Lord and Peasant in Peru: A Paradigm of Political and Social Change [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674594616, 9780674594609

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Lord and Peasant in Peru Sponsored by the Center for International Affairs Harvard University

F. LaMond Tullis

Lord and Peasant in Peru

A Paradigm of Political and Social Change

Harvard. University

Press, Cambridge,

Massachusetts,

1970

© Copyright 1970 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-116738 SBN 674-53914-1 Printed in the United States of America

For Marta

Preface The Peruvian central highlands are an extraordinarily exciting place. Many who visit them come away captivated by the curious marriage of ancient traditions and modern technological arts so abundantly exhibited, especially in the towns. For us — my wife, two children, and I who resided there in 1967 — the excitement was elsewhere and of another kind. We were enthralled by the social and political change occurring in many of the peasant villages. We were seeing the breakdown of feudal-like social relations between lords and peasants, and witnessing the emergence of several villages into a modern world. That world was more than a simple juxtaposition of new and old technological forms, of antibiotics, chemical fertilizers, transistor radios, tractors, and trucks lined up beside wooden plows, yoked oxen, and coca-chewing Indians. The world we were seeing contained all these, to be sure, but it also included an increase in personal freedoms for village peasants, an opportunity for them to exercise local decision-making powers and a chance to participate in the then nascent democratic political processes of the Peruvian national state. All this was not given to them by a

viii

Preface

modernizing central government. The peasants struggled for their gains against great odds, and they won. In Lord and Peasant in Peru I have sought not only to describe some of the attendant social and political changes, but to explain the forces behind them as well. I am still sufficiently close in time to my major intellectual debts to be very aware of them. I am indebted to Samuel P. Huntington for his insights on political development and the relation of social forces to political change; to Frank W. Young for his information-processing paradigm relating to the rise of social forces; to William Foote Whyte for his adaptation of exchange theory to master-subordinate relations and patterns of social control; and to John D. Montgomery for introducing me to important attitudinal and value-change factors in rural sectors of developing nations. Aside from major intellectual debts, by the time most authors complete a work they have amply drawn on the wisdom, patience, forebearance, and financial support of a good many persons and institutions. This certainly is true in my case. The Foreign Area Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies underwrote the original project with a generous grant for a year's research in Peru, and also subsequently granted supporting funds for data analysis. Later, the Center for International Affairs at Harvard made it possible for me to devote several uninterrupted months to the manuscript. My wife, Marta, typed and criticized more drafts of the manuscript than we now care to count. Indeed, she and my children undauntingly shared the excitement, frustration, fulfillment, and hard work which have accompanied this project in its several phases. Even a year of cold showers, campstove cooking, and Spanish-speaking schools in Peru's ten-thousand-foot-high Mantaro Valley were not too much for them. My mother, Melba Tullis, consistently prodded me throughout the writing to employ an acceptable brand of the English language. Samuel P. Huntington gave me much needed advice and encouragement during the entire project as well as constructive comments on several versions of the manuscript. John D. Montgomery, Alex Inkeles, Frank W. Young, and William Foote Whyte also have read and made helpful remarks on earlier drafts. To all these I express my sincere gratitude. None, of course, is responsible for errors in fact or judgment which may remain. In addition to all these debts, I must acknowledge several others.

Preface

ix

Giorgio Alberti was a source of intellectual stimulation in the field and also collaborated in gathering some of the data. Rodrigo Sanchez, Ernesto Cruz, and Josefina Pereyra, Peruvian social science students from Huancayo, ably assisted with the project for several months. F. LaMond Tullis

Contents Introduction A Lord and His Peasants: A Parable, 1. Scope and Approach, 4.

Part I: Underlying Theory 1. Three Predictive Variables Capacity, 12. Solidarity, 14. Relative Centrality or Opportunity, 16. A Predictive Paradigm, 18. 2. Information-Processing Energy Conversions: Solidarity Movements, Coercion, and Reform The Solidarity Movement, 25. Relative Subordination, Catalysts, and Charismatic Leaders, 26.

xii Contents HYP. i: Higher Solidarity and the Appearance of Intense Solidarity Movements, 35. HYP II: Higher Solidarity and the Appearance of Moderate Solidarity Movements, 36. HYP HI: Lower Solidarity and the Nonappearance of Solidarity Movements, 37. 3. Linkages Between Intense Movements and the Larger Society: Alliances and Reaction

39

HYP. iv: Success of Intense Solidarity Movements, 40. An Ideal Type: The Triangle Without a Base, 42. The Changing Triangle, 43. A Model of Peasant Political Modernization, 46. 4. Beyond the Intense Solidarity Movement: Development and Political Decay

Political 51

Part II: Intense Movements: Intervillage System of Acolla 5. The Village and the Nation: Now and Then 6. Five Case Studies: Tingo, Chuquishuari, Sacas, and Yanamarca

61 Armonia, 85

Tingo, 85. Chuquishuari, 111. Sacas, 117. Armonia, 120. Yanamarca, 131. 7. Patterns of Structural Binds, Alliances, Coercion, and Reform

145

The Structural Binds, 147. Capacity Development and Energy-Conversion Blocks, 150. The Impact of Alliances, 157. Solidarity Movements and the Political Modernization Model, 162. 8. Self-Sustaining Growth or Internal Breakdown: Did They Really Survive After All? Chuquishuari, 165. Sacas, 170. Tingo, 172. Armonia, 175. Yanamarca, 178.

164

Contents

xiii

Part III: Moderate Movements: Intervillage System of Chupaca 9. The Empirical Variables: Scales and Causal Analysis

185

Relative Subordination, 186. Capacity, 191. Solidarity, 202. Capacity and Solidarity Compared, 209. Relative Centrality, 211. Moderate Energy Conversions: Some Quantitative Causal Relationships, 216. The Nature of the Movements, 221. Conclusions and Observations

223

On the Origin of Peasant Movements, 223. On the Development of Moderate and Intense Peasant Movements, 224. On the Initial Success of Intense Peasant Movements, 226. On Post-Movement Success, 226. Some Corrollary Generalizations, 227.

Appendices A. Statistical Data

231

B. Data Collection Methods

260

Bibliography

211

Index

289

Tables 1

Intervillage system of Acolla

2

Village information-processing capacity at organizational level, Chupaca system of villages

194

3

Village solidarity scale, Chupaca system of villages

204

4

Scored intervillage contact matrix

212

5

Village rankings on relative centrality variable

216

6

Derivation of structural-bind index and rankings

218

7

Village rankings on the structural-bind index

219

8

Summarization of the rankings

220

9

"Goodness of fit" of data and Hypotheses II and III, Chupaca system of villages

221

Frequency distribution of village information-processing capacity indicators

232

Correlations of appearance of nonscaling capacity indicators with respective levels of village information-processing capacity

233

A.3

Frequency distribution of village solidarity indicators

238

A.4

Correlations of appearance of nonscaling solidarity

A.l A.2

73

indicators with respective levels of village solidarity

241

A.5

Objective intervillage contacts

246

A.6

Informant perception of most-contacted village

249

A.7

Rankings of intervillage contacts

250

A.8

Intervillage system of Chupaca

252

A.9

Rank correlation of solidarity and capacity variables

253

A. 10

Rank correlation of solidarity and capacity variables with Chupaca, Manzanares, Chambarä, Pilcomayo, Huarisca, Nahuinpuquio, and Cocha eliminated

254

Figures 1

Location of intervillage systems of Acolla and Chupaca, Junin Department

7

2

Some solidarity types

16

3

Hypothesized corporate energy conversions under increasing structural-bind conditions at varying levels of subordination

29

Channels of symbolic transactions in highly subordinated conditions

31

Channels of symbolic transactions in non-highly-subordinated conditions

32

6

A model continuum

41

7

The triangle without a base

42

8

The completed triangle

43

9

External communicative network

44

10

Enlarged communicative network with the patron eliminated

45

11

A political modernization continuum

45

12

A continuum of political change among the peasantry

49

13

Acolla system of villages (road connections)

74

14

Evolution of the comunidades and free peasant villages

80

15

An empirical typology of increasing class amalgamation

119

16

Chupaca system of villages (road connections)

187

17

Scattergram showing the correlation of the villages on the solidarity and capacity variables

210

Observed relative centrality, Chupaca system

215

4

5

18

Lord and Peasant in Peru

Introduction A Lord and His Peasants: A Parable To be sure, Alejandro Aquina was the son of a peasant. But his father was a caporal. That made a difference. The old man was rewarded with special favors in return for assuring that the other peasants on Hacienda Chuquishuari in Peru's central sierra complied with their labor obligations. The land baron, the hacendado, gave him the use of a little more land than the other hacienda peasants, required fewer labor obligations from him, and, from time to time, gave him a sol or two. Alejandro was fortunate to be the son of a caporal. He was probably the only lad in the village whose father had sufficient means to send a son to school. Like almost all other haciendas of the region, Chuquishuari had no school. None of the hacendados wanted them. However, the old caporal had designs for his son, and so it was that he sent him to the district capital of Acolla, some ten miles away, to study at the government school there. It was not that the hacendado was in favor of Alejandro's leaving. 1

2

Introduction

Quite undisguisedly, he was against the idea from the beginning. The boy ought to be home where he belonged, working. But the elder Aquina had rendered a decorous performance on the labor debts. All the peasants were complying well enough. Indeed, only once or twice a month had the hacendado found it necessary to visit the hacienda from his comfortable residence in the provincial capital of Jauja, some twenty miles distant. He had not had to hire an outside administrator as had so many of his hacendado friends. So why not let the old man have his way? Let the boy go. Let it be a concession for his fourteenth birthday. In Acolla Alejandro made the acquaintance of a dedicated young teacher, a social activist who had picked up many of the reform ideas of Peru's famous Hay a de la Torre. Alejandro and five or six other young students from a nearby hacienda eventually began meeting with the teacher in discussion sessions. They had all heard the man speak of the frightful conditions of life in the valley. Eventually the students realized that he was speaking of them; they resolved to find out more of what he had to say. One by one they began to visit him, to ask him questions, and to tell of life at their respective haciendas. In due time they also began to ask themselves questions: "Why do the hacendados care more for their cows and sheep than for us? When the animals are sick they call a doctor. When we are sick sometimes we just die. There is never a doctor." "Why must our parents work for no pay?" "When the hacendados get mad, why do they take our animals and food and leave us hungry?" Yet, life might not be so wretched if the hacendados would only help out from time to time during difficult conditions, as it was said they formerly did. Before, they had been godfathers to the hacienda children, had given out herbs and medicines to the sick, and had even sponsored and paid for fiestas from time to time. And also: "Maybe if we only had to work unpaid three days a week instead of six . . . ?" As time went on the young students would ask themselves more fundamentally philosophical questions about the social morality of the world in which they lived. But they were already thinking. It would prove to be a dangerous exercise for them. The years passed. Graduation from elementary school finally arrived, and Don Alejandro, touched by the teacher's idealism, yet tempered by his own peasant practicality, returned to Chuquishuari to take up resi-

Introduction

3

dence with his family. How proud they must have been. An educated son! One who could read and use numbers — and in Spanish — just as well as the merchants of Acolla. Those city marketers who thought they could speak Quechua so well might now learn a thing or two themselves. Alejandro's talents were sorely needed indeed. The economy of the hacienda village had been moving from barter to money over the last few years, and the peasants never felt quite satisfied or secure in their infrequent but important dealings with the city shopkeepers. But Alejandro's education was to render consequences not expected by his father. Trouble. In spite of admonitions, the young peasant quickly set himself up as a focus for the pent-up imaginations and hopes of some of his people. In their own way they had frequently asked themselves questions of the same kind that had long troubled Alejandro and his student friends. It was to Alejandro that they now directed themselves: "What can we do?" "Why not build a school here? The hacendado is never around much anyway, so why should he care?" So they built a school and taxed themselves in order to pay the salary of the school teacher they would hire. Sometimes even the adults came to school and many of them learned to read and write. Besides, they often informally gathered around the schoolhouse to talk about their lives. Perhaps they could get the hacendado not to require them to work so long for him without pay. They even talked about owning their own land someday. In due time, with Alejandro's prodding, the peasants formed a labor syndicate complete with officers and written bylaws. The villagers would bargain with the hacendado, they said. Maybe he would relax his demands. After much debate they agreed upon a code of self-discipline and sanctions. The peasants mutually covenanted to pay fines to the syndicate if they "caved in" under any pressure and worked more days for the hacendado without pay than they had agreed upon in the group. Alejandro argued this necessity from the beginning because he expected the hacendado to retaliate abundantly against the organization — and him. The first list of resolutions and demands was long — very long. Even the school teacher from Acolla was astonished, but he counseled moderation: "If you make too many demands all at once you're likely only to make the hacendado mad. Start slowly and see what happens." Accordingly, they finally made four resolutions: First, the hacendado must

4

Introduction

not require them to work on his lands without remuneration more than three days a week. No longer, they said, would they continue to work the required six, ten- to twelve-hour days. Second, the hacendado must abolish the obligations for personal services in the manor house and elsewhere. (For many peasant families it had been glaringly inconvenient to have wives and children ordered to the manor house to serve the hacendado, for days, or months — without remuneration. Moreover, now sometimes the hacendado took their children to Jauja to serve him there — without remuneration, and according to their parents, even without giving them adequate food.) Third, the hacendado must not continue to expropriate their livestock at prices established by himself, or, indeed, as was often the case, without any payment at all. (The peasants frequently had been forced to give up two of their finest head of cattle and sheep at prices 50 to 80 percent below market value. The hacendado had wanted these for a feast or something in town, he would always say. On other occasions he would simply take what he wanted.) Fourth, the hacendado must furnish his own tools, equipment, and draft animals and cease requiring his villagers to furnish theirs — without pay — for work on his lands — also without pay. And so it was done. When the retaliation came it was almost everything the peasants could possibly have expected: harassment, beatings, threats against life, intimidating and menacing visits of other hacendados, politicians and police from Jauja, imprisonment of their leaders. Rather than even discuss the resolutions and the nature of the new working agreements the peasants wished to make (they were still quite willing to work three days a week without remuneration), the hacendado reacted by resolving to crush the syndicate and ". . . teach those upstarts a well-earned lesson." Scope and Approach Hacienda Chuquishuari is one of forty-four villages studied for this book. The study is, however, intended to be more than an ethnography of these villages and their respective lords; it is a study of how lords cease to be lords and why peasants rise to depose them. Moreover, it shows how some peasants may truly become nationals — integrated socially, culturally, and especially politically into the national fabric of a modern state. It is therefore an investigation of environmental and value

Introduction

5

change which focuses primarily on peasant social and political forces — why they arise, and what happens to them. Political scientists, among whom this author counts himself, are beginning to sense the great relevancy of the peasantry to the political processes of a society undergoing rapid forms of modernization. In conducting field research, however, many have adopted a macro "topdownward" approach. That is, they establish themselves in an important central or primate city of a developing country and study its political and social processes and institutions from the perspective of the nerve center itself. The approach tends to be elite-oriented. On the subjects of modernization, national integration, and political and social development, for example, the information sources primarily are government bureaucrats, important political and civic leaders, and holdings in the national library. Whatever becomes known about what Truman Capote once referred to as "out there" is often picked up vicariously. Or, at the end of the researcher's field stay, he may travel about the country to see for himself all that he has been hearing. The perspective of the nerve center, particularly as regards the peasantry, is thus reinforced. Such elite-biased data regarding the peasantry are not a satisfactory kind of data. They cloud many important variables associated with the modernization process. For one thing, they fail to take into sufficient consideration the political power of indigenous modernizing forces, or even satisfactorily to explain why they exist at all. On the other hand, insulated peasant micro studies of the variety normally carried out by sociologists and anthropologists suffer equally as much but from an opposite perspective. Operating at the level of ethnography or correlational analysis, not only do the studies generally shy away from causal relationships, but they also often fail to relate the peasantry to the nation and therefore do not shed systematic light on impingement from outside of either modernizing or coercive forces. Nor do the studies generally bring out the importance of peasant alliances with national bureaucrats and politicians. Impingement and alliances can have enormous consequences for a modernizing peasantry, particularly if they occur simultaneously; and this, in part, is what Lord and Peasant in Peru is about. In addition to the more traditional vantage of the nerve center itself, therefore, this study also sought a "look-upward" perspective from the peasantry to the nation. Data collection methods were neither exclusively of the macro political science nor the micro sociological varieties,

6

Introduction

but combined aspects of each. Quite aside from carrying on a dialogue with bureaucrats and the elite, the researchers also placed themselves at the level of the peasant and patiently worked for what at first was a "touch-and-go" process of gaining admittance to confidence. Once this confidence was established, however, and because of the great generosity of the peasants, it was possible to gather in less than a year most of the data from which this book is composed. The study argues that a generalized understanding of peasant political and social change vis-ä-vis a modernizing nation becomes possible only when the problem is approached through systems analysis. The field application of the theory presented in this book has shown that the peasant village, taken as a unit, is very relevant. Contrary to most studies on the peasantry, systems analysis, in effect, requires the inclusion in the study of a number of interrelated villages, not just one or two. Accordingly, a relevant system must be identified. The nature of the approach here can be understood only within the context of the book, but it can be noted at this point that the general idea is to include as much geographically relevant data as possible along the lines set out by the underlying theory. This is why what is termed the intervillage system becomes so important: these systems can be readily identified; they are meaningful for the peasantry; the theory works at this level; and they have the additional feature of being the largest natural peasant system that can reasonably be studied by direct field methods. Ordinarily these systems comprise anywhere from fifteen to forty villages. Two such intervillage systems, containing twenty and twenty-four vilages respectively, are included in this book. The setting is the central sierra valleys of Mantaro and Yanamarca (figure 1). The study is divided into four parts: the first advances a framework of analysis which has been found to be useful in assessing political and social change among the peasantry in Peru; the remaining three present information about and analysis of the two intervillage systems mentioned above. In general the specific problem focus is fourfold: (1) why corporate peasant social and political forces arise, (2) why some become more radical and violent than others, (3) why some are more successful than others, and (4) why some are able to incorporate themselves into a dynamic world of change while others are not. Each of these dependent variables is treated theoretically in chapters 1 through 4 respectively. The balance of the book contains the empirical data from Peru and accompanying conclusions relevant to the above topics.

I n t e r v i l l a g e S y s t e m of A c o l l a in and n e a r t h e Y a n a m a r c a V a l l e y

Fig. 1. Location of intervillage systems of Acolla and Chupaca, Junin Department

Part I

Underlying Theory

Chapter 1

Three Predictive Variables One goal of social science presumably is to reach and refine general explanations and predictions regarding an increasingly wider and more complex variety of human interaction.1 A social-science approach thus separates itself to some degree from descriptive historical or journalistic approaches, which look respectively at the past and present with an eye to determining the minutiae of some particular event or series of events within historical or contemporary contexts. Accordingly, social scientists must work from some body of theory — theory which tells us more about reality than we already know, predicting relationships which are both conceivably true and perhaps unsuspected — theory which also sets the potential bounds of relevant social and political data. Otherwise, it is nearly impossible to rise above the level of simple description. The underlying theory presented in this and the following three chapters is designed therefore to bring into sharp relief the 1. A methodological essay by Dankwart A. Rustow is extremely instructive on this point: "Modernization and Comparative Politics: Prospects in Research and Theory," Comparative Politics, 1, no. 1 (October 1968), 37-51. 11

12

Underlying Theory

relevance of the facts associated with the Peruvian data, and to explain certain key relationships among them. Capacity

One aspect of this underlying framework is an abstraction which Frank W. Young calls "information-processing capacity": 2 the ability to understand, use, and take advantage of information fragments (or symbols) to which individuals or groups may have access. Two people, for example, are invited to a lecture on the causes of kwashiorkor and are later asked to discuss the implications for tropical Africa. One of the participants is a Bedouin tribesman, the other a professional nutritionist in the World Health Organization. Obviously, there will be a vast difference in the ability of these two to comprehend and intelligently discuss the matter. When the two individuals are compared as to their ability, the nutritionist is said to have a higher capacity to process this complex information symbol. Of course, there are untold numbers of symbols relevant to the world of the tribesman upon which the health officer could not make an intelligent expression at all. So we must say something else regarding information-processing capacity: it is the extent to which there is a capacity to process a diversity of complex information which transcends strictly localized symbolic nuances. This is information-processing capacity's direct linkup with what in general terms is ordinarily understood as "modernization." 3 In this regard one could say that a peasant 2. A brief summary of the notion may be found in Frank W. Young's "A Proposal for Cooperative Cross Cultural Research on Intervillage Systems," Human Organization, 25, no. 1 (Spring 1966), 46-50. I have benefited from his course, "Comparative Peasant Societies," at Cornell University. Several authors have worked with "information processing" in the field of modernization and development. Examples are Burke, Permanence and Change·, McLuhan, Understanding Media·, Redfield, "How Human Society Operates"; Smith, Communication and Culture·, and Duncan, Communication and the Social Order. (See bibliography.) 3. Harold Lasswell's perception of the logical thrust of modernization is the elimination in large part of localized symbolic nuances and their replacement by broad-spectrum, near-universal symbolic structures. See his "The Emerging Internation Culture," in U.S. International Development Agency, International Cooperation and Problems of Transfer Adaptation (Washington, D.C., 1962). In Young's information-processing theory, modernization is defined as an increasing capacity to handle complex symbolic structures, of which science and technology are obviously a part, but not the whole. The standard competing

Three Predictive Variables

13

who traveled regularly to a modern city probably would develop a higher information-processing capacity than one who simply stayed home; that one who lived in the city after leaving the village would develop still higher capacity; that one who did all these and received a formal education besides would place still higher in relative terms, and so on. As is the case with individuals, so it is also with larger units of social groupings. One may look at a whole village, compare it with another village and, with appropriate indicators or measurement devices, detect the relative information-processing capacity of each. A village functioning as a center of commerce and trade, for example, probably has a higher information-processing capacity than one which does not. One which acts as the physical repository of modern social services (medical clinics, schools, agricultural development institutes) probably has higher capacity than one which lacks all these and is also greatly physically removed from them. This theoretical assumption implies that any established actions or objects — sounds, behavior, artifacts — may, and most probably do, serve as information symbols or information structures which in turn function as norms or formulas for the entire village. A school; a social club; a policeman; an agricultural, transport, or consumer cooperative; a political party — all of these are symbolic representations of certain existing and rather complex meaning structures in any particular village. If the village has been influential in establishing them, it obviously has the capacity to process complex information about them. Moreover, by their very existence such symbols "communicate," that is, they evoke meanings and imply values for people associated with them. As the information and associated values are "processed," the patterns of communication may paradigm (structural-functional as opposed to information-processing) is well stated by Neil Smelser: As modernization occurs, roles and institutions become more differentiated and specialized. Analogously, in the information-processing theory, under these conditions, the complexity of information structures increases and so-called "modern man" is able to handle and process the meanings by virtue of the fact that he has a complex and differentiated capacity. Smelser's points are made in his "Toward a Theory of Modernization," in Amitai Etzioni and Eva Etzioni, eds., Social Change (New York, 1964), pp. 258-274. One concept of modernization by a prominent political scientist has it that the phenomenon "denotes rapidly widening control over nature through closer cooperation among men and implies changes m man's attitude toward his material environment, toward his fellow man, and toward time itself." Refer to Rustow, "Modernization and Comparative Politics," p. 38.

14

Underlying Theory

become dynamic, "as connoted by terms like strategies, policies, programs, and rhetoric." 4 In a sense, one is speaking of an arena of symbolic communication exchanges. Capacity-to-process-information may be termed a variable, for when villages are compared on this basis they are seen to vary somewhere between a high and a low point on the resulting continuum. Some villages simply have more complex information or meaning structures than others, as evidenced by the symbols which they possess. They therefore give evidence of higher global capacity, because their symbols demonstrate that information-processing is occurring at the level of the general public. One may give this variable any of several names. Young calls it differentiation, "a system's capacity to process a diversity of information types; or, to emphasize the mechanism by which such information is handled, it is the diversity of meaning areas in a symbolic structure." 5 For purposes of clarity, the abstraction in this book will be termed "informationprocessing capacity," or, for brevity, simply capacity. In terms of operational measurement, capacity may be understood as the number of meaning sectors that a given village or intervillage system publicly discriminates, and these may be found by a count of organizations, institutions, roles, and so forth which the village exhibits. 6 Solidarity Extending the previous assumptions, one may even say that the content of any society or polity, at any level, may be construed as structures of meaning or information. Capacity to process the related symbols therefore is only one aspect of a larger whole. Accordingly, there are other 4. Young, "A Proposal," p. 47. 5. Ibid. 6. Young and others have produced a scalogram of social differentiation for fifty agricultural communities (Menzel coefficient of scalability, .76; coefficient of reproducibility, .96) which uses indicators applicable to this theory although they are not of the variety employed later in this book. Refer to Frank W. Young, Berkeley A. Spencer, and Jan L. Flora, "Differentiation and Solidarity in Agricultural Communities," Human Organization, 27, no. 4 (Winter 1968), 344-351. A similarly-developed scale based on fifty-four Latin American community studies is by Frank W. Young and Isao Fujimoto, "Social Differentiation in Latin American Communities," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 13 (1965), 344-352. Using essentially the same variable but with different indicators, Wesley W. Craig, Jr., produced a scalogram on an intervillage system in the Quillabamba region of Peru, From Hacienda to Community (Ithaca, New York, 1967). For an additional variant, refer also to chapter 9 of this book.

Three Predictive Variables

15

important variables which may be specified and which will be useful in refining studies of the peasantry. Aside from capacity one could look at the degree to which the residents of a given village tend to interpret available information and symbols in diverse or similar manners. What, for example, is the perceived function and use of money, the purpose and utility of religion, the benefit or liability of modern agricultural technology? What are the life or death notions regarding Western medicine? All these meaning belts, represented by their associated symbols (that is, national currency, church edifice or patron saint, fertilizers, insecticides, and antibiotics) may evoke highly diverse or very similar perceptions among the villagers. If the villagers perceive the symbols to have similar meanings, then it can be said that they are processing the associated meaning structures according to a single-value format. As an extension of this illustration, if the entire village processes an extremely wide variety of complex information according to a single integrated value format, the villagers will be united in global understanding and united in their thinking about the "really important things." Their perception of issues, problems, and solutions will be remarkably similar. Moreover, internal frictions will be progressively minimized as an increasingly larger variety of symbols come to carry essentially the same meaning for everyone. Under such conditions information processing not only will be occurring within a single-value format, but it also will be highly integrated and unified, no matter how diverse the meaning structures themselves may be. There is a coordination of minds, as it were, in such a way that a sharp and definite world view is created among the peasants on any one or more of a number of issues — and the more unified the interpretation of the symbols on those issues, the more united the village will tend to be. In practice, this unification of symbolic meanings creates, maintains, and subsequently projects that united view to the rest of the world with resulting attitudes of "we-ness" and "they-ness." Thus, we have a second variable associated with information processing, and again we may give it a variety of appropriate names. The formulator of this variable calls it solidarity. A village may exhibit high or low solidarity depending on how it globally interprets information and symbols available to it. Through the use of appropriate indicators it is possible to rank villages of a selected region on this variable and therefore compare them.7 In fact it should be possible to rank any social unit 7. Young, Spencer, and Flora, "Differentiation and Solidarity in Agricultural Communities," have been able to prepare a unidimensional solidarity scale (Men-

16

Underlying Theory

as to its relative degree of solidarity. An illustrative possibility is shown by the impressionistic typology of figure 2.

3 — Paranoia. (Only one shaft of truth in the world, and the group has it.) Increasing Solidarity

2 — Nationalism, communityism, brotherhoodism, and so forth. 1 — High morale. 0 — Humdrum societies, apathetic groups. 1—Dualistic societies. (Negro-White; Mestizo-Indian; urbanrural; modern-traditional, and so on.)

Decreasing Solidarity

2 — Amoral groupism. (The completely group-fragmented society.) 3 — Secret combinations. (Internal banditry, predatory raids.)

Fig. 2. Some solidarity types

Relative Centrality or Opportunity Taking the general discussion one step further, an additional variable may be drawn from the notions of information processing. This one deals with the relative participation of villages in the symbolic communications network of which they are a part. In illustrating this variable at an individual level we could say that a prisoner in solitary confinement would not be participating in information and symbolic structures to the same relative degree as another not so confined. On the other hand, a man incapable of reading would not have a capacity to process certain symbols to the same extent as one not so handicapped, even if he had access to them. Similarly, for villages it can be seen that it may be possible for some zel coefficient of scalability, .76; coefficient of reproducibility, .94) for fifty villages and communities not even of the same region. A solidarity scale using different operational indicators may be found in this book in chapter 9.

Three Predictive Variables

17

to have a capacity to process complex symbols but be restrained from doing so by natural or artificial impediments. One village may be incredibly remote, for example, geography being the impediment. Another may be processing complex and technical information about agriculture but be restrained from participating in those symbols by a zealous landlord who sees elements of subversion in such innovations. On the other hand, it also can be seen that some villages may be in a position of having access to these and other complex symbolic structures but be incapable of processing them. Some villages may have low capacity but nevertheless have good communication possibilities with the cities. Others may be located near a dispensary of Western medicine and thereby be in a position to exercise freely whatever information-processing capacity they may have on this plane, and so on. Those villages which have access to or participate to a greater extent than others in the network's information and symbolic structures are said to have higher relative centrality in the system.8 This third and final variable is thus understood in terms of a village's relative position in the wider symbolic structure of the system of which it is a part. 9 It is clearly evident, therefore, that villages in positions of high relative centrality will have greater opportunity (than those not so favorably positioned) to process information and symbols commensurate with whatever capacity they may have. In a common-sense 8. Relative centrality should not be confused with "geographic centrality" in the sense of the two being synonymous, although under some conditions they may be. Relative centrality deals with communicative paths and symbolic transactions, not necessarily terrestrial roadways. Concepts similar to that of relative centrality have been developed in the literature. The term as it is used in this book is analogous to sociometry. Other definitions are available, such as that of Claude Flamant, Applications of Graph Theory to Group Structure (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963), and Murray A. Beauchamp, "An Improved Index of Centrality," Behavioral Science, 10 (April 1965), 161-163. The "father" of the notion is probably Alex Bavelas, "Communication Patterns in Task-Oriented Groups," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 22 (1950), 725-730, although Young, on one occasion, admitted that his use of relative centrality also derives from Wiener's early notions on cybernetics and the feed-back characteristics of self-correcting energy systems. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (New York, 1948). 9. This is the intervillage system. Work on intercommunity systems has been developed from a variety of points of view in the literature. Some examples are Clawson, "The Implications of Urbanization for the Village and Rural Sector"; Nystuen and Dacey, "A Graph Theory Interpretation of Nodal Regions"; Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China"; Turner, "The Industrial City: Center of Cultural Change"; Vance and Smith, "Metropolitan Dominance and Integration"; and Young, "Location and Reputation in a Mexican Intervillage Network." (See the bibliography.)

18 Underlying Theory sort of way, then, relative centrality is analagous to "relative opportunity." Relative opportunity, as far as its suitability for explaining social and political forces is concerned, appears to have two empirical facets of frequently interchangeable importance — one dealing with symbols of material growth (and opportunity for growth) in the village, the other with symbols of meaningful political participation of the village with the larger regional or national political world. In a practical way relative opportunity therefore reflects a village's economic and/or political opportunity relative to other units in the system, and this can be measured by a count of economic and political symbols reflecting growth or participation. Although all three of the preceding variables (capacity, solidarity, opportunity) derive from "information processing," it is nevertheless clear that they are on three separate and distinct planes. The capacity variable refers to the ability and competency of the village to process complex information; the solidarity variable refers to the similarity of values placed on the information which is processed; and the opportunity variable refers to the village's relative participation or opportunity to participate in the economic and political information network and symbolic structures of the system. A Predictive Paradigm The purpose of using these three variables is to see how they interrelate — to see what they explain, what they predict. Information-processing theory permits a considerable refining of the normal no-necessary-causeor-effect correlations between variables — what Rustow calls the "tally-ho method" — which researchers often report. On the other hand, by deriving capacity, solidarity, and relative opportunity from an information-processing base it is possible to hypothesize cause and effect relationships which are theoretically and, as will be seen, empirically sound. That is, given the positions of a village on any two of the variables, it is possible to predict its position on the third variable. Each variable, therefore, may be taken as a dependent one, explained in turn by the remaining two. Let us proceed to see how one combination may work, selecting solidarity as the dependent variable. Assume that we have found a village which demonstrates an extraordinarily high capacity to process information, as exhibited by, for example,

Three Predictive Variables

19

its possession of numerous complex organizations, institutions, role structures, and so forth. On the other hand, we also note that the same village has relatively low opportunity to utilize that capacity. It may be geographically isolated, forcefully confined to reservation or feudal status, or internally constrained by a traditional indigenous elite. The village, that is, most of its inhabitants, is relatively overcapacitated when reflected against its opportunities. One may say that it displays a discrepancy between its capacity and its opportunity. Such a condition in this study is termed structural bind. Specifically, structural bind is defined as a situation in which a village's capacity greatly exceeds its position of relative opportunity in the intervillage system. Accordingly, as capacity to process information exceeds available outlet opportunities, there is a structural problem in the village and the villagers are apt to get together to identify it — and perhaps resolve it.10 At the very least, if the problem is self-evident, it can be expected that the villagers will begin to harmonize their ideas regarding the matter. Perhaps the landlord is blocking opportunity at a time when capacity is high. If so, it is nearly certain that he will become the focus of attention. The villagers will begin to interpret many of their problems as deriving from his intransigence. Or, suppose the problem is perceived as being caused by the activities of national bureaucrats, policemen, the church, other peasant villages, or dominating towns. The effect will be the same. The villagers will tend to perceive in a unified way the symbols displayed by those people or institutions. The perceptions derived from the symbolic structure will be harmonious. The villagers will tend toward a solidary mind about the matter and come to agree on the underlying meaning. In short, the village will develop solidarity and will begin to move to progressively higher positions on that variable until the structural bind is relieved,11 or, conversely, until the major rhetorical participants are eliminated. 10. To the extent, at least, that no limiting cultural factors exist to impede corporate action. See, for example, Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York, 1958). If corporate action, for impeding cultural reasons, is impossible in the traditional environment, it is equally unlikely that it would be very possible under structural-bind conditions deriving from the impact of modernity. The evidence presented by Banfield on his southern Italian village suggests that as a structural bind increases under cultural conditions impeding concerted action, interpersonal relations simply become more pathological or "amoral." Mounting problems are never resolved; they only become more intense. Considerable out-migration may result. 11. To the extent that structural binds exist at the sub-village level the phenomenon would be similar but explained using groups rather than villages as the unit

20

Underlying Theory

There are many avenues leading to the structural bind. Capacity will tend to rise among villagers who may get an opportunity to travel; temporarily work outside the village for a mining company, plantation farmer, or city merchant; attend school; come into contact with the Peace Corps or modernizing national bureaucrats; or by participating in radiolistening clubs. Any number of such encounters may affect the global information-processing capacity of the village. To the extent that the capacity level consistently exceeds the development of opportunity outlets — which may be expressed in the practical terms of agrarian reform, political protection, and social justice — the problem of the structural bind will occur and the phenomenon of solidarity will tend to appear. Following are some theoretical possibilities: a) Capacity to process information increases but relative opportunities to exercise and utilize it do not. If C = capacity, Ο = relative opportunity, and S = solidarity, then the following symbolic formula results: Ct + Ο = Sf. b) Capacity and relative opportunity both increase, but capacity does so more rapidly than opportunity. That is, Cf + Oi = Sf. c) Capacity increases while at the same time relative opportunity decreases: Cf + OJ, = Sf. d) Capacity remains the same while at the same time relative opportunity decreases: C + Ο j = Sf. Young has advanced a formulation which abstracts this approach: "Under conditions of lower intervillage system solidarity, the greater the discrepancy between a community's differentiation (high) and its relative centrality (low), the greater will be its solidarity." It is this constellation of factors which forms the basis of this study, although dependent variables other than solidarity may be specified.12 of analysis. The theory should work at any systems level. The entire village is taken as the unit here in order to accommodate the empirical application of the theory in Peru. 12. Young's "rotating" three-variable formulation is as follows: I. Under conditions of high solidarity in the intervillage system, the differentiation of the component communities varies directly with their relative centrality in the system. IIa. Under conditions of lower intervillage system solidarity, the greater the discrepancy between a community's differentiation (high) and its relative centrality (low), the greater will be its solidarity. IIb. Under conditions of low intervillage system solidarity, the greater the discrepancy between a community's differentiation (low) and its relative centrality (high), the lower will be its solidarity.

Three Predictive Variables

21

III. Under conditions of lower intervillage system solidarity, the greater the solidarity of a community, the more likely it is to increase its relative centrality. IV. If the solidarity of the intervillage system is increasing, an increase in a community's relative centrality will lead to an increase in its differentiation relative to the other communities, after which the condition of hypothesis One will apply (Young "A Proposal").

Chapter 2

Information-Processing Energy Conversions: Solidarity Movements, Coercion, and Reform Although Young has primarily been interested in "differentiation" as the dependent variable, we have seen that his theory may also be used to explain village solidarity. There are a number of related variables, however, which his framework is not designed to handle. The solidarity component, for example, must be modified and expanded before it can be used to help explain social and political change among the peasantry of a modernizing nation such as Peru. 1 For one thing, we must account for the fact that the strategies, policies, programs, and rhetoric which in varying degrees accompany information-processing solidarity do so sometimes in very intense and sometimes in rather mild forms. Likewise, we must account for the spectacular and sudden appearance of highly intense forms of dynamic communication, a peculiarity which others 1. Much of the approach to be presented derives not only from the informationprocessing theory of Frank W. Young, but also the exchange-relations paradigm of William Foote Whyte, the political development model of Samuel P. Huntington, and some interesting contributions on "social geometry" by Julio Cotler. I am also indebted to Giorgio Alberti for suggesting some possibilities regarding the integration of several of the notions of Whyte and Young.

22

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

23

have sought to explain in terms of "psychological dynamics." 2 A third factor which we must take into consideration is the differential effect that a leader, depending on his own values, may have upon highly solidary groups under certain conditions.3 Finally, we must account for the impact of the larger society upon the village, both in terms of modernizing intervention and reactionary coercion. Modern peasants are not 2. For a time it was academically fashionable to explain revolts and revolutions solely in terms of psychological dynamics; "frustration-aggression" theory in some of its variants has been a case in point. On the other extreme, some have sought to explain such expressions of discontent as simply reflecting underlying disequilibria, dysynchronization, or "ills" in the social system itself. Recently some scholars have attempted to combine the notions of psychodynamics and structural disequilibria by demonstrating that underlying structural ills set the stage for revolts, but the fact that they occur, if they do at all, can be related to some "catalytic intervention," i.e., a sudden, usually nonrecurring phenomena which dramatically affects the psychology of the masses. A very useful summary on these and other approaches to this topic is by Lawrence Stone, "Theories of Revolution," World Politics, 18 (January 1966). Other references will be made to specific works in their appropriate contexts. Lord and Peasant in Peru holds that there is a complex intertwining between the structural conditions presented by a society and the sudden events which may dramatically affect the psychology of people and inflame them, or render them susceptible to psychological capture by outside revolutionaries or charismatic leaders. The nature of the combination will become clear in the discussion of the subordination variable and hypotheses which follow. 3. Social scientists in recent years have had a great tendency to deal with "politics" as the ever-dependent variable, explained away by underlying social, psychological and economic conditions. In short, many have made a sharp denial of what Rustow argues ought to be considered, under certain conditions at least, the independent variable ("Modernization and Comparative Politics," pp. 38-39). The denial of the "primacy of politics" and attempts to explain it away accord well with "stability" and "equilibrium" as the central concepts of social theory. Nevertheless, a trend now appears to be developing which, while continuing to relate politics to the underlying characteristics of the social system, also demonstrates that under certain conditions various leadership types and the values which they espouse (nationalist, communist, millinarian, etc.) can seriously affect the society as a whole. The most brilliant general efforts on this point, to my knowledge, are Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968), and S. N. Eisenstadt, Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966). It may be acceptable to argue, as Young does, that whenever underlying discrepancies or structural binds exist in a society adequate leadership has a tendency to surface automatically. It is nevertheless mandatory to acknowledge that competing leadership values often exist, that they frequently have a differential impact on society depending on which value group eventually gets hold of the reins of power (Lenin in Russia vs. Ataturk in Turkey, for example), and that "underlying structural conditions" are not sufficient either to explain or predict what leadership values will eventually emerge victorious.

24

Underlying Theory

isolated in their society; they are a very integral and intimate part of it.4 To begin with, aside from the eye-to-eye value perceptions associated with highly solidary villages, information-processing solidarity also implies what John T. Dorsey calls "energy conversions." 5 Appropriated for the scheme here, the theory of energy conversions is the postulation that as information is processed under structural-bind conditions, and as solidarity develops, an energy potential is created. Under uncomplicated conditions later to be specified, one would expect the resulting dynamic forms of communication to include not only rhetoric and strategies, but actual programs and policies as well. The rationale for developing solidarity and energy expressions under structural-bind conditions is simple enough. The village has a problem — its inhabitants are relatively overcapacitated with their informationprocessing abilities. It is quite certain that the villagers will attempt to do something about that problem. Those who for one reason or another do not migrate elsewhere probably will organize, start some programs and attempt to bring village opportunity into line with village capacity. The villagers may decide on any number of things to do: build roads, hospitals, irrigation networks; reclaim lands; erect municipal buildings; 4. Writers have often spoken of "cultural dualism" in societies with a significant peasant population. It has often been argued that the duality of the society is snch that the two major parts live in near economic and social isolation from each other. Recent studies discount this aspect of duality, showing that the two sectors of the society are inextricably interwoven in all planes — economic, social, and political, in a kind of "internal colonial" arrangement. Three good works which treat this point are: Rodolfo Stavenhagen, "Seven Fallacies About Latin America," in Latin America: Reform or Revolution, ed. James Petras and Maurice Zeitlan (New York: 1968); Julio Cotler, "The Mechanics of Internal Domination and Social Change in Peru," Studies in Comparative International Development, 3, no. 12 (1967-68); and Eisenstadt, Modernization, pp. 86-95. 5. John T. Dorsey, Jr., "The Bureaucracy and Political Development in Viet Nam," Bureaucracy and Political Development, ed. Joseph LaPalombara (Princeton, 1963), pp. 318-325. Analagous interpretations of development of a social system as an expression of its energy conversion levels may be found in Fred Cottrell, Energy and Society (New York, 1955), and Leslie A. White, The Science of Culture (New York, 1949), pp. 363-393. Where Dorsey and the approach here differ, however, is in the chain of causation. For Dorsey, energy conversion levels somehow rise in a society, and as such, "political, social, and economic structures and processes undergo transformations." Essentially his approach is Parsonian. Here, however, the argument is that changing structures conducive to the creation of high solidarity (structural-bind conditions) are the causal link to energy conversion. I am indebted to Professor John D. Montgomery of Harvard University for bringing the Dorsey article to my attention.

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

25

introduce electricity. Or, in extreme cases, the peasants may invade lands, organize revolts, and, perhaps, engage in guerrilla warfare. The Solidarity M o v e m e n t

If the structural bind is quite high, the dynamic patterns of communication— that is, strategies, policies, programs, and rhetoric — are liable to be quite intense. The peasants will not only be processing symbols according to a general single-value format, but they will tend to convert that processing into visible physical energy as well. These are the moving energy expressions of solidarity — hence solidarity movement. Such a state implies social cohesion, unified purpose, and a willingness to work toward achieving articulated goals. A successful peasant solidarity movement6 hatches two major offspring: (a) It increases the peasantry's capacity to handle (process) more information and symbols and thus allows the incorporation of more "meaning structures" into peasant life. The symbolic structure of the world which guides the peasantry becomes more complex — more "differentiated." Capacity thus becomes an important variable affected by — and, as we have already seen, affecting — peasant solidarity, (b) Such a movement also increases the peasantry's relative access to whatever information structures are available to the nation (or social subsystem) of which it is a part and in so doing increases the peasantry's relative centrality or opportunity in the system's communication arena and symbolic world. The relative opportunity variable is therefore affected by — and affects — peasant solidarity movements. Thus, the peasantry's capacity to handle a wider variety of meaning structures increases as a result of a successful solidarity movement (exemplified by an increasingly differentiated symbolic meaning structure), and we may postulate that by the same token its ability to gain access to more complex meaning structures also increases. In short, the movement is 6. In the sense that the movement achieves some or all of its goals and is not crushed in the process. Most often the movements are those which deliberately make as their prime objective a rise in the peasants' economic, political, and/or cultural status under conditions in which they must seek concessions from superior status groups in order to realize the goals. Henry Landsberger has made some instructive observations on this point. Refer to his "The Role of Peasant Movements and Revolts in Development: An Analytical Framework," Bulletin of the International Institute for Labour Studies (February 1968), pp. 8-85.

26

Underlying Theory

infectious and its energy conversions tend to accelerate geometrically. "The more you get, the more you want" is not at all a bad perception — under certain uncomplicated conditions. In societies which do not place great blocks on the energy expressions of their peasantry (and which therefore may be amenable to, or even encourage, such things as agrarian reform, village development, social and occupational mobility, legal and social justice, and so on), policies, programs, and rhetoric at the village level tend to develop gradually in a fashion more or less synchronized with the development of village solidarity. As a village gains greater capacity and unifies its informationprocessing network (the development of which is usually a gradual process unless village resources suddenly have come under attack from other parties) its energy expressions gradually develop also. As capacity to process information increases, and to the extent that it is accompanied by village solidarity, attention is turned to village infrastructure — schools, roads, buildings, services — and the acquiring of land, agricultural techniques, and so forth. Because there are no energy blocks, as village solidarity develops so does the expression of its energy. Under such advantageous conditions, solidarity and energy expression are closely synchronized — solidarity a half phase or SQ ahead. Relative Subordination, Catalysts, and Charismatic Leaders Even for successful moderate movements to occur, in the terms outlined above, it appears necessary for the village to be, or feel itself to be, at least moderately subordinated by the outside world. The specific meaning of this new variable will become apparent in the discussion below, but for the moment we may say that moderate solidarity movements are helped if the participants have the perception that they are working not only for something within the village structure itself, but against something outside the village as well. As an example, perhaps the villagers' positive efforts are directed toward the construction of an irrigation system. The maintenance of solidarity, and therefore the development program is facilitated if the peasants also feel that as a result of their concerted action they may be able to bypass land barons and other land-tenure problems imposed by the larger society. Likewise, in the formation of a marketing cooperative the effort will be aided if the peasants perceive not only that they will obtain a better price for

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

27

their product, but that they will also be able to bypass the old moneylenders and truckers who have habitually exploited them. Thus, for any moderate solidarity movement the stage is set by the structural bind, but the resulting strategies, rhetoric, policies, and programs are helped along if a little perceived subordination exists as well. The result will tend to be a moderate, well-disciplined solidarity movement carried out under the auspices of existing village leadership. If we designate (RS—) as symbolic of low relative subordination, and MSM for a moderate solidarity movement, then one possible explanatory formula would be: Cf + Ο = S | + ( R S - ) = MSM. We have already noted in chapter 1 other avenues leading to the structural bind, but through whatever avenue solidarity appears, when solidarity is coupled with low levels of relative subordination, one can expect that moderate solidarity movements will tend to appear. However, when the relative subordination of a village or intervillage system by the outside world is so high that the larger society habitually places almost total energy blocks on the village through some coercive means, or when the peasants perceive that such would be the case were they to attempt corporate action to restructure their relative opportunity in the system, it is another question indeed. Where energy blocks exist but the peasants are not completely aware of them, structural binds gradually developing through any of the avenues we have noted so far may initially move toward moderate energy conversions. As soon as the movements appear, however, the larger society will block or suppress them. Moderate movements arising under conditions of high relative subordination are therefore "shut down" by outside force. As an example, perhaps the landlord has been away for some time and in his absence the peasants have decided to build a school. When the lord returns, he orders the school closed, the students disbanded, and the teacher removed from his land. The program is thereby effectively cancelled. However, where peasants may have been so conditioned over scores of years of interpersonal relations with the lords that they already know the "limits of behavior," solidarity may develop over time and become rather intense before any visible energy conversion occurs, or, indeed, energy conversion may never occur at all. In both cases, either after initial energy conversions have been blocked or while solidarity develops but no energy conversions are even attempted, the deciding factor in further energy conversions is usually some catalytic occurrence which

28

Underlying Theory

dramatically affects the peasants' perceptions of the outcome of any unified action. Such occurrences are sometimes referred to as "catalysts" or "accelerators." Someone may appear who convinces the villagers that the power of the traditional rural elite can somehow be negated. The peasants may objectively see a power deterioration if the country has been defeated in war or if a modernizing elite has taken over the national government. Or influential persons in powerful positions may appear whom the peasants believe will help them break through the energy-conversion blocks posed by the traditional rural elite. It does not matter, however, whether the perceptions are objective. It is sufficient for the peasants to believe that they are objective. Once a catalyst has triggered the conversion of high solidarity into energy expression, no matter what its source or nature, then one had better not look for moderation. An intense solidarity movement will have been born. 7 In the face of real or perceived coercion, however, no matter how high their solidarity, the peasants may view the success probabilities of energy conversions as being too limited, the commensurate costs too great. They may see the sanctioning powers of the rural elite as being too strong. Or they may see their own position as being too weak to risk an energy conversion of their solidarity at that particular moment. They may have programs, policies, and rhetoric in mind to change their status and bring their information-processing opportunities more in line with their information-processing capacity, but they may also choose to await a more propitious time in which to express their energies. Intense movements may therefore not appear at all, even when high village solidarity exists. The important factor in this chain is the perceived level of energy-blocking coercion which the larger society (or its representatives) is prepared to use. If moderate energy conversions arise 7. Working from a variant of a frustration-aggression model, Ted Gurr argues that catalysts "may be categorized according to their inferred psychological effects, for example, according to whether they facilitate interaction among the discontented, or provide the discontented with a sense that violent responses to deprivation are justified, or give them the means to make such responses with maximum effect, or shelter them from retribution." See his "A Causal Model of Civil Strife: A Comparative Analysis Using New Indices," American Political Science Review, 62, no. 4 (December 1968), 1106. Gurr has further elaborated on-the impact of these psychological factors (while not denying the fact that underlying structural conditions such as the "structural bind" may contribute to them) in his very excellent theoretical framework: "Psychological Factors in Civil Violence," World Politics, 20 (January 1968), 245-278.

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

29

and are not blocked, it is a sign that the upper strata are either flexible or weak, that effective levels of coercion and therefore relative subordination are low, and that the peasants have properly perceived them as being such. If an intense movement arises, however, it suggests that the upper strata are inflexible, that their coercive powers are high and have been successful for a time. In this instance a relatively spectacular (and usually nonrecurring) catalyst has psychologically negated the energy-blocking effect of the symbols associated with that coercive power: police, jail, imposed hunger, confiscation of property, extermination. (Figure 3 illustrates the difference.)

Fig. 3. Hypothesized corporate energy conversions under increasing structural-bind conditions at varying levels of subordination

Energy conversions, if they occur at all, may reflect either of two extremes: 8 radical or nonradical, revolutionary or nonrevolutionary, 8. And, of course, a good many gradations in between. In reality, a movement may start in a moderate sense, suddenly have its energy expressions blocked by the larger society, collapse into apparent quietude for a time, subsequently erupt in

30

Underlying Theory

violent or nonviolent, depending on the terms one wishes to use or the actual conditions which arise. The general connotations can be understood by the terms intense and moderate peasant solidarity movements. Intense movements are radical, revolutionary, and often violent. Moderate movements are not so radical, revolutionary, or violent. Intense movements seek to destroy some or all of the institutions under which the participants have been obliged to live; moderate ones seek reforms or benefits from within the system, not its destruction. If, in addition to the symbols already presented, we let ISM represent intense solidarity movement, NSM represent no solidarity movement, ( R S + ) represent high relative subordination, and X represent a catalyst, then two sets of formulas emerge: (1) The peasants perceive high subordination (that is, energy blocks exist and are well known to the peasantry). a. Sf + ( R S + ) = NSM b. S t + ( R S + ) + X = ISM (2) High subordination objectively exists but the peasants do not immediately perceive it (that is, energy blocks will be erected if any energy conversions are attempted, but the peasants do not know it). a. St = MSM + ( R S + ) = NSM b. St = MSM + ( R S + ) = NSM + X = ISM One would expect that a system of peasant villages which was not highly subordinated would maintain multidirectional contacts with each other and the outside world to the extent that desire or need arose. Peasants would travel, visit, communicate, and associate with a great number of entities external to their own little village. Under such conditions, the intervillage system might be characterized by as many external as internal communication, information, and symbolic linkages. Indeed, this is probably the single most important objective indicator distinguishing this type of intervillage system from a highly subordinated one. In the highly subordinated system the communicative links are nearly all internal to the system, except for the village or town which acts as intense forms of one or another variety, or simply die. The point here is that for theoretical reasons it is useful to show the apparent relation of the variables under polar-type conditions because the conceptual possibilities are much more readily grasped. This does not deny that in the real world the interrelationship of the variables may or may not be considerably more ambiguous under "moderately intense" or "intensely moderate" levels of energy expression.

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

Ο Δ

S y s t e m ' s Center:

31

The dominant village in highlysubordinated intervillage systems

Individual v i l l a g e s

Fig. 4. Channels of symbolic transactions in highly subordinated conditions broker or interpreter for all symbolic transactions of the system with the outside world. Such a town is usually one which participates to a high degree in the dominant national culture, and may even be one where the local landlords maintain their town houses. In non-highlysubordinated cases, however, the linkages are multilateral; symbolic transactions are carried out with a multiplicity of villages both inside and outside the system. (Figures 4 and 5 note the graphic difference.) In intense movements the charismatic leader9 usually plays a main 9. The question of charismatic leadership is one of the more consistently debated subjects of political development. One author has gone so far as to designate

32

Underlying Theory

F r o m various villages within the

Ο Δ

S y s t e m ' s Center: A village of convenience

Individual villages

Fig. 5. Channels of symbolic transactions in non-highly-subordinated conditions charismatic authority as unstable and without structure; therefore, no criteria can be devised to identify or measure it (K. J. Ratnam, "Charisma and Political Leadership," Political Studies, 12 [October 1964], 341ff). Many authorities on political development, however, acknowledge that, within certain and sometimes serious limitations, Weber's typology is a useful guide; it is possible to identify his respective authority types even though their intensity cannot be absolutely scaled. This study holds that within broad limits the concept serves as an index for studying the leadership associated with intense varieties of peasant solidarity movements, without going into the question of whether charisma must be supernaturally endowed, formally structured, etc. One of the best general summaries is by Dankwart Rustow, A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization (Washington, D.C., 1967), chapter 5.

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

33

role, acting as the peasants' "information interpreter" for crucial incoming and outgoing symbolic meanings. The result is that the entire movement processes information, derived from the symbolic structures, according to a single format which is then often articulated, reinforced, and given conscious direction (or redirection) by the charismatic leader himself.10 Thus Reivindicacion, a village cry for the return of stolen communal lands, became an information-processing symbol for intense movements in Peru's sierra — and spectacular leaders arose to reinforce it. Tierra ο muerte likewise had a symbolic solidarity meaning for the guerrilla movements in Peru's Eastern jungle, 1964-1966. Charismatic leaders tend to appropriate these symbols and give them an ideological focus. As the symbolic meaning is understood by all those involved it is quite easy for leaders to encourage them to act solidarily upon that meaning. Such emotive symbols constitute part of a new codebook for the future. Accordingly, it is under conditions conducive to intense movements that well-focused ideologies can be expected to appear. Although the stage for any movement must be set within the social system itself (by creating those conditions which lead to solidarity), the fact that energy conversions occur at all under conditions where energy blocks exist must be attributed to dramatic psychological factors.11 By using the capacity and relative opportunity variables it is possible to explain the appearance of information-processing solidarity. Solidarity, in turn, sets the stage for energy expression and the potential appearance of a solidarity movement. Where energy expressions are 10. It is at this juncture that the leaders' values, whatever they are, give direction and perhaps ideological style to the movement. See n. 3 above, and chapter 4, η. 1. 11. This is the conclusion that Henry Landsberger, "The Role of Peasant Movements," reaches in his structural-functional paradigm. It is also a general one to which Chalmers Johnson has made some major adjustments in his second, and brilliant, effort at analyzing revolution. Johnson's earlier attempt, Revolution and the Social System (Stanford, 1964), clearly a landmark in the study of revolution, sought explanations strictly from within the social system. He was nearly universally admired, but also criticized (e.g., Stone, "Theories of Revolution") for his failure in some way to account for those sudden, and usually nonrecurrent psychodynamic happenings on which so many others had laid such great stress. His second effort, Revolutionary Change (Boston, 1966), rectifies that problem by doing essentially what is done here. He hypothesizes that the stage for revolution must first be set within the social system, that the moment of its occurrence may be attributed to conditions or events, i.e., "catalysts" which dramatically affect psychological perceptions. Furthermore, revolutions occur because less radical forms of social change have been blocked.

34

Underlying Theory

permitted by the larger society, then solidarity and solidarity movements are practically synonymous. They are also moderate. Where such expressions are not permitted, however, solidarity may exist for short or long periods of time without any energy conversion at all. Under these conditions if a movement does arise, that it does so at all may be attributed to some catalyst, or, in Chalmers Johnson's terms, "accelerator," 12 which affects the psychology of the peasantry in such a way that they become willing to take a gamble — or perhaps knowingly commit themselves to martyrdom. Such gambles or decisions habitually result in intense movements. In order to say anything meaningful about the conversion of solidarity into a solidarity movement and to explain why some movements evolve in moderate and others in intense forms, one must relate the peasantry to the larger society. Relative subordination, catalysts, and charismatic leaders are concepts which help us do that. Before proceeding to some specific hypotheses, it is worthwhile to note that peasants' perceptions of the success possibilities of intense movements have usually been wrong. Generally such movements have led to martyrdom, especially for the leaders. The peasants have been more highly subordinated by their national elite or the "national culture" than they had thought. Or they have been unable to gain access to means of violence with which either to protect or assert themselves. Clubs and chains are of little use against automatic firearms, or, as in some reported instances in Peru, bombs dropped upon villages from aircraft. Incipient movements are thwarted; anything approaching a mass peasant movement mobilizes the entire military strength of the nation. In Peru, until recent years, the peasants were crushed each time they attempted to organize. In Guatemala, the secret police has done an efficient job of keeping the country's majority Indian population "content" on wages of fifty cents a day. Western Europe's peasants, at least until the mid-nineteenth century, were similarly controlled (as have been many minority groups in the United States). Such movements may have a sense of charisma attached to them,13 but the larger society may snuff out the leaders and fragment or deport the membership — or simply exterminate it. Suffering thus reaches a point of diminishing 12. Revolutionary Change, pp. 91-154, passim. 13. Egon Bittner has argued the necessity of charisma in "Radicalism and the Organization of Radical Movements," American Sociological Review, 28 (December 1963), 928-940.

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

35

returns — it results in annihilation. Revolutionary movements may succeed only when the participants are persecuted, but there is the problem of being persecuted to extinction. It is appropriate at this point to tender some specific hypotheses designed to explain how and why peasant movements occur. The first hypothesis explains the appearance of intense movements, the second, the appearance of moderate movements. The third posits those conditions under which structural binds do not exist, solidarity is low, and village movements would not be expected to occur, even under conditions of low relative subordination. Higher Solidarity and the Appearance of Intense Solidarity Movements HYPOTHESIS I: In cases where a village displays signs of a high structural bind and is also highly subordinated by the nation or national culture, energy expressions of solidarity — programs, policies, strategies, and rhetoric — if they occur at all, will tend to be intense. This hypothesis can be demonstrated in a dualized nation: "cultural dualism," "social dualism," and "political dualism" are terms frequently used to express such a state. Literally, the terms connote a split society, usually made so on racial, ethnic, or cultural grounds. The existence of dualism should not suggest that the "lower part" of the society has failed to be incorporated into national life, however. Rather, it has been incorporated in a very special way — highly subordinated, not necessarily on its own terms, and under conditions which are comparatively unfavorable to it. Some writers have referred to such a state as "internal colonialism." 14 In any event, this general notion of structural subordination takes many specific forms. It may vary from a satellite town of the national culture existing in the midst of a number of peasant villages to sharply regimented containment and exploitation as in the Rhodesia and South Africa of the 1960's. 14. Refer to chapter 2, n. 4, for references to the concept. It may be nearly certain that all units in a system not only symbolically intercommunicate in one form or another, but their communicative patterns are always reflected in some kind of relative subordinate-superordinate patterns of symbolic interaction. However these may or may not be reasonably "voluntaristic." The question whether or not they are voluntaristic implies entirely different considerations regarding the potential success of a solidarity movement on the one hand, or its intensity on the other.

36 Underlying Theory Under these conditions if the structural bind is high, the field is ripe, and conditions necessary for a movement to begin are present. Only a catalyst is lacking. Any number of usually nonrecurring events may serve as catalysts. An assassination, a theft, or an abuse may be sufficient. Or, the catalyst may simply be the appearance of a dynamic or charismatic leader. Such a leader can and often does "capture" these conditions, giving them ideological content, directing and organizing the movement toward certain specific goals which may not otherwise have been considered by the peasantry. Indeed, the appearance of a leader seems to be the point at which the dynamic corollaries of village solidarity really begin to develop. Some peasants have their own leaders, although these leaders often tend to be somewhat marginal to the peasant culture. Other peasants have found outside leadership. Radicalism abounds. If suppression is not complete, land invasions, guerrilla activities, and separatist movements may be some of the consequences. The village by means of these dramatic communication strategies makes a bid for the attention of the whole nation and ultimately for an enlargement of the symbolic world which guides the village. The inevitable conclusion, however, is that if the conditions — structural binds — do not exist, no leader will be able to set off a movement. The energy conversion potential simply is not there. Catalysts work only if structural-bind ingredients are present. Higher Solidarity and the Appearance of Moderate Solidarity Movements HYPOTHESIS II: In cases where a village displays signs of a structural bind but is not highly subordinated by the nation or national culture, energy expressions of solidarity — programs, policies, strategies, and rhetoric — will tend to appear but in moderate and nonradical forms. Charismatic leaders or outside revolutionaries in search of a following will not find the harvest very encouraging here. True, a structural bind does exist, a prerequisite already noted, but to be supportive of charismatic leadership the bind must be generated within the context of highly subordinated conditions. Structural binds relating to an unsubordinated environment simply do not favor the emergence of radical mass movements. A mobilized peasantry in non-highly-subordinated conditions will tend to retain its indigenous leadership and many of its stable organizations. It will tend to rely on outsiders only for occasional advice. The

Information-Processing Energy Conversions

37

energy expressions of solidarity will almost always be more internally directed, that is, land invasions and the like will not tend to develop. Instead, the involved villages will direct their strategies, programs, policies, and rhetoric toward building schools and churches, making roads, forming cooperatives, establishing medical posts, and so forth. As these improvements are made, other villages in the vicinity will probably begin to pay a great deal of attention — at least enough to send their sons to the schools when they are finished and to visit the medical post when it is in operation. Indeed, the village may suddenly find itself the center of informal authority for a number of its neighboring villages. The symbolic importance, and therefore relative centrality, of the village in the intervillage system will increase, and the structural bind will tend to be gradually resolved. In the process the village also will have increased its information-processing capacity. Lower Solidarity and the Nonappearance of Solidarity Movements From the standpoint of the unity and comprehensiveness of a theory, it is as important to identify the conditions wherein solidarity may not be expected to appear as those wherein it may. HYPOTHESIS III: Villages presenting conditions of high relative centrality or opportunity but low capacity will not tend to be characterized by high solidarity. Consequently, village solidarity movements generally will not develop among them. A village with high relative centrality but low capacity is usually an intervillage system's cultural and political link with the dominant part of a dualized society. To be sure, such a village can exist under conditions which do not fit the hypothesis, but when those conditions are met, a predictable yet curious result is obtained. Even though there is relatively low solidarity within the dominant village, such a village nevertheless retains a position of high relative centrality in the system because of its special brokerage links with the nation. If for any reason these links were to collapse, so would the high relative centrality of the village. But as long as the special links remain intact, the village's high relative centrality will remain. Local organizations in the dominant village tend to be composed of privileged-status ethnic groups, primarily bent on exploitation of surrounding subordinated villages and other ethnic groups within their own

38

Underlying Theory

community. Under these conditions, high relative centrality is the immediate structural setting which not only defines the status of the village, but serves to perpetuate that status as well. This is a kind of negative structural bind.15 Village communication boundaries are hard and usually dualistic; social rigidities are intense; means of social control are sharp and harsh. Internally, the dominant village is fragmented; "amoral groupism" 16 often is unrestrained. Of the groups themselves, some are likely to be highly solidary. The highest solidarity usually rests with that one which acts as broker and thus represents the system to the outside world. On the other hand, such a dominant village may be one that historically held high relative centrality because at one time it was more highly differentiated or capacitated than its neighbors, purely on its own merits. At the moment, however, it finds that its relative level of capacity is not so high. Because of an intervillage system's communicative habits or customs or historical political boundaries or unusual geographic conditions, it continues to enjoy a position of relative centrality higher than its capacity would predict it ought to have. But because it may be a district capital, have a large market place and money lenders and governmental institutions supported by the nation, for a time it may retain that position. It also finds itself in a condition of negative structural bind, however, and must therefore tend toward lower solidarity. If the satellite villages of the system were at one time highly subordinated, they no longer are. While they may be pleased to have an independent status, they still are paying the dominant village more deference than it theoretically deserves. Of course, the conditions of Hypothesis II are being met for the satellite villages and the chances are that one or more of them will eventually take over the position of higher relative centrality. In the meantime, the village specified in this hypothesis may be plagued by dependent wards or villages demanding independent political status, severance of tax requirements, and so on. Even under these pressures the village has no solidarity, and it is incapable of having a village-level solidarity movement of its own. 15. Defined as the discrepancy between a village's relative centrality or opportunity (high) and its global capacity (low). 16. A term used by Samuel P. Huntington to explain politics in Praetorian societies. Its parent in the literature is "amoral familism." See Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Amoral groupism is defined as a condition in which individuals carry on moral interpersonal relations within their own group but amoral relations when dealing with someone not of their group.

Chapter 3

Linkages Between Intense Movements and the Larger Society: Alliances and Reaction So far we have focused on the origin and subsequent direction of peasant solidarity movements. From an information-processing, energy-conversion framework it has been possible to isolate, identify, and establish the theoretical interrelationship of seven important variables: capacity, relative centrality or opportunity, solidarity, energy conversions, relative subordination, catalysts or accelerators, and charismatic leadership. The interrelationships among the variables, along with their respective causal directions, have explained the structural origins of information-processing solidarity, and the intensity (dormant, moderate, intense) of the energy conversions associated with solidarity. These are not the only considerations of intrinsic interest to peasant solidarity movements. For one thing, the success or failure of intense movements depends to a large degree on important alliances with institutions or powerful individuals in the national culture itself. Given that the intense movements tend to appear only under relatively highly subordinated conditions in the social system, it is therefore to be expected

39

40

Underlying Theory

that "radical reactionary" attempts will be made to crush them.1 The extent that such forces are deterred from their objective often depends on their being negated in one or another fashion. One way may derive from strategically placed individuals in the national culture with whom the peasants have struck up an alliance. It is at this critical juncture that we turn to additional analytical tools which will alert us to the nature of such alliances, their effect upon the peasantry, and their impact on the traditional rural elite. Success of Intense Solidarity Movements HYPOTHESIS IV: An intense peasant solidarity movement will be successful (in the sense that it avoids extermination and realizes at least a portion of its immediate goals) only to the extent that (1) the reforms it seeks are either mirrored or at least condoned by an influential elite or successful counter-elite2 in the national system itself, and ( 2 ) the elite are influenced to intervene on behalf of the movement in such a manner that rural reactionary forces are denied their traditional powers of repression. One fruitful way of analytically approaching this aspect of the problem is to look at a model of ideal types.3 With such a model, one generally speaks of a continuum of change between two polar opposites. But whereas the continuum presumably may represent some aspect of 1. Sometimes the larger society may attempt to remove some of its energy-conversion blocks. If the system is not very flexible, such reforms may only be considered after solidarity movements are in a state of rapid acceleration. Frequently such a society then chooses to work on the capacity variable alone rather than the opportunity variable, because such a thrust does not make a direct confrontation with traditional interests (as, for example, improving educational facilities but not touching land reform). This kind of an approach only aggravates the structural bind. Thus in spite of reforms the structural bind becomes more intense. The resulting stock phrases of indignation which fail to sense this point are: "The more you give them the more they want." "You can never satisfy them." "They [the reformers] have inflamed their hopes beyond any possibility of their being realized." "Promising too much too soon." "Opening up Pandora's Box by acceding to their demands." The list is virtually endless. 2. Such as may occur during civil war when a traditional elite may be either weakened or destroyed. The same may occur after defeat in a national war. An influential national elite, as opposed to a counter-elite, would be modernizing personalities with strategically important positions in the national bureaucracies or government. 3. Giorgio Alberti has made useful suggestions here on combining ideal types with the more abstract variables of a theory.

Intense Movements and Society

41

reality, the polar types do not. It is not the intention that they should. The purpose of the types is to act simply as points of abstract reference to which reality may be compared and contrasted. The real world may then be roughly plotted on the continuum which separates such ideal types. If upon investigation two empirical units (such as villages) are found to approximate more closely one ideal type than the other, as in figure 6, then they may fall on the continuum as shown.4 A "comparison of approximations" of a certain kind therefore becomes possible. Ideal Type

Ideal

1

•

Type

II

Ος-

-α

•

Observed Cases

Fig. 6. A model continuum Another virtue, which helps offset the impreciseness of the measurement possibilities which ideal types afford (indeed, they are used because precise measurements are extremely difficult or impossible), is that the abstract types also allow logical derivation in model form of a number of propositions about the hypothetical world which each repre4. The use of typologies is certainly not new to political science. Variations, which may or may not employ the continuum notion, are legion. Harry Eckstein has summarized some of the important ones in several paragraphs of his "A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present" in Comparative Politics, ed. Harry Eckstein and David Apter (New York, 1963). As regards political systems, some of the more important continua developed over the years have to do with constitutional-totalitarian, traditional-modern, and agricultural-industrial types. At the society level, some popular continua are Durkheim's mechanical-organic, Redfield's folk-urban, Toennies' Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, and Riggs' agraria-industria. These two-term schemes are polarized and therefore have two ideal types, not — as in the classic case — three. In nearly all cases the typologies set forth categories by which empirical material can be examined and somewhat roughly compared. (A comprehensive discussion on the use of ideal types in modern social science has been made by John C. McKinney, Constructive Typology and Social Theory [New York, 1966]). The analyst utilizes ideal-type constructs to explain the reality of the world. However, their quality is vastly different, and oftentimes the schemes are classificatory rather than ideal type. If one wants ideal types, one ought to remember Weber's definition of ideal type constructs. They are a "one-sided accentuation . . . by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discreet, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged . . . into a unified analytical construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found anywhere in reality." Cited by Neil J. Smelser, "Toward a Theory of Modernization," Social Change, ed. Etzioni and Etzioni, p. 258.

42 Underlying Theory sents. Like the variables of abstract theory, they also point out themes which may be worthy of an empirical investigation. An Ideal Type: The Triangle Without a Base Basic to the model of ideal types is a geometric figure — a triangle without a base (figure 7 ) . In one form or another the figure has been ρ

Code: Ρ S

Patron Subordinate

Fig. 7. The triangle without a base

used as a theoretical tool at least since Plato. Recently several sociologists interested in exchange theory have employed it very successfully.5 For our purposes the triangle without a base can also be used as a tool for understanding the alliances which intense solidarity movements generally attempt to create, as well as the forces of reaction unleashed against them. The patron ( P ) is the apex of the triangle. One dictionary gives "patron," "sponsor," "landlord," "master," "boss," as English counterparts to this word. In fact there is no adequate counterpart although these words do approximate it in some respects. The word really can be understood only in its historical and systemic context, but land baron (hacendado) is a good synonym. Ρ may be Ρ 1 , Ρ 2 , P 3 . . . P n , and thus serves to illustrate the existence of various open-based triangles with their respective land barons. 5. Julio Cotler has explored the use of the triangle as a modern theoretical tool. William Foote Whyte has used the figure in conjunction with exchange theory. I have profited from correspondence with him concerning several theoretical implications which derive from his usage.

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Each end of the open base is designated S with an appropriate subscript to distinguish between subordinates. These may also be called peasants, serfs, or in some instances, slaves. The purpose of the triangle is to present a graphic way of analyzing information-processing relations between Ρ and S, and between Si and S 2 . In terms of the abstract theory, it can readily be seen that this illustration represents a highly subordinated situation as far as the S's are concerned. The patron is king; his subordinates are isolated and atomized. The subordinates do not have independent information-processing links either with each other or with the outside world. Only through the patron are they symbolically related to any recognizable communicative system of the type specified in the theory. Later, when the continuum of the model is presented, this figure will form the basis of one of the ideal types. The Changing Triangle Suppose we draw a line at the base and complete the triangle (figure 8). What does it represent in terms of the theory? It simply means that Ρ

Fig. 8. The completed triangle the information-processing network of the traditional (feudal) peasant world has been partially short-circuited. This is decidedly different from the open base of figure 7, which symbolizes peasant atomization in which all information-processing must be routed through the patron (in the sense that the image of the patron "colors" or gives meaning to virtually all communicative exchanges; that decisions, before taken, must first be related to the meaning of the existence of the patron, and so forth). However, with a closed base there is an indication of some informationprocessing channels between and among the peasants which are not positively reflected on the "patron image" for their meaning. In short, many of the old land baron devices perpetuating psychological atomization among the peasants have broken down. 6 6. The Society for Applied Anthropology has dedicated an entire volume of

44

Underlying Theory

Further analogies are brought to mind by taking the logic of the changing triangle one step further and placing it into overlapping and multiple positions (figure 9). Not only has the patron or land baron

Fig. 9. External communicative network been short-circuited at the peasant base, but he has been circumvented at or above his own status level as well. Peasant information-processing has become multi-impingent. The network has enlarged. The peasants have established reference points outside the village system, such as with an influential elite, counter-elite, an ideologue, or a governmental reform agency. The solidarity movement has gained momentum. This, incidentally, is one of the most critical periods for it. For it is here that the land baron or patron, unable himself to cope with insurgency, falls back on the larger society for assistance. If he receives institutional support he usually is capable of crushing the movement. If he does not, the peasants may outlast him. It is worthwhile to reflect on this point because, essentially, if the land baron is denied repressive powers (police, army, courts, and so on) his failure will probably derive from the enlarged information-processing channels developed by the peasants and their subsequent successful solicitation of aid, which then may negate the social control forces traditionally available to the barons. Taking the changing triangle notion a step further, one could suggest a new posture by simply removing Ρ from the overlapping triangles (figure 10). In so doing an opposite ideal type to figure 7 is established which represents an independent peasantry devoid of hacendado or patron influence. The solidarity movement has been successful, and the Human Organization (27, no. 3 [Fall 1968]) to a study of the Atomistic Note especially the introduction and p. 231.

Society.

Intense Movements and Society

45

Fig. 10. Enlarged communicative network with the patron eliminated patron has been eliminated. Complex patterns of information-processing remain. 7 The foregoing has been but a preview of a formal model of political change. However, it is sufficient to allow us now to proceed to an understanding of the single most important variable regarding initial success Ideal _ T y p e TI

„ . . „ Mixed empirical types * Θ

Ideal „, T y p e II

0 — G O — g }

1

Fig. 11. A political modernization continuum or failure of radical solidarity movements — the "counterprevailing powers" 8 to which the patron and subordinates, the land baron and peasants, may respectively appeal through formal or informal alliances. 7. Frederick W. Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge, Mass., 1965) has created a typology of power structures (p. 442) during the process of political development in which he posits essentially the same thing, i.e., that in "traditional" polities the masses are isolated and atomized from each other in a power linkage sense, but that in modern democratic "mass" polities they are totally incorporated and linked up in a pluralistic and multidirectional way. 8. A term coined by John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston, 1952). This says nothing about the continued success of the movement in the sense that its norms become institutionalized.

46 Underlying Theory

A Model of Peasant Political Modernization It may be seen that the "triangle without a base" of figure 7 represents an ideal type which may be fitted on one end of a model continuum as in figure 11. This triangle will be referred to as Ideal Type I. Its polar counterpart at the other end of the continuum derives from figure 10 and will be refered to as Ideal Type II. In between, some mixed empirical types are plotted. Type a, for example may be approximated by a simple closing of the triangle base such as in figure 8, and types c or d might be characterized by figure 9. The continuum shows political modernization among the highly subordinated peasantry as progressive shifts from conditions approximating those of Ideal Type I toward those of Ideal Type II. The intermediate empirical types indicate what may happen along the way, given the conditions of the model. Of course in an informal sort of way we have already been introduced to all of these types. Ideal Type I on the left side of the continuum represents a hypothetical society characterized by total internal subordination, as we have seen. The elites are few, the masses many; there is nothing in between. Communicative networks are a province of the patrones who are in absolute power; all others are atomized and subordinated. On the other hand, Ideal Type II represents a radically different picture. The patron has been replaced and the information-processing network has become complex. The subordinates, as they act collectively, have replaced the function of the land baron and therefore eliminated the rationale for his existence. Communication has become omnidirectional and the rates of value exchange between the groups are allowed to seek a level of mutual satisfaction (Ideal Type II would always be in "equilibrium" whereas Ideal Type I may or may not depending on whether a structural bind exists). This is not a homogeneous and segmental political condition in which all the parties may replace each other at any time. Rather, it is an ideal condition characterized by an interlocking of active heterogeneous parts which highly complement each other. 9 There are rulers and ruled, but the participants are not The argument now concerns only the solo flight of the movement itself and the possibilities of its simply getting off ground. What happens to it if it survives its solo is a problem for the following chapter. 9. This suggests the creation, in gradations, of many groups of people between the masses and the elite. "Middle class," "middle sectors," "middle segments," are

Intense Movements and Society

47

artificially impeded from gaining access to a symbolic world commensurate with their capacity to participate in it. Indeed, they are encouraged to increase that capacity through formal organizations. More important, the organizations are indigenous to the actors. It is very clear that a move from conditions approximating those of Ideal Type I to something close to Ideal Type II would be a very long leap indeed; but it must be obvious that implicit in that leap is a basic notion of political modernization which can be cast against almost any current usage of the word — mobilization, participation, integration, development, political rationality, equality of opportunity, justice, harmony, or utilization of capacity, capability, and technique. Any of them will fit.10 As capacity is allowed to seek the point of its optimum exercise terms which various authors have employed to describe their existence. The importance these "middlers" have for development in general and political participation in particular was aptly seen by Aristotle: "Thus, it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well administered, in which the middle class is large . . . great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may develop out of either extreme — either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them . . . and democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in government; for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end." From "Politica," trans. Benjamin Jowett in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed., Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), pp. 1221-1222. John Johnson has long had an interest in the emergence of what he calls "middle sectors" in Latin America. See John J. Johnson, Political Change in Latin America: Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Stanford, 1958). In a recent volume he has also engaged the opinions of others: John J. Johnson, ed., Continuity and Change in Latin America (Stanford, 1964). An interesting series of observations on the "middle segments" is by John P. Gillin, "Some Signposts for Policy," in Social Change in Latin America Today, ed. Richard Adams (New York, 1960). A more provocative approach is by Luis Ratinoff, "The New Urban Groups: The Middle Classes," in Elites in Latin America, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Aldo Solari (New York, 1967). 10. "Political modernization," like almost any other "modernization" notion associated with the non-economic world, is basically ethnocentric. The point of reference is usually the United States (as probably 95 percent of the world's social scientists reside here). The usage is time bound (failing to direct itself to the future — to what "political modernization" may mean in the twenty-fifth century, for example). In spite of these problems, I have decided to employ the term in order to compare it with political development. The often-used term "political mobilization" is not a suitable substitute in this case for political modernization,

48

Underlying Theory

(position of relative opportunity in which no structural bind exists), communicative links are opened up, "rates of exchange" 11 seek a point of mutual satisfaction among the actors, participation increases, the global pie is enlarged and the "zero-sum game" 12 is discarded. The model has suggested that political modernization among a highly subordinated peasantry may be seen as progressive shifts from conditions approximating those of Ideal Type I toward those of Ideal Type II. Specifically, it may be understood as the acquiring of more of the characbecause it is highly possible for peasants to become politically mobilized (an intense solidarity movement) and yet have no alteration in the exchange relations between them and the patrones ever occur. And this is precisely the point: mobilization occurs, but modernization (increasing capacity, enlarging of the communicative network, and more favorable rates of value exchange) does not. The movements are crushed and therefore political modernization is denied. (See n. 11 below.) 11. "Rates of exchange" refers not only to commodities, but to values, norms, and symbols as well. No matter how patently "unjust" any given exchange system may appear to an outsider, if the participants are in accord with its basic premises there is "mutual satisfaction" and therefore harmony on the issue. Such a condition would derive under conditions where structural binds were absent. An excellent study of power and society by one of the early theorists in this area is Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York, 1964). The theory's use as a structural explanation of individual behavior is also well elaborated by its apostle, G. C. Homans, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York, 1961). William Foote Whyte has also elaborated a variant of exchange theory which has been very helpful in the writing of this book. 12. An analytical construct developed by George M. Foster, "Peasant Society and the Image of the Limited Good," American Anthropologist, 67 (April 1965), which posits the players of such a game as holders of a fixed view of economic resources normally available to them. Their vision of the world is such that no matter what collective effort they may make to exploit resources, the available amount, they believe, will always remain the same, barring someone's finding a buried treasure or the like. Hence the "zero-sum" title. As resources are fixed, there is also a fixed amount available for distribution. The Resource Pie can only be cut up —• not enlarged. Indeed, it is beyond the comprehension of the players of the game that through ingenuity and application of group effort additional Resource Pies might be made to exist. The political consequences are quite obvious. As the economic progress of one must mean the equal deterioration of another, social controls are implemented by those who are able to prevent such an occurrence. The hacendado does not believe that by reforming his methods the global pie could be enlarged so that both he and his peasants might enjoy larger portions, for example. "Only if the peasants get less will I receive more" is the mentality which has prevailed, whether based on fact or fantasy. An annotated bibliography of responses to Foster may be found in Joel M. Halpern and John Brode, "Peasant Society: Economic Change and Revolutionary Transformation," in Biennial Review of Anthropology, ed., Bernard J. Siegel and Alan R. Beals (Stanford, 1966), pp. 79-80.

Intense Movements and Society

49

teristics of Ideal Type II and retaining fewer of those of Ideal Type I in cases where a structural bind would otherwise exist. (Figure 12.) Political modernization among the peasantry is therefore to be understood as the successful resolution of structural binds in favor of a move toward Ideal Type II. If a structural bind does not exist, there is no capacity for political modernization and the term simply becomes irrelevant for the group involved. Such a case would indicate the existence of a highly developed and highly legitimate and paternalistic traditional system in which divisive solidarity movements could not exist. In modernizing nations where binds generally do exist, however, the concept is Type3!

0

"Mixed empirical types"

El· Political Atomization

Ideal

Type II

Political Modernization

Fig. 12. A continuum of political change among the peasantry totally relevant. Under these conditions, an Ideal Type I situation could only indicate that structural binds probably exist and therefore the capacity for modernization is present. The intermediate empirical types of the model (designated a, b, c, and d, in figure 12) may tend to change, or they may be rigidly status quo. If they are changing in a modernizing direction, by definition they become "base-closing, multi-impinging" intermediate types, that is, organizations are being formed, interests are being articulated, and an intense solidarity movement may be on the way. Furthermore, changes in the net rate of value exchange between S and Ρ are becoming increasingly more favorable for S. If the intermediate types are moving toward political atomization, they are becoming "base-opening," that is, they are losing characteristics of Ideal Type II and acquiring those of Ideal Type I. Their interests are becoming muddled, their communicative network is closing down, the land barons are taking over as the sole interpreters of all symbolic structures and they are placing the S's in conditions of increasing atomization. Rates of value exchange are increasing in favor of P. Organizations of S are disintegrating and solidarity movements are collapsing. I have thus established model conditions of politically modernizing

50

Underlying Theory

or atomizing villages within the context of an abstract theory supplemented by model constructs. While specified rates of change cannot be derived from the model, they nevertheless can be intuitively perceived from the context of the theory. It is thus possible to see that a successful solidarity movement would tend to aid in closing the base of the triangle of the model and therefore enlarge the communicative network; an unsuccessful one would leave the base open and the network confined. A solidarity movement is not the only way the base may be closed, of course, but a solidarity movement successful through time would tend to push any village with a predominance of Ideal Type I characteristics toward conditions approximating those of Ideal Type II. The point is that peasant villages which are highly subordinated, of themselves generally cannot make that political modernization leap, no matter how intense their movement — unless they are linked with powerful people or institutions in the larger society who can protect them.

Chapter 4

Beyond the Intense Solidarity Movement: Political Development and Political Decay In the previous chapter, adding the alliance variable to the informationprocessing, energy-conversion framework permitted the elaboration of a model which reflects the modernizing process of an intense peasant solidarity movement. Such movements, however successful they may be in their political modernization thrust, often run into serious trouble of an internal order once they have resolved their structural-bind problem. For one thing, they are suddenly thrown into a radically new social and political environment with which they must cope in a largely inexperienced way. Moreover, they must do so under conditions which do not lend themselves to a continuation of the same high degree of solidarity (symbolic value homogeneity) as existed before. De-atomization and solidarity are fueled by heavy structural binds. Once the binds are relieved by a successful movement (as exemplified by a move toward Ideal Type II on the political modernization continuum), however, the foundation for information-processing solidarity tends to crumble. The sharply-focused,

51

52

Underlying Theory

well-articulated ideology or symbolic structure so carefully elaborated during the period of activism consequently becomes diffuse, and the single-format information processing system loosens up a bit. Sometimes this occurs gradually, sometimes quite rapidly. The question is, can the "strategies, rhetoric, policies, and programs" somehow be institutionalized? Change has occurred. Can the villagers institutionalize the process itself and successfully incorporate themselves into a dynamic world of social, political, and economic modernity? This is a critical juncture in the evolution of a movement in which not only latent "differing opinions" and previously suppressed interpersonal animosities may arise, but leadership challenges may occur as well. Complicating the matter is the fact that the entire village must suddenly direct itself to new tasks. It is worthwhile to reflect briefly on these issues and problems because the extent to which the village adapts to them in large part determines its continued survival as a modernizing entity. The shift in issues is sudden and direct. What previously was the single question of the peasants' "getting the land baron off their backs," for example, quickly becomes a question of buying and distributing land; raising funds for lawyers' fees, court costs, and land titles; forming cooperatives; building new villages, organizing them and setting up a modicum of social services and order. These are entirely new problems that suddenly, sometimes catastrophically, fall upon a successful intense solidarity movement. How are they met? Characteristically, the organizations and leaders coming out of the movement, whatever and whoever they are, attempt to resolve these problems also. Can they adapt to handle them? Are they inherently capable of discharging these new and complex tasks? The "charismatic leaders" who took advantage of conditions favorable for a movement and helped weld the participants into a formidable force may not be the best suited to lead the village in its new tasks once the structural bind has been resolved. But will these leaders voluntarily step aside if and when the new situations show this to be desirable, or will their vanity and feelings of self-importance encourage them to "fight on" against all those from within who would destroy the purity of the symbolic structure which they have so carefully helped to elaborate? What happens if a dissident group challenges the charisma which legitimated the early leaders? Indeed, can the village handle this or any other "crisis

Beyond the Intense Solidarity Movement

53

of leadership succession" without creating intense disunity among the members and running a risk of catastrophic decay?1 A logical place to begin looking for an answer to these problems and issues is in the political organizations associated with the movements. Solidarity movements need structural binds; political organizations do not. Organizations may and do exist in diverse conditions, under binds or not, in traditional or modern settings. However, it is through its infant modernizing organizations that a village moving out of an intense, successful solidarity movement might gain respectability in the larger world and actively participate in it as an integrated part. Those modernizing organizations which succeed in adapting themselves to a new environment as they emerge from an intense solidarity movement can also serve to guard the village against chaos in the wake of shattered traditional political institutions. (Chaos, it must be pointed out, has frequently followed national solidarity movements after initial successes were finally achieved.) Otherwise the decay which the movements occasion to established political norms and procedures is not readily replaced by commensurate development of new ones. Confusion and disintegration therefore occur. In this regard, intense solidarity movements are particularly vulnerable. If they are initially successful but the political organizations which they create are subsequently not, the villages themselves tend to participate in the inevitable political decay which surrounds them.2 Those 1. The question of leadership succession and the role of the charismatic leader is extremely important at this critical juncture in the movement. A charismatic leader exists best under conditions in the village system which are conducive to an intense solidarity movement. When those conditions do not exist, other leadership forms are more appropriate and much more effective. But oftentimes the charismatic leader is unwilling to relinquish his power. A struggle in which the patron mentality is repeated all over again sets in, this time being internal to the peasantry rather than external. Useful works which treat the problem in varying degrees are: Berger, "Charisma and Religious Relocation"; Blanksten, Ecuador: Constitutions and Caudillos, pp. 35-36; Weber, Essays in Sociology·, Friedrich, "Political Leadership and the Problem of the Charismatic Power"; Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements·, Marcus, "Trancendence and Charisma"; Ratnam, "Charisma and Political Leadership"; and Shils, "The Concentration and Dispersion of Charisma." (See bibliography.) 2. In speaking of "political decay" in this context, Samuel P. Huntington has shown how rapid modernization in general has the same effect at all systems levels. See "Political Development and Political Decay," World Politics, 17 (April 1965), 386—430. Huntington has further elaborated this concept in his Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968).

54

Underlying Theory

political organizations in the villages which do survive all these problems, however, would seem to have two sides: one which faces the village and one which faces the nation. Thus, even though an organization may have inherent capacity to handle new and complex problems at the village level, a politically traditional nation may put such a squeeze on it that it eventually breaks up in spite of initial help received from alliances with powerful people in the national culture. It is doubtful, therefore, that a village will ever politically modernize and politically develop its modern organizations and institutions unless a reciprocating modern symbolic structure exists in the nation itself. 3 Moreover, the strength of village political organizations can and most probably does vary with the scope of support the organizations receive from the outside world, that is, the degree to which the "symbolic structure" of the nation supports the developing organizations themselves. Beyond the intense solidarity movements, therefore, lie the political organizations which they have created. Organizations which are able to adapt to new needs and functions, thus preserving a reason for their existence, will tend to survive and continue to give order to village existence. Those organizations which do not adapt will tend to die after the demise of the movement itself; the village will tend to decay and fall apart. This brings us to a consideration of the political development framework advanced by Samuel P. Huntington, 4 who sees political development 5 as a process independent of, although obviously affected by, the 3. Arthur L. Stinchcombe argues parallel conclusions from a different framework. His evidence suggests that the forms and styles of organizational-invention alternatives that are open to a society at any particular time in history depend on the social technology available at that time. "Organizations which have purposes that can be efficiently reached with the socially possible organizational forms tend to be founded during the period in which they become possible." See his "Social Structure and Organizations," in James G. March, Handbook of Organizations (Chicago, 1965), p. 153. 4. As set forth in his "Political Development and Political Decay." Also applicable here is his "Political Modernization: America vs. Europe," World Politics, 18 (April 1966), and re-elaborated in Political Order in Changing Societies. 5. Useful summaries on trends in political development literature have been made elsewhere, and I will not attempt to duplicate efforts. I refer particularly to Apter, "Political Change"; Huntington, "Political Development," first few pages; Moskos and Bell, "Emerging Nations and Ideologies of American Social Scientists"; Nye, "Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis," first three pages; Packenham, "Approaches to the Study of Political Development"; Packenham, "Political Development Doctrines in the American Foreign Aid Program"; Pye, Aspects of Political Development; and also Pye's "The Concept of

Beyond the Intense Solidarity Movement

55

process of modernization. Although the terms "political modernization" and "political development" are often used interchangeably, Huntington has effectively shown the conceptual dangers in such uncritical approaches. It is quite clear that, if a distinction is not made between the two, it becomes impossible to speak of a politically developed tribal authority or any other "nonmodern" and yet politically developed regime, such as China under the Manchus (at least in its middle period). Politically developed regimes may be modern or traditional. Politically decaying regimes may also be modern or traditional. In terms of the model presented in the previous chapter, under conditions of no structural bind Ideal Type I is a highly politically developed traditional hacienda village; Ideal Type II a highly politically developed modern independent village. When placed on the continuum of change, however (figure 12), it is clear that as Ideal Type II develops, Ideal Type I must decay, or vice versa. Thus a successful solidarity movement which pushes a village toward political modernization also creates political decay all around it in the traditional patterns of political institutions. In other words, traditional institutions fall apart to the extent that intense modernizing solidarity movements are successful. Huntington's political-development contributions are therefore as applicable to a traditional system as to a modern one. When the concept is applied to the peasant political-modernizing model of the previous chapter, the combination becomes critically important for the village. Assuming that a solidarity movement has been successful and that some political modernization has therefore occurred, the next thing to do is to look at the possibilities of developing some stability and effectiveness in the recently created political organizations once their modernizing thrust has been satisfied, once the structural bind has been relieved. In this vein it is easy to see that the possibility that "modernized politics" may become institutionalized is directly associated with the continued development of modern organizations and institutions. However, because they are so new and have so little "institutionalization" (adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence, to use Huntington's categories of analysis),® they are essentially untried and unproven except Political Development." A good reference to the same concept as it relates specifically to Latin America is Alfred Stepan, "Political Development Theory: The Latin American Experience," International Affairs, 20, no. 2 ( 1 9 6 6 ) . (Refer to the bibliography.) 6. Huntington has four variables to measure the level of institutionalization of

56

Underlying Theory

within the context of a heavy structural bind and a "single-format information-processing network." If they fail to adapt, fail to institutionalize their norms and procedures, fail to handle their leadership successions, they fade away. The implications are enormous: dualistic societies, amoral groupism, secret combinations.7 This is the unhappy lot of villages which have shattered their traditional world yet failed to develop their infant modern organizations and institutions. On these questions of adapting to the new situations, developing increased capacity to handle increasingly complex jobs, handling leadership successions, and fostering an autonomous and yet harmonious relationship with the nation, two variables seem to be critical: (1) the attitudes, flexibility, and innovativeness of the village modernizing elite, and (2) the linkage patterns of the village with the larger society. We have already seen how the charismatic leaders may damage or enhance effective political development after their political modernizing movement has been successful. On the linkage question an equally dichotomous situation arises: if the village, during its modernizing thrust, is linked with powerful elements in the national culture who serve to "protect" it, that is, negate the coercive power of the traditional rural elite and land barons but for reasons other than national modernization,8 then the chances are that once a localized solidarity movement has run its course the linkages with the nation will decay and the villagers will be left to stew in their own juice, so to speak. Under such conditions, internal breakdown is nearly certain. On the other hand, if the linkage patterns are with modernizing institutions and individuals in the national culture who are not protecting the village for vindictive or localized personal reasons but

an organization. They are expressed in the form of continua: adaptability-rigidity; complexity-simplicity; autonomy-subordination; coherence-disunity. The level of institutionalization of any organization can be measured, therefore, by its adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence. Similarly, the level of institutionalization of any political system can be defined by the adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence of its political organizations and institutions. See, "Political Development and Political Decay." 7. Cf., Figure 2. 8. Such as may arise from personal vindictiveness between certain traditional rural and national elite or personal idiosyncrasies of some traditional national elite who have "made it" but who remain attached to their village of origin. In either case such traditional national elite may negate the power of the land barons and rural elite by denying them the institutional support of the national guard, secret police, and the courts, but would be quite unwilling to allow widespread village political modernization to occur throughout the nation.

Beyond the Intense Solidarity Movement

57

rather for the global development of the nation, then the institutional linkages tend to remain after the intense movement has died down. The infant organizations at the village level can then continue to draw support — social and political capital, and perhaps economic aid — and thus, if the charismatic leaders are flexible, survive the period of "diffuse information processing" which tends to accompany the resolution of a structural bind. We have looked at eight variables in this framework. 9 These are not the only ones of intrinsic interest to the peasantry, of course, but they go a long way toward identifying and explaining several important aspects of village modernization: (a) the conditions creating internal drive for political modernization, (b) the intensity of the drive or energy conversions, (c) the chances for an intense modernizing movement to achieve success, and (d) the possibilities of the respective villages achieving sustained growth and integration in the national culture. In the case studies and analyses of Part II, "Intense Movements: Intervillage System of Acolla," the utility of the conceptual framework will become clear. Later, we will return to the question of moderate movements (Part III, "Intervillage System of Chupaca"). A preliminary word will help maintain the perspective, however. Successful moderate movements, as we have seen, do not arise on the same structural base as do intense ones. Relative subordination is not high: perhaps the national elite are not just weak, but rather modernizing, flexible, and strong as well. Under such conditions it may be entirely possible for such favorably situated villages to receive a great amount of institutional support from the larger society without "strategic alliances" of the variety spoken of above. To the extent that structural binds arise among these villages the problems tend to be tackled by existing indigenous leadership (if the peasants have demonstrated the cultural capacity for corporate organization at all). Such village elite often are surprisingly effective in their modernizing thrust. In such cases the moderate movements are not plagued with the idiosyncrasies of charismatic leaders, the rapidly shifting functions forced upon organizations accustomed to surviving only under high-intensity conditions, and so forth. Furthermore, the movements do not run the risk of being crushed by an intransigent rural elite. The corporate activities of such movements may be much less dramatic than those of intense 9. Capacity, relative centrality or opportunity, solidarity, energy conversions, relative subordination, catalysts or accelerators, attitudes and values of the charismatic leaders, and external alliances or linkages.

58

Underlying Theory

ones, but they can be just as effective in incorporating themselves into a dynamic world of change. That it is a simpler process for moderate movements is evidenced by their generally needing to work on only four of the eight variables associated with intense movements: capacity, opportunity, solidarity, and energy conversions. The movements are thus able to bypass the often catastrophic conditions associated with high relative subordination, catalysts or accelerators, charismatic leaders, and external alliances of the variety important to intense movements. In Part III we will take up the residual "moderate-movement variables" and give them a systematic application in one of Peru's intervillage systems. For the moment, however, let's return to the question of intense movements.

Part II

Intense Movements: Intervillage System of Acolla

Chapter 5

The Village and the Nation: Now and Then Peru is a country which in many ways is undergoing enormous stresses as it modernizes. The peasants are not isolated in that process. Indeed, they serve to bring into sharp relief the struggle on the national scene between those forces which push for social and political modernization and those which consider modernization's impending arrival a sign of uttermost decadence. National forces have therefore impinged on the village; the village in many ways has reciprocated. In order to obtain a descriptive glimpse of this evolving relationship in its modern setting, and before turning to the intervillage system of Acolla per se, let us take a brief look at the Peruvian central sierra and its relationship to the nation. Disquietude in the Central Sierra Late in the evening of what had been a cool, damp, February day in 1967, hundreds of people could be seen wandering about the streets of Huancayo, one of three provincial capitals in the high central sierra 61

62

Intense Movements

Mantaro Valley. Many wore the traditional Indian dress of the region, a custom which, it was said, had been on the decline for several years, especially among the men. Not until the following morning did the reasons for the wanderers and their costumes become clear. It was the crowd — its composition and its apparent purpose — which told the story. Perhaps five hundred people had assembled in the town square to participate in the funeral cortege of Elias Täcunan Cahuana, celebrated and controversial leader of probably the most important peasant league1 in the vicinity of the valleys of Jauja-Mantaro and Yanamarca where this study was carried out. The persistent but slight drizzle of rain did not at all discourage attention during one of the longest series of funeral orations ever given a peasant. On February 28, the remains of a valiant man were placed in the wall of beehive sepulchres in Huancayo's general cemetery. It was demonstrably apparent that many important national political dignitaries wished not only to pay their respects but also to be recognized by Täcunan's followers as champions of the causes which he had espoused. Such recognition had not always been coveted in Peru. But times had changed. The temporary prefect (governor) of the Department (state) of Junin attended to represent the president of the republic, Fernando Belaünde Terry. One could also see in attendance many labor leaders, local politicians, and professionals. Then there were the followers: representatives and delegations from more than forty peasant villages were present, many in traditional costume, others in Western dress — all mourning. Scores of other villages sent their respects. Forty-eight discourses were delivered, some lengthy. Appropriately, one of the most impressive was given by Veliz Lizärraga, Professor of Sociology at Lima's famous San Marcos University, and sometime disciple of Täcunan. 2 "Täcunan," he said, "was the one man who carried 1. There is no intention here or elsewhere in this book to present a classification of Peruvian peasant leagues. The choice of Täcunan's league is for convenience in bringing to light relationships of some peasants and their villages to national politicians and modernizing bureaucrats. Various small leagues function in the Mantaro and Yanamarca Valleys, and some are discussed under the "capacity indicators" of chapter 9 which deals with the intervillage system of Chupaca. Information on national Peruvian peasant confederations may be found in Anibal Quijano O., "El Movimento Campesino del Peru y sus Lideres," a paper presented at the International Seminar on Elite Formation in Latin America, Montevideo, June 6-11, 1965. 2. A more complete discussion of the role of Lizärraga is presented in chapter 9.

The Village and the Nation

63

forth the banner of peasant revindication with unfaltering zeal." (Many would, and still do, attribute Lizärraga's commitment to the fact that in the early 1960's the Apristas3

relieved him of the rectorship of the

local provincial university which he, Tacunan, and others had formed as a communal college in 1959. But no one could doubt his sincere grief at having lost an important symbol of peasant leadership.) Lizärraga had been the Defense Secretary of Täcunan's league of peasant villages Fedecoj).

(Federation

Departamental

de

Comunidades

de

Junin —

Before the leader's death the prospects for further organiza-

tional activity and enlargement of the league to include the entire nation had seemed most propitious. Contrary to many so-called leaders among the peasantry, Tacunan 3. Apristas refers to members of one of the most important political parties in Latin America·—the Apra. Founded by the indomitable Victor Raul Haya de la Torre while he was a student exile in Mexico during the 1920's, the party's early Peruvian members prided themselves in having theoretically elaborated all the answers to their country's "underdevelopedness" and the "Indian problem." Stripped of its philosophical trappings, the thrust was simple: "While millions of Indians continue to live on a subsistence level, not incorporated into the life of the country, Peru will stagnate." However, Apra was never able to answer the question of how to achieve power in order to instigate reform (although several regimes had been dependent on its support for their survival). Moreover, Haya de la Torre has been hounded in one way or another by virtually every Peruvian regime except that of Fernando Belaunde Terry (1963-1968). (This president patiently tolerated even the most reprehensible vituperations from Apra fanatics without so much as threatening press censorship, a practice commonly employed in previous governments.) The basic problem has been ideological, but in practice it derives from Apra's allegedly murdering several score army men in 1932 and the subsequent execution of 5,000 Apristas at the point of army machine guns. The military never forgave. As of 1962, and perhaps even as late as the coup of 1968, it was still vetoing Apra's bid for presidential power. Richard Patch gives a firsthand report on the military veto of Apra in the 1962 elections. Refer to his "The Peruvian Elections of 1963," American Universities Field Staff Report (July 1963), reprinted in Robert D. Tomasek, ed., Latin American Politics (New York, 1966). Analysis from another perspective is given by Edwin Lieuwen, Generals vs. Presidents (New York, 1964), pp. 25-36. A sympathetic exposition on Haya de la Torre and his Aprista movement is found in Harry Kantor's The Ideology and Program of the Peruvian Aprista Movement (Washington, D.C., 1966). Kantor is probably too sympathetic at times and has really failed to note sufficiently the degeneration of Apra in recent years to yet another participant in the rather singular Peruvian politics of "amoral groupism." Observations of related interest may be found in David Chaplin's "Peru's Postponed Revolution," World Politics, 20, no. 3 (April 1968), 393^20, James L. Payne's Labor and Politics in Peru (New Haven, 1965), and Marvin Alisky's "Peru," in Political Forces in Latin America, ed. Ben G. Burnett and Kenneth F. Johnson (Belmont, California, 1968), pp. 308-309.

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Intense Movements

certainly had legitimate peasant roots. Born in the small village of Huasicancha in the high plateau country of the central sierra near Chongos Alto, his early youth gave him living experience of the anxieties and pains of a life totally removed from meaningful national integration. Moreover, he had personally experienced the abuses of the gamonales (literally gangsters, but in peasant vocabulary land barons — hacendados — and their friends). In 1930 Täcunan had become a member of the Apra reform movement, and, it is said, he cultivated a close and harmonious relationship with its founder, Haya de la Torre. Converted to the reforms articulated by Apra ideology, the man from Huasicancha dedicated years of his life to the growth of the party. However, his dedication was costly, primarily because Apra was not at all appreciated by Peru's elites. The national government forced him and many other party members into exile in Chile in 1936; in 1948 it sentenced him to two years in Peru's legendary El Fronton, the Alcatraz of the southern Pacific. Between the political purges, Täcunan gained considerable experience in organizing Apra-affiliated labor syndicates. No sooner had he obtained employment with the American-owned Cerro de Pasco mining corporation in 1945, for example, than he set out to found at its smelting plant in La Oroya the Federacion Regional de Trabajadores Mineros del Centro. In those days there were many brilliant Apra organizers in the mining and smelting industries. Täcunan was one of the best. Apra later expanded its labor-union success into the coastal agricultural plantations by means of Fertcap (Federacion Nacional de Campesinos del Peru), calling for a national convention on the coast. Yet in spite of the party's pronounced ideology, which called for great social changes for the nation's sierra Indians and peasants, Apra made little effort in that direction. Some party leaders argued that because the Indians and mountain peasants could not vote (they were largely illiterate and therefore did not qualify under the law) they were not important at the time. Täcunan, however, had those nagging attachments to his mountain village of Huasicancha, to his relatives and friends who lived there. Thus he decided to take his organizing talents to the sierra to see what could be done. Accordingly, in 1958 he left La Oroya, returned to his homeland, called five districts in the area around Chongos Alto to a convention, and there founded his Movimiento Comunal del Centro, the infant beginnings of the first politically independent league of peasant villages in and around the Mantaro Valley. Most of the villages in

The Village and the Nation

65

the area were served by foot and animal trail only, but in a sense they were strategically located — adjacent to extensive grazing lands owned by some of Lima's most well-to-do and politically important families. Initial opposition to Täcunan's organizational activities was therefore extremely intense. The landlord's reasons derived from the nature of Täcunan's motives: the villagers would organize to protect themselves and to exercise their rights against the encroachments of the powerful cattle and sheep barons — the gamonales. For decades the great livestock hacendados of the highlands had randomly and unabashedly expropriated village land and livestock, and sometimes even village labor forces. Now Elias Täcunan had defiantly raised his voice. He organized convention after convention in the isolated districts. Membership grew rapidly. Täcunan had wished that the Apra party and its Fencap organization would take more interest in his people. He had shown his party colleagues that the peasants of the sierra could be organized. But his party would not respond. Thus in 1959 Täcunan had a complete falling out with the party's old guard over this and other matters — and he withdrew his membership. It was not that the peasant leader had succumbed to the frequent persecutions, but he did feel that his party had. From his point of view Apra, by attempting to gain "respectability" vis-ä-vis Peru's elites, had betrayed its ideals and had become soft with its reforming zeal. His own people would not benefit from the party. Moreover, the party's precipitous buttering up (convivencia) of a member of Peru's famed "forty-family complex," 4 President Manuel Prado, was more than he could bear. Some years later the Apra party and its Fencap organization tried to work in the sierra and, indeed, achieved some success for a time. By 1967, however, the Fencap as a peasant voice was largely dead.6 Most of its leaders were professionals, businessmen, or labor leaders affiliated with the Apra political party, quite unattractive to the sierra peasants. Or the Fencap leaders were just plain Apra politicians who, 4. The "forty-family complex" refers to the Lima aristocracy which purportedly has controlled Peru since colonial times. While the Lima elite is indeed powerful, James L. Payne argues against any monolithic interpretation of aristocracy, particularly in the Peru of today. See his Labor and Politics in Peru. A related argument is made by Arnold Payne, "Peru: Latin America's Silent Revolution," InterAmerican Economic Affairs, 20, no. 3 (Winter 1966), 69-78. 5. U.S. aid funds have been used to strengthen this organization, particularly on the coast.

66 Intense Movements of recent years, had demonstrated little persistent interest in the plight of Peru's peasants. 6 Täcunan's organizational efforts, however, had been so successful that shortly before his death he had jubilantly announced the planned convocation of the "First National Conference of Peasants and Indigenous Villages" (to have been held in Huancayo in May of 1967). Village delegates from all over the nation had accepted his invitation to attend. Although Täcunan did not live to see the fulfillment of his own dream, 7 he will be long remembered in the sierra: "Elias Täcunan, the strong man of five hundred villages." In earlier years Ciro Alegria, one of Peru's most internationally famous and frequently exiled social-protest writers recognized Täcunan's importance by dedicating to him a volume of his classic work, El Mundo es Ancho y Ajeno.8 Above his autograph he carefully penned: "To the new Rosendo Maqui of Peru." Maqui was the hero of his novel and the indefatigable and trusting peasant fighter for the rights of his people (but who was eventually crushed). The Ideological Mix In decades and centuries past in the Peruvian highlands many resistance movements had broken out in the name of freedom. However, they were not noted for their success. One of the greatest heroes of Peruvian Indianism, virtually canonized today by many of the highlanders, was Tupac Amaru. The "last" of the noble Inca line, in 1571 he led an abortive last-ditch resistance movement against the Spaniards in the Cuzco area — only to suffer defeat and receive a subsequent brutal and barbaric death at the hands of the forces of Viceroy Toledo — the "protector" of the Indian. Likewise, virtually every other major peasant or Indian movement until the 1950's had been summarily crushed, including that of the second Tupac Amaru in 1780. At any point that indigenous organization began, its leaders were deported, jailed, or 6. However, the local chapter of Fencap in Huancayo is run by a former boyhood acquaintance of Täcunan, Elias Yaurivilca, also born and raised in the isolated village of Huasicancha, and certainly of bona fide peasant stock. But he is consistently undercut by party interests. 7. Further information on this and other leagues operating in the central sierra may be found under the discussion of the capacity indicators in chapter 9. 8. An English translation has been done by Harriet de Onis, Broad and Alien Is the World (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941).

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67

exterminated. If complaints were registered, not the source of the complaint but rather the complainers were eliminated. Sanctions were heavy, and the land barons historically were amply bolstered and backed up by the other important institutions of the nation, including the army, the civil guard, and, in many instances, the church. In the late 1950's, solidarity movements began again among the peasants in many parts of Peru's sierra, but this time they would be symptomatic of even greater changes to come. The movements this time would be mirrored by important and powerful people strategically placed in the national culture itself. Fernando Belaiinde Terry was one of these apostles of change; he soon (1963) would become the President of Peru. Belaiinde had run a campaign for the presidency in 1956 but was defeated. Afterwards, he paid for his audacious statements on social reform by being locked up in El Fronton where he undertook a dramatic protest fast. Belaunde mirrored, awakened and rekindled many dormant hopes and aspirations which in earlier years had been generated by Apra. Continually he declared, during his many visits to the backwater villages of the nation, that the old regime must fall, that new blood and new changes must be introduced, that Peru's peasants must cease to be the "forgotten people of the Americas." Belaunde, with those thoughts, was to capture the imagination of peasant people everywhere in Peru. To be sure, for years many Peruvians had called for an end to, and from time to time even protested against, what they called the criminal neglect of their peasants. In fact, many Peruvians had even developed a national consciousness of the "Indian problem," as they termed it. Actually, even during the dictatorship of General Manuel Odria ( 1 9 4 8 1956) the government had begun to set up and finance some agencies to tackle the problem, although the efforts were largely paternalistic and resulted in little change of social structures. But as the shanty towns grew and the barriadas (the slum districts) of Lima increased, the need for action became imperative not only in human terms, but also from a political point of view.9 Something simply had to be done to save Lima! It was Belaunde, however, who would create the new reform philoso p h y — a kind of ideology — embodied in the reincarnation of the ancestral habits of popular cooperation known as the minka,10 a practice 9. R. J. Owens, Peru (London, 1963). 10. See Fernando Belaünde Terry, La Conquista de Peru por los Peruanos (Lima, 1959).

68 Intense Movements which has been an often-heralded characteristic of the great empire of the Incas. In fact, many of the minka symbols and practices permeate numerous sierra Indian villages even to this day. Indeed, Belaünde considered the mutual cooperation and communal development symbols of the Incas a most noble and ancient national tradition and he appropriated them for use in his own nascent popular action movement (Action Popular). Communal cooperation, he argued, is better than capitalism. It is compatible with the capitalistic system and the notion of private property, but it lacks completely the inherent vices of those systems because it is structured to avoid any danger of speculation and therefore the possibility of hurting other people. He argued that it gives to the common man the possibility of organizing himself in the same way as the great capital consortiums do. And so he preached. Belaünde was to try an experiment in gradualism. The national government could aid in effectuating nonviolent change, he argued. If it did not act, radicalism and revolution would inevitably come and Peru would become "one great pit of carnage." The keys, he thought, were cooperative efforts in agrarian reform and community development. As soon as he assumed the presidency he set about trying to bring the resources of the central government to bear on those difficult tasks. President Belaunde knew Elias Täcunan. Moreover, they were agreed on three points: they wanted rural development, integration of the peasantry into national life, and a cessation of the historic abuses to which the peasantry had always been subjected. Only two days before Täcunan's death Belaunde had been in conference with him at the national palace. The President could not work for rural development through Fencap, the Apra-dominated peasant confederation, but he certainly needed some existing organizational links with the peasantry. That he could see political gains in the strengthening of his Popular Action party in Junin by working through Täcunan's Fedecoj could not detract from his genuine commitment to the "forgotten half" of his country's population. He knew that for political reasons Apra, and therefore Fencap, would be out to "cut him down" at every possible point, especially since the party's obstructive 1964 political alliance with its old and mortal enemy, General Manuel Odrfa and his Union Nacional Odriista. (The coalition was known as Apra-Uno.) 11 However Belaünde could 11. Technically the coalition was Apra-Union Nacional Odriista. When Belaünde combined parliamentary forces with the Christian Democrats in 1963 in order to create a working majority, Apra, in a panic, decided to join forces with its old

The Village and the Nation

69

work with Täcunan. Although the peasant leader was a former Apra member and one of its founding voices, he had retained his reforming zeal and expressed faith in the eventual justice of Peru's fledgling democratic institutions which, under Belaunde, had begun to take shape. Reform, not revolution was his desire. Belaünde could not have agreed more. Peru's president, however, was soon to feel the debilitating effects the rigid nature of the Peruvian social system could have upon attempts at reform — something Täcunan had felt all his life. Agrarian reform on paper was one thing; getting it carried out was quite another. Community development materials for use by the willing hands and strong backs of thousands of anxiously awaiting villagers was a fine idea, but Parliament, controlled by the Apra-Uno coalition, would supply no funds. "Everyone loves philosophy — no one respects action." Thus, while Belaunde excited the imagination of the peasants with his philosophy and his words, and while he indeed wanted to aid the hundreds of thousands of Indians and peasants living under near-feudal conditions, he found himself increasingly incapable of delivering the goods. To be sure, he accomplished some reform (some with the help of U.S. aid) but, as it turned out, not enough. Lack of action was indeed the prelude to Peru's subsequent peasant agitation, land invasions, and guerrilla warfare during 1964-1966, which captured world headlines. Yet the agitation presented Belaunde with an impossible situation. In order to salvage anything from his administration and hopefully to avoid any drastic action by Peru's omnipresent "military guardians," he found himself forced into succumbing to many of the coercion-and-no-reform demands of the opposition forces and conservative officers in the military. In the beginning the peasants had felt that he was with them; as time wore on, many were not so sure. By late 1967, plagued by a corrupt and ineffienemy, General Odria, in order to "fight communism." Haya even spoke of Odria, who had kept him boarded up in the Colombian embassy for five years in the fifties, as "the best friend Apra has ever had." By late 1967, in the wake of a serious economic crisis, the Accion Popular-Democrata Cristiana alliance had broken. The problems were so serious, perpetrated in part by the intransigence of the Apra-Uno coalition, that once the coalition's objective of dethroning Belaunde's alliance was accomplished Haya and Odria could find little continued harmony. By mid-1968 the Apra-Uno coalition was therefore nearly finished. Indeed, there was some talk that Apra would do a turn-about and begin to work with Belaunde's Accion Popular! Such a potentially fortuitous occurrence was never brought off. The military soon took the government for itself, sent Belaiinde into exile, and locked the doors of Parliament.

70

Intense Movements

cient bureaucracy and a do-nothing Apra-Odria opposition coalition in Parliament and faced with monetary devaluation his star was fading very rapidly. Finally, in the latter part of 1968, he was ousted by a military coup and was sent into exile. Peru's experiment in democratic gradualism had ended. It did not seem likely that it would reappear in the immediate future. Long before the fall of Belaünde substantial rumblings had developed among the peasants to form "non-politically-aligned" peasant parties which could then field their own candidates for parliament. In this regard the efforts of the Cäceres brothers in Puno and their success in routing both major national parties (Apra and Accion Popular) in the area were well known in the Mantaro and Yanamarca valleys.12 By 1967 the problem held a symbolic focus and the complaint, objective or not, was the same everywhere: except in token quantities, money coming from the U.S. by means of loans to Desarrollo Comunal13 was not filtering down to the peasants. "It is all chewed up in the bureaucracies and frustrated by the politicians." The peasants were continually frustrated. One of the best indicators of this frustration was the comparative deterioration of their economic position shown by a substantial fall in relative net income during the five years 1962-1967. The wholesale price of potatoes, the main cash crop, remained remarkably stable during the period (in part because of government price controls), bringing S/.1.80 per kilo (U.S. $0.03 per lb.) f.o.b. the village. Production costs, however, reached intolerable proportions. In the 1962-1963 period in one village, for example, nitrogenrich guano (fowl droppings gathered from coastal islands) cost S/.40 per 80-kilo bag (approximately U.S. $1.60 per 175-lb. bag). By 1967 the cost of the same bag was up 400 percent, to S/.165 (while the monetary exchange rate, until October 1967 continued to remain stable, hovering very close to S/.26.80 per U.S. dollar). A further bite was occasioned because guano was in short supply.14 Most villages were 12. An excellent discussion of this family's political engagements may be found in Edward Dew, "Politics in the Altiplano: A Study of Provincial Political Change in Peru" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1966). 13. The name of the national plan and consortium of governmental agencies set up by Belaünde for the development of the villages in rural Peru. Unable to obtain funds from his parliament, Belaunde negotiated with the International Development Bank for a $20,000,000 loan for village development projects. 14. The cycle is approximately as follows: The Humboldt current brings vast quantities of fish near the Peruvian coastline. Birds feed on the fish and then fly to nearby coastal islands where they deposit their dung. (Hundreds of thousands

The Village and the Nation

71

receiving only 10-20 percent of their annual quotas, no matter what the price. The logical turn, therefore, was to commercial fertilizers. But here again the peasants were in trouble. In 1962 a 75-kilo bag could be purchased for S/.180. In 1967 it had risen to S/.340. Moreover, the percentage content of nitrogen and phosphate was reported to have been reduced. And even for a poor crop, the villagers affirmed that it took at least three bags for every hectare (2.5 acres) of land. Another cause of the deteriorating position of the peasant was associated with the use of insecticides. The ramifications were pronouncedly political. Experience had shown the peasants that since they began using commercial insecticides it had become increasingly difficult to control pests and worms. The whole problem derived, it was said, from a mistake in 1960 when the villagers began using DDT and commercial fertilizers according to instructions they had received from agricultural technicians from SIPA, a U.S. subsidized inter-American agricultural development organization. The villagers' perception was curious. They were convinced that the government had allowed the marketing companies to put new kinds of bugs in the commercial fertilizers so that they could then extract more money by selling more DDT! An ex-mayor (alcalde) of the village of Concho in the Yanamarca Valley (a village in the Acolla system) expands the accusation quite well: But then they reduce the potency of the insecticides so they can make more money by selling us even more of that. And now we can't go back to using corral dung unless we let the land rest a year; otherwise the worms become totally uncontrollable. The gorgojos [weevils] did not bother us much before but now they are consuming all our crops right in the field. Maybe it's because of the fallout from all these atomic bomb experiments that have been going on. Maybe that is what is poisoning us. But now not even Folidoil 15 does of tons of this natural fertilizer were shipped to Europe in the nineteenth century. It has been among the best obtainable because of its extraordinarily rich nitrogen content.) Peru, however, has recently grown into the most important fishing nation of the world and is the largest exporter of fish meal. There are thus fewer fish for the birds to feed on, hence less guano deposited on the islands, hence less to be distributed — at the same time that demand is going up because of population increase and peasant awareness of the great utility of the fertilizer. 15. Brand name of a rather potent insecticide sold to the peasants — potent enough, at least, to occasion the death from time to time of unwary persons who mix home-brewed beer in the empty cans. The ex-mayor was asked if perhaps the

72

Intense Movements

anything and w e have to use more of it besides. Every year they tell us to use more of it, and every year they raise the price. 1 6 T h e frustrations evidenced b y such deteriorating conditions

were

indeed severe. "Apra has failed us. N o w A c c i o n Popular has failed us. W e must turn to our o w n candidates, those w h o really understand our problems. W e are tired of all the politicians, their many words and f e w deeds (mucha

boca pero poco

hecho)."

Before the political thrust could really materialize, however,

the

military took the nation for its own and shut d o w n all the politicians — especially the peasant politicians. But then the new regime quickly promised

agrarian reform.

The Intervillage System Twenty villages belong to the information-processing network of Acolla (table

1 and

figure

13).17

T h e y vary in size, composition,

geog-

bugs were just getting immune to the insecticide, and thus "stronger," rather than the insecticide's being diluted. He heartily laughed and said: "How can this be — you can still mash them with your finger!" 16. Personal interview, October 27, 1967. 17. An intervillage system is said to include all villages which have direct relations with one another in the categories of symbols selected, which in this case include symbols in social, cultural, economic, and political planes. The technique for establishing the existence of an intervillage system is analagous to that of sociometry, and one simply finds out which villages are selected by other villages for relationships in network symbols that are judged to be relevant. A kind of "contact count" is established. The "contacts" of any given village, however, must eventually link up with what turns out to be the system's center on a higher order of frequency than contacts with a center of some other system. Obviously, as one moves out toward the periphery of a system many villages are apt to be marginal, i.e., they may be equally related to two intervillage systems; or they may relate with one more than another, but still have direct relations with the two. In practice, all villages are included so long as their patterns of contact indicate that they belong more to the system being studied than to some other system. Except for the village of Yanamarca, there is no published monographic information on the other hacienda villages. Jose Matos Mar has devoted a chapter to Yanamarca in his El Valle de Yanamarca (Lima, 1964). However, some pertinent ethnographic data has been collected by Moises Ortega, schoolteacher in Acolla, over the years. I have profited from interviews with him. The bulk of the information in this section, however, comes from interviews with nearly all the leading participants themselves. In the case of Yanamarca, the data are further enhanced by interviews with agrarian reform officials stationed at the hacienda. In addition

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Concepcion Huancayo I Chupaca

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Huancayo

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Chupaca

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Huancayo Concepcion

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Chupaca

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Cocha

Miraflore s

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248

Appendix A

Table A.5 (continued) Code: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 A Β

Village most contacted for purposes of educating children at primary and secondary levels. Village most contacted for sale of marketable surplus of produce, grains, textiles, etc. Village contacted when religious guidance is desired. Village, community, or city where group family ties exist. Village, community, or city contacted when professional medical assistance is needed and desired. Village most contacted for purchases of outside goods and services. Village contacted when legal assistance is desired. Village, community, or city ranked by the above objective indicators as number one in contact frequency. Village ranked number two in contact frequency by the above indicators. (Also, it must appear in the intervillage system.)

Statistical Data

Table A.6 (see table 4 ) . Informant perception of most-contacted village Village

C

Pilcomayo Orconcruz Antapampa Huächac

Chupaca Chambara Huachac Sicaya

Huamancaca Chica Huayao Sicaya Huarisca Buenos A i r e s Orcotuna A co Iscuhuatiana Ahuac Mito Miraflores Cocha

Huancayo Chupaca Huancayo Chupaca Pilcomayo Sicaya Concepcion Ahuac Chupaca Huancayo Chupaca A co

Manzanares Vic so

Marcatuna Chupaca Concepcion Manzanares Huachac Chupaca Chongos Bajo

Chambara Copca Huamancaca Grande Nahuinpuquio Marcatuna Chupaca

Ahuac Chupaca Huancayo Pilcomayo Ahuac Iscos

D Huancayo Angasmayo Huayao Marcatuna Huayao Chupaca Huancayo Chupaca Ahuac Chupaca Mito Chupaca Chupaca Huancayo Jauja Huancayo Orcotuna Concepcion Huachac Mito Antapampa Ahuac Chupaca Huancayo Huancayo Sicaya Sicaya

Code: C

D

Village or town perceived by the key informants to be the one most contacted by their respective villagers. For example, Chupaca is seen to be the one single town most contacted and visited by the peasants of Pilcomayo. Village or town perceived to be the next most contacted and visited. For example, Huancayo is seen as the second most-contacted town by the residents of Pilcomayo.

249

250

Appendix A

Table A.7 (see table 4 ) . Rankings of intervillage contacts

VILLAGE Pilcomayo Orconcruz Antapampa Huachac

FIRST Score 4 Chupaca Chambara' Huachac Sicaya

SECOND Score 3 Chupaca Chupaca Chupaca Huancayo

THIRD Score 2 Huancayo Angasmayo Huayao Marcatuna Huayao

Huamancaca Chica Huayao Sicaya Huarisca Buenos A i r e s Orcotuna Aco Iscuhuatiana Ahuac Mito Miraflores

Huancayo Chupaca Huancayo Chupaca Pilcomayo Sicaya Concepcion Ahuac Chupaca Huancayo Chupaca

Huancayo Huancayo Huancayo Huancayo Huancayo Huancayo Concepcion Chupaca Huancayo Huancayo Huancayo

Chupaca Huancayo Chupaca Ahuac Chupaca Mito Chupaca Chupaca Huancayo Jauja Huancayo

Cocha

Aco

Concepci