Myth and Ideology in a Nineteenth Century Peruvian Peasant Uprising

Abstract

The Atusparia Uprising of 1885, in Peru's Ancash Department, was an anti-fiscal response to increased taxation by a peasantry in a deteriorating economic situation. The historical record of this event has been made by non-peasant journalists, novelists, and historians; it represents an elite view of oppressed rural toilers without ideas of their own, who are anything but historical agents. In reponse to this view, an attempt is here made to search for existence of peasant consciousness which does not correspond to elite ideology. Peasant myths are explored in order to furnish a context of ideas held by rural masses regarding social structure, historical continuity and discontinuity, and political legitimacy. I E. P. Thompson (1971:76) has warned term riot may conceal what he calls spasmodic view of popular history, is, common people can scarcely be taken as historical agents, and they intrude in history in compulsive, rather than self-conscious or self-activating sudden social disturbances in response to large economic events. In opposition to such a view of masses, Thompson (ibid.:78-79) discerns legitimation in crowd actions: belief by people that they are defending traditional rights or customs; and, in general, they were supported by wider consensus of community. In cases which he examines, eighteenth century English food riots, he refers to these popular beliefs as the moral economy of poor. Stalnaker (1979:28) contrasts this indictment of picture conservative historians of insurrection have drawn of rebels who have no ideas but only empty stomachs which propel them automatically into political violence with philosophical idealist picture of rebels with ideas but no material needs, with full but no stomachs at all. This essay addresses issue of relationship between heads and stomachs, or popular consciousness and material conditions by examining related aspects of an Andean peasant rebellion, known as Atusparia Uprising, which took place in Peru's Callej6n de Huaylas in 1885. The Callej6n de Huaylas is a densely populated valley which runs in a southeast-to-northwest direction between ranges of Andes Mountains, for about one hundred miles. A number of towns are strung along Santa River in valley bottom, while peasant settlements of various types are located on hilly slopes and terraces of mountain ranges. The region forms part of Department of Ancash, a political subdivision of country whose capital, Huaraz, occupies a central position in valley at an altitude of a little over 3,000 meters above sea level. Huaraz was scene of first outbreak of mob action in early March, which consisted of a collective protest against