By Jorge Recharte, 1993.

Chapter 1 - Introduction

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The Regional Context of Cuyo Cuyo

Although I focus my analysis on only two of the peasant communities of the District of Cuyo Cuyo (see next section), the socially relevant space in which Cuyo Cuyeños carry out their regular subsistence strategies extends beyond the territorial boundaries of their home communities. Golte and de la Cadena (1983:23) convincingly have argued that, since the space utilized by Andean households for their subsistence activities goes beyond the physical space of their communal territories, we should not narrow our concept of community to its physical, landholding dimension. My examination of contemporary and historical subsistence strategies in Cuyo Cuyo shows that this idea is pertinent to this region (Chapters 2, 8). For example, when Cuyo Cuyeño men work in the goldfields of Madre de Dios, they partially replicate the social relations of production practiced in Cuyo Cuyo. In many ways the experience of community forms of production is extended into this distant and distinct location (Chapter 8).

Figure 1.6 gives a broad vision of the economic space in which Cuyo Cuyeños regularly participate. Most agricultural and herding activities occur within the borders of the community of residence. However, in some cases households own, rent or sharecrop the lands of other communities. Many Cuyo Cuyeños also own small coca fields in Valle Grande and Pukara Mayo, the montaña region of Sandia (Figures 1.6 and1.7). They share these areas with scores of comuneros from all over the District of Sandia (Chapters 2 and 4). This zone is mainly Quechua-speaking.

San Juan del Oro (Figure 1.6), a region that specializes in tropical cash-crops, is utilized mostly as a labor market by Cuyo Cuyeños, since most of them do not own land there. The region produces coffee and citrus fruits which are exported to the cities of Juliaca, Puno and Arequipa (Chapter 5). The farmers in San Juan del Oro are mostly Aymara-speaking people from the Huancané Province of Puno; these farmers still control subsistence resources within their highland communities of origin, in yet another example of vertically diversified production strategies (Collins 1980: 125).

Horizontal exchange along the escarpment is more restricted. Native bartering circuits of food and seed link the ecologically diverse communities of Sandia and neighboring valleys, yet the movement of people and goods, and inter-marriage is marginal on this axis. Movement of food and seed is more important up and down the valley slopes (Chapter 4). Produce is also bartered between residents of Sandia and herders of the punas of Ananea, as well as with farmers of San Juan del Oro.

Cuyo Cuyeños also travel frequently outside the Province, to Juliaca, to the goldfields of Madre de Dios, and to Arequipa and Lima. For example, seasonal migration to Lima is fairly important for a number of Puna Ayllu families who have relatives permanently residing there, mostly in the Independencia District. Fruit selling is a preferred family business in this urban setting. Puna Ayllinos, together with Puneños and other sellers, are concentrated in a two block section of Plaza Union in downtown Lima.

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The most important destination for seasonal Cuyo Cuyeño migrants is the Department of Madre de Dios (Figure 1.6). Men embark yearly on a seven to ten day truck journey to the tropical rain forest in the region of the Inambari river. A large number of Cuyo Cuyeños have squatter's rights to small plots on dozens of small creeks in the vicinity of Masuko and Huaypetue. They have established permanent houses there (Figure 1.6). Migrants either work alone, form business associations with relatives, work with locally-hired wage workers, or they utilize a combination of these types of labor relations. As noted previously, while in Madre de Dios, migrants partially reconstruct the social networks that structure production in the home district (see Chapter 8).

On the way back from Madre de Dios, Cuyo Cuyeños stop for a day or so in Juliaca to sell part of their gold and buy flour, sugar, oil, and other commercial foods at prices that are better than at home. They also may purchase tape recorders, sewing machines, bicycles, clothing, and other household items which either are difficult to obtain or too expensive in Cuyo Cuyo itself.

The dozen or so small stores in Cuyo Cuyo and the communities offer basic items such as kerosene, matches, candles, noodles, sugar, and beer. Comuneros go to Cuyo Cuyo weekly to make purchases, or to obtain legal documents, health care, or judicial services. Although Sandia, the provincial capital (Figure 1.6), has some well-stocked stores and a daily market, Cuyo Cuyeños almost never travel to Sandia for commercial reasons. They only stop there if they happen to be traveling through Sandia on their way back to Cuyo Cuyo from San Juan del Oro or Valle Grande. Occasionally comuneros travel to Sandia when they need one of the special services offered there, especially those related to notary, banking, judicial, or military documents.

In sum, although my study focuses on two communities of the Cuyo Cuyo District, it reaches beyond them to a regional level.

Field Work Methods

I carried out the present research in the communities of Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu in the District of Cuyo Cuyo from July of 1985 to July of 1986, returning for a short visit from May through July of 1987.

As previously mentioned, a striking feature of the Cuyo Cuyo valley is the thousands of stone terraces covering the steep valley walls, terraces that have been built and maintained by the local peasantry throughout the centuries. The magnitude of this transformation of the landscape attracted Dr. Bruce Winterhalder, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to Cuyo Cuyo to study the agricultural ecology of the area (Winterhalder 1984). The specific goal of the PSE project⁷ was to understand the ecological causes and consequences of peasant household decisions concerning the production, storage and exchange of agricultural

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produce.

The PSE project worked with ten households in Puna Ayllu and ten in Ura Ayllu. Data concerning household agricultural production, time allocation, and cash flow were recorded on a weekly basis over a two year period for each of the twenty households. The project also kept weather records on a daily basis. Javier Choque and Alfredo Condori, from the Universidad Técnica del Altiplano, assisted with the collection of this information under my supervision. I shared this responsibility with Margaret Graham, an anthropology graduate student from Michigan State University, who was conducting her doctoral study on women's issues. The processing of the general PSE data sets is still underway and they have been used only marginally in this report.

I actually had visited Cuyo Cuyo for the first time in 1978 when I spent over four months there conducting fieldwork for my B.A. honors thesis. In that trip I traveled to other communities located at lower altitudes in the valley and also to the coca producing region of Valle Grande. I returned for a short visit in 1980. In the summer of 1983 I visited the puna regions of Azángaro and Huancané in the provinces located immediately south of Sandia, as part of my search for a dissertation research site. These previous field experiences were valuable in helping me situate Cuyo Cuyo within a regional context.

My fieldwork emphasized participant observation in the daily life of comunero families. I chose to work both in Ura Ayllu and Puna Ayllu, hoping that the contrast would enhance my study of the juncture of gold mining and subsistence activities. My closest friends and informants in Cuyo Cuyo were mostly men, although I persistently tried to bridge the difficult barriers of Quechua and gender that separated me from women.

I regularly visited the twenty families who were participating in the PSE project, and was able to build a relationship of trust and friendship with most of them. Although I resided for the most part in an independent household with my wife and PSE colleagues, I also lived for short periods in several Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu households. Several trips to the gold placer owned by Puna Ayllinos in Ananea, and a one month stay in the goldfields of Madre de Dios -- including the daunting trip by truck from Cuyo Cuyo -- were extremely beneficial to my understanding of the Cuyo Cuyeño way of life.

The contrast between Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu in terms of subsistence and gold mining strategies proved to be very useful to my study of the articulation of money and subsistence. Puna Ayllinos control a territory located between 3,600 m. and 4,700 m. above sea level, devoted mostly to the production of tubers, and the grazing of Andean camelids (see Chapter 4). Ura Ayllinos, in contrast, have a territory located immediately below Puna Ayllu (between 3,600 m. and 2,700 m.) They rely heavily on corn and products from lower ecological zones (see Chapter 4). Puna Ayllu has a gold mine on the high plains within its territory (see Chapter 6); Ura Ayllinos travel to goldfields located in the tropical lowlands, hundreds of kilometers away (Chapter 8).

Households were chosen from a group that expressed interest in

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participating in PSE research; no purely statistical sampling procedures were followed. However, we included people representing as much diversity as possible. These households consisted mainly of complete nuclear families (18 out of 20); the ages of the male heads of households ranged between 29 and 54 years. The group included marriages at all different stages of the family developmental cycle, from young parents with few or no children through elderly couples whose children were grown. It did not include any widows or widowers, who are important figures in both communities.

I use data on the size of landholding units from the PSE survey on land use decisions (see Chapter 4). This survey included visits to each one of the fields planted by the twenty households during 1985 and 1986. Each field was measured, mapped, and agricultural information concerning tenure, production, technology, and productivity was recorded. Over 350 fields were visited in each of the two years of the study.

I designed a survey to obtain quantitative information on the social organization of the gold mining economy, and on the household administration of monetary and non-monetary resources that Cuyo Cuyeño peasant households mobilize for subsistence. I interviewed 28 families between April 27 and July 17 of 1986 (Table 1.1). Fourteen of these families were from Puna Ayllu, and fourteen from Ura Ayllu. Fourteen of these families participated in the PSE project and are identified by letter codes in Table 1.1. Informants' proper names used in this work are all pseudonyms.

The main goal of this survey was to collect reliable information concerning gold mining income. Thus, I selected as informants a group of comuneros I had been working with throughout the year, trying to obtain as diverse a group as possible. I had visited most of their mines and had worked with them. I had weighed their weekly outputs of gold in their caños and cortes, as they call their mines. Therefore I was confident that results were highly reliable.

This survey included an extensive list of questions that I completed in sections, interviewing families two or more times, as necessary. Most questions referred to the 12 months that preceded the date of my interview; therefore, the periods covered for each household are slightly different. The main topics of inquiry were: a) general data on household composition; b) allocation of agricultural resources to food, seed, labor payments, processing, and exchange; c) qualitative evaluations of household labor allocation to wage labor, ayni, qaray, and other local forms of work within the community; d) migrations (for purposes other than gold mining) by each household member (including destination, purpose, departure and return dates, costs, and income); e) migrations to gold mines by each member of the household (departure and return dates, and destination; f) information on mine camp organization (composition, labor status of all members, productivity, distribution of gold); g) gold income, including annual fluctuations between 1983 and 1986, remittances of gold to the household in Cuyo Cuyo, net gold income and a discussion of the criteria for its distribution; and, h) a qualitative description of the expenditure plan of each household.

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Fieldwork was complemented with research at the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), the Archivo Notarial de la Provincia de Sandia (ANPS), the Biblioteca Municipal de Sandia (BMS), the Archivo de Comunidades Campesinas de Puno (ACCP), the Archivo Historico del Departamento de Cusco (ADC) and the Archivo del Arzobispado de Cusco (AAC). Given the complexity of issues in the ethnic history of Sandia, I decided to concentrate on later sources, mostly from late colonial and republican periods. I augmented these written documents with interviews with elder Cuyo Cuyeños on the recent political and economic history of the district (Chapters 2 and 5).

Regional History

The lowlands and valleys north of lake Titicaca are poorly known, despite a wealth of ethnohistorical and ethnographic studies dealing with the altiplano region near the lake.⁸ Historical research on prehispanic chiefdoms in the vicinity of lake Titicaca (e.g., the Lupaqa, Murra [1972]), as well as that on other, smaller groups inhabiting the high altitude pastures of modern-day Azángaro and Huancané provinces (Berthelot 1977) indicates that the valleys of present-day Sandia were integrated into the economy of these highland polities. Valley resources were exploited by colonizers (mitmaqkuna) sent by both the Inca state, and by a number of ethnic groups with population centers in the vast pasture lands above Sandia. The most valuable resources from these narrow, steep valleys were tubers, corn, coca, gold, and products collected in the tropical rainforest -- an ecological zone known as yunka in local modern Quechua. These resources were channeled into the storehouses of both small regional ethnic groups and those belonging to the Inca state (Berthelot 1977; Saignes 1985).

The warm valleys of Sandia were an Inca province known as Kallawaya, named after the local group that had established an alliance with the Inca conquerors. The region was incorporated into Inca domains in the 1480s by Inca Tupa Yupanki, who reserved the natives of these valleys for his personal service and for that of his panaca (royal ayllu) (Berthelot 1977: see note 13). After the Inca conquest and subsequent political reorganization of the region, the Kallawayas became preeminent in the region.⁹ Other ethnic groups, the Chayas and Usicayos, resisted Inca rule and were therefore subject to exile or extermination (Berthelot 1977: 41-42). The political allegiance of the Kallawaya to the Inca is revealed by the fact that they were chosen to carry the royal litter and thus were

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known as Incap chakin, ('the feet of the Inca').¹⁰

Following Inca organization principles, the region was divided into two large moieties. The head of the Inca province was apparently situated in the lower moiety, in the valley of Charazani, within the boundaries of modern Bolivia. The lower moiety came to be known as Calabaya la chica in early colonial times and later on as Larecaja. The territories of the upper moiety (modern-day Carabaya and Sandia provinces in Peru) were known to the Spaniards as Hatun Calabaya, and later on as Carabaya. Saignes (1985: 189) examines the ways in which the Incas restructured the already complex patterns of multi-ethnic access to resources in these valleys. The groups that inhabited the region prior to the Inca conquest were either native to the region (e.g., the Kallawaya) or were members of ayllus located in the high plateaus lying to the north of lake Titicaca.¹¹ These highland ethnic groups sent families to colonize the valleys and exploit lowland resources. The lowland products were then transported to ayllu larders in their respective home settlements in the puna (Saignes 1985: 103-109; Goland 1988).

The lower moiety of the province was an ethnic patchwork, the outcome of "vertical" patterns of ayllu land organization (after Murra [1972]). The lower moiety consisted of:

1) native "valley" groups (e.g., the Kallawaya);

2) colonizers sent by ethnic groups located in the nearby punas (e.g., from the Umasuyo region);

3) colonizers sent by herding groups inhabiting punas located farther away than those noted above (e.g., the Lupaqa and Pacaje);

4) state colonizers sent by the Inca from nearby regions (e.g., the Qollas and Taracos); and finally,

5) colonizers of state mitmaqkuna inhabiting the region near lake Titicaca.

These latter groups (e.g., the Chincha of Junín)¹² came from regions that

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were politically loyal to the Inca. Consequently, they and others had been resettled by the state within Lupaqa territory secure political control. It seems likely that the Inca granted them the privilege of sending their own colonizers to exploit the resources of the valley (Berthelot 1977: 60; Saignes 1985: 103-9). Comparable historical data on the upper moiety is not available, but it can be presumed that it was an ethnic patchwork of similar complexity.¹³

After the fall of Cusco and only a short while after Hernando Pizarro attained military control of the rebellious Qolla and Charka, the Spaniards discovered the existence of the gold in Carabaya (Barnadas 1973: 44). By 1539, San Juan del Oro, the first Spanish mining settlement, had already contributed some 200 pesos in taxes to the Catholic Church (ibid., p. 44).

Upper and lower Carabaya became part of a valuable encomienda, a royal trusteeship of Indians and their tributes that also included other ethnic groups of the region (the Achas, Cavanillas, Papres, Achambis, Achankillos and Wamanpalpas). The territories of these groups extended from the formerly Aymara-speaking regions of Cusco Department to the Province of Camacho in La Paz, Bolivia. This valuable encomienda was held consecutively by Antonio de la Gama, Juan de Mendoza, Bartolomé de Terrazas, and Garcilazo de la Vega. In 1555 it was held by the Spanish Crown and in 1557 by the Lanzas, Spanish soldiers living in the new colonies who were given this encomienda to finance part of their salaries. It then was held by Antonio Vaca de Castro from 1561 through 1569, when it returned to the Spanish Crown.¹⁴

Documents pertaining to the encomienda titles identified above, and earlier tributary records¹⁵ dating from 1555, reveal that "Cuyo Cuyo" was the name of an ethnic group located in modern-day Sandia. It was headed by several caciques (the name given to kurakas or ethnic lords by the Spaniards) and was therefore a segmentary polity. The documents imply that Cuyo Cuyo was part of the upper Kallawaya moiety, but I have found no clues concerning its possible affiliation with puna groups from outside the valleys of Sandia. A census of 1614 identified the "Cuyo Cuyos" as a group indigenous to the valley (Berthelot 1977: 61).

The intricate prehispanic pattern of land organization sketched above and the complicated association these groups had been forced to accept under Inca rule were altered with the Spanish conquest. The Spanish

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organized the previously dispersed Indian hamlets into reducciones (nucleated towns) during the tenure of Viceroy Toledo (1569-1574).¹⁶ Inter-ethnic conflict over access to valley territories after the colonial reorganization resulted in ethnic battles. For instance, Saignes (1985: 104) reports the clash of the Kana and the Canchi against the Huancané, Moho, Carabuco, Pacaje and the Quirva, on the punas of Macusani to the west of the valleys of Sandia.

In spite of changes introduced by the colonial administration, some basic aspects of prehispanic political divisions were replicated. Thus, the lower moiety became the Corregimiento of Larecaja and the upper one the Corregimiento of Carabaya.

A 1614 visita (state inspection) of the gold mines of Sandia sheds some light on the status of ayllus in the region at that time. The visita identified three indigenous ayllus, Cuyo Cuyo, Lacaique and Queneque, and described a number of "foreign" ayllus in the valley, belonging to the Qolla. These people were registered in their ayllus of origin and consequently were not listed as part of the local population of the valley.¹⁷ In other words, the pattern of ethnic inter-mixing was still recognizable in 1614.

I have no evidence to describe in more detail the ways in which the 1614 post-reducción ayllus and their respective territories differed from the segments that had composed the Cuyo Cuyo of 1555. Major changes, however, were likely underway by that time. The valleys of Carabaya and Larecaja were by then one of the most important zones of refuge for Indians fleeing from forced labor conscription in the mines at Potosí (Rowe 1957: 175). Klein (1978: 30, notes 3-5) also has documented massive seasonal migrations of Aymaras to the coca valleys of Chullumani (Bolivia) in the seventeenth century.

Saignes' (1985) research on the lower moiety of the Kallawaya region indicates that residence in the valleys by outside groups did weaken affiliation of the migrants with the home community, typically located on the puna. Over time, however, residence in the valley took precedence over descent as the main criteria in defining ayllu membership and as the principle that regulated access to resources in the valleys. According to Saignes (1985: 97), this transformation was well under way by the end of the sixteenth century.¹⁸ Although changes of a similar nature probably unfolded in the upper moiety (the Carabaya Province) I have no evidence to substantiate this.

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The corregimiento of Carabaya was divided into seven repartimientos or tributary units. These repartimientos were Sandia, San Juan del Oro-Quiaca, Usicayos, San Miguel de Phara, Coaza, Ayapata, and Ituata.¹⁹ Some of them were divided into parishes that belonged to the diocese of Cusco. The repartimiento of Sandia for example had three parishes, each one encompassing several ayllus.²⁰

A significant aspect of the social history of Sandia was demographic transformation due to a massive immigration of foreigners from the late 16th through early 18th centuries. These immigrants probably were Indians escaping from the mita, the corvée work in the silver mines of Potosí. In 1572 the repartimiento of Carabaya had 265 tributary household heads paying 1,862 pesos per year (Toledo [1572] 1978: 112). A tributary census of 1771 recorded for the same region an eightfold increase in the tributary population, to 2,130 household heads.²¹ The majority of this population (1,469 of them) were identified as forasteros, men who did not belong by descent to the local ayllus, while a little over one-fourth (661 men) were listed as originarios, or natives of the local ayllus. Except for San Juan del Oro, the repartimiento of Sandia had the lowest proportion of originarios (8 originarios versus 587 forasteros) in the entire Province of Carabaya. In other places in the Andes originarios usually held larger land resources than forasteros and thus forasteros were in a subordinate position (Platt 1982; Sanchez Albornoz 1978; Escobedo 1979). Although the exact meaning of these classifications in the case of Sandia requires more careful research, it is clear that the Sandia of 1771 was characterized by patterns of land different from those that predominated in 1551 and 1614.

The present introduction to the history of Carabaya has established that long term political, social, and economic change was a continuous process in this region. In the following chapter I move on to discuss the transformation of Cuyo Cuyo ayllus into peasant communities, a process that originated in the last decades of the nineteenth century.