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Peasant Politics and Andean Haciendas in the Transition to Capitalism: An Ethnographic History

In the Andean field, social scientists and historians have only recently begun to ask “how peasants make politics” (Montoya 1986) or how they have “engaged their political worlds” (Stern 1987, 9). In the past, Andean peasants were frequently viewed as living outside politics or as being sporadic players at best on the stage of politics—albeit as reactive or perhaps millenarian rebels aligned against the state. When peasants did make a political showing, they were inevitably represented by the tactically mobile “middle peasantry” or independent smallholders (see Wolf 1969). In contrast, “traditional” estate peasants (service tenantry) were characterized as relatively passive, “prepolitical” victims. Further along the path of historical development and social differentiation, it was generally held, these same “prepolitical” peasants were brought into the post-feudal world of “modern political movements,” where they were soon endowed with “political consciousness” (see Hobsbawm 1959). In probing the ambiguous but historically significant “middle ground” between these extreme and rather static images of “politically modern” peasants and “prepolitical victims,” this article will raise a different set of questions. The middle ground can be found at the intersection of Herrschaft (domination) and Gemeinschaft (community) on the Andean hacienda in capitalist transition. Analysis of this middle ground reveals a highly contested terrain where the idioms of peasants' everyday political agency resound. This resonance from below, however, presents interpretive as well as political ambiguities.