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E-book Landscapes of Liberation : Mission and Development in Peru’s Southern Highlands, 1958 – 1988

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Penilaian

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In early 1958, a regional newspaperbased in Puno ran a series on villages aban-doned by the central government. How could it be that Lima is paved with luxury construction, parks and twenty-story buildings while the people of thesoutheast-ernmost region of Peru lived “with a paleolithic backwardness of more than a cen-tury”? Residents of Nuñoa, located on the wide northern plains of the altiplano, reclaimed the construction of a new bridge to facilitate circulation and hoped that the achievements of modernization, including electricity, running water and health care, would be provided to the inhabitants of the small villages of the sier-ra. In the same vein, the villagers of Patambuco, situated further to the northeast of the department, also lamented that they had been forgotten by the successive governments in power. Thanks to their own initiative, however, the inhabitants succeeded in constructing a gravel road that connected the community to the road network where “the current of progress” circulated.1 These forgotten villag-es’ sense of abandonment reveals how the puneño countryside was conceived as a place where the central government was absent. The villagers were not merely part of an unjust social order, but seemed to have been forgotten by the Peruvian state altogether. Following a local saying, indeed, Puno is so close to heaven, yet so far from Lima. Contrasts of tradition and modernity dominated contemporary portrayals of Puno in the late 1950s. By time the inhabitants of small villages and hamlets like Nuñoa and Patambuco complained about their abandonment, observers had already noticed the uptake of modern technology across other parts of Puno. Whereas farms started replacing rudimentary instruments with tractors, reed rafts crossed paths with recently introduced engine-driven ships on Lake Titicaca. Traditions of indigenous religion contrasted even more starkly with the transfor-mations that modernity had brought to the southern highlands. “Indigenous peo-ple [...] continue to make offerings to the sun and the spirits of the high places”, a French ethnographer noticed in the early 1950s, “but know the plane, the railway and the telegraph.” This juxtaposition of what he considered old and new, back-ward and progressive, appeared indicative of the slow but steady modernization of Puno.3The propagation of ideas of progress and modernity to the inhabitants of Nuñoa and Patambuco was arguably stimulated by a multitude of local and for-eign actors who construed Puno as a “space of development” in need of interven-tion and salvation. They perceived a remote and harsh landscape, at the margins of a state that appeared to care little about its rural inhabitants. Many of these differ-ent agents of development subscribed to the indigenismo prevailing since the early 20th century, broadly defined as a heterogeneous political ideology preoccupied with the fate of the (for Peru) unparalleled “density of the indigenous mass” in Puno.4 As a space-to-be-developed, the region hosted abundant projects, initiatives and organizations which aimed to further the modernization of Puno and the na-tional integration of its population.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

266 OEH l

Penerbit

Belgium : Leuven University Press., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

231 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789461665171

Klasifikasi

266

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Missions

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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