperanza, Boletín, Noviembre 2012, < http://www.pazyesperanza.org/pe/>, accessed 22 May, 2019. 965
The community member who later died of his wounds from the Sendero attack on May 21st was a former
military soldier, Valentín Quispe Achas. Quispe was one of the organizers of Cancha Cancha’s resistance to
Sendero’s incursions over the past year, according to Peru’s TRC. He seems to have been targeted by Sendero in this
incursion, because masked insurgents stormed his house as soon as they entered Cancha Cancha. The other Cancha
Cancha residents killed that day by Sendero were: Mariano Conde Cancho, Jesus Labio Conde, and Cirilo Achas
Quispe. CRV, Inform, Volume 7, section 2.4, 36-37. 966
CRV, Inform, Volume 7, section 2.4, 36-7. Sánchez Villagómez, "El Horror Olvidado,” 292. 967
CRV, Inform, Volume 7, section 2.4, 37.
296
Quispillaccta’s settlements of Cuchoquesera, Pampamarca, Catalinayuq, Unión Portrero, and
Llacctahurán .968 Community members from Chuschi and its annexes that accompanied the
government soldiers looted and destroyed Quispillacctino houses as they went. Survivor
testimony strongly suggests that the peasant groups accompanying the military on these sweeps
took an active role in the looting and killing, seeking revenge on Quispillaccta. In some cases,
community authorities were targeted in the attacks, authorities who had played a role in the
recent land conflicts in the district. In other cases, those captured seemed to be random
Quispillacctinos, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Recent survivor testimony of these sweeps highlight the targeting of Quispillaccta. When
soldiers arrived in late May to Cuchoquesera, they burned the communal store and the homes of
several families.969 Salomón Galindo, who’s home was burned, was a well-known community
development leader in the area. For several decades he had been working with Swiss NGO
representatives and later with experts from the Allpachaka research station to improve pastures,
herds, community development opportunities in and around Cuchoquesera.970 He had been
singled out by Cancha Cancha in a dispute from 1980 for helping to organize Quispillacctinos
from Cuchoquesera and Pampamarca to seize contested puna lands.971 Galindo would
successfully evade both the military and their allies and the Senderistas during the months of
killing in the district.972 However, fellow Cuchoquesera resident and authority, Francisco Núñez
968 Sources differ on the exact number of Quispillactinos caught up in the late May sweep. In recounting the details
of the Sakaypata massacre, Peru’s TRC says that about 100 soldiers and community members from Chuschi and
Cancha Cancha captured at least 16 Quispillactinos, with 15 later killed at Sakaypata. CRV, Inform, Volume 7,
section 2.4, 30. Salvatierra, Méndez, and Núñez, says that 30 peasants were detained in the multi-day operation,
eight from Pampamarca, eight from Unión Potrero, twelve from Catalinayuq, and two from the neighbouring district
community of Putaqa. Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 214. In my interview with the survivor of the Sakaypata
massacre, he noted that many of those captured were not necessarily captured in their home barrios, but instead were
captured in various places in Quispillaccta – either on the way to or from agricultural work (like him) or on their
way home after attending to community business in the town centre. 969
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 265. 970
Burri, Los Inicios, 88; Oseas Núñez Espinoza, Online history of Cuchoquesera,
<http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-PE018555.html>, accessed Sept. 16, 2019; Interview, Salomón
Galindo Achallma, 77, Cuchoquesera, 28 October, 2004. 971
Oseas Núñez Espinoza, Online history of Cuchoquesera, <http://tierra.tutiempo.net/Peru/Cuchoquesera-
PE018555.html>, accessed Sept. 16, 2019. The lands Quispillaccta invaded that day in 1980 was around
Pukaramunwayqu, according to Núñez Espinoza. I have not been able to locate this on a topographical map. 972
Galindo was also targeted by Sendero because he was the earliest and the most successful proselytizer of the
Evangelicalism in the district, and because he had worked extensively in the mid-1970s with Swiss development
experts and with experts from the Allpachaka research station. Galindo told me that he started getting harassed by
297
Vilca, was not as fortunate. Núñez Vilca’s widow Alejandra says that her husband was targeted
by community members from Cancha Cancha during the political violence in 1983 because he
was a community lieutenant during the trial with Cancha Cancha in the early 1980s.973 Forced to
again assume an authority position by the military who entered Cuchoquesera in late May,
Núñez Vilca was detained by soldiers along with fellow Cuchoquesera authority Marcelino
Espinoza Núñez, after being fingered by three peasants dressed as soldiers. Both were killed in
the Sankaypata massacre.974 Demetrio Galindo Rocha from Pampamarca was another
Quispillaccta peasant who had long worked with NGOs in the area to improve pastures and
animal husbandry practices. He was also killed at Sakaypata, after being captured on his way
home from the Matriz on official duties, during the military’s late May operations in the high
puna.975
Sweeps by soldiers accompanied by peasants from Chuschi and its annexes also swept up
seemingly innocent Quispillacctinos in the drive for retribution. Marcelina Quispe de Espinoza,
whose husband would be captured and die in the Sankaypata massacre watched a peasant mob
kill an elderly Quispillacctino in Puncapata in late May: “That morning they killed Jerónimo
Vilca, an elderly gentleman. I went out with my four children and we hid …I watched as people
passed with knife-pointed sticks, others with machetes and axes A whole crowd passed in front
of us. Don Jerónimo had hidden in the middle of the ichu [grass] below the road. When he saw
that people approached the place where he was, he jumped and started running desperately.
Someone reached him, took out his ax and gave him an ax in the head and threw him [down]. So
Jerónimo Vilca died.”976 Cirilo Galindo Huamaní of Pampamarca was returning to his home on
May 28th with his young, twelve-year-old brother-in-law, after attending a military-required
assembly in the Chuschi town centre. At Kimsacruz, the pair were captured by a combined
more radical community members for working with the outside development experts in 1975. Interview, Salómon
Galindo, 77, 28 October 2004. As Smith notes, radical leftists increasingly criticized the Allpachaka station and its
staff for collaborating with foreign imperialists, and for creating conditions that were creating a new class of rich
peasants through Allpachaka’s activities. Smith, "Rural Development in the Crossfire,” 36-38. 973
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 264. 974
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 264. Francisco Núñez Vilca helped to dig the same hole as the only survivor of
Sakaypata, whose testimony opens this dissertation’s preface. 975
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 255-56. 976
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 242.
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group of soldiers accompanied by dozens of peasants who had already taken prisoner four other
Quispillacctinos from Pampamarca. They were all beaten and bloodied by the mob, who wanted
to kill them all right there by throwing them into the Wayunka ravine. "Let's start with this
chibolo (kid)," they said. Instead, the military shipped them all to the base in Totos. Cirilo
Galindo Huamaní’s young brother-in-law was released by the military; however, Cirilo and the
other captives brought with him to Totos were all killed in the Sankaypata massacre.977
The military’s counter-insurgency campaign in the district in May, 1983 followed a plan enacted
in other highland districts. Violent repression was combined with demands to resurrect state
functions and offices. Community authorities banned by Sendero were reassigned by the
military. A daily accounting of residents in each barrio was instituted, and self-defence militias -
or rondas campesinas - were created in communities.978 District residents submitted their
communities to military control in late May, even displaying white paper flowers at military-
required assemblies to signal surrender.979 In the interests of survival, residents quickly
conformed to the military’s demands, even if it meant having to live double lives, presenting a
firm pro-government face when the soldiers appeared, or as Senderista supporters when the
guerrillas returned – a strategy no doubt also employed by Chuschinos at times. Guillermo Vilca
Galindo was a lieutenant governor of Quispillaccta in 1982. “When the terrorists arrived, we
behaved like Senderistas; when the military came, we fought alongside the military. That’s how
we behaved. Our lives depended on a thread, and there was no other way out.”980 Vilca Galindo
was a former member of the armed forces but was still detained by the military for one week in
1983, accused of helping to organize community members to be Senderistas. He vigorously
977 Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 258-59.
978 Luis Medoza Achallma, appointed to be an authority in Catalinayuq by the military in late May, remembers the
conjunction of deadly repression and demands for cooperation by the Army that month. Quispillacctinos would be
pulled from community lineups to disappear in helicopters to the Totos army base, never to be seen again. But those
left behind were exhorted to loyalty and activity against Sendero: The soldiers filled the helicopter with those
fingered as Sendero sympathizers by a peasant dressed in military cloths, he explained. “To those of us left, the
Captain asked: “Who are you with?” We responded in chorus: “With you my general!” Again, he asked us: “Are
you going to organize against the path?” And, again, in chorus we all answered: “Yes, my general!”” Salvatierra et
al., La Vida, 251. 979
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 266. 980
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 268.
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argued with his military captors, telling them: "I am a political authority and I do what I have to
do as an authority so that the whole population will respect me."981
In the months that followed, Quispillaccta quickly implemented the military’s demands for
cooperation; however, Quispillacctinos continued to suffer disproportionately in the counter-
insurgency violence in the district, leading some to question whether neighbouring communities
were still telling the military that Quispillaccta was a Sendero stronghold. In June 1983, the
community members of Quispillaccta met in Unión Potrero and decided to form the first self-
defence committees. Each barrio would have a self-defence committee, and a mutual defense
pact was made against subversive attacks.982 Quispillaccta also participated in the wider
organization of anti-Sendero communities in the area. In September 1984, in the Rio Cachi
community of Putaje, a large meeting was held with the participation of community members of
Quispillaccta, Putaje, Wariperqa, Quchapampa, Condorpaqcha and other surrounding
communities. In total, 24 villages came together. A plan of resistance was developed and they
adopted solidarity commitments – mutual security arrangements. One of the agreements
committed Quispillaccta to fight collectively against the Shining Path and come to the aid of the
neighboring towns that were attacked.983 Their commitments were tested a few weeks later, on
24 September 1984, when dozens of Sendero militants entered Putaje, sacking and burning 41
houses. The self-defence committee of Putaje and a squad of soldiers from the military base of
Casacancha, supported by community members of Quispillaccta, pursued the Senderistas across
the D. Chuschi, finally catching up with them in the puna of Aqumate, near the border of Tuco
and the District of Paras. Three Quispillacctinos were killed along with several soldiers and
981 Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 268. His two-faced strategy was common among peasants trying to survive the
insurgency. Theidon writes about similar dynamics in the Huanta communities of northern Ayacucho that she
studied: “Villagers learned that survival might well depend on showing one face to soldiers and another to the
guerrillas. People lived their public and secret lives, masking their torn allegiances. Many people insisted that
everyone became “two-faced” (iskay uyukuna), and one could never know which way anyone might turn.”
Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 15. Vilca Galindo’s strategy of survival, though, failed his father in May 1983. His
father, Martin Vilca Tomaylla was sleeping in Llaqtuahuran when military personnel passed his house and gave
deceptive Sendero cheers. His father, acting like many trying to bend with which ever group was in town, replied
with a similar cheer, not knowing that Sendero was not outside his door. He was arrested and subsequently killed in
the Sankaypata massacre. The account of his father’s capture was in Peru’s CRV, Inform, Volume 2, 2.3, 29. 982
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 215. 983
Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 215.
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Senderistas.984 The community had now been bloodied together with the military in counter-
insurgency operations against Sendero.
In spite of their alliance with the military, Quispillaccta struggled against continued rumours that
the community supported Sendero. In 1984, when working on the orders of the Army to build a
town square in Quispillaccta’s Matriz, Catalinayuq authority Luis Mendoza Achallma heard a
rumour that the residents of Cancha Cancha and Chuschi were “coming to Quispillaccta to turn
us into “dust” (ashes).” They were again encouraging the military to attack Quispillaccta by
claiming that Quispillacctinos were all terrorists. A short time later, in Catalinayuq, Captain
Jackal sent them a military guide to bring to the town centre, and warned them to take care of
him or else be destroyed. As they returned to Quispillaccta’s town centre, dawn broke and they
recognized their mysterious guide. He was the person who Quispillacctinos believed had been
encouraging the military to again attack Quispillaccta. Heated discussion followed: “We asked
him, ‘Why do you accuse us of being terrorists and massacre us? We are people of God.’ We
told him, ‘Because of you, for calling us terrorists, they beat and torture us.’ When the group
approached Pallqa, a neighborhood due north of Chuschi’s main town, the man escaped from the
group in the direction of his village.985 The grievances against Quispillaccta ran deep and
remained dangerous, even after the Peruvian army had regained control of the district.
Explaining violence in the district in the early 1980s in the context of historical land conflicts
The early 1980s are a critical moment in the centuries-long conflict between Quispillaccta and
Chuschi because wider conflict currents in Peru began to intrude upon the district, eventually
enveloping its residents in a brutal civil war for more than a decade. Understandably, scholars
have wondered whether land conflicts in the district either contributed to the rise of Sendero in
the area, or helped to condition patterns of violence in the district during the brutal early 1980s -
during Sendero’s early violent actions in the district and the government counter-insurgency in
the area. From the beginning, astute observers of developments in the district like Isbell
suspected that the long history of local conflicts between Chuschi and Quispillaccta played some
984 Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 215.
985 Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 252-3.
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role in the violence in the area during the Sendero insurgency – though the precise role was
never explained in detail. Recent research by historians like Miguel La Serna has come to firmer
conclusions based on an examination of past land conflicts in the district, linking Sendero’s
violence against Chuschinos during the 1980s dirty war to Quispillaccta’s long-standing land
grievances against Chuschi. The specific claims of scholars like La Serna that historical land
grievances contributed to the rise of Sendero and help explain Sendero’s violence in the district
in the early 1980s – particularly his claim that Sendero found greater support for its violence
from aggrieved Quispillacctinos – needs careful consideration, however. Claims that
Quispillacctinos used support for Sendero to seek redress for historical land grievances fails to
adequately consider the implications of Quispillaccta’s success in the land struggles of the 1960s
and 1970s, and the outcome of the 1981 peace settlement between Quispillaccta and Chuschi.
In lights of the careful assessment of patterns of violence in the district in the early 1980s
outlined above, some recent interpretations about the sources of Sendero’s support in the district
and reasons for Sendero violence during the early 1980s appear questionable.
Research by Isbell, Sànchez Villagomez, Castillo Gamboa, La Serna, and my own conversations
with district residents, confirms that many comuneros in the district, regardless of which
community is examined, supported – or, at least, tolerated - Sendero’s efforts in 1981 and 1982
to rid the district of bad apples - to punish delinquents, thieves, and those who abused their
power.986 No doubt, many found Sendero’s actions extremely distasteful. There was a strong
tradition of avoiding the use of violence or displays of public conflict among comuneros in the
district, as Isbell noted in the 1970s.987 Historically, peasants channeled much of their inter-
community conflict in the back and forth litigation over land disputes. Using violence as a
means of conflict management appears to have been rare, a pattern Theidon also noted in
Huanta.988 Sendero’s willingness to use humiliation and public violence in 1981 and 1982 –
986 La Serna’s account of how different communities in the district supported Sendero’s specific actions against
these bad apples is the most detailed to date, and rings true with my research. Building on past work by Isbell and
Sànchez Villagomez, his account stresses that district peasants supported Sendero’s efforts to discipline those who
violated peasant conceptions of moral order and those who abused their positions of authority for their own gain.
See La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 149-157. Scholarly analysis of peasant responses to Sendero are discussed
in Degragori, How Difficult it is to be God, 62-65. 987
Isbell, To Defend, 230-233. 988
Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 188-191. She writes: “Conflicts were constant battles within and between villages,
and ritualized battles figured among the conflict management mechanisms practiced throughout Ayacucho.
302
including lethal violence – must have been a terrible shock to many district residents. However,
scholars are probably correct that community members throughout the district accepted or at
least tolerated this violence because of frustration that these abusers and local criminals were not
being stopped by state authorities. Comuneros only began to actively turn on Sendero in late
1982 and 1983 when they began targeting district residents who many believed had not violated
community norms and practices, and thus were not legitimate targets. (The coercive hammer of
the military’s counter-insurgency operations in the district at this time no doubt hastened the shift
against Sendero, as discussed above.) As Isbell wrote, comuneros turned on Sendero when
“Sendero went too far. It went beyond killing known enemies and killed village authorities. It
promised a better world where “truth without deceit is supreme.” But Sendero did not bring the
promised truth; rather, it replaced the old power with its own authoritarianism.”989 Peasants
rejected Sendero’s authoritarianism in the same way that they rejected traditional gamonales. 990
So, Sendero’s lethal justice may have offered district comuneros a form of peasant justice for
violation of community norms in the face of an incompetent or absent state. La Serna
convincingly argues that Sendero’s actions disciplined local leaders or power holders who
violated the cultural component of peasant moral expectations – that a cultural moral economy
existed in Ayacucho communities composed of “morally established assumptions that
indigenous peasants brought to their relationships with all local power holders.”991 Specifically,
La Serna argues that indigenous peasants had a “power pact” with local power holders, “in which
peasants were willing to submit to and legitimize the dominion of local power holders provided
that the latter lived up to these cultural expectations.”992 Community leaders or Mistis who
violated peasant moral expectations through corruption, abuse, theft, possession of community
land, or other moral failings were thus seen as legitimate targets for punishment or censure.
However, although the battles were widespread, the exercise of lethal violence was rare.” Theidon, Intimate
Enemies, 190. Theidon quotes Carlos Iván Degragori who frequently heard the expression in rural Peru, “castigar
pero no matar.” Punish but do not kill. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 190-1. 989
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 94-5. 990
Heilman importantly notes that Degregori was mistaken in concluding that peasant acceptance of Sendero’s
authoritarianism in the early 1980s was conditioned by peasant tolerance of gamonales in rural Ayacucho. Heilman,
Before the Shining Path, 197. 991
Miguel de la Serna, “Murió comiendo rata: Power Relations in Pre-Sendero Ayacucho, Peru, 1940-1983,”
A Contra Corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 9, no.2 (Winter 2012): 4. 992
La Serna, “Murió comiendo rata,” 4.
303
Sendero’s targeting of such moral misfits thus faced little opposition among district residents,
according to La Serna.
This argument tilts less toward James Scott’s moral economy argument and more toward notions
of good governance and accountability. Though La Serna suggests that his argument explains
why peasants were willing to subjugate themselves to some legitimate local power holders but
not others, in practice this “subjugation” often amounted to what many of the governed in
democratic societies tolerate from those who govern them. Mestizo elites holding land long-
claimed by communities were not seen as legitimate, and were not offered moral legitimacy like
landholding elites in Scott’s moral economy account. However, some local landholding elites
could retain legitimacy by upholding the moral power pact in the eyes of local peasants. Local
Chuschi mestizo Ernesto Jaime, for example, was accepted as a community development leader
by Chuschinos, lauded for his role in directing the fight against neighbouring land grabbers like
Quispillaccta, and respected for putting the welfare of the community of Chuschi above his own
interests, even though he was widely known to be one of the largest landowners in the district.
When he died in 2005, the community gave him a hero’s funeral, with a parade through town.
Jamie was clearly seen as someone who lived, both personally and during his role as a
community authority, with cultural legitimacy among Chuschinos, compared to other abusive
mestizo elites in Chuschi like Humberto Ascarza.993 Jamie was a proud man in person, who
wanted his voice to be heard in communal meetings, even when I met him in 2004 in his late
80s. Some Chuschinos privately whispered to me that he was a Misti, had stolen land from
widows, and was arrogant, thinking himself better than other comuneros. But La Serna is correct
when he says that Jamie was “flawed, to be sure, but generally respectful of the power pact.”994
Evidence collected by Isbell, La Serna, and Sànchez Villagomez strongly supports the
conclusion that Sendero’s early violent acts in the district targeting violators of moral justice and
moral power pacts were largely accepted. In eastern Cangallo, historian Jaymie Heilman notes
that Sendero similarly killed abusive local elites in the early 1980s, violence that horrified
993 La Serna’s article, “Murió comiendo rata,” discusses the contrast between these two Chuschino elites.
994 La Serna, “Murió comiendo rata,” 27.
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peasants, even if they “understood” why these elites were targeted.995 However, we cannot
easily conclude that acceptance or tolerance of Sendero actions amounted to active or passive
support for Sendero’s wider revolutionary goals. Clearly, actions in 1983 showed that when
push came to shove and comuneros had to decide if revolutionary goals trumped indigenous
peasant cultural norms, communities turned on Sendero.
The idea that support for Sendero stemmed from those who were aggrieved by violations of local
“power pacts” also dovetails with research discussed above about how the impacts of peasant
economic and social differentiation stemming from capitalist development in the Andes during
the post-WW2 period may have influenced support for groups like Sendero. Here the material
basis for grievances discussed in the revolution literature, combine with insights from Peruvian
social change literature and empirical findings in highland districts like Chuschi. Economic and
cultural differentiation was more palatable in a changing Peru if the newly upwardly well-off and
ambitious peasants adhered to cultural moral power pacts in rural communities. However, when
their ambitions and actions led them to violate cultural norms among peasant communities,
because they took advantage of new-found wealth or positions to unfairly enrich themselves at
the expense of the community or individual peasants, grievances built-up that were sometimes
exploited by groups like Sendero. By the mid-late 1970s, the path to becoming an abusive Misti
or gamonal in rural Ayacucho - behaving like a rural “boss” who violates the local moral power
pact - might be a result of a historical landowning legacy or it could be the result of new-found
development success. The reality was locally contingent. However, the reactions of peasants to
violations of the moral power pact were similar in different communities. Such individuals were
not seen as legitimate and thus worthy of protection from censure or targeting by groups like
Sendero. Within communities, the continued existence of such abusive individuals into the late-
1970s, years after Agrarian Reform was supposed to rid the highlands of Mistis, might also
explain why some would turn to support Sendero’s actions against other community members.
Less convincing, however, are La Serna’s claims that specific support for the Sendero uprising in
the district was an extension of intercommunity conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta.
Bloodshed from the 1960s was certainly on the minds of peasants in the district when Sendero
995 Heilman, Before the Shining Path, 192 & 196.
305
entered in the early 1980s, La Serna writes.996 He goes on to say that, “[t]he intense inter-
community struggle provided an important incentive for peasants to support the Shining Path in
the early years of the rebellion,”997 and “that indigenous Chuschinos and Quispillacctinos
manipulated the political violence to revisit the historic intervillage feud.”998 In fact, La Serna’s
argument goes a step further in linking historical land conflicts to differences in peasant support
for Sendero between communities. La Serna repeatedly argues that Quispillaccta’s support for
Sendero was broader and deeper than support in Chuschi, and that this support was directly
linked to decades of inter-community conflict.999 It is no surprise that two of the four university
students who burned the ballot boxes were from Quispillaccta, La Serna argues, because their
actions that day “may have been fueled as much by young Quispillacctinos’ desire to burn down
their rivals’ administrative center as it was by their desire to ignite the flames of communist
revolution.”1000 “There were more terrorists in the zone of Quispillaccta, they were united with
them,” La Serna quotes another Chuschino, Gregorio Cayllahua, as saying in TRC testimony.1001
For La Serna, revenge against Chuschi explains why so many Quispillacctinos seemed to have
turned to supporting the Shining Path when the insurgency began. Here he echoes Gustavo
Gorriti’s history of the conflict, where Gorriti claimed that Sendero “gained much more
influence in Quispillaccta than Chuschi.”1002
By contrast, in discussing why Chuschinos supported Sendero to settle scores with Quispillaccta,
La Serna comes to confusing conclusions. After many pages detailing the historical conflict
996 La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 135.
997 La Serna, To Cross the River of Blood, 136.
998 La Serna, The Corner of the Living,158.
999 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 160-63. La Serna’s certainty of Quispillaccta as the source of Sendero
support in the district is even sharper in an earlier publication, when he writes that “…even the very first episode of
Shining Path insurgency in Peru, which we have taken to signify the Initiation of the Armed Struggle (ILA) against
the Peruvian state, may have been fueled as much by young Quispillacctinos’ desire to ignite the flames of
communist revolution in a metaphorical sense as it was to ignite the shingles of their rivals’ administrative center.
The significance of this act would not have been lost on Chuschinos, serving as a political parallel to the burning of
Chuschino religious centers in years past. All this leads us to the conclusion that in Chuschi the “river of blood” did
not only lead to a classless society. It also led, quite literally, to Quispillaccta.” La Serna, To Cross the River of
Blood, 136. 1000
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 162. 1001
La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 162-63. 1002
Gorriti, The Shining Path, 19. Gorriti offers no evidence or citations to support this claim.
306
between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, La Serna writes that “it should come as no surprise that
Chuschinos used the Shining Path insurgency as a pretext for revisiting this conflict.”1003 While
he acknowledges that most of the victims in the early years in the district were from
Quispillaccta, his detailed discussion of specific Sendero killings accepted by Chuschinos leaves
the impression that Chuschi’s support for Sendero was limited in scope and time, primarily to
punishing transgressions of the moral power pact.1004 His examples of Quispillacctino victims
targeted by Sendero with Chuschi’s approval include two well-known community delinquents
who were condemned even by their own community members in Quispillaccta.1005 With their
deaths, he acknowledges that Chuschi’s support for killing morally degenerate Quispillacctinos
was its way of settling scores with Quispillaccta over land clashes.1006
However, nowhere does La Serna investigate whether Chuschinos – and community members
from Chuschi’s affiliated hamlets – supported killing Quispillacctinos for revenge who were
neither widely accepted moral delinquents nor abusive authority figures – the main targets of
Sendero’s early violence in the district. Nor does La Serna investigate Isbell’s suggestion that
the violence in the district perpetrated by the Peruvian military was directed by ordinary
Chuschinos at ordinary Quispillacctinos because of their historical land conflict.1007 In the end,
the uncomfortable question that La Serna fails to examine is the extent to which the excessive
targeted killing of Quispillacctinos, during Sendero’s rule of the district and particularly during
the military counter-insurgency campaign in the area – killings which far outnumbered the
killings of Chuschinos,1008 was largely spurred by score-settling of the historical land conflict
between the two communities against Quispillaccta, the major victor in those conflicts during the
1960s and 1970s?
The deeper understanding of the specific dynamics of the historical land confrontations in the
district over many decades outlined above provide the answer to this question. By early 1980s
1003 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 160.
1004 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 158-61.
1005 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 160-161.
1006 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 161.
1007 Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 89.
1008 A fact noted by Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 87.
307
when Sendero began to openly operate in the D. Chuschi, Quispillaccta had been far more
successful in land conflicts with Chuschi and its annexes. This reality formed the context of
social and political conflict in the district as Sendero’s operatives began to plan their insurgency
against the Peruvian state in the district during this time. The peace settlement between Chuschi
and Quispillaccta that was negotiated in late 1981 and finalized in February, 1982, formally
recognized Quispillaccta’s control over most of the contested terrain in the Rio Cachi zone and
left those who lost out in this struggle bitterly disappointed. Remarkably, La Serna’s account of
the intercommunity conflicts between Chuschi and Quispillaccta never mentions this peace
settlement, even though the deal that was reached finally established a secure and lasting line of
division between the communities in the contentious Rio Cachi zone and in the hills above the
Rio Pampas settlements. It was a deal that has withstood the test of the dirty war in the district
after 1982, and it has survived the post-insurgency era to the present day. 1009
While the peace deal was able to finally settle the most contentious part of the long-standing
conflict between the communities, the outcome of the settlement had important impacts on both
communities because it froze in place a specific reality on the ground in the Rio Cachi zone – a
reality that, in the end, favoured Quispillaccta in the long-running land conflict with Chuschi.
Quispillaccta now essentially had legal control over much of the contentious Rio Cachi zone that
they fought over with Chuschi. Added to this, Quispillaccta was similarly successful in the late
1970s in its conflict over Pillcoccasa, an outcome that disadvantaged comuneros from some of
Chuschi’s sister annexes like Cancha Cancha. These outcomes provide the answer to the
unanswered question above: Quispillaccta’s victories in contentious land disputes spawned
grievances among the losers, grievances that some sought to settle during the Sendero
insurgency, and more importantly, during the Peruvian military’s counter-insurgency campaign
in the district. Violence was perpetrated against Quispillacctinos to a greater degree than against
Chuschinos during early 1983 precisely because of Quispillaccta’s decades-long successes in
land disputes with Chuschi and its annexes.
1009 In fact, in a recent publication listing unresolved border disputes between communities in Ayacucho, the
centuries-long dispute between Chuschi and Quispillaccta is not listed. See Cuadro Nº 12, Conflictos Entre
Comunidades Por Linderos No Delimitados, Región De Ayacucho, in Roger Maquera and Serafín Osorio, Las
comunidades campesinas, 18.
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Chapter 9 Conclusion
The implications of the D. Chuschi case study findings for research on the causes of rural
violence and research on the linkages between human-induced environmental change and violent
conflict are outlined in five main points in the concluding chapter of the dissertation.
Qualitative fieldwork pays off – delayed temporal impacts of resource capture and revised understanding of conflict causes
The dissertation’s local, field-based approach to examining environmental change-conflict
linkages has satisfied many of the suggestions of scholars like Tobias Ide, who have promoted
field-based qualitative research as a way of advancing our understanding of debates about
environmental change-violent conflict linkages, including debates about climate change and
violent conflict.1010 Process-tracing and ethnographic research methods can highlight temporally
deferred impacts of human-induced environmental change, Ide notes, and better contextualize
change at the local level. This can allow scholars to “pinpoint such wider social, economic, and
political dynamics which are highly relevant for understanding … [environmental change]-
conflict links, but which are easily ignored by approaches focusing on the narrow relationship
between two variables.”1011 In the D. Chuschi, the conflict impacts of local resource capture in
the decades following Conquest, when highland estates were established by wealthy Mestizo
elites in the puna of the Rio Cachi basin at the expense of local communities, would help cause
conflict between communities centuries after peasants were originally dispossessed of grazing
lands in this area.
This study captured the delayed temporal dynamics of conflict in the district. Conflict dynamics
between actors involved in the original capture of grazing lands were largely irrelevant centuries
later; conflict in the late twentieth century was not between the land-grabbing Mestizo elites and
the communities who lost them, but between rival communities fighting for control of these
former hacienda lands. By the 1960s and 1970s, the old Mestizo elites and the Catholic Church
1010 Ide, “Research methods,” 1-14. See also the sources in note 12.
1011 Ide, “Research methods,” 5.
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who were the source of so much local enmity ceased to have much relevance in land affairs in
the district, apart from the conflict between the community of Chuschi and the owners of the
former Yaruca hacienda lands. Abusive local mestizo elites living in Chuschi’s main town were
instead a source of continuing conflict for district residents, especially in the intra-community
struggles in Chuschi described by La Serna.1012 These local Mistis and lawyers hired by the
communities to advance their litigation also aggravated conflict between Quispillaccta and
Chuschi in the 1960s and 1970s, as described above, and complicated efforts to find a peaceful
solution to the land conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta.1013 It is likely that some elites
probably aggravated conflicts between Chuschi and Quispillaccta for their own benefit, in ways
that harken to insights from Colin Kahl1014; though, these linkages were not described in detail in
this dissertation. Unsurprisingly, when peace was achieved between Chuschi and Quispillaccta,
1012 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, chapter 3.
1013 This was confirmed by numerous community members that I spoke with in both Quispillaccta and Chuschi.
Lawyer Braro Albornoz from Huamanga was one Misti community members from both communities agreed helped
worsen the conflict between Quispillaccta and Chuschi in the years leading to the 1960 Kimsa Cruz conflict.
According to an account from a Quispillacctino anciano, Albornoz advised Quispillaccta to kill some Chuschinos
because it would help speed up their land settlement litigation. When Quispillaccta rejected his advice, Albornoz
angrily kicked out the Quispillacctino authorities from his office. He was soon working for Chuschi and
encouraging them to kill some Quispillactinos to speed up their land settlement. Interview, Esteban Nuñez,
Quispillaccta, October 15, 2004. A Chuschino noted that lawyers like Albornoz were bad because they did not want
a solution. They were Quichka mikuy – someone who eats thorns. Interview, Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua, Chuschi,
October 24, 2004. Albornoz seemed to have played the role of a typical tinterillo – literally, “one who deals with
ink,” a phrase given to lawyers or amateur lawyers. Stephen Brush quotes Metraux’s description of the role of
tinterillos: “…in regions where the Indians’ lot has not improved as a result of an agrarian reform land hunger
sometimes assumes the form of an obsession. It gives rise to interminable lawsuits between Indians’ to the
advantage of the notorious tinterillos – shady lawyers, who since the colonial era have earned a living by exploiting
the Indians.” Quoted in Brush, Mountain, 61. Heilman also notes the damaging impacts of tinterillos in Carhuanca,
in eastern Cangallo, in the mid-twentieth century. See Heilman, Before, chapter 4. 1014
Kahl, States, 227. As scarcities of cultivated and pasture lands increasingly challenged household livelihoods
in the district after 1940, there was an increase in clashes within the community of Chuschi between Mestizo elites
and peasants. Of course, there were other important changes also taking place among the peasantry that helped
mobilize them to throw off the yoke of elite domination in Chuschi in the 1960s and 1970s, like increasing
education, agrarian reform, greater national and regional political activity among peasants, and increasing economic
development opportunities. Local environmental change was only one factor among many in the district that
accelerated peasant activism in Chuschi and increasingly led them to challenge traditional Mestizo elites. This is a
broader range of factors than proposed by Kahl in his elite exploitation thesis. Whether elites in Chuschi sought to
aggravate conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta as a way of maintaining their control in the district remains
unproven, however, even if there are hints of an aggravating role for elites based on field interviews and in the work
of La Serna.
310
a new generation of peasant leaders brokered the final deal, free from the decades of corrupt and
abusive influences from Chuschi’s mistis.1015
By pushing the temporal scope of this study to the pre-Colonial and Colonial period, this
dissertation also reveals how many scholars misdiagnosed the roots of local conflict in the
district, because they failed to understand the degree to which elite capture of lands in the district
had conditioned livelihood realities between communities in the twentieth century. As a result,
scholars failed to recognize how conflict over efforts to reclaim elite-captured lands could help
drive violent conflict in the years before and during Sendero’s uprising. For decades scholars
saw the conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta as an inter-community struggle over land, in
a district largely free from the exploitative impacts of large haciendas. Billie Jean Isbell, the
celebrated ethnographer of Chuschi stated that Chuschi “has escaped many of the semifeudal
relationships of the hacienda system” because “[h]aciendas did not develop in Chuschi’s
marginal land with its immense expanse of high puna communal pastures.”1016 Isbell was
echoing the views of IEP ethnographic studies of the district in the 1960s. District boundaries
helped to obscure the pernicious impacts of hacienda domination in the district because most of
the historical haciendas impacting the communities in the D. Chuschi were located in
neighbouring districts to the north.
These views had implications for scholarly analyses of Sendero’s rise in Cangallo in the 1980s
and 1990s. Degregori argued that southern provinces like Cangallo had few large haciendas,
compared to northern Ayacucho, so class conflict spurred by elite land-owner domination likely
had little to do with the growth of Sendero in this region, compared to the impact of locally
abusive elites or gamonales. Isbell even speculated that Sendero chose the D. Chuschi for its
first armed actions precisely because of the absence of a history of hacienda domination.1017 As
1015 When examining conflict dynamics between Chuschi and Quispillaccta from the 1940s to mid-1970s, there
were always some abusive Mistis in positions of authority in the district or as authorities in the community of
Chuschi. Their presence correlates to actions which worsened relations between the communities during this period,
and thus cannot be entirely discounted. Quispillaccta, as noted above, did not have any abusive Mistis, according to
informants; though, there were a small number of community members or outsiders that some Quispillacctinos
characterized as Mistis who helped navigate the legal side of land conflicts between communities, thus possibly
contributing to the conflict’s durability and scope. 1016
Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses in Rural Ayacucho,” 78. 1017
Isbell wrote: “I believe that Sendero chose Chuschi for its initial military operations precisely because of this
absence of haciendas, which allowed [Sendero Luminoso] to experiment with peasant communities that had strong
311
a result, scholars have over-emphasized the degree to which violent conflict in the district was
spurred by historical and constructed ethnic differences – the Canas of Quispillaccta versus the
Aymaraes of Chuschi – and the impact of abusive gamonales. Given the degree of historical
ethnic mixing noted by scholars like John Earls,1018 can we characterize the conflict in the district
as a conflict between neighbouring ethnic groups? Or, is it more accurately portrayed, as this
thesis argues, as an inter-community land conflict aggravated by the impact of centuries of elite
capture of patrimonial lands, supply and demand scarcities, and perceptions of ethnic differences
between communities in the district? Key to explaining the violence in the district in the 1960s
and 1970s, and the particular form of violence in 1983 during the military’s counter-insurgency
campaign, was the way that conflict between Quispillaccta and Chuschi played out over efforts
to reclaim former hacienda lands in the district. Since the pre-Conquest period, elites had also
manipulated ethnic difference among communities in the area for their own purposes,
heightening conflicts between Quispillacctinos and Chuschinos. Twentieth century land
conflicts, aggravated by supply and demand scarcities in the district, similarly worsened
divisions between groups in the district. Thus, historical patterns of resource capture and their
social effects described in this dissertation were crucial for aggravating and setting the causal
pathways in the latter decades of the twentieth century toward inter-community violent conflict
in the district.
This conclusion does not speak directly to the question of whether scarcities in livelihood
resources directly led to or contributed to the Sendero’s revolutionary uprising, which was the
original question guiding this thesis. However, the evidence presented here demonstrates that
environmental scarcities, combined with other important political-economic and social factors,
aggravated group conflict between communities in the district in the decades leading up to
Sendero’s insurgency. These linkages between environmental scarcities and inter-community
violence are highlighted as the red pathway in the systems diagram below, Figure 32.
communal structures, autonomy over their resources, and whose experiences with capitalistic market penetrations
were minimal. By initiating their revolution in what they believed to be a region that had escaped many of the semi-
feudal relationships of the hacienda system, Sendero perhaps hoped to avoid the mistakes made by the guerrillas
inspired by the Cuban revolution who failed to gain the support of hacienda peons for their short-lived insurgency in
1965.” Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 78. District residents were no doubt aware of the long shadow
of hacienda control of their patrimonial lands in the first years of Sendero’s uprising, let alone the impact of abusive
Mestizo elites in the district, even if there were few functioning haciendas left in the area at that time. 1018
Noted above in footnote 333.
312
Revising theoretical links between environmental change and violent conflict
This dissertation’s findings about how environmental scarcities, combined with other political,
economic, and social factors, aggravated group conflict between communities in the D. Chuschi
informs long-standing debates around qualitative environment-conflict research, suggests
revisions in hypothesized causal mechanisms, and supports some key findings. Processes
described here support some of Homer-Dixon’s environment-conflict hypotheses, but suggest
clarification and refinement are needed in others. Resource capture of grazing lands and Colonial
relocation of communities to the lower Rio Pampas zone of the district stunted livelihood options
for communities in the district. But the hypothesized process of resource capture described by
Homer-Dixon1019 is not as helpful in explaining developments in the district compared to
political ecologist research approaches that emphasize how “social relations of production and
the social fields of power” resulted in particular “systems of access to and control over
resources,” by elites in the district, and the consequences for social stability when these systems
1019 Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 74-75.
313
of control and power broke down.1020 Consumption-driven demand signals were acted upon by
Mestizo elites who saw highland grazing lands as valuable commodities to seize, irrespective of
patterns of population growth among peasants, and this drove resource capture during the
Colonial and early Republican period in the district.1021 This case suggests that Homer-Dixon’s
conception of resource capture should be revised to consider situations when population growth
does little if anything to spur elites to grab resources. Instead, we should acknowledge that in the
D. Chuschi case and in many others, the incentives of consumption demands are sufficient for
driving resource capture.1022
The impacts on households of resource capture in the D. Chuschi during the Colonial period
were moderated for several hundred years by the relative abundance of land for households
following the severe population declines after Conquest. Supply and demand pressures on
households as a result of heavy reliance on cultivated assets in the southern zone of the district
began to be felt in the twentieth century, this dissertation concludes, as populations recovered in
the district. Growing supply and demand pressures in the Rio Pampas zone of the district
presaged increasing ecological marginalization1023 of households in this area, as yield declines
and extensification of agricultural production signalled greater pressure on cultivated assets in
this zone. Homer-Dixon and colleagues from the Toronto Group are thus correct in arguing that
population-driven supply and demand impacts cannot be endogenized to political-economic
factors and processes.1024 Detailed evidence presented in Chapter 7 highlight the increasingly
negative impacts of such processes on households, particularly in Quispillaccta.
However, the livelihood immiseration from ecological marginalization predicted by Homer-
Dixon’s theory failed to materialize for many district households because local and regional
1020 Quoted in Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-Conflict Research: Moving Towards
Consensus." 42. 1021
These land seizures were happening, in fact, in the context of low or falling peasant population levels in the
district. 1022
I have developed this point more extensively in Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-
Conflict Research: Moving Towards Consensus." 44-47. This point does not invalidate Homer-Dixon’s conception
of resource capture, which posits an interaction between population growth-driven demand changes and elite moves
to capture scarcer, more valuable resource assets. I simply did not find this process at work in this study. 1023
Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 77-79. 1024
Deligiannis, "The Evolution of Qualitative Environment-Conflict Research: Moving Towards Consensus,"
42.
314
adaptation options were available. To deal with worsening impacts of supply and demand
scarcity, many peasants shifted livelihood activities to increasingly emphasize animal husbandry
and moved to settle contested grazing lands in the northern puna zone of the district. As well,
strategies of temporary or semi-permanent migration and petty commodity production were
increasingly employed to supplement household livelihoods. While resource capture and
ecological marginalization were linked in the D. Chuschi case, as Homer-Dixon suggests1025,
they were temporally distant and not connected in ways predicted by his hypotheses. More
importantly, household adaptations to the impacts of demand and supply changes in the twentieth
century suggest that Homer-Dixon’s conception of ecological marginalization as a process for
household immiseration overly simplifies dynamics around human-environmental pressure on
households. Household adaptative capacity can moderate the impacts of ecological
marginalization. This conclusion is developed more fully below in section 9.5 where I discuss
this dissertation’s development of a livelihood framework for environment-conflict research.
Adaptations to demand and supply pressures by households in the Rio Pampas zone of the
district did have conflict impacts, this dissertation concludes. More generally, the historical
account of land conflict in the D. Chuschi affirms Homer-Dixon’s conclusion that
“environmental scarcities can aggravate divisions or segmentation among ethnic, religious, and
linguistic groups.”1026 Increasing group divisions may have worsened negative othering and
contributed to the outbreak of violence.1027 Clearly, as communities adapted to increasing
scarcities of grazing and cultivated lands, competition for these resources with neighbouring
communities became more pronounced, and enmity between communities increased. These
conflict processes were also stimulated by local and regional economic development trends
which increased the value of control of grazing lands for community members in the twentieth
century, particularly as peasants increasingly articulated their livelihood activities into the
expanding cash economy in the highlands. Development work in the Rio Cachi basin, stimulated
1025 Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 78.
1026 Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 96.
1027 This conclusion appears to support Ide’s suggestion that group divisions and negative othering are key factors
to pay attention to when attempting to discern environment-conflict causes. Ide, “Why do conflicts,” 62. However,
Ide classifies negative othering as a structural variable in his 2015 QCA analysis, which ignores the empirical reality
that group divisions and negative othering vary over time.
315
by efforts at the Allpachaka rural research station, probably contributed to increasing tensions
over disputed lands as those shut out of access to these lands looked on from the sidelines while
some Quispillacctinos profited from the increasing commercial opportunities that came to them
as a result of their control of the disputed lands.1028 This suggests that the impacts of scarcities
may have combined with increasing social and economic differentiation among peasants in the
area to aggravate group conflict. Peasant differentiation as a possible causal mechanism of rural
rebellion and revolution was hypothesized in chapter 2 as a possible source of Sendero support;
however, the evidence presented here suggests scarcities and economic differentiation among
peasants from different communities combined to instead aggravate community enmity, with
violent consequences during the insurgency.
Homer-Dixon has argued that scarcities interact with other socio-economic and political
variables to help produce negative social impacts. The violent clashes and the casualties from
these local land conflicts only increased the fear, mistrust, and bitterness toward neighbouring
communities in the twentieth century. These impacts did help cause households in the district to
“turn inward and to focus on narrow survival strategies” for their communities, as Homer-Dixon
predicted.1029 This conclusion is also supported by the empirical findings of two development
specialists who worked in the district between 1978 and 1983. Vera Gianotten and Ton de Wit
wrote in 1983 that boundary conflicts between Chuschi and Quispillaccta reinforced communal
organization within communities in the district.1030 After clashes in 1960, to take another
example, many families in Quispillaccta stopped sending their children to schools in Chuschi,
and Quispillaccta increasingly pressed to build their own schools. Hardening attitudes toward
1028 I acknowledge that the evidence for this point is not developed sufficiently in this dissertation. Further
research in the district is needed to comprehensively document how economic development patterns in the Rio
Cachi zone of the district played out between Quispillaccta and competing communities in the 1970s. However, the
evidence presented above points to this conclusion. In outlining why Sendero arose in eastern Cangallo and the
province of Victor Fajardo, Theidon points to the impacts of frustrated economic and development expectations in
the context of the economic crisis that hit Peru in 1976, particularly among students and teachers. Theidon, Intimate
Enemies, 327. Her nod toward relative deprivation theory as a cause of radicalization of wage-earning teachers and
aspiring student professionals can be seen as a parallel argument to my argument that rural developments in the
1970s in some places in the D. Chuschi was also leading some to be frustrated with their lack of progress compared
to others in their community or in neighbouring communities. 1029
Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 96. 1030
Vera Gianotten and Ton de Wit, "Organizacion Popular: El Objetivo De La Investigacion Participativa,”
Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 35 (December 1983), 105.
316
each other resulted in fewer interactions between members of different communities in the 1960s
and 1970s, divisions that would turn deadly in the early 1980s. The struggle for land between
Quispillaccta and her neighbours thus appeared to be stimulating both group-identity conflict
between different communities and Quispillaccta, but also exhibiting relative deprivation
motivations among those angry at Quispillaccta for their success. As Homer-Dixon writes, “If
the historical identity of a clearly defined social group is strongly linked to a particular set of
natural resources or a particular pattern of resources use, degradation or depletion of that
resource can accentuate a feeling of relative deprivation. Members of the group can come to feel
that they are being denied their rightful access to resources that are key to their self-definition as
a group. This relative deprivation boosts grievances that may eventually be expressed through
aggressive assertion of group identity.”1031 Grievances among competing communities built up
during Quispillaccta’s successful pursuit of land did not lead to insurgency, as Homer-Dixon’s
theory suggested. Instead, the aggrieved used events during the Peruvian government’s counter-
insurgency campaign to get back at Quispillaccta.
Scarcities can condition violence during violent conflict
These conclusions are important because they suggest that the key finding in this dissertation is
not how environmental scarcities contributed to the onset of the Sendero rebellion, but instead
how resource disputes and their outcomes conditioned patterns of violence in the D. Chuschi
during the first years of Sendero’s uprising, and particularly during the Peruvian military’s
deadly counter-insurgency campaign. Quispillaccta, largely the victor of the inter-community
conflict over land and water resources, suffered disproportionately in the military counter-
insurgency campaign after being characterized as a hotbed of Sendero support. However, given
their success in competing with their neighbours over land disputes and the community’s
economic development progress in the Rio Cachi zone, the logic of Quispillaccta being the key
centre for Sendero support in the district – a common conclusion among scholars and Peruvian
experts - is questionable. As a community, they had the most to lose by throwing their support
behind Sendero, following their success in consolidating land in the district. While some
Quispillacctinos certainly supported Sendero, the same was true for every community in the
1031 Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 147-8.
317
area.1032 There is no evidence that there were proportionally more Sendero supporters in
Quispillaccta than any other community in the district. The most logical explanation for
Quispillaccta being labelled as a centre for Sendero support and suffering disproportionately in
the government’s counter-insurgency war is that grievances stemming from their success in the
intercommunity resource competitions led some in neighbouring communities to claim that
Quispillaccta was a Sendero stronghold in order to seek revenge for their land conflict successes
– score-settling by counter-insurgency. Survivor testimony examined above seems to confirm
this conclusion.
Thus, this dissertation argues that we cannot understand how patterns of violence developed
during the insurgency unless local changes in livelihood assets are assessed over the long term.
The violence perpetrated during the insurgency and particularly after 1982, when the Peruvian
government began an aggressive counter-insurgency campaign in the area, was many times more
deadly to district residents than group conflicts over land resources in the decades before
Sendero’s insurgency. This violence disproportionately impacted Quispillaccta. Conflicts over
environmental resources thus impacted the process and direction of violence in the civil war in
the district once it began, with tragic consequences, particularly for Quispillacctinos.
Recent field research in other parts of Ayacucho provides evidence to support this dissertation’s
conclusion about the impacts of local land conflicts on violence during the civil war. At the end
of September, 1981, special Peruvian anti-terrorism police (Sinchis) entered the community of
Sarhua, across the Rio Pampas to the south of the D. Chuschi in the Province of Victor Fajardo,
beating comuneros, looting houses, and smashing communal property. They violently captured
fifteen community members and threw them in jail in Huamanga. Accompanying the police was
1032 This finding also helps to explain why Sendero targeted several Quispillacctinos from the Rio Cachi barrios in
May 1983 for execution because of their commercial and development activities. On May 20, 1983 Sendero killed
Tomás Moreno Casavilca from Catalinayuq for being opposed to Sendero. Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 246. The
same day Sendero also executed Cirilo Mendoza Mendieta, his wife Melchora Ccallocunto Conde and their son
Albino Mendoza Ccallocunto in Catalinayuq. According to Albino’s sister, Sendero said that he didn’t help the
party and preferred his business; that’s why he was killed. His parents were killed, because they were accused by
Sendero of informing on Senderistas in the community. A note left after their killing said, “If you want to accuse,
you will also be killed.” Salvatierra et al., La Vida, 270. Theidon notes that Sendero sometimes accused those who
were ideologically opposed to Sendero of being snitches to justify their execution. Peasant differentiation within
Quispillaccta as a result of land conflict success and economic development in the area may have also led to peasant
differentiation within Quispillaccta and may have helped turn some who were not prospering towards Sendero.
However, I do not have sufficient evidence to support this conclusion.
318
a local community member who accused the peasants of terrorism under the Peruvian
government’s recently passed terrorism legislation.1033 A few months earlier, in early May, the
community voted to expel “this comunero who wanted to be a gamonal”1034 from Sarhau for
various abuses, after confiscating all his property and livestock and taking back communal land
he had illegally seized in recent years.1035 The expelled ‘gamonal’ took his revenge on those
who ejected him by accusing five Sarhuino authorities of terrorism.1036 When the accused
authorities could not be located by the Sinchis, they roughly captured whoever was at hand in the
town. After a few days, police released the imprisoned landowners for lack of evidence.1037
Some time after, however, Sendero militants in Sarhua killed the abusive landowner and secretly
disposed of his body.1038 As Theidon notes, there were distinct regional patterns in Ayacucho to
killings during the Sendero years: “Although Ayacucho was the “birthplace” of Sendero
Luminoso, there were local patterns to the violence and its consequences – within and between
communities, and between these communities and the Peruvian state.”1039 Local grievances
1033 Olga M. González, Unveiling Secrets of War in the Peruvian Andes (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2011), 137-142. 1034
González, Unveiling Secrets, 127. 1035
González, Unveiling Secrets, 127-133. 1036
González, Unveiling Secrets, 133-137. 1037
González, Unveiling Secrets, 142. Several prominent Sarhuinos in Huamanga, including a border policy
officer, were instrumental in convincing authorities that the terrorism accusations were false, and securing the
release of the captured Sarhuinos. It is notable that pressure and persuasion could still overturn false terrorism
accusations in 1981while Peruvian police headed the counter-terrorism operations in Ayacucho. The military’s
arrival in Ayacucho a little over a year later, dramatically increased the brutality of Peruvian government repression. 1038
González, Unveiling Secrets, 146. 1039
Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 188. Sendero’s willingness to use violence was also used to settle scores in several
other communities in Ayacucho. Theidon describes how an angry villager in Carhuahurán, in Huanta Province,
denounced local authorities to Sendero as government snitches because he was punished for theft. Sendero rounded
up eight authorities and a random group of villagers based on a list written on a matchbook and executed all but one
comuneros, who managed to escape. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 196. In San Miguel, Ayacucho, Nory Cóndor
Alarcón and Nelson E. Pereyra Chávez examine how a decades-long intra-community land conflict between
villagers led to a targeted killing by Sendero in 1984. Nory Cóndor Alarcón and Nelson E. Pereyra Chávez,
“Desaparecidos en la penumbra del atardecer: disputas privadas, memoria y conflicto armado interno en San Miguel
(Ayacucho),” Anthropologica 23, no. 34: 2015, 63-88. In another example, Sendero was used to settle old land
disputes between the communities of Ocros and Pampas, communities in the neighbouring provinces of Huamanga
and La Mar, located on the eastern edge of Ayacucho, on the western bank of the Pampas River. Violence from
their historical land conflict helps to explain why Sendero murdered members of the community of Ocros in mid-
January, 1984. Ocros largely won the land dispute in the 1970s against Pampa, according to research by Valérie
Robin Azevedo, and this conditioned who was later targeted by Sendero and where Sendero chose to attack those
who had recently allied with the military in their counter-insurgency efforts. Sendero’s attack set off a series of
reprisals and revenge killing between the communities that killed 100 people in the first four months of 1984. See
Valérie Robin Azevedo, Sur les sentiers de la violence: Politiques de la mémoire et conflit armé au Pérou (Paris:
319
around resources and power stimulated violence in Ayacucho along with wider national
ideological struggles led by Sendero.
Environmental scarcities were thus crucially important for shaping patterns of violence during
the civil war, this dissertation concludes, in addition to influencing processes that led to violent
conflict onset. This finding is new in environment-conflict research and supports calls in recent
reviews of climate change-conflict research to explore how the “dynamics” of conflict are
impacted by climate change.1040 The dissertation’s findings also confirm work by civil war
scholar Stathis Kalyvas on the sources and nature of violence in civil war, where “individuals
and local communities involved in the war tend to take advantage of the prevailing situation” and
denounce rivals “to settle private and local conflicts whose relation to the grand causes of the
war or the goals of the belligerents is often tenuous.”1041 Violence was used instrumentally by
Peru’s military “to generate compliance” with the government, and oppose Sendero, as Kalyvas
suggests.1042 Serious human rights abuses were committed, but the violence was not
“indiscriminate repression,” as Theidon describes the violence in Huanta, in northern
Ayacucho.1043 Instead, Peru’s military set out to re-establish control over the district by
indiscriminately targeting Quispillacctinos, knowing that some were probably Senderistas or
sympathizers, but not knowing who specifically to target. For district residents, this had the
effect of appearing selective and discriminate toward Quispillaccta, though the military did abuse
OpenEdition Books, 2019), Ch 3, paragraphs 84-104. https://books.openedition.org/iheal/8256, accessed Feb. 12,
2020. The historical land dispute between the two communities is outlined in: Heraclio Bonilla, La Defensa del
Espacio Comunal Como Fuente de Conflicto: San Juan de Ocros vs. Pampas, Ayacucho, 1940-1970, Documento de
Trabajo No. 34, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989. 1040
Joshua Busby, “Taking Stock: The Field of Climate and Security,” Current Climate Change Reports 4, no. 4:
2018: 341; Cullen Hendrix, Scott Gates, and Halvard Buhaug, “Environment and Conflict,” in T. David Mason and
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell eds., What Do We Know about Civil Wars? (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016),
243-244. Hendrix et. al. are correct in noting that “environmental factors may exacerbate contestation over
property,” and that “migration induced by environmental factors is one way that could possibly spark a fight over
property.” Their suggestion that state capacity, inequality, and unclear property rights can mediate such clashes is
somewhat supported by my research. However, this dissertation’s findings suggest that greater attention should be
paid to how potentially conflictual livelihood adaptations like migration are also driven by supply and demand
scarcities, and that these pressures can heighten the stakes for conflict over disputed lands, processes ignored in
Hendrix et. al.’s discussion. 1041
Kalyvas, Logic, 364. 1042
Kalyvas, Logic, 28. 1043
Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 5.
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and kill peasants from Chuschi and its annexes as well at times.1044 Denunciations of
Quispillaccta as a Sendero stronghold by some in Chuschi and its annexes in early 1983,
stemming from decades of heated local land conflict, unleashed indiscriminate counter-
insurgency violence against Quispillacctinos. From the military’s perspective, this violence was
necessary to establish order, to turn them against Sendero and toward collaboration with Peru’s
security services, precisely as Kalyvas’ theory of indiscriminate and discriminate violence
suggests.1045 The violence was indiscriminate from the perspective of the Army and Chuschinos,
but not from the perspective of Quispillacctinos, who saw that they were suffering more than
other communities in the district.
The response from Quispillaccta seems to confirm that they felt targeted because it led the
community to conclude that if they got rid of the Senderistas in their midst, then they would not
be killed. However, if they did not eliminate the Senderistas, the entire community might be
wiped out. So, Quispillaccta quickly conformed to the military’s demands for cooperation, and
the community allied with neighbouring communities in the area against Sendero, to show their
allegiance to the state. Some Senderistas were told to leave the community, while others were
disappeared by their own community. Several Senderistas from Quispillaccta were quietly killed
by the community when they refused to leave or reform their ways. Some of the bodies were
thrown into the abandoned salt mine in the district.1046 Faced with the military’s ruthless
pressure, Quispillacctinos “learned to kill our brother” to survive. 1047 Many communities
confronted this terrible calculus in the months after the military’s counter-insurgency campaign
intensified in rural Ayacucho.1048 Disentangling motives, causes, and impacts of violence at the
1044 Kalyvas, Logic, 145. Kalyvas writes: “In practice, the distinction between selective and indiscriminate
violence hinges on public perceptions since it is possible to pretend to be selective by indiscriminately targeting
isolated individuals. As long as people perceive such violence to be selective, it will have the same effects as
selective violence. If people do not perceive it as selective, the results will be opposite, much like when they
perceive selective violence to be indiscriminate.” 1045
Kalyvas, Logic, 150. 1046
Interview, Quispillaccta, 2004. Name and location withheld. 1047
The phrase comes from Theidon, who notes similar dynamics at work in Huanta, in northern Ayacucho, where
community members had to kill the Senderistas in their midst to survive. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 5. See her
discussion in chapter 7. 1048
González discusses how community members in Sarhua killed a prominent local Senderista in March, 1983.
Cleansing the community of this Sendero leader, rather than handing him to the military was seen as the safest
321
local level in the D. Chuschi thus adds to the growing scholarly effort to make sense of the
complex reality on the ground in Ayacucho during the Sendero insurgency, and highlights
different outcomes from the impacts of scarcities than this project first hypothesized.
Scarcities shape structures and processes, rather than trigger conflict
Another key finding of this dissertation speaks to debates among environment-conflict scholars
about the causal significance of environmental scarcities and whether they can act as violent
conflict triggers.1049 Environmental scarcities in the D. Chuschi did not act to trigger violent
conflict, as Ide suggests; instead, various political and policy changes in Peru in the 19th and 20th
century triggered local violent conflicts in the district, particularly in the three decades leading
up to Sendero’s insurgency. This conclusion supports another of Ide’s hypotheses that policy
changes toward natural resources can act to trigger conflict by altering opportunity structures that
encourage groups to act.1050 Policy changes on land reform correlated to peasant activism and
conflict over land resources going back to the early 19th century, decades before scarcities began
to acutely impact household livelihoods in the district. Government reforms in the early 1800s
allowing peasants to buy land led Quispillacctinos to seek to buy declining haciendas in the Rio
Cachi zone. Reforms after World War 1 led to greater peasant activism and defence against
encroaching haciendas in the area. Policy changes in the early 1940s to finally recognize peasant
communities led both Chuschi and Quispillaccta to apply for formal peasant community
recognition and boundary marking, setting off the first large-scale inter-community conflicts in
the district in the twentieth century. Land reform movements in the late 1950s in other parts of
Peru helped stimulate the violent clashes of 1960, while nation-wide land reform in the 1970s by
President Velasco’s military-led government accelerated the struggle for contested lands in the
district. These fights reached a peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Peru’s government
faced economic crisis and a political opening to return to democratic elections in 1980. In each
case, local communities reacted to policy changes or the events triggered by these changes in
course of action by Sarhuinos, because the militant could have implicated many in Sarhua with supporting Sendero.
González, Unveiling Secrets, 206-07. 1049
Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent?” 62-3. 1050
Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent?” 63.
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other parts of Peru to seek to reclaim lost lands or solidify control over lands that they believed
were their own in the district. In some cases, economic developments combined to stimulate this
increased political activism, as with the impact of increased wool demand during and after
WW1. But, in each case, the proximate political impact of these economic and policy changes
on conflict within the district was clear.
With regards to the Peruvian military’s counter-insurgency violence in the district in 1983 and
the terrible toll suffered disproportionately by Quispillaccta, state decisions to deploy counter-
insurgency forces in the district appeared to create opportunities for aggrieved community
members in the district to get back at Quispillaccta.1051 In this case, a strong state capacity for
counter-insurgency violence possibly altered the opportunity structure for score-settling.1052
Rather than violent conflict triggers, environmental scarcities are instead causally significant as a
deep structural factor, altering causal pathways and impacting livelihood constraints and
opportunities available to households. While some might characterize environmental scarcities
as a root cause, this would be an overly narrow description of their causal impact because
scarcities also act as dynamic pressures – “processes and activities that ‘translate’ the effects of
[scarcities] both temporally and spatially”1053 into negative impacts on households, depending on
the degree of scarcities and the adaptation and coping strategies employed by households. The
structural impacts of environmental scarcities are not “static and invariate over time,”1054 as some
scholars suggest, but instead change and transform in relation to the degree of human-pressure
on the resources. Their causal structural role in the D. Chuschi case is analogous to tectonic
plates, as Homer-Dixon has suggested.1055 Their precise causal role is likely contextually
1051 We do not yet know the motivations behind those who sought to settle scores by blaming Quispillaccta as
Senderistas. Perhaps some thought it would lead to their reclaiming land now controlled by Quispillaccta in the
peace deal, though this may have also been a misunderstanding on their part of the impact of the counter-insurgency
policy. However, beyond instrumental impulses, their actions may have also been performative or driven simply by
revenge. 1052
I would like to thank Steven Bernstein and Joshua Busby for suggesting that a changing opportunity structure
and the role of the state were also crucially important for causing the violence in early 1983. 1053
See Wisner et.al., At Risk, 48. 1054
Ide, “Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent?” 62. 1055
Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 18. Homer-Dixon’s use of this geo-physical analogy to
describe the causal role of environmental scarcities harkens to Galtung’s similar usage to describe how cultural
violence expresses its impacts. See Johan Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 27:3 (1990):
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specific and difficult to generalize, however. It is conceivable that environmental scarcities
could act to trigger conflicts in other contexts.
Livelihoods should be at the centre of environment-conflict research
Research on household adaptation to environmental scarcities and other livelihood pressures in
the D. Chuschi also leads us to revise thinking about the most appropriate the level of analysis of
environment-conflict research and about prevailing hypotheses about linear processes from
environmental scarcities to violent conflict outcomes. Much of the research to date on
environment-conflict linkages has chosen to use a state-level of analysis when attempting to
determine if environmental scarcities can help cause violent conflict. This dissertation
demonstrates that such an approach is misguided, because scarcities impact households and
groups at the local level, and their local responses to these pressures are often lost if the focus is
on the state level. This dissertation has instead developed a household model for environmental
scarcity-conflict linkages. Situating the household livelihood model at the centre of the causal
analysis of the impacts of environmental scarcities allows for a more complex understanding of
the impact of scarcities in light of other factors noted by scholars like political-economic
processes. Multiple levels of analysis are necessary to gain a full picture about why violence
broke out; local and state level processes were key in early 1983. Multi-level analysis that
includes the local level should become the norm in future environment-conflict research.
Equally important, the livelihood framework developed in this study allows for an appreciation
of how household assets and capacities mediate social impacts through livelihood diversification.
Environment-conflict research that posits linear processes from environmental scarcities to social
effects and then to violent conflict is simplistic because households adapt and cope to stresses
like environmental stresses or economic transformation by diversifying activities. Certainly,
Homer-Dixon’s arguments that environmental scarcities can constrain agricultural and economic
294. Galtung described cultural violence as a “permanence,” in ways that are similar to how Homer-Dixon sees
environmental scarcities. But scarcities are not permanent or unchanging. They evolve over time depending upon
many influences. So, they can act as root causes or as dynamic pressures, to borrow the causal characterization of
Wisner et al.
324
productivity are correct.1056 But there are likely few instances of a direct impact from
environmental scarcities to social effects as he suggests. Livelihood diversification in the face of
scarcities can also result in various unanticipated social effects that are far removed temporally
or geographically from the impacts of scarcities, complicating efforts to deal with negative social
impacts that may result. The livelihood model developed in this dissertation also cautions
scholars about how livelihood diversification can lead to increased differentiation among those
impacted by scarcities, because households are not equal and they cope and adapt differently to
stresses. Differentiation can cause winners and losers among those impacted, exacerbating group
divisions or facilitating less than desirable choices from those whose coping and adaptation
strategies fail. Policy interventions for those impacted by environment change should seek to
broadly enhance livelihood opportunities, reduce human security, and build adaptive and coping
capacity, while avoiding maladaptation and outcomes that increase inequities.1057
In the D. Chuschi, communities forced to give up control of their puna rangelands during the
colonial period under the pressure of newly established Mestizo haciendas adapted and refocused
their livelihood strategies on cultivated agriculture on the hills fronting the Rio Pampas. Some
herding continued, but probably with less livestock than before colonization. Diminished by the
diseases of the Spaniards and their exploitation of labour, community cultivation efforts were
probably sufficient for livelihood needs until the early twentieth century, when growing
populations increasingly led households to look for new adaptive opportunities to supplement
livelihoods. By this time, opportunities for settling the Rio Cachi zone were increasingly
attractive, along with increasing wage labour from temporary migration and simple commodity
production. Households in Chuschi and Quispillaccta adapted to scarcities in many ways,
1056 Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 80-85.
1057 W. Neil Adger et al., "Human Security," in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Part
A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Wokring Group Ii to the Fifth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Christopher B. Field, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 762; Jürgen Scheffran, Tobias Ide, and Janpeter Schilling, "Violent Climate or Climate of Violence?
Concepts and Relations with Focus on Kenya and Sudan," The International Journal of Human Rights 18, no. 3
(2014), 376; A.K. Magnan et al., "Addressing the Risk of Maladaptation to Climate Change," Wiley
Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 7, no. 5 (2016), 661; Colette Mortreux and Jon Barnett, "Adaptive
Capacity: Exploring the Research Frontier," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8, no. 4 (2017) 7 of
12. Montreux and Barnett's review notes that the limited research on adaptation outcomes does not “support the
assumption that systems with high adaptive capacity will adapt well.”
325
depending upon the prevailing economic, political, and social constraints and opportunities. At
times, these adaptations did have important conflict implications. The impacts of scarcities in
the district defied simple, linear predictions of social effects. Their adaptations increasingly
shifted the impact of scarcities of cultivated lands to conflicts over high-altitude grazing lands in
the district’s Rio Cachi zone as more comuneros settled in this zone. Some households no doubt
prospered by these moves; however, others may have been unsuccessful with these adaptations,
particularly those whose property was destroyed or livelihoods destroyed during inter-
community conflicts.
Complex adaptive and coping responses of households modelled in this dissertation point to
many possible outcomes, and instead suggest that we need to pay attention to both changes in
household vulnerability and risk and to constraints on adaptation and coping, if we want to
model likely social effects of pressures like environmental scarcities and their possible violent
conflict implications. Increasing economic decline in the late 1970s and early 1980s in highland
Peru, as reflected in declining government investment, dropping agricultural incomes, and
reduced health outcomes described by McClintock1058 was ratcheting up the stress on peasant
households, and may have increased the significance of struggles to control contested lands in
the district. In the context of household livelihoods increasingly challenged by scarcities, these
additional stresses probably reduced the adaptive options for households in the district, and may
have further aggravated community conflict in the district.
1058 McClintock, Revolutionary Movements, 170-184.
326
Postscript I am optimistic about peace in the D. Chuschi – that a lasting peace will prevail between
community members who for centuries came to see peasants from the next community as
different; as rivals; as the other. For far too long, some people have tried to manipulate
Chuschinos, Quispillacctinos, Canchacanchinos, and others in the district for their own selfish
needs. The story outlined above shows the tragic consequences of some of these actions.
However, I see hope when I think of Mario Silverio Huamani Conde, one of my research
assistants during my time in the district, and someone who is emblematic of a new future for
residents of all the communities in the D. Chuschi. Though now based in Huamanga, Mario has
close family in both Quispillaccta and Chuschi. As we travelled around the district during my
fieldwork in 2004, Mario was completely at ease visiting family and comuneros in both
communities. His dual identity is much more common now in the district, decades after the
violence of the early 1980s left deep scars among many. Peace now holds between former rivals,
and community members are slowly building on shared identities in the district.
To be certain, memories and grievances are still raw. We saw the anger in some people when we
asked about past conflicts between district communities. These raw memories and hardened
attitudes toward their neighbours will not easily disappear. However, my interactions with
various community members and past and present authorities in the district encourage me that
many people in the district – hopefully most - have pushed past using violence to settle their
disputes. They know better than anyone the consequences of using violence to settle disputes; it
is not a cliché to say that violence begat violence in the district over the decades. Today, district
authorities no longer only come from the Community of Chuschi and its annexes.
Quispillacctinos now routinely hold the highest administrative offices in the district government.
Abusive authorities can easily be removed in the next election. Local governance is much more
representative today of those being governed.
Competition between Quispillaccta and its neighbours has not disappeared, however. In the past
decade there have been repeated efforts by some Quispillacctinos to separate the community
from the D. Chuschi, in order to create their own district in Cangallo. While unsuccessful thus
far, the sentiment behind such efforts suggest that separation is seen by some as a better solution
than building a shared future. There is scholarly evidence that competition between the
327
communities has moved into the political contests that are regularly held for district political
offices.1059 But that should be seen as an encouraging development, because healthy political
competition means that conflicts between communities can be settled within the governance
structures, where they should be settled.
Cooperation among all the community members in the district is crucially important if the
district is going to deal with the multiple challenges currently facing highland residents. While
the livelihoods of district residents have improved markedly since Sendero began its insurgency
in the area in 1980, the region remains one of the poorest in Peru.1060 Some households now
produce products that they sell for cash, whether it is milk, or vegetables like garlic and
potatoes.1061 However, most district agriculturalists only marginally produce for the local and
regional market economy, and significant barriers remain for producers in the district to increase
household production for cash markets.1062 Roads being built in the district during fieldwork in
2004, are now directly connecting even the most isolated barrios in Quispillaccta’s Rio Pampas
zone, like Pirhuamarca, and Soccobamba, to Huamanga and Lima. These road links may enable
greater market production in the future. As well, climate change is dramatically impacting
highland districts like Chuschi, as noted above, altering productive relationships and long-held
certainties about best practices for agricultural livelihoods. In semi-arid Ayacucho, possible
1059 Gustavo Flórez Salcedo, “Rivalidades comunales y contiendas electorales: micropolítica en las elecciones
distritales de Chuschi. El caso de las comunidades campesinas de Chuschi y Quispillaccta,” in Alejandro Diez
Hurtado ed., Tensiones y transformaciones en comunidades campesinas, (Lima: CISEPA-PUCP, 2012): 225-261. 1060
Oscar Espinosa de Rivero notes that Peru’s 1993 census listed Cangallo as having the fourth lowest per capital
income level among all Peruvian provinces and the fourth highest level of the percentage of households in poverty
among Peruvian provinces. Improvement has been slow. A 2002 UNDP report showed that Cangallo had the
second lowest rate of human development in Ayacucho and the lowest rage of monthly per capita income. Óscar
Espinosa, Desafíos para la inserción en el mercado por parte de familias campesinas y de pequeños productores de
cereales en la provincia de Cangallo, Ayacucho. Programa Comercio Y Pobreza En Latinoamérica, Lima:
Consorcio de Investigación Económica y Social (CIES), Febrero 2009), 7-8. 1061
Fieldwork notes. 1062
Espinosa de Rivero’s analysis notes some of the significant barriers farmers in neighbouring districts face in
increasing grain production for local and regional markets. Similar barriers are faced by household producers in the
District of Chuschi. During fieldwork in Quispillaccta’s Rio Cachi barrios I asked a dairy farmer if she produced
cheese for Huamanga’s market. I had seen several farmers selling cheese on the streets of Huamanga in an earlier
visit. She said she would like to produce cheese to sell in the market, but had no access to refrigeration or transport
to enable her to produce and sell cheese in the capital. Such barriers are common to producers who are still
relatively isolated, have limited resources and technical capacity, and located many hours from urban centres.
328
declines in the frequency and level of precipitation as a result of climate change could have
severe impacts on household livelihoods.1063
Travelling through Quispillaccta’s Rio Cachi barrios, I also I noted with interest that larger
portions of Quispillaccta’s productive punas were being partitioned and claimed by households –
walled off from their neighbours puna holdings to ensure control and access to grazing lands,
much like land in the lower cultivated zones have been for decades. These are new developments
and the implications are not well studied. Parcelization of puna holdings may lead to better
management and prevent over-grazing – particularly as climate change challenges farmers to
manage their grazing lands. However, parcelization may also lead to greater wealth differentials
among community members. Increasing household differentiation within communities like
Quispillaccta or Chuschi could undermine traditional communal governance and reciprocity
relationships. While Quispillaccta has managed to sustain its traditional governance structures,
Chuschi has struggled to keep them in place in the post-Sendero era. In both communities, the
desire of young people to leave the community for educational and professional opportunities
challenges the maintenance of traditional governance structures.1064 Accelerated market access
by remote or isolated producers may improve livelihood options for households; however,
there’s no guarantee that it will improve income levels and reduce poverty, and it may increase
the challenges communities face to retain their traditional cultural practices and communal
control of local agricultural production.1065
1063 See Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA), Agricultura sostenible para la adaptación al cambio climático en
regions vulnerables de Bolivia y Perú: Informe de línea de base del programa en Ayacucho, Ayacucho, September
2011. 1064
Mariano Aronés Palomino, “Chuschi: el territorio del Chimaycha,” in Proyecto Qhapaq Ñan: Informes de
investigación etnográfica, Pueblos y culturas en las rutas del Qhapaq Ñan, Ayacucho y Huancavelica
Campaña 2003, Volume 1 (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 2005), 132-36. 1065
Oscar Espinosa de Rivero notes that only a small number of potato producers in Cangallo have been able
improve poverty indicators through greater production for local and regional markets. Espinosa de Rivero,
Desafíos, 38-9. Mayer’s research highlighted that increasing commercialization of production impacts communal
organization: “pressure toward commercial cropping often translates into a secessionist move [by households] to
free a production zone from overall communal organization.” Mayer, The Articulated Peasant, 303.
329
We should applaud the efforts of community
members and NGOs like the Asociación
Bartolomé Aripaylla (ABA) that have
diligently worked to help district community
members face current and future challenges
from the climate or markets, while also
striving to strengthen community solidarity
and preserve traditional cultural processes.
ABA began in Quispillaccta more than
twenty years ago. The NGO has recently
been lauded for extensive efforts to build
rainwater harvesting capacities in the
district, by reconstructing and building small
water reservoirs throughout the punas that
take advantage of local bofedales –
temporary peat wetlands, which ABA helps
communities turn into rainwater storage
reservoirs, recharging local aquifers and
storing water for dry periods.1066 They have also sponsored indigenous seed fairs to encourage
the preservation and strengthening of local crop biodiversity and indigenous approaches to
nurturing local agriculture, crucially important efforts to manage both pest and climate risk.1067
As well, ABA has started programs to rebuild local agricultural terraces in the district, to
preserve soil fertility and overcome labour scarcities that handicap terrace maintenance. Such
efforts to build local resilience and capacity among district agriculturalists are tremendously
1066 Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla, Yakumama – Madre Agua - Lagunas de Lluvia y Comunidades Criadoras del
Agua, Sistematización de la experiencia de la Asociación Bartolomé Aripaylla y Comunidad de Indígenas de
Quispillaccta sobre la Crianza del Agua - Siembra y Cosecha del Agua de Lluvia (Huamanga, Ayacucho: 2014).
M.S. Maldonado Fonkén, “An introduction to the bofedales of the Peruvian High Andes,” Mires and Peat,
15(5),2014/15, 1–13. 1067
Marcela Machaca Mendieta, Crianza Andina de la Chacra en Quispillaccta (Ayacucho: Asociación Bartolomé
Aripaylla, 1994); Tirso Gonzales, Nestor Chambi and Marcela Machaca, “Agriculture and cosmovision in the
contemporary Andes: the nurturing of the seeds,” in United Nations Environment Programme, Cultural and spiritual
values of biodiversity, ed. Darrell Addison Posey (London: Intermediate Technology 1999)., 211-217.
ABA has helped spread knowledge and practice about
managed seasonal reservoirs like this one in Quispillaccta’s
Rio Cachi puna. Source: ABA
330
important and models for other communities. Such work should be encouraged and supported
where possible. Recognizing shared challenges among district residents like these, and working
to build livelihood resilience through such projects, helps to create stronger and more united
communities in the district.
For a number of years, since it first dawned on me that grievances around Quispillaccta’s land
conflict successes found deadly expression during the Peruvian military’s brutal counter-
insurgency operations, I have puzzled about why sentiments persist about Quispillaccta being a
Sendero stronghold. Clearly, there were Quispillacctinos who became active, militant supporters
of Sendero. Some comuneros, as La Serna suggests in his discussion of early support for
Sendero in the district, may even have supported Sendero as a way to strike back at Chuschi,
their historical foe.1068 But there is no convincing evidence to prove that Quispillaccta’s support
for Sendero was any greater than any other community in the district. In fact, La Serna also
notes cases of Chuschinos using Sendero as a tool to take revenge on their rival Quispillaccta.
Scholars have a responsibility to take care in leveling judgments based on an incomplete
understanding of history. There seems to be a strong scholarly consensus on the sources and
scope of early tolerance or support for Sendero’s actions in the district. However, I find some
scholars have been less than responsible in repeating and amplifying claims that Quispillaccta
was the Sendero stronghold in the district based on an incomplete accounting of developments in
the district. A thorough and judicious history of the district during the Sendero insurgency has
yet to be written. I have agonised over whether the evidence I present in this dissertation is
sufficient to prove that some of those who lost out to Quispillaccta in the decades-long fight for
district lands quietly pointed fingers at Quispillaccta, when Peru’s military demanded to know
where to find the Senderistas. I believe that the evidence I present builds on early writing by
Isbell, and more recent work by others in the district to prove that such accusations were, at their
core, tools for revenge, rather than a reflection of reality.
1068 La Serna, The Corner of the Living, 160-63.
331
So, I wonder whether the desire to exculpate Chuschi and tar Quispillaccta with the Sendero
label by some scholars is instead an attempt to make up for an earlier historical wrong – the
persistent myth among many Peruvians that Chuschi was a stronghold of Senderistas. Only a
few months after the ballot boxes were burned, according to Deborah Poole and Gerardo
Rénique, Chuschi “had become a household name throughout Peru. Evoking long repressed
colonial fears of the highland peasantry’s legitimate claims for justice, Chuschi came to stand for
coastal Peruvians as a symbol of Sendero Luminoso’s roots in Ayacucho. For Peru’s highland
citizens, it resonated as a metaphor for all the frightening implications of the ‘ILA’, as Sendero’s
acronym for ‘Initiation of Armed Struggle’. As the years went by and Sendero’s armed struggle
intensified, the nature and scope of its early exploit in Chuschi were magnified accordingly. By
1986, the influential Peruvian magazine Sí was simply repeating what had become accepted
historical fact when it described the students’ actions as a full-scale military ‘occupation’ of
Chuschi by ‘armed graduates of Sendero’s first military school.’”1069 For Chuschinos and those
who know the community and their suffering during the dirty war, the injustice of Chuschi being
the symbolic and actual representative of Sendero in Ayacucho is both evident and galling. Is
this sentiment behind the efforts of some scholars to repeat questionable claims?
We would do well to remember, as scholars working on events of such emotional and physical
tragedy, the uses and abuses of history. As Margaret MacMillan has recently written:
History can be helpful; it can also be very dangerous. It is wiser to
think of history, not as a pile of dead leaves or a collection of dusty
artifacts, but as a pool, sometimes benign, often sulphurous, which
lies under the present, silently shaping our institutions, our ways of
thought, our likes and dislikes. We call on it … for validation and
for lessons and advice. Validation, whether of group identities or
for demands, or justification, almost always comes from using the
past. You feel your life has a meaning if you are part of a much
larger group, which predated your existence and which will survive
you (carrying, however, some of your essence into the future).
Sometimes we abuse history, creating bad or false histories to
justify treating others badly, seizing their land, for example, or
killing them. There are also many lessons and much advice offered
by history, and it is easy to pick and choose what you want. The
1069 Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 57-8.
332
past can be used for almost anything you want to do in the present.
We abuse it when we create lies about the past or write histories
that show only one perspective. We can draw our lessons carefully
or badly. That does not mean we should not look to history for
understanding, support, and help; it does mean that we should do
so with care.1070
I have sought to take care in telling this story, and I hope that a fuller historical accounting of
events in the district will one day be written. If I have erred in my conclusions here, I take
responsibility for those errors and I hope that care is taken to correct them. Care and empathy
are needed to heal the wounds of the terrible tragedies in the district during Sendero’s rebellion,
particularly if we hope that Quispillacctinos, Chuschinos – all residents of the district - can work
and live together free from violence and hate in the future.
1070 Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (Toronto: Penguin Group, 2009): ix-x.
333
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350
Appendices
Appendix 1: Field Measures of Soil Erosion in Quispillaccta
Fieldbook
Number
Date Field
Measure
Number
Slope in
degrees
Type of Soil
Erosion
Measure
Soil
Erosion
T/H/Y
Acceptable Unacceptable and
Reason
1 Oct. 1, 04 1 10 Tree Root
Exposure
12.1 Yes
2 Oct. 2, 04 5 14 Waterfall
Effect
1 Yes
3 Oct. 1, 04 1 10 Rock
Exposure
7.1 Yes
4 Oct. 2, 04 2, Terrace 2 10 Build-up
Against
Barrier
- No. Failed to
record years of
build-up.
5 Oct.1, 04 1 10 Build-up
Against Tree
Trunk
- No. Failed to
record
contributing area.
6 Oct.2, 04 5 14 Pedestals 12.6
7 Oct. 1, 04 2 10 Tree Root
Exposure
- No. Failed to ask
about tree age.
8 Oct. 1, 04 2, Terrace 1 10 Build-up
against a
barrier
- No. Failed to
record years of
build-up.
9 Oct. 1, 04 3 5 Build-up
against a
barrier
- No. Failed to
record years of
build-up.
10 Oct. 2, 04 4, Top of
field barrier
10 Build-up
against a
barrier
21.3 Yes
351
11 Oct. 2, 04 4, Bottom of
field barrier
15 Build-up
against a
barrier
138 Yes
12 Oct. 2, 04 5, Large
Rock
8 Build-up
against a
barrier
No, failed to
record years of
exposure.
13 Oct. 6, 04 6, Large
Rock
7 Waterfall
Effect
0.42 Yes
14 Oct. 6, 04 6, Large
Rock
7 Rock
Exposure
68.6 Yes
15 Oct. 8, 04 8, Wall built
in 2003
13 Build-up
against a
barrier
81.4 Yes
352
1071 Cook, Demographic Collapse, 114. 1072 Cook, Demographic Collapse, 114. 1073 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 115. 1074 Rivera, Geografia de la Población de Ayacucho; figure (111,559) minus totals for the provinces of Anco (2022) and Andahuaylas (12020); Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 114. Anco was given to the Department of Huancavelica in 1822. Andahuaylas was separated from Ayacucho and given
to the Department of Apurimac in 1873. All the figures for Ayacucho have only counted those provinces which formed the Department in the 20th century. 1075 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 114. 1076 Gutierrez, Ayacucho, 6. The figure (171,857) comes from Gutierrez’s original figure (212,286) minus the totals for Andahuaylas (13,368) and for Anco (1,096). 1077 Gutierrez, Ayacucho, 6. 1078 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 127-8. Some scholars cite a census figure for 1836; however, Guttenberg’s analysis concludes that data from 1836 figures “has no value whatsoever.” 1079 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 126. This figure is calculated by only including the latter provinces of Ayacucho, as done for all the Ayacucho figures. 1080 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 126. This figure is ‘interpolated’ by Gootenberg from 1791-1850 data. 1081 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 115; Klaren, Peru, 433 gives 2,001,203 as figure for that year. 1082 Figure drawn from Gutierrez, Ayacucho, 7, subtracts Andahuaylas total from Gutierrez figure (130,070). Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 114, lists 110,886. 1083 1850 and 1862 figures from Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 114. 1084 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 115; Klaren, Peru, 433 gives 2487916. 1085 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 114. Gutierrez gives the total as 184,876, 8. This is calculated from Gutierrez’s original figure (236,577) minus the population of Andahuaylas. I have chosen to list the lower figure. 1086 Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru,” 115; Klaren, Peru, 433 gives 2651840. 1087 Official census figure. Maletta and Bardales, Perú: las provincias en cifras 1876-1981, 36. 1088 Marté Sánchez Villagómez, (Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado, 72. This figure is difficult to confirm. Three different sources offer three different figures. Sanchez Villagómez cites census data. In 1910, the Victor Fajardo was split off Cangallo to form its own province. This figure includes the population of Victor Fajardo. 1089 Sanchez Villagómez, (Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado, 73. 1876 census figures, minus totals for village of Sarhua and its annexes (Auquilla, Huarcalla, and Tomanga) which were separated from District of Chuschi in 1910 with the creation of the province of Victor Fajardo. 1090 1900 figure taken from Rivera, Geografia de la Población de Ayacucho. 1091 Rivera, Geografia de la Población de Ayacucho. Figure from a Geographic Society of Lima study. 1092 Rivera, Geografia de la Población de Ayacucho. Figure from a Geographic Society of Lima study. 1093 Ramón Córdova et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 17. 1094 Peru Population Figures from 1940 to 2007 from INEI, Censos Nacionales 2007: XI Población y VI de Vivienda. 1095 Annual Growth Rate from 1876-1940 is 1.5% 1096 INEI data for 1940, 1961, 1972, 1981, 1993, 2007 from INEI, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Departamento de Ayacucho, 2009, 17. 1097 Maletta and Bardales, Perú: las provincias en cifras 1876-1981, 41. 1098 Annual growth rate between 1876-1940 is 1.6% 1099 Census figure, cited in Gonzales Calderón, Estudio Geo-Económico Social de la Provincia de Cangallo, 77; Ramón Córdova et al., La Comunidad de Chuschi, 17. 1100 Average annual growth rate from 1876 to 1940 is 1.9%, which would lead to a doubling of the population in 37 years. 1101 Peru. Dirección Nacional de Estadística y Censos, Censos nacionales de población, vivienda y agropecuario, 1961, Table 1, 1. 1102 Peru. Dirección Nacional de Estadística y Censos, Censos nacionales de población, vivienda y agropecuario, 1961, Table 4, 3. 1103INEI, Perfil Sociodemografico - Departamento de Ayacucho, Censos Nacionales De 1993, Table 1.4. This figure is the total of Cangallo and Vilcas Huamàn, in order to represent the population of the province of Cangallo before the 1984 creation of the province of of Vilcas Huamàn. 1104 Sanchez Villagómez (Re)Pensando Lo Olvidado, 76. 1105 INEI, Perfil Sociodemografico del Departamento de Ayacucho, 2009, 21. Figures for Cangallo for 1981, 1993, and 2007 are total of Cangallo and Vilcas Huamàn. 1106 Census figures 1981-2007, INEI 1993, 2007.
Year
Peru Department of Ayacucho Province of Cangallo D. Chuschi
Peru Population
Ann Ave.
Growth Rate (%)
Ayacucho Population
Annual Ave.
Growth Rate (%) Cangallo population
Yearly Population
Change
Annual Ave.
Growth Rate (%)
Chuschi District
Population
Annual Ave.
Growth Rate (%)
1520 9,000,0001071
1620 600,0001072 -2.7
1791 1,239,1971073 0.4 97,5171074 12,4741075
1802 171,8571076 5.2 28,5661077 1,237 6.4
1827 1,516,6931078 0.6 122,8081079 -1.3 16,3251080 -489 -2.2
1850 2,001,1231081 1.2
110,4331082 -0.5
20,1761083 167 -0.9
1862 2,461,9361084 1.7
165,2101085 3.4
34,722 1,212 4.5
1876 2,699,1061086 0.7
142,2151087 -1.1
21,3561088 -954 -3.5
1,6761089
1896 3,760,0001090 1.7 302,4691091 3.8 26,5001092 257 1.1
1924 2,5871093 0.9
1940 7,023,1111094 1.41095 414,2081096 0.7 59,7431097 755 1.81098 5,8211099 5.11100
1961 10,420,357 1.9 430,289 0.2 71,1441101 542 0.8 6,4781102 0.5
1972 14,121,564 2.8 479,445 1.0 72,9081103 160 0.2 6,5941104 0.2
1981 17,762,231 2.5 523,821 1.0 68,9581105 -438 -0.6 7,0181106 0.7
1993 22,639,443 2.0 512,438 -0.2 56,135 -1068 -1.7 8,388 1.4
2007 28,220,764 1.6 653,755 1.7 58,502 169 0.3 8,278 -0.1
Appendix 2: Population of Peru, Ayacucho, Province of Cangallo, and District of Chuschi
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Appendix 3: Notes on the Use of Box and Whisker Plots
The challenge in this study was to determine how to visually present what people were telling me
about changes in crop yields from when they were younger to the present day. This study uses
box and whisker plots to show the distribution of this data at a glance. These graphs illustrate
agricultural yield data from over sixty field interviews with district residents.
Box and whisker plots are used to help summarize and measure data
on an interval scale.1107 Box and whisker plots can run vertically or
horizontally. The data are divided into four parts - or quartiles - and
the median is indicated as the line in the middle of the box. In a box
and whisker plot, the ends of the box are the upper and lower
quartiles, so the box spans the interquartile range. The middle half
of a data set thus falls within the interquartile range. The
interquartile range is represented by the height of the box (if it’s up
and down; or width if it’s set up horizontally). The whiskers are the two lines outside the box
that extend to the highest and lowest observations that are not outliers. Data points above or
below the whisker lines are outliers, representing data more than 1.5 times the upper quartile (if
above the whisker line) or 1.5 times less than the lower quartile (if below the whisker line). Plots
were made with Excel, and used quartile calculations employing an inclusive median. Data
points may or may not be included as dots on each plot, with some dots representing more than
one closely bunched data point. I have chosen to include the data points in each plot to give
some idea of the distribution of the data because I do not have the ability to create box plots that
illustrate density, like a histplot, vaseplot, box-percentile plot, or violin plot.1108 Each box plot is
also labelled to indicate the number of observations. Some note that observations about trends in
1107 Government of Canada, Constructing box and whisker plots, https://www.statcan.gc.ca/edu/power-
pouvoir/ch12/5214889-eng.htm , accessed 25 Oct., 2018. 1108
For a description of these types of boxplots, see Kristin Potter, “Methods for Presenting Statistical Information:
The Box Plot,” in Hans Hagen, Andreas Kerren, and Peter Dannenmann (Eds.), Visualization of Large and
Unstructured Data Sets, (GI-Edition Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), vol. S-4, 97--106, 2006).
http://www.sci.utah.edu/~kpotter/publications/potter-2006-MPSI.pdf (Accessed 25 October, 2018), 99-102.
https://datavizcatalogue.com/methods/box_plot.html
354
boxplots should be avoided when the number of observations is less than 10.1109 My fieldwork
plots adhere to this rule-of-thumb, with most plots having over 20 data points.1110 Observations
in the maize plots in this study are all equal to or greater than 20, while the potato observations
number greater than 20 in the contemporary field work data. Isolated historical or contemporary
observations from the district that were not collected in this study’s field work have also been
added to the graphs for comparison. These include the 1966 IIP studies, observations by visitors
to the district like Antonio Diaz Martinez in the mid-1960s, and contemporary academic work
such as the erosion study by Gaulberto Machaca. Finally, “[t]he width and fill of the box, the
indication of outliers, and the extent of the range-line are all arbitrary choices depending on how
the plot is to be used and the data it is representing.”1111
Interview data on crop yields over time (about 60 different interview data points for maize and
potatoes) pose challenges to analyse and order because elderly respondents varied in ages
between late 60s to late 90s. I asked informants to tell me what yields were like in their early
20s and in the present day (2004). Obviously, given the varying ages of informants, they were
not always speaking of the same time period when looking back to their youth. So, I collected
their estimates, and ordered them chronologically in the data table. The oldest spoke to me about
reflections from the 1930s and the youngest spoke from experiences in the 1970s. I divided this
data up into three ranges; three data sets were created representing the 1930s to 1950, 1950s to
1970s, and the contemporary period (2004). The first era represents the period when population
growth took off in the district, according to this study’s reconstruction of demographic change,
but when commercialization of agriculture was still limited. The second era, 1950s to 1970s, had
continued high population growth, increasing out-migration from the district, increasing
commercialization of agriculture in the highlands, and the introduction of green revolution
technology in the district. The last data set shows a period of agricultural recovery from the dirty
war, the return of some district residents who fled from the civil war in the area, and variation in
1109 Brian Stipak, Notes on Boxplots, Portland State University, 4 June, 2007.
http://web.pdx.edu/~stipakb/download/PA551/boxplot.html , accessed 25 October, 2018. 1110
There is some debate about the minimum number of observations for a credible box-plot. Some sources say
10; some 20 is the minimum; others suggest that as low as five data points is possible. See discussion here:
https://www.isixsigma.com/topic/box-plot-comparision-and-sample-size-issue/, accessed 25 October, 2018. 1111
Potter, “Methods for Presenting Statistical Information,” 98.
355
the final destination of their production - some for the market, much for personal consumption,
etc. Green revolution technology began to be used in the district in the 1950s to 1970s period
and is still used by many; however, some use it sparingly, if at all. These three data divisions are
admittedly arbitrary divisions. Initial inclinations to simply show then-and-now plots - two
different box and whisker plots for comparison gave way to a more nuanced approach to
illustrate the different range of dates involved in the “then” observations. In the end, dividing the
historical data up in a way that captures different historical periods in the district seems logical.
356
Appendix 4: Ayacucho map
Historical boundaries of Province of Cangallo including current Province of
Cangallo and Province of Vilcashuaman
Department of Ayacucho
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.
357
Appendix 5 - D. Chuschi and Surrounding Districts and Provinces
Source: Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Perú.