week6—Land or Death! What Mariategui wanted to say… but did(n’t)?—

week6—Land or Death! What Mariategui wanted to say… but did(n’t)?—

reading blog #10 – Hugo Blanco’s We the Indians

Reading Hugo Blanco’s We the Indians was like reading a less pretentious version of Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries of the Inca. Though both have their biases and influences, of course, but Blanco’s writing isn’t used as a (shaky, yet) foundational knowledge of the Incas or Peruvian campesinos. To be honest, I’m not sure I understood everything that Blanco wrote about, I was mostly going along with the story. This guy got deported so many times.

I liked Blanco’s writing on land, communities, and ayllus. I felt it helped me piece together more aspects of the puzzle that is Peru and Peruvian history. If Mariategui was the theoretical, critical, more classically literary, and (somewhat) academic approach to the issue of land, community, and Indigeneity, then Blanco’s writing is an action-oriented and experiential approach. Blanco’s combat cry: “land or death!” is a pretty apt summary of his approach. At times, “land or death!” seems like what Mariategui wanted to say.

It wasn’t said directly, but I think Blanco asserts what he thinks about the current state of Indigeneity through a few certain sentences in this passage:

“Quechua was stronger than the murderers; they could not kill it.” (105)

“We, the children of Túpac Amaru, shook with rage and continued our long silent history of rebellions, struggling against the régime of estates.” (106)

“…the ayllu is stronger than its enemies; it is in our blood.” (106)

Perhaps, it is not everything, but these are the words that stood out to me.

I’m not one for politics, or even knows an extensive amount about it, but I thought it was interesting the Blanco asserts that “democracy is a cultural inheritance of ours; the community has governed itself for millennia…” and “…that the essence of the ayllu is democracy” (108). The tension is fascinating, because Blanco also slanders the inventors of democracy, the Greeks—of which I agree with him, but the conflict still stands.

The re-shaping and changing of the ayllus was also interesting. It seems to me that the form and enactment of ayllus is much like that of Indigeneity, subject to change throughout time yet the core of it still somehow remains original and true to the source. (This is perhaps a broad statement to make, but here we are…)

This changing of how ayllus operate and function in light of the ‘legalizing’ of it, or institutionalizing of it was interesting. I think this is true of many things. It kind of reminded me of how harm reduction facilities were something put on by grassroots organizations, despite the (un)helpfulness of the governing body at the time. But now, the discourse and methods have been institutionalized and eaten by government entities and bureaucracy. Perhaps, in these different ayllus, there is also a kind of tension between mediating tradition and government.

How did you read the role of ayllus in the un/making of Indigeneity?

These are all my thoughts right now. Thanks.