By Jorge Recharte, 1993.

Chapter 3 - Footnotes

¹Sandia's ayllus were divided into moieties at least until circa 1614 (Berthelot 1977). Moieties in Ura Ayllu, as far as I know, were not related to control of land as in other regions (Hickman and Stuart 1980).

²These clusters are reported as a common feature in some regions of the Andes, see for example Platt (1986).

³Padrones comunales (community membership rolls) follow a standard format sanctioned by the Bureau of Peasant Communities in the city of Puno. These data were copied and coded as part of the project, "Production, Storage and Exchange" (PSE, see Chapter 1). The Census should in theory include all people within the community. In fact a few men and women who were outside the district at the time of registration as well as a few old men and women were not included.

⁴During the period of migration to the goldfields of Madre de Dios, residence and relations of production among people who share a common house differ (Chapter 9).

⁵A second (or a third) house is either closed, used as storage, or loaned to relatives. I explore the rationale of gold expenditure in the construction of houses in Chapter 9.

⁶Convivientes are unmarried couples living together who are customarily recognized by the community as trial households.

⁷Most solteros are females who are single parents (particularly in Ura Ayllu.) I do not know why there is a higher frequency of registered single mothers. I do know that some male solteros register as comuneros in order to get an early start on their political career in the community and to have access to the community mine in Puna Ayllu (Chapter 6).

⁸Boys begin to work in gold mining at about age 13. If their natal household owns a gold mine, usually they will labor there for a number of years for a token return. As they approach marriage age, they try to separate themselves from their natal household economic operations to accumulate some personal resources.

⁹This brief description of adolescent life comes mostly from the recollections of young married men. Examination of judicial records from the Justice of the Peace concerning conflicts among the relatives of newly weds also provided some insights.

¹⁰Such groups usually are composed of first cousins. The term cousin, however, includes a broad group of relatives, and it is used in a colloquial sense to mean "good friend."

¹¹Isbell (1978) describes a similar tradition in Ayacucho.

¹²These first years as convivientes are similar to the trial marriage described in many places of the Andes under the name of sirvinakuy. See Isbell (1978).

¹³I believe that the godparents also referred to the new couple as their "possession," but this is an idea that needs to be corroborated.

¹⁴Some of these bills may be kept as a sort of "first-penny" talisman of wealth for the family. I knew one person in Puna Ayllu who kept these bills with locks from his children's first hair-cutting in a ritual bundle.

¹⁵Some houses may take longer to complete because there is competition among comuneros to see who can build the best house (Chapter 9).

¹⁶For example, padrinos may assist their ahijados when they have conflicts with other households. They are also expected to make sure that their ahijados assume political offices and sponsor community festivals.

¹⁷Padrinos play a critical mediating role between the two families that are brought into alliance through marriage. Andean notions insist on the dual nature of marriage, its two dimensions of union and conflict (Albó 1976).

¹⁸Houses in Ura Ayllu are also constructed with ayni labor. In this community, agricultural ayni is said to be rare. But it is common to work for other households for a salary or goods; and, as I argue in the section "Wage Work" in Chapter 5 this practice is closer to ayni than to market-oriented exchange.

¹⁹The most visible ayni exchanges occur when households sponsor private and public ceremonies. These events are numerous throughout the domestic cycle: weddings, children's first hair cuts, baptisms, house building ceremonies, and the sponsorship of numerous religious festivals (see below, "Fiestas and Community").

²⁰I knew a woman in Ura Ayllu who divorced her husband because he had a second (illegal) wife in Madre de Dios. She was awarded his truck in the divorce settlement.

²¹I am relatively less familiar with this group of widows and widowers. The information I provide here represents the point of view of younger married couples and my own observations on older people.

²²I base this comment on an examination of land deeds at the Notarial Archive of Sandia Province (ANPS) and lawsuits filed at the Justice of the Peace in Cuyo Cuyo. Of course, relationships with older people are also based on moral values. Yet it is impossible to separate egotistical interest from altruism. Very old people are treated with deference by the authorities of the community and they are exempt from the labor and cash payments required of young comuneros. I knew of one case in which the authorities of Puna Ayllu forced a comunero to shelter his great aunt at home. I was also told that older people are helped in q'asi (i.e., without expectation of return) by their neighbors, particularly in the cleaning of water pools for the dehydration of oca tubers. Yet, life is difficult for many older people. In 1985 an old man from Puna Ayllu fell from a high cliff near the village. The general belief was that, tired of being mistreated by his younger relatives, he had committed suicide.

²³Included in these figures are the solteros who still belong to their natal households.

²⁴See Chapter 4 for a more complete discussion of differences in land tenure, and Chapter 9 for description of differential access to cash.

²⁵See Chapter 9 for other examples of clothing and material objects as symbols of social relations in Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu.

²⁶Ethnographic documentation for my examination of land inheritance comes from interviews, a review of land deeds in the Archive of the Public Notary of Sandia (ANPS, years 1924-1950), and from the records at the Justice of the Peace office in Cuyo Cuyo.

²⁷I am familiar with one case in Aripo (Ura Ayllu) in which a twelve year old boy received a larger portion of land from his paternal grandfather than his own father was granted.

²⁸Legal wills, i.e., those that have been registered with the Public Notary of Sandia, are drawn only when the parties involved perceive the existence of actual or potential conflict among claimants. Notarial wills, therefore, cannot be taken to represent accurately the whole range of situations that surround the inheritance of land.

²⁹As I noted above, I found no systematic preference for giving more land to men than to women. However, men are sometimes given the choice plots. The cultural values that are implicitly stated to legitimate men's preferential inheritance are not the only criteria that explain patterns of land division. Norms are used as opportunity allows. For example, in the will of a man from Puna Ayllu, the main asset was a large corn plot which he divided into halves. The best one, a flat section near the river, went to his only son. The second one, on the slopes above, was for his four daughters, except for a small piece which they were required to give to their step-sister (ANPS, Puna Ayllu, September 13, 1950). In this case the criteria for division included sex, age, legitimacy, and ecological factors.

³⁰I do not have data to evaluate the percentage of households that have step-children, illegitimate offspring, or adopted children. It is my impression that these are relatively common situations. Until 1950, about half of the households had children in these statuses. Eighteen out of thirty-six wills that included this information described households with step-children, or adopted children. I base this observation on the examination of land deeds at the Notarial Archive of Sandia Province (ANPS) and lawsuits filed at the Justice of the Peace in Cuyo Cuyo.

³¹Wills and land transactions among comuneros can be also legitimated by the President and the Secretary of the Community. They write the title and stamp it with the seals of their offices. Peasants may also go to the Justice of the Peace, who gives them a temporary document that they have to validate with the Public Notary of Sandia.

³²Funeral expenses include, among others, alcohol, candles, coca leaves, and meals for the assistants.

³³In the case for which I have the best documentation, a twelve year old boy, the oldest of five siblings, had been assigned most of his plots already at this early age. The father had decided that this eldest son would receive the largest share. The second in age was a boy who already had been selected by his father for emigration and the other children were girls. When I asked the father why he had made this decision, he said that the youngest one was "mas despierto," smarter. His decision and reasons were known to his young sons.

³⁴See ACCP, Puna Laqueque pp. 20-23.

³⁵Technological aspects of agricultural and pastoral production are discussed in Chapter 4.

³⁶Communities were seen as direct descendants of the Incaic ayllu, a group of peasants holding all of their lands in common. In fact, the legislation that regulated the process of legal recognition of Indian communities (Peru 1948) required that peasants demonstrate that they owned collective lands. Some communities had to buy lands for this specific purpose.

³⁷See Chapter 4.

³⁸The tone of this "answer" was probably set by the local bureaucrats who handled comunero legal business. From other parts of the documentation (ACCP, Canchis, p. 131-139v) it is clear that local, powerful misti landowners were behind the Inspector of the Bureau of Indigenous Affairs, helping to shape his view of local peasants as highly individualistic. The response of the Indians obviously is political as well, a conscious effort to demonstrate their "communality."

³⁹Urton's (1988) study of annual Quechua ceremonies of church building in Cusco shows that this is a widespread practice in the Andes.

⁴⁰Raimondi's travel notebooks describe these tambos in the Macusani region. The maximal ayllu appointed a man from one of the minor segments to live in the tambo in order to guard the building and the tools left there by fellow ayllu members, in order to avoid the effort of carrying them back home. The guard also protected the adjacent fields (Raimondi [1864] 1896:137).

⁴¹I provide a more detailed description of the manda system in the section on "Common Field Agriculture and Community Politics," Chapter 4.

⁴²This legislation was inspired by cooperativist forms of institutional organization (Cotler 1975).

⁴³Recently married couples start by serving in Nursery School (Wawawasi) committees; they move to become Vocales, persons who transmit the orders of the President of the community; they then serve on the School committee; and eventually, they arrive at either at the position of Lieutenant Governor or President, the highest positions in the community. Everybody is expected to undertake positions of public service, but a man coming from a poor family, with little or no knowledge of Spanish, will not have the opportunity to be involved in the social dynamics that propel some members of the community into the position of President or Lieutenant Governor. Such a person would be expected to have a public career, but his highest office would perhaps be that of Pregonero or Arariwa, the town crier and policeman of agricultural fields, respectively.

⁴⁴The following positions were identified in the Libro de Tenientes [Book of Official Records of the Lieutenant Governors], between 1985 and 1987: The Council of Administration is composed of approximately seven members, depending on the number of vocales elected every year and the size of the community. There is one Municipal Agent supervising two Arariwas in Ura Ayllu, and up to four such agents in Puna Ayllu. Both communities have three members on the Council of Discipline and Honor which, according to the law, oversees the performance of authorities and protects the comuneros against the abusive use of power. Each community has one Lieutenant Governor and one Auxiliary Lieutenant. Ura Ayllu had two sets of Lieutenants until the mid-1970s, one for each moiety of the community. In Puna Ayllu there are about ten additional public positions for the administration of the Ancoccala mine (Chapter 6). In addition, the annexes of each community have similar sets of authorities. The positions of President and Vice-President are traditionally filled by households belonging to the "mother" community and "annex" respectively. There are also several religious sponsorships, Alferados and Mayordomías, which do not entail the exercise of public authority, but are nonetheless part of the structure of power in the community.

⁴⁵Fines are assessed according to the type of animal that did the damage, from chickens, which incur the lowest fines, to pigs, which incur the most expensive ones. These fines are adjusted annually to compensate for inflation. If the Arariwas cannot capture the offending animal, they enforce the sanction by confiscating a lliklla (a shawl-like textile), a hat or whatever property they can seize from the owners of the animal.

⁴⁶These price ceilings are called "controlled prices," an expression borrowed from government legislation (initiated in the 1970s) for food prices in the cities. Price control of commodities and agricultural wages, however, is an old tradition in the communities of the region (ACCP, Canchis [1942] p. 140v-141).

⁴⁷Construction projects underway during my fieldwork in Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu included: a room to house a small diesel-powered generator, a carpentry workshop, and a fish hatchery, among others.

⁴⁸However, there are cases in which individuals commit considerable time and resources to building projects. For example, the man in charge of the "Committee for Potable Water" in Ura Ayllu had been successful in overseeing the construction of the water system for the community in 1980. The water tank had been built with community labor and government materials. Some community cash was raised to finance his trips to secure materials from the government agencies in the city of Puno. He told me that he had refused to let other comuneros take over the Presidency of the "Committee for Potable Water" until the project was complete, since otherwise the person taking over the position would have robbed him of the credit. While he held on to the position, he constantly complained about the work demanded of him, about the community's lack of gratitude, and about the laziness of all comuneros.

⁴⁹During my period of field research the following types of voluntary associations or institutions were managed by committees: musical bands; soccer teams; mothers' clubs; schools; the "Pro" associations (potable water, electrification and urbanization); religious groups (Catholic and Adventist); and, loaning associations. In Puna Ayllu there was also a mining committee and one devoted specifically to the expansion of the irrigation system of Ancoccala mine (source: Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu's Libro de Tenientes [Book of Official Records of the Lieutenant Governors], 1985-1987).

⁵⁰Although the Tenientes make use of the Peruvian Code of Civil Law to rationalize their decisions, it is my impression that this is a formality. By and large, decisions are based on local values. The Teniente uses personal skills to balance the interests of the contending parties. The "witnesses" may be the godparents of the litigating couples, who customarily are responsible for the public image of their godchildren. Meetings with the Teniente are conducted in Quechua.

⁵¹These are propitious times, also found in other communities of the region (Montgomery 1965).

⁵²Compensation may involve labor, along with payments in cash to the community. For example, one Ura Ayllu comunero requested that the General Assembly grant him a plot owned by the community on which to build his house. He not only offered to pay the market-value of the property, but also to continue to faithfully attend all faenas (collective work projects) called by the community.

⁵³The Arariwas usually come from poor families; "any poor man," (cualquier hombrecito) said a comunero, "will accept this position."

⁵⁴For example, in Ura Ayllu, a man who used a rocky piece of land to plant eucalyptus trees was forced to give half of them to the community under the threat of destruction of his plantings. Chapter 6 examines examples of community control of mineral resources in Ancoccala.

⁵⁵Among others, these fees included: one used to make a map of the village which was required for its future electrification; one to repair the school roof; one for the government tax on the community mine; one for the right to be registered in the community roll; one for registration in the mine; one for the construction of a new canal to expand the water supply of the community mine; and, one for the construction of a building to house the electric generator. The community also requested voluntary donations: one for roofing materials for the church at the mine; and one for potato seeds for the community field (Fees and donations registered in Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu's Official Records of the Lieutenant Governors, 1985-1987.)

⁵⁶Sandia parish also had under its jurisdiction churches in Patambuco and Quiaca. These two ayllus apparently were not related to those of Sandia (see References: AAC, 1736, 28.3-16 LI,1,8).

⁵⁷See References: AAC, 1736, 28.3-16 LI,1,8: pp. 1, 2.

⁵⁸I base this tentative suggestion on evidence concerning the rural history of Sandia Valley and the study of similar cases in other regions of the Andes (see for example Pablo Macera's prologue to Celestino and Meyer [1981)].

⁵⁹See Isbell (1978), Palomino (1970), Urton (1988).

⁶⁰The Virgin of the Rosary that people actually take out in procession is called the "spirit" or "second." The original stone is kept inside the church. It can be seen only by the dancers who receive a special blessing called the saruchikuy in Quechua.

⁶¹For example, as I indicated in Chapter 2, younger people know little about the past, even a period as recent as misti timpu. Oral traditions, such as the story of the Virgin of the Rosary quoted above are of course deep and rich forms of social knowledge, but from a nondiscursive, mytho-poetic view.

⁶²Carnival has lost part of its centrality in recent years due to changes in the seasonal migration pattern to the goldfields of Madre de Dios (see Chapter 7).

⁶³Platt (1986) examines the reiteration of these conceptual oppositions in the social structure of the Macha ayllu in Northern Potosi.

⁶⁴Here the expression to "face anybody" means that such a person already has the social maturity to defend himself in the context of the honor duels examined in the previous section.

⁶⁵While people who take the burden of sponsoring religious festivals emphasize their expenses and see the obligation as a sacrifice, those who are not doing the sponsoring sometimes may see things differently. For example a man from Puna Ayllu told me that one of the advantages of sponsoring fiestas was that it forced the family to work harder than usual to accumulate blankets, cooking pots, and dishes that otherwise would not be purchased. He also emphasized that the expenditures are mitigated by the fact that sponsors receive large numbers of aphatas or "gifts." Similarly, he added, the sponsors of the fiesta for the Virgin Mamita Limaqpampa (in December) do it to enhance the fertility of their herds or to find good gold in the mine.

⁶⁶This hat is the montera, which women wear everyday in Cuyo Cuyo. It was also worn by men until c. 1900.

⁶⁷Harris (1982a) mentions the association between hot peppers and the dead during ritual ceremonies of Carnival among the Laimi of Bolivia.

⁶⁸I was told that these hot peppers are nowadays bought from a community in which Cuyo Cuyeños used to have corn lands.

⁶⁹The karapi is made of horsehair dyed in bright colors, and it is wrapped around the waist.

⁷⁰See Chapter 9,Table 9.1.

⁷¹The two 1986 sponsors that I interviewed agreed in saying that the Tenientes communicate their decision to the marriage godfather first. I suspect, however, that in most cases this is only a formality, since the prospective sponsors already know they have been chosen.

⁷²This institutionalized behavior has also been documented in Coasa (Montgomery 1965).

⁷³In Coasa Ayllu, the Governor of the district was dressed as an Inka during the Chaku apaykuy (Montgomery 1965: 172). The fact that the Governor stamps the white "peace flags" of each ayllu, the Chaku apaykuy ceremony itself, and the historical role played by Governors in the nineteenth century, suggest that Carnival celebrates, among other things, the surrender of Ayllus to a centralized state.