ANTHROPOLOGY: Peru's Indians

Tim Brown is more optimistic about Peru's large Indian groups than its small tribal societies in Amazonas. He reports:

"At the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos in Lima, a group of Quechua-speaking graduate students strongly faulted the way a seminar on the future of Peru had concentrated exclusively on the Europeanized Peru, its traditional dominant post-colonial elite. Their response was that they, not the Europeanized elite, are Peru's majority, and that, if Peru is to be democratic, the future belongs to them. But, and before the reader jumps to the current Politically Correct interpretation that they must have meant Toledo, I doubt that what they had in mind was a Westernized international bureaucrat with an Ivy League education married to a foreign leftist. I think they meant real Indians."

My comment: Toledo is in the tradition of Haya de la Torre´s so-called "Indoamerica". However, the Indians of whom Tim speaks are also becoming Westernized. It would be interesting to have the opinion of Peruvian specialist Scott Palmer, whose research base is Ayacucho, the focal point of the Indians of whom Tim speaks.

Ronald Hilton - 9/07/00