Latin America--Exploitations trust of U.S.

In the following three articles, Richard Price describes what Cornell University has done in one Peruvian community to offset an anachronistic feudal system that may lead the country to revolution, and contrasts such modern changes with the ancient but prevalent custom of "trial marriage;" Renate Rosaldo views with alarm increased feelings of anti-Americanism in Ecuador; and Jack Stauder describes a way of life in the "hot country" of Mexico that has remained unchanged over the centuries. The writers were among eight Harvard and Radcliffe students who spent the summer living with and studying Indians in Peru, Ecuador, and Mexico in a Carnegie-sponsored program.

VICOS is a former hacienda set in a breath-taking Andean valley two miles high, yet more than ten thousand feet below the summits of massive snowpeaks. Before Cornell University anthropologists began--by arrangement with the government of Peru--an unusual development program in 1952, the hacienda's two thousand Quechua-speaking Indians lived on the brink of starvation.

Lacking educational opportunities and skills, they were victims of a vicious exploitive system under which each family gave three man-days of labor every week in return for a meager plot of land on which to live and farm. A "serf" mentality, inability to make decisions, and complete distrust of outsiders after centuries of being cheated, beaten, and exploited made progress impossible. Vicos and many similar haciendas remained feudal anachronisms in a rapidly changing country.

From my observations, the best a peon can hope for in a patron is a condescending paternalism, considering the Indians as innocent, somewhat retarded children. The worst he can expect are varied atrocities ranging from the common practice of beatings and whippings to extreme cases of unprovoked murder. Last year in the hacienda neighboring Vicos, two innocent Indians were killed and three seriously wounded by mounted local police acting on orders from the patron. Such incidents are generally silenced by the press and the government, whose spokesmen are often involved in the business end of the hacienda system.

If a hacienda becomes so poor that it becomes unprofitable for the renter to operate, the Indians may be able to rent it directly from the owner. Several years ago the Indians in a hacienda not far from Vicos took advantage of such an opportunity. But though they have freed themselves from the daily brutalities of a particularly cruel renter, they have been unable to progress toward a higher standard of living and to build a school, their immediate goals.

The vicious circle of the system allows the former renter to outbid the Indians when the lease expires and take over the hacienda as soon as it becomes profitable once more. The renter waits for the Indians to accept the tempting agricultural aid that several organizations offer--which would increase prosperity in the community, hence assuring a return to serfdom. Caught in this system, these Indians are afraid to act and wait quietly for an opportunity to change. Should revolution sweep Peru, as many observers feel it soon will, these are some of the people with nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting a general upheaval.

The community of Vicos is among the most fortunate of Peruvian haciendas. Through the efforts of the Cornell-Peru project and pressure from the U.S. embassy in Lima, Peru last month expropriated Vicos. For the first time in many generations, Vicosinos own their homes and farm their own. Boasting a modern school built with local labor, a greatly improved standard of living, a clinic and a self-governing community council, Vicos is the home of a people who have attained a new degree of human dignity and self respect. It is only among a few old men that one finds the traditional boot-licking posture when Indian confronts non-Indian. Young Vicosinos are able to play as equals with the children of American anthropologists in a way that would have been impossible not long ago.

IN spite of such recent changes, much of Vicos culture remains as it was at a time before the arrival of the Spaniards. I spent the summer studying the institution of trial marriage which legend says was imposed on his subjects by the Inca himself. Four centuries of constant attack by the Church have had no influence in weakening this custom, and Vicos marriage remains an interesting mixture of pagan and Catholic traditions.

Courtship involves frequent group horseplay, encounters on lonely mountain trails, and participation in wild fiestas. Picking up a girl at a Vicos fiesta is simple. Steal her hat and she chases you through the milling crowd; head for the nearest isolated cornfield where you may, if you wish, return her hat. When a couple becomes "serious," the girl will come--with parental permission--to live in the boy's home.

For about a year the couple will live together as man and wife. This "trial" may be discontinued at any time without social stigma. Children remain with their mother and are accepted by the new husband in case of separation and remarriage. Two "trials" seem to be the maximum, and eighty per cent of the couples get married in the Church at the end of their first. A yearly ronda, or roundup, keeps the ancient system working smoothly. The alcades, traditional religious leaders of the community, stage midnight raids on all houses and cornfields where they suspect that unmarried couples are sleeping. These couples are apprehended and married, by force if necessary, the following Sunday in a mass Church ceremony. Some enterprising youths flee to the mountains during the ronda season, but those that are caught must marry.

The intertwining of pre-conquest traditions and Spanish-Catholic customs evident in these marriage patterns is typical of sierra culture. Harvesting potatoes in a field high above Vicos, I often wondered whether I was on a medival manor or in an isolated corner of the Inca Empire.

Barring revolution, the future of Vicos will be a gradual movement toward the mainstream of Western civilization. For other less fortunate communities the future is much less clear. The government has in recent years undertaken to improve conditions in some of Peru's most depressed mountain areas. The problems it faces are frightening. As health facilities increase, countless babies are saved; and in a country which precludes birth control, the problem of too many people for too little land is everywhere apparent and worsening daily.

The practicality of proposed government plans to move whole sierra villages into the vast, unsettled selva is extremely dubious to anyone who has felt the oppressive, steaming air of the Amazon basin. Until some solution is found, penniless sierra Indians and mestizos will continue to pour into the rapidly growing slums which ring Peru's modern coastal cities.

A new government will be elected in June. It will, many people feel, be allowed about two years to show concrete progress toward a solution of the complex problems of the sierra region. If it fails, the government may well fear that the awakening population of the sierra will join with other discontented groups to bring about a revolution whose consequences could be felt far outside the borders of the world of the ancient Inca.