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JUNE 15, 1972

reply by E.J. Hobsbawm

IN RESPONSE TO:
Peru: The Peculiar "Revolution" from the December 16, 1971 issue

To the Editors:
Mr. Hobsbawms recent analysis of the Peruvian revolution (NYR, December 16)
unfortunately left more unsaid than said. Like most analyses of the Andean republics the
point of view, like the people who write them, never departs from the narrow neo-colonialist
world of the European urban centers. I believe Mr. Hobsbawm has done more violence to the
majority of Perus population, the Indian, by characterizing him as the rural anachronism
whom, if he doesnt disappear in the meantime, the revolutionary government of Peru will
eventually rescue from primitiveness and misery. I would like to make the following
comments in an attempt to clarify the latest Peruvian governments attitude toward Perus
Native American peoples.
On the surface the military government gives the appearance of carrying on a revolution. And
certainly some very impressive changes are taking place. But practically all economic and
political analyses of Peru conceal the fact that from 60 to 70 percent of the population is not
of European origin. These are the Native American peoples of the Andean highlands and the
upper Amazon lowlands, who are principally speakers of Quechua and Aymara languages.
The political, social, and economic institutions of these peoples are organized by principles
and values radically different from those held by the Spanish-speaking peoples of European
origin and orientation.
The native people of Peru were first subjected to Western colonialism in 1532 when the
Spanish took control of the Inca empire. In 1821, when Peru won political independence
from Spain, a new form of internal colonialism replaced the external Spanish colonialism.
The colonial master was no longer Spain, but the newly independent Peruvian-born
grandchildren of the Spanish conquerors. Throughout the 400 year history of this colonialist
regime, the European masters have systematically undermined and destroyed indigenous
social, political, economic, and cultural institutions in an attempt to consolidate their control
over the colony and to exploit the labor of the colonized peoples more efficiently. The

present government, which is composed of only non-Indian people, is no exception. While

clearly being more nationalistic and benevolent than past regimes, it is nonetheless simply
the latest in a long line of colonialist administrations.
In fact this government has made the cleverest attempt yet to legitimize the colonial situation
by performing a simple coup de grce on the Indian peoples. It is no coincidence that the
present government chose June 24, Day of the Indian, to announce the Agrarian Reform law
in 1969. On this occasion the President proudly announced that from that day on there would
no longer be any Indians in Peru. The word indio would be purged from the national
vocabulary. Now there would exist only peasants. With a great deal of revolutionary fervor
and benevolence, the Day of the Indian became the Day of the Peasant. At first glance, it
seemed like a charitable attempt to rid the country of a racist and culturally biased attitude.
But hidden in this linguistic maneuver is an attempt to legitimize the colonial power
structure. The rationale is as follows: by conceptually converting the Indians into peasants,
they can be neatly assimilated into the Western class structure of the European colonial
masters as the rural proletariat. As such, the cultural differences, which mark the Indians as a
colonized people, can be quietly and legitimately ignored and their humanity can be officially
recognized by the colonizers. The colonized-colonizer distinction now vanishes and the
power of the colonial masters becomes legitimate.
However, this linguistic sleight-of-hand can never work. We are now learning from peoples
like the Vietnamese, black Americans, and Irish that colonized people dont forget who they
are nor do they forget their colonial history. There is still a majority of Indian peoples in Peru
oppressed under colonial rule. A closer look at the reforms of the military government reveals
how either the Indian peoples are excluded from the benefits of the reform (as with the
Industrial Reform which excludes the mining industry which relies exclusively on Indian
labor) or how it furthers the process of destruction of indigenous institutions (as with the
Agrarian Reform which imposes on Indian peoples forms of economic organization based on
Western concepts of peasant economy and industrial management in exchange for returning
stolen lands). None of the new reforms recognizes the fact of colonialism within Peru, and
none of the reforms makes any attempt to return any power to the Indian peoples.
To call this process I have described a revolution is, to use Mr. Hobsbawms own phrase, to
devalue language. The basic goals of the government are the Western concepts of progress
and economic development. For the lower and middle segments of the non-Indian peoples, it
may mean more access to American style consumer products. For the Indian, it means more
alienation. His non-Western experience is not only being ignored in the mad dash to
develop, it is being ruthlessly destroyed. As the Quechua story of the Inkari tells, when the
dismembered body of the assassinated Inca comes back together, the Indian peoples will rise
up and regain control over their land and their destiny. Until that day there can be no
revolution in Peru.

An Anthropologist
[The writer asks that his name be withheld.]
E.J Hobsbawm replies:

The writer of this letter and I clearly do not talk the same language. I believe his use of the
term neo-colonialism to be fuzzy, meaningless, or plain wrong. I cannot understand his use
of the term Indian which veers from one possible criterion to another: in the widest sense
(i.e., that used to define black North Americans) probably more than his 60 to 70 percent of
Peruvians are Indian; in the sense of those living under indigenous institutions such as the
peasant [formerly indigenous] communities probably less than 20 percent were even ten
years ago. His brief references to history are misleading and unacceptable, and his view that
the concept of peasant economy is somehow Western, incomprehensible. So let us try to
establish a common universe of discourse. First, about the policy of the Peruvian
government, which is propagating the glories of the Inca past, of Indian rebels like Tupac
Amaru, and of Indian virtues with great enthusiasm, and actually planning schooling in the
Quechua language. Whatever the gap between rhetoric and reality and between plans and
realizations, what it is clearly not trying to do is to abolish the Indians as Indians.
The director of the Office of Communities (himself an Indian) is actually, if I understand his
policy, trying to reverse the process of class differentiation which has made considerable
progress within the communities, and one wishes him luck. I do not myself believe that a
policy of treating Indians as men and citizens just like anyone else is in some way a
neo-colonialist plot, though it may have other drawbacks; but the Peruvian policy cannot be
adequately described as assimilationism in this sense.
Second, about the prospects of the Indians traditional way of life, which is incidentally, to
speak economically and socially, very much more comparable to that of non-Indian
communally organized peasants than this writer seems to think. It clearly retains far more
strength in Peru than in, say, Mexico, and it would be deplorable if the future development of
the country, and especially the highlands, were to bypass and destroy it rather than to build
upon it. All the more deplorable as simple urbanization is not a satisfactory solution for the
problems of the Third World.
But the fact is that this way of life has been changing and breaking down rapidly, perhaps in
many regions irreversibly, and that the majority of Peruvians will soon be or are already
urban. The traditional highland way of peasant life is not an adequate guide to what is
already Peruvian reality, and simple preservation or reversal is not an adequate program.
However powerful the cultural influence of the Indians in the future Peru, and however
effective the blending of their characteristic and traditional way of life with the new social
environment, it will not re-create the past. Except as a figure of speech the dismembered
body of the assassinated Inca will not be reassembled. (These statements do not apply to the

Amazonian Indians, who have little to do with the Quechua and Aymara speakers of the
highlands).
However, I agree with this writerand have said sothat the mad dash to develop will
not solve the Indian problem, that this problem remains to be solved, and that, until the
Peruvian people, whether communally organized Indians or not, take an active part in the
transformation of their country, we cannot speak of the Peruvian Revolution as having taken
place.

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