Ayacucho Region Research Articles

Drawing development: Analysing local understandings of development in three Andean communities

This article shows how local understandings of development can be researched empirically by reference to experiences presented from three drawing workshops performed with children in the Ayacucho region in the Peruvian Andes. The children were asked to draw pictures from their community, as they would like it to become in the future. Their drawings are analysed by using an adapted form of Grounded Theory, and further interpreted as expressions of local development discourses. Although the three villages are located within the same area and share a violent history of war and instability, the research shows how each community has its own interpretation of development.

Traditional Music of Peru 6: The Ayacucho Region

Traditional Music of Peru 6: The Ayacucho Region

Religious regimes in Peru: Response to a review

I want to react to the review of my book Religious Regimes in Peru by Andrew Canessa in a recent issue ofthe Bulletin of Latin American Research. I strongly feel that the reviewer both misunderstood and misrepresented my book in a number of serious ways to the extent that I hardly recognised my own work. Since Dr Canessa did not mention it, he apparently completely missed the central theme ofthe book, namely a simple comprehensive theory of religion and politics with novel features, with the aid of which the book was constructed. I stated this goal in the first paragraph of the Introduction. In my more detailed comments, I will follow Dr Canessa's arguments. I would have argued that the military or political expansion of polities such as Tiwanaku and Wari was impeded by ecological factors and that 'the only way to expand the influence was to emphasise religious prominence' (p. 41), while citing Isbell's work in support. This is a rather unusual reading of my text. My quotation referred to early coastal societies, while Isbell's quotation only related to Tiwanaku's influence in the Ayacucho region. I refrained from making any detailed statements about the politico-religious developments in both the Wari and Tiwanaku heartlands, since I think that current scholarship does not provide sufficient information to do so. Dr Canessa observed next: 'Here lies a problem with the way the book is presented. Spier lists the sources on which each section is based in a footnote and it is unclear to what extent the ideas presented are Spier's or those authors in the initial footnote, let alone which of these writers is the source of any point being made.' When writing a study of this kind, it is impossible to make references to all the authors all the time. This would lead to a great number of extended references and discussions after almost every sentence in which factual information is stated. This would make the book unreadable. So I opted for a joint footnote in every section, in which I stated on whose work the section was based. When quoting and/or making references I thought were important for the argument, I did so in the main text. Since I presented my theory in simple sociological terms, I hoped that any thoughtful reader would have noted where my representation of established scholarship ended and my analysis began.

Migrant Flesh: Head-Choppers, Eye Pluckers and Foreigners

In September of 1987, a panic peaked in the Peruvian Andes town of Huamanga, region of Ayacucho, when a young travelling salesman from the town of Huancayo was lynched by a group of shantytown dwellers. They accused him of being a ?ak 'aq, the Quechua bogeyman who is said to extract fat from human beings in order to use it as an ingredient in the making of church bells or in medicines. His companions barely escaped the violence meted out to their fellow pilgrim. Though the man tried to convince his assailants that he was. at bottom, just like them, without much money, a Peruvian, an Andes dweller, his exhortations were disbelieved. As in a folk tale gone awTy, the hero in peril didn't possess the magic phrase, the secret password. When they took him prisoner, the young man tried to move his captors by saying to them, humble like my parents are humble people like yours. His protests met with the following reply: you're like us, let's see you speak in Quechua. I don't know Quechua because F m from Huancayo, but I'm a worker, just like you. (Portocarrero Maisch 55) His linguistic mark of difference, his ethnic admixture, could not efface itself, and the traveler was beat to death with machetes and stones. Such is the fate of ?ak 'aqs, also known in Spanish as pishtacos, in innumerable Quechua folk tales, wherein the carnal but otherworldly being is seen not as a hero but as a villain and monster who. like the dangerous ancestor called gentil, must be destroyed at all costs. It made little difference that the physical appearance of the traveler was much closer to that of his assailants than to the monster he was supposed to be an incarna? tion of. When the social need for aliens is great enough, the metamorphosis will take place in the realm of the actual, the way it does in the oral traditions that delimit the extremes of what is possible. Belief in the ?ak'aqs existence is widespread. In the vivid distillation of tradition, his arms are powerful, his face purple, his eyeballs bloody, his violet beard and hair long and tangled, his robe flowing, his head wrapped in red cloth, and his long knife, used for purposes of swift decapitation, hangs from a stout leather belt. His terrific appearance is attenuated only by the fact that he is mortal, that he can, with an effort, be killed. If the gods of Quechua belief are fallible, all the more vulnerable are its supernatural beings, who forever wait to be dispatched into another form, either more or less animate. The ?ak 'aq propagates himself only through the single son he is able to have. The folklorist Efra?n Mor?te Best gives a succinct description of his habitual activities.

Effects of season, altitude and daylength on floral initiation of two contrasting genotypes ofTrifolium repensL.

SUMMARYThe effects of season and altitude on floral initiation of twoTrifolium repenaL. cultivars, Haifa and California Ladino, were tested in the area of Ayacucho, Peru (2730 m, 13° S), with regard to their seed production potential. Specific effects of daylength at a constant temperature (20 °C) were examined in growth chambers.In Ayacucho, the proportion of inflorescence-bearing nodes was found to be lowest between December and June (Haifa 10–20%, Ladino 0–10%) and highest in August (Haifa 30%) and September–October (Ladino 15%). Late in the cool season, floral initiation of Ladino, but not that of Haifa, increased strongly at a high altitude (3250 m). In growth chambers, Haifa initiated few inflorescences and Ladino none in a 10 h daylength. In 16 h, the floral initiation of Haifa was very limited but Ladino formed many inflorescences. Floral initiation of Haifa was most pronounced and lasted longest after a daylength shift from 10 to 13 h.It is concluded that seasonal and altitudinal variations in low temperature were the main factors influencing floral initiation in the region of Ayacucho. Haifa is considered to be an intermediate-day plant, suited for seed production in the region because of its marked and early flowering. Ladino was classified as a quantitative longday plant, unsuitable for seed production at this low latitude because of its retarded floral response to low temperature.