Diario las Américas Newspaper, May 9, 1954, Page 25

In Yauyos distric, Peru, where this woman lives, Indians still speak Kauke. Nazca, Chimu, Mochica, and Tiahu- anaco ceramics, Chongoyape gold work, stone and adobe structures like Machu Picchu and Chan-Chan, is now passing through a crisis; contemporary products of the In- dian’s hand cannot bear compari- sion with those of earlier times. Skill is not lacking so much as impulse or motivations, perhaps inspiration in the supernatural or in a new social order. All this pushes the communities into a position where they signify almost nothing “in their countries’ economies. They produce little, they are not large consumers of the products of modern technology, they accept few new things. Indivi- dual economic conditions are dep- lorable. Not only are family in- comes low, but excessive expendi- tures on religious celebrations and on lawsuits —to which they resort for the solution of the most trivial problems among themselves or wit neighboring communities or estat- es— drain off what littie there is. As the Indians abandon this un- promising situation, they swell the population of the cities in growing numbers. People from the sierra constitute 60 per cent of the po- pulation of the Peruvian capital, a city of almost a million. They are A native of Puno, on the Peruy- jan shore of Lake Titicaca. of various social strata, from the well-to-do mestizo to the disposses- sed Indian. In Puno and La Paz many Indians start out as servants or laborers, learn Spanish, and slowly rise into the mestizo class, forming a peculiar type known as cholo. In certain regions (Puno, Huancayo, La Paz, Huaras) the cholos are capable businessmen; the women in particular are tire- less travelers who dominate the retail and sometimes the whole- sale market, especially in coca and alcohol. Little by little, the mes- tizos are working their way into every sphere of society and govern- ment. As I have said, these groups are slowly changing. Although they stick to Quechua, Aymara, or Ka- uke in family or community con- versations, more and more people are learning Spanish, realizing that they need it to protect themselves and to get ahead. The schoolds can become the best agents of cultural change, and the funda- mental steps have been taken. Hun- dreds of community members try very hard to educate their chil- dren, beginning by sending them to the nearby schools and later making considerable sacrifices so that they may go on to secondary school and a few even to the uni- ~~ versities or special schools. Mu- quiyauyo, in the Mantaro Valley, annually underwrites the education of several young people; in Lara- marca, Huancavelica Department, the community member customari- ly sells every year, in March, two or three head of cattle and uses the profit to send one of his chil- dren for a whole year to a secon- dary school or university. Many children from the Indian commu- nities earn degrees as lawyers, en- gineers, doctors, agronomists, den- tists, veterinarians, ethnologists, ac- countants, and especially teachers; their record inspires the new gene- rations. What is still needed is ideals and concrete aims to bind the school and the Indian more closely. Un- der an agreement between the Peruvian and Bolivian governments the so-called “nuclear schools’ ha- ve been created, combining theore- tical instruction with practice and operating successfully n many communities of both countries. There are twelve in Cuzco Depart- ment; nearly three hundred chil- dren, in six grades, attend the one at Chincheros. A bus picks up those who live in out-of-the-way places. Communities like Laraos, in the province of Yauyos, Lima Department, show how education is changing these groups. Everyone there reads Spanish and speaks and writes it correctly, the stan- dard of living is higher and for decades the people of Yauyos have looked with respect upon anyone who has studied in Laraos. Neigh- boring Huarochiri is another exam- ple. But more is involved than simply establishing schools —in both cases the communities have had their “own” teachers, people of their own who have devoted their lives to teaching. In religion and magic the situa- tion is complex. Some groups have accepted the Catholic religion, its paraphernalia and ritual, as a scre- en for their ceremonials, while sticking to the old ways in belief and practice. Catholicism itself has been losing ground over the past twenty years because of a shortage of priests and the inroads of Pro- testantism. The Indian believes that all the phenomena of nature have spirits, just as men, animals, and plants do, and that at the top is God, the Supreme Being. All the spirits have a good ora bad nature; destructive phenomena like lightning or hail are malefi- cient, while rain is beneficent, and so on. These spirits must be pro- piated, a“job handled by two kinds of specialist —the pako, who is in charge of venerating and implor- ing the good spirits, and the laika, who deals with the evil. Often, however, both sets of duties are discharged by a single person. The pakos and laikas have work- ed out a complicated ritual. A mesa, for example, is prepared for Pachamama (the spirit of he earth) and others. On white paper, which symbolizes an altar, such offerings as llama or hog embryos are spread, together with tin or lead figurines, sweets, caramels, beads, gold and silver paper, a root called koa, coca, and small clay vessels containing sugar water or a boiled-down extract of the best crops. A special day is always set aside for worship of Pachamama, in hopes of a good year. Perhaps it is in the magico-religious field that the spirit animating the An- dean community members resides, for none of the efforts directed against it have made any head- way. As for medicine in many re- gions the only practitioners are the shamans, whose pharmacopo- eia is based on traditional animal, vegetable, and mineral products. Modern drugs find a cool recep- tion —for financial reasons, sin- ce no one resists analgesics, in- jections on a small scale, or, to a lesser degree, other pharmaceutical products. Often it is the medicine men who introduce modern drugs: at Lanca de Otao, in the mountains of Lima Department, an esteemed practitioner has gradually won ac- ceptance for the antibiotics. The highly important health cam- paigns sponsored by the govern- ments and by international organi- zations are very well received. Chaean, near Cuzco, is one of many communities in the area where UNICEF is fighting typhus DOMINGO, 9 DE MAYO DE 1954 ~ with DDT. In October 1952, with the collaboration of the Peruvian Ministry of Health and the various local services, the campaign there reached 1,161 inhabitants. Before the experiment was started, exa- mination revealed that 61 per cent were infested with lice; afterward, monthly checks indicated that a month after the DDT spraying of individuals the index fell to 5.6 per cent and that by May it had risen again, to 38.6 per cent. Simil- arly, UNICEF and the Nutrition Service of the Ministry of Public Health have given powdered milk to the hundreds of community schools and to the nuclear schools so they can offer their pupils bre- akfast. Every morning the chil- dren take turns helping to pre- pare the milk, then all line up with their cups and consume it eagerly. Unfortunately, the Indians’ diet in general is neither balanced nor abundant. They eat only two regu- lar meals and a snack at midday, and their typical dishes are soups and stews. There is also the prob- lem of coca and_ distilled-cane aguardiente, their favorite stimu- lants. Unquestionably coca-chewing affects their nutrition, since the drug is a stimulant, allowing them to consume energy that is not satisfactorily replaced. But the im- portant role it plays in the Indian’s life must not be overlooked. It is associated with magic cures, prac- tices, and beliefs, with a whole symbolism deeply rooted in their present culture; if it is to be sup- pressed, something must be pro- vided to take its place. More seri- ous is the problem of aguardiente, badly distilled, toxic, terribly in- jurious, and being consumed in increasing quantities. No successful plans for improve- ment could be made without ex- pert knowledge and understanding of the Andean region and its cul- ture. The past ten years, particular- ly in Peru, have seen decisive steps in the right direction. Professor Bernard Mishkin’s ethnological stu- dy, in 1937-38, of the Indian com- munity of Kauri, marked the be- ginning, and since then a num- ber of Peruvian and foreign an- thropologists have examined many areas of Peru: Chuchito, in Aymara territory; Sicaya and Muquiyauyo, in the Mantaro Valley; Moche, Vi- ru, and Santa, on the Peruvian north coast; Tupe and Catahuasi, in Yauyos; Lunahuana, in the Ca- nete Valley; Laramarca in Huan- cavelica; the fishing colonies on the shores of Lake Titicaca; the islands in the lake; Huarochiri, in Lima Department; San Sebas- tian, Sallac, and Chincheros in Cuz- co Department; Huayobamba, in the sierfa of La Libertad Depart- ment; and the Cashibos, in the jungle along the Ucayali. Similar studies have been made of Pegu- che, Otavalo, La Paz, Pusir, and Yluman in Ecuador, and of the Aymaras, the Chipayas, and the Cochabamba region in Bolivia. In Ecuador the principal institu- tions studying the Indian problem are the Ministry of Labor and So- cial Welfare, which includes a De- partment of Indian Affairs; the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana; and particularly the Ecuadorean Institute of Anthropology and Ge- ografy. In Peru there are the Mi- nistry of Labor and Indian Affairs, the Institute of Ethnological Stu- dies of the Museum of Peruvian Culture, the Institute of Ethnolo- gy of the University of San Mar- cos, the Institute of Andean Bio- logy, and the Peruvian Indian Ins- titute; in Bolivia, the Ministry of Rural Affairs. Cooperation has al- so been forthcoming from various U. S. universities, from the Smith- sonian Institution, and from French organizations such as the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and the French Institute of Andean Studies in Peru. Financial help for these studies has come from the Wenner Gren Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Projects in applied anthropolo- gy have been started simulta- neously with this research. The first was at Vicos, in the Callejon de Huailas, Peru, carried on by Cornell University in cooperation with the Peruvian Ethnological kind of social-improvement _ pro- gramis under way among a group of eleven communities in Huaro- chiri, Department of Lima, based Dwellings of the Urus, among the reeds in Lake Titicaca. on a year’s ethnological field work by a Peruvian team —ethnologists, city planners, architects, civil en- gineers, agronomists, doctors, psy- chologists, educators, lawyers, folklorists, musicians, naturalists, dietitians, geographers, geologists, and historians. A third project, to improve conditions in Cuzco De- partment with supervised agricul- tural credit, is sponsored by the Cuzco Board of Reconstruction and Industrial Development, a bo- dy created to deal with the havoc of the 1950 earthquake. An ethno- logical survey is the first step After a twelve-week survey of the three countries starteinf in July 1952, a United Nations mis- sion proposed several very signi- ficant plans to raise the standard gion of Madre de Dios Department, after a preliminary six- to twelve- month survey by an ethnologists, an agricultural expert, and an agri- cultural economist. Second, a trin- ning center for Indian community leaders, staffed by health, agricul- ture, fundamental-education, pre- vocational, and_ social-anthropolo- gy experts, is proposed for Mu- quiyayo. In Ecuador, the artisans of the Otavalo area —where contempora- ry Indian craftsmanship is per- haps at its best— would be orga- nized along cooperative lines, with such help as supervised credit and the assistance of a team of nine or ten technicians in cooperative organization, business agricul- ture, public health, education, and Chief leads ceremony at Gateway of the Sun, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, On September 21, sun rises in exact center of ancient structure. of living in the Indian communi- ties. In Bolivia, teamwork by tech- nicians in economics, health, agro- nomy, education, and social an- thropology is proposed to carry out three projects: an agricultural cooperative, within the general structure of the Bolivian agrarian- reform program, at Jestis Macha- ca-Tiahuanaco; the training of In- dian teachers at the rural normal school in Vacas, a canton in Co- chabamba, and at the same time a government public health pro- gram there; and Indian coloniza- tion of the jungle lowlands, which must await completion of the rail- road between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Two projects are planned for Peru. First, it is suggested that in order to reduce severe overpopu- lation in Puno Department, Indians from that area be resettled in the Tambopata Valley, in the jungle re- ethnology So plans are being drawn, and others are going into effect. All three countries boast experts en- tirely competent to carry out ef- fective improvement programs. But there is a need for money and an agency to coordinate the varios isolated efforts, both pub- lic and private. Statistics are an- other requirement. In Peru, for example, it-is calculated that there are about five thousand Indian communities, but only 1,378 are recognized. Their economic poten- tial can be determined only by dee tailed censuses. Given the complexity of the si- tuation, the most important things are now ethnological research, and pilot projects limited to small areas. For no simple solution can ever be found for the Indian proe blem. Housekeeping in Otavalo region, Ecuador, bringing new prosperity to this area. HEMISFERIO Exquisite weaving i¢ stenotic, PAG 13