By Jorge Recharte, 1993.

Chapter 9 - Commodities and Social Reproduction in the Peasant Economy of Cuyo Cuyo

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He was still a child when his father died and his access to farm land was lost. His mother was left with few resources to feed her children. Demetrio remembers:

We lacked everything:¹⁵ money, clothing. We had nothing. We had no one to give us [these things]. We ate only qhaya [dehydrated oca], we had to eat [those] stupid things! It wasn't like the food we eat today. It was sad. We ate no meat. Bones, just the bones that my mothers [sic] collected and they washed to make soup. Now we live so happily! My children live in peace. I tell them, 'you think my mother, my father, made me grow?' We did not even have a bed. We used to live that way. We had two blankets, one was used in the burial of my father. My mother had to weave another one. We all had to cover up with that one [blanket].

Demetrio spoke of his childhood sufferings before recounting his life in Madre de Dios in order to frame appropriately the meaning of his life as a miner and migrant. He referred to the lack of appropriate food or shelter. These were painful experiences in themselves, but his narrative hints that poverty is a matter of public image. Thus, qhaya is despised by Demetrio in association with his "mothers" (the plural form may be a reference to his mother's sisters) collecting bones from charitable households, an embarrassing public acknowledgement of extreme poverty. He continues to measure the value of his current wealth and happiness against past sufferings.

For generations of Cuyo Cuyeños, the signs of well-being had been related to agricultural production and the display of stored food. For example, qhaya, dehydrated oca, was tied into cone-shaped bundles that hung from the beams of the house. A large number of cones announced to visitors the wealth of the family. It thus is odd that Demetrio illustrates his suffering as a poor boy by reference to the times in which he had only qhaya to eat. However, the increasing importance of money has made rice, noodles and other store-bought foods the new signs of wealth, now obtained outside the community. ¹⁶ Demetrio concluded this emotional remembrance of his past with a reference to blankets. As is true of all weavings in Cuyo Cuyo and more generally in the Andean tradition, textiles always have stood as tokens of wealth.

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Extreme material poverty, Demetrio's narrative continues, forced him to find a gold miner who would be willing to take him to Madre de Dios and train him in the trade. However, his public image as a "poor man" diminished his capacity to bargain and thus forced him to establish a client relationship with a patron from Llaqta Ayllu. The latter agreed to sponsor his trip in exchange for Demetrio's mother's services:

We begged him to take us [me and my brother] with him, no matter what. We had to pay for our own trip. Upon our arrival, he had to train us. With that promise, my mother pledged to help here in his fields and to perform all [other services].

Poverty and lack of social support were synonymous in this particular case. Demetrio was from a family with weak connections within the community and he suffered further because of his family's ties to mistis. Lack of social support contributed to Demetrio's family's public image as poverty stricken, ¹⁷ resulting in a disadvantageous miner's status that reproduced his family's poverty.

Demetrio's story explains the importance of investment in prestige goods. Prestige goods serve to create a public image and to invigorate social relationships. His account and that of other miners make reference to the first encounter with commodities, the allure of money and the transformation of their persons as a result of this encounter. Demetrio told of successive trips to Madre de Dios that eventually enabled him and his brother to save money for the first time in their lives:

We divided [the profits] in Masuko. 4,500 soles each one. With that [money] we went back [to Cuyo Cuyo]. What joy! Before that I had not known [money]. The 500 soles [bill], the 200, the 300, the 1,000, I did not know. Now this [4,500 soles] was money, and then I understood how people could bring radios and record-players. We returned. Happy! we arrived in Juliaca. My brother bought a bicycle. I bought a watch, clothing, blankets. . .We bought bread. I think each of us bought one sack [of bread], fruits, everything! We had a joyful Carnival celebration. We played with the solteras [for the first time]. Before that we were afraid because we had nothing, and the other [people] dressed well. Damn, we enjoyed life!

Even households who had severe shortages of land preferred to invest first in prestige commodities. As indicated in the preceding quotation, the display of commodities and generosity in group drinking were instrumental in establishing friendships, in finding potential brides, and also in developing work relationships in the gold mines. Another migrant from Ura Ayllu emphasized the utility of commodities as symbols of maleness and status in the community:

In those days people were already economically aggressive, that is

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[pausing. . .] people were looking at each others' [capacity to] work.¹⁸ Young people ranked each other. If one had extracted good [amounts of gold], then you had to demonstrate it to the people. [It was] for the eyes [of others]: radio, shoes, good pants. It was like that.

The kind of goods purchased by the predominantly poor comuneros who established the best cortes in Maldonado and the order in which they were purchased, helped me to understand contemporary patterns of peasant consumption in the community. In order to illustrate my point I will discuss the present-day universe of commodity demand in Cuyo Cuyo, relating consumption patterns to the domestic cycle.

Peasant demand changes in different stages of the family developmental cycle, a phenomenon that underscores the political utility of some commodities in the community. The youngest migrants to Maldonado are children around age thirteen. They usually are orphans or come from the poorest families of the community. The little money they make as cooks goes either to the sustenance of their mothers and siblings (in the worst scenario) or to finance their own educations and expenses (in the best scenario). Older adolescents, the escoleros from Cuyo Cuyo's high school, work as partners and bring in more money. They invest their income mainly in their own education. Nowadays this may include the purchase of a bicycle to commute between home and school, school uniforms, and supplies.

Single men who are approaching marriageable age begin to spend their money on commodities related to adult status. Bicycles, soccer paraphernalia, musical instruments, clothes, radios, and beer drinking are some examples. As discussed previously, this can be interpreted as part of their public demonstration of industriousness. All are visible aspects of the process of finding marriage partners. This pattern of expenditure is the basis of older married peoples' perception that solteros are irresponsible beer drinkers, living a happy life without the burden of raising children.

The pattern of expenditure changes with marriage. Recently married comuneros have a more complex range of expenses. These include food, clothing, house construction, children's education, community obligations, land, and various businesses. The most important items of expenditure are for commercial food and other goods. The amount of money spent in the local stores grows with the number of dependent children. There is no household, with or without children, which can exist without store products. The purchase of land for house construction and construction materials are an important expense, both for couples who are building their first house and for those seeking to remodel or expand their homes or to

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buy a second one.¹⁹ Financing the education of children, particularly that of sons, is also a common expense because it is perceived as the only avenue to permanent emigration from the community.

Although I am not aware that men attach significant social prestige to the ownership of agricultural plots, it is possible that this is an important criteria of social hierarchy among women. Wives, according to their husbands, put pressure on them to buy land.²⁰ As noted earlier, the most prominent miners usually come from families who were poor in land, and it was not surprising to discover that they were among the principal buyers of land. It is worth noting that some of them have bought land outside the community due to scarcity within it. Especially desirable are corn lands located in several of the communities below Ura Ayllu. ²¹

Married households have community fees that are impossible to avoid. An additional expense of all households is participating in the fiestas sponsored by relatives. These always involve the presentation of ap'hata or ceremonial gifts. Similarly, married households are under pressure from both neighbors and authorities to assume the sponsorship of fiestas and positions of public service. Both involve considerable time and money.

Households that have substantial surpluses have the alternative of investing their gold in a business. Stores serve mainly to protect the family from inflation. There are a few "professional" money lenders in

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Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu who charge high monthly interest rates.²² People resort to them only under extreme duress and when they are certain that payment can be made within weeks (e.g., some people use this kind of credit if they have no other way to pay for their trip to Maldonado). A more common source of credit is relatives, although it is a cumbersome procedure to obtain money from them. Requests are systematically denied and are granted only after much insistence. A token gift of coca and alcohol must be given to symbolize commitment to the social relationship. Loans granted to close relatives are given without interest, but are of longer duration and must be repaid in gold, to protect the lender against inflation. Migrants who have a surplus of gold income often have a part of it circulating among their close associates. Social and personal loyalty from borrowers is taken for granted.

There are not many opportunities to engage in commercial ventures in Cuyo Cuyo. Selling beer during the dry season is good business for the few stores that can secure a steady supply from the two regional wholesalers of Arequipeña, the only brand sold in the province. Seasonal, small commercial adventures are also an avenue for investment.²³ Purchasing a truck and engaging in regional commerce is an alternative favored by some households in Llaqta Ayllu. In Ura Ayllu there are three brothers -- among the poorest in land, but among the richest miners of the district -- who have each purchased a truck and a small pickup truck. They are, however,

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an extraordinary case.²⁴ There is only one truck owner in Puna Ayllu. There are more trucks in the Llaqta Ayllu (and Pampa Cojene-Rotojoni community) but I do not know exactly how many.

The two most important examples of investment and consumption of prestige goods are house construction and fiestas. In the early years of married life a house looms large in a couple's imagination. Building a house separate from that of their parents is so important that it even may affect food consumption (see below). After spending a year or so living in the husband's natal house, the main concern of the new couple is to save enough gold to buy materials to build independent living quarters. House construction in the past required mostly agricultural produce to feed the ayni workers. Locally abundant stones and mud were the only materials needed for the walls, wood from the yunka served for the roof structure, and different species of grasses provided thatching for the roof and the material to make the ropes. By contrast, except for the stone and the mud, the modern peasant house in Cuyo Cuyo requires the purchase of a number of commodities.²⁵ The importance of building an independent house to young couples was illustrated to me by Sabino, who had just completed his new house. He said:

We prefer to eat poorly. We talked, right? [Sabino said this to his wife, who was looking at us while cooking supper. Without bothering to answer, she turned her back to us]. We had a conversation and we thought, "Well, we are going to eat only this and that, no matter what, so that we can build our house and then we can be happy."²⁶

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The case of Pablo further illustrates the political and economic importance that building an independent house has in the social life of the community. He was born in an hacienda in the Azángaro region and grew up in Valle Grande, where his parents developed a coffee field after they moved from Azángaro. He married an Ura Ayllino woman and lived with her in the montaña until 1984. He decided to move to Ura Ayllu with his wife and three of his four children after low coffee prices and health problems in the family made his coffee farm unprofitable.

Pablo and his family were authorized to live in the storage rooms of the Empresa Comunal, the community farm. As payment, he guarded the property and was expected to cooperate with the Empresa. Although his wife had an average-sized landholding in the community, they were nonetheless seen by comuneros as a poor family because they did not have a house of their own. It was clear in this case that Pablo's poverty was closely linked to his lack of social support and power within the community. Men and women often came to hire him to do agricultural or construction work. He attended all the collective faenas of the community and Empresa. As I got to know him better, it became clear to me that he was not in a position to turn down these requests because he was attempting to improve his weak political position in the community through dutiful performance of public and private service.

Among the consequences of his social disadvantage was that he had a low-paying position in the gold mine of a man from Llaqta Ayllu. However, between 1984 and 1987 he was able to save enough money to buy a building lot and to construct a house. He was saving money while at the same time he and his family were eating poorly, a fact I, a neighbor, knew well. He had some capital invested in tools and a number of household items on his coffee property which he did not sell when he moved to Ura Ayllu. This indicates that in Pablo's perspective his most important resource for carving out a position of respect in the community was not money, but investment in social relations. He needed support 1) to improve his working conditions in the goldfields, 2) to be able to buy a building lot, 3) to obtain credit, if needed, for his new home, and 4) to have workers during the week of his house construction. Pablo would be able to deal on a more equal footing with other comuneros in his own home. The huts of the Empresa Comunal framed his public image as a poor man.

In the case of Ura Ayllu, houses apparently have become one of the main ways to display status and wealth.²⁷ People who already own one house may build a second one or improve the one they own. An ideal house should be next to the road, away from the old straw-roofed houses built on the hillsides above the highway. It is tin-roofed, and the mud and stones of the walls are covered with cement. Plaster-cast tigers are displayed in

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the lintels. It is painted pistachio, yellow, light blue or any color that boldly announces its presence (Even though, after a short while the color of the house disappears under a thick cover of dust). This ideal house has wooden railings, glazed wooden doors, iron-trimmed windows with glass panels, and a patio that is covered with cement rather than cobbles as in the traditional house. In Puna Ayllu there was one house decorated with tiny pieces of mirror inlaid in the lintels of the windows and doors. During my year of fieldwork the first three-storey stone-and-mud house was constructed. This seemed to open a new arena of social competition. Few houses meet these lofty standards, however.

It is poignant to hear people talk with pride about their new houses, yet complain about the cold cement floors that have accentuated their respiratory problems. The epitome of the new ideal was a large house in Aripo, standing by the road. It was owned by one of the richest miners of the community. The new construction was used as a storeroom and the family lived in a comfortable traditional house (straw-thatched, mud-floored) that stood behind this "stage set." The image of the "ideal" house has been borrowed from the houses built by mistis and school teachers in Cuyo Cuyo.

Fiestas constitute a second type of investment, in this case in intangible assets -- Bourdieu's (1982) "symbolic capital." Although I am not in a position to assess the percentage of gold channeled into fiestas, they are a fundamental and expensive aspect of life in the community. Comuneros agree that the number of fiestas sponsored by each community has diminished in the last few decades. "Corpus" and "Cavalry" are among the important ones that are not celebrated anymore. Nonetheless, the celebration of community and private fiestas is a central aspect of Cuyo Cuyeño culture.

In the section "Community, Fiestas, and Peasant History" (Chapter 3) I argued that fiestas are related to personal prestige and that prestige is elated to the social reproduction of households, families and communal political institutions. One of the most noticeable changes of these fiestas in recent years is the introduction of commercial beer as a prestige drink. Its consumption has steadily increased in recent years in Cuyo Cuyo District (see Table 9.4). ²⁸

Commercial beer has replaced cane alcohol as the drink of choice for fiestas, public and private.²⁹ It is far more expensive than cane alcohol, in part because of high bulk and the transportation costs. It is evident that beer is an important symbol for a generation of peasant men who

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procure resources for the household from of the farm and outside of the community. Although I shall not discuss the phenomenon in detail, beer drinking in Peru is associated with images of nationhood, maleness, and (from the peasants' perspective) modernity. Shifts to modern musical bands, soccer teams, beer drinking and new forms of communal political organization comprise a linked phenomenon. Virtually all of the community studies of Peru during the 1950s and 1960s have recognized this, labeling such phenomena as manifestations of "modernization" (Bourricaud 1967, Montgomery 1965). These studies, however, have not made the connection between social reproduction and the transformation of the household economy.

In Chapter 7 I argued that beer drinking during the fiestas, and particularly during the fiesta of the Virgin of Rosario, enabled Cuyo Cuyeño men to construct their public image as "miners." In doing so, men also reproduced traditional methods of subordinating women. Women find little or no social purpose in drinking. Beer drinking does not serve their social aspirations or well-being. Consequently they see it as wasteful. ³⁰ It certainly is notable that a poor peasant district of Peru

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like Cuyo Cuyo should spend the equivalent of U.S. $27,715 a year on beer. Yet, in a sense, this is a consequence of the articulation of the Cuyo Cuyo economy with the national capitalist economy. Beer drinking is inseparable from the specific historical conditions under which Cuyo Cuyeños now reproduce their peasant way of life.