Rich Peasant, Poor Peasant Differing Fates of Urban ...

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

10.1177/0094582X04268401 Gascón / FATES OF URBAN MIGRANTS IN PERU

Rich Peasant, Poor Peasant

Differing Fates of Urban Migrants in Peru by Jorge Gascón Translated by Victoria J. Furio Breaking with preconceived ideas, research in the 1990s focusing on the urban-marginal migrant population of rural Andean origin has shown that “informal economy” is not necessarily synonymous with “poverty.” According to these writers, two factors explain the business success of part of that population. One is knowing how to take advantage of the socioeconomic resources their culture offers—social networks based on kinship, cronyism, religious bonds, or those linking compatriots, a work ethic, willingness to work long days for small profit margins, etc.—in order to compete in a market economy (Adams and Valdivia, 1991; Golte, 1995; Huber, 1997). The other is the nature of the Peruvian market: it is one that has been held back and deprived of capital by Peru’s decade and a half of political violence. This situation has meant that migrants lacked competitors in many sectors of the economy and found ample unmet demands that they could fulfill (Golte, 1995; León, 1996; Huber, 1997). Despite this, neither the use of cultural resources nor the characteristics of the market can explain the socioeconomic differentiation created in the heart of this migrant population. Most informal micro-businesses continued to be barely viable. The men and women vendors on the streets of Lima whose limited merchandise demonstrates their low level of capitalization are an example. In addition, the successful informal businesses are composed not only of entrepreneurs but also of migrant laborers working in a situation of overexploitation: job insecurity, long work days, no social security, low wages, etc. This article attempts to contribute to the search for an answer to the question why some migrants manage to become prosperous in the informal sector and the rest—the majority—do not. My hypothesis is that this differentiation is not necessarily created in the city through luck or entrepreneurial ability Jorge Gascón is an anthropologist at the University of Barcelona and a member of its Andean Studies Group. Victoria J. Furio is a Latin Americanist and translator currently living in New York City. LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 138, Vol. 31 No. 5, September 2004 57-74 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X04268401 © 2004 Latin American Perspectives

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but in most cases has its roots in the place of origin. The migrant takes the socioeconomic status he has in his community to the city, and his fate and access to the aforementioned cultural resources largely depend on this status. As does Paerregaard (1998), I believe that an understanding of the world of the urban migrant requires study of its interdependence with the rural world of origin. It is not that this relationship has been overlooked by researchers; on the contrary, several of them have focused on it (the pioneering works of Doughty [1969] and Altamirano [1977] should be highlighted here). In general, however, it has either been to demonstrate the communal cohesion of the Andean world (Sandoval [2000] calls this a tendency toward neoindigenism) or to show, from a more functionalist viewpoint, how the migrant makes use of certain resources of his community, basically social links, that allow him to handle his activities successfully (Adams and Valdivia, 1991; Golte, 1995; Huber, 1997). In this study I will focus on the migration that has occurred in recent decades in a rural district of the department of Puno, the island of Amantaní. I will begin by examining its socioeconomic structure and how it was created. FORMATION OF A DIFFERENTIATED SOCIETY Amantaní, with 850 hectares and nearly 4,000 inhabitants, all Quechuas, is the largest and most populous of Peru’s islands in Lake Titicaca. From the Spanish conquest to the mid-twentieth century it was a land of haciendas, and its inhabitants were tenant farmers. The social relation of production existing between owner and worker was peonage, characterized by the peons’ ownership of their own labor power and the usufruct of part of the land they worked in exchange for its surplus value (Montoya, 1989). The contract was verbal, governed by tradition, and fit the description of what has generally been called yanaconaje: in exchange for work, money, or production, the landowner donated parcels in usufruct to the campesino (Matos Mar, 1976). In Amantaní the contract referred to the appropriation of the campesino’s surplus labor, although the landowner also appropriated part of his agricultural surplus value through other means. The fact that the nature of the contract was similar for all tenant farmers does not mean that campesino society was socially and economically homogeneous. Through various mechanisms, the hacienda system created differentiation among workers, without, however, dividing them into solid, impermeable classes (there was some social mobility). This allowed for greater control of the sharecropper population and hindered the formation of group consciousness, since it offered the prospect of

Gascón / FATES OF URBAN MIGRANTS IN PERU

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socioeconomic mobility and caused competition among them for the favor of the dominant group (Gascón, 1997; 1999b; 2000). The hacienda system fostered economic diversification by not granting all campesinos the same quantity and quality of plots. The differences could be considerable. This made it necessary, at certain points in the agricultural cycle, for domestic groups that utilized more plots to recruit more labor power than they possessed; among sharecroppers appropriation of surplus labor was disguised within forms of reciprocity such as minka or yanaparakuy. Campesinos could gain usufruct of more land through various strategies, all of which entailed the establishment of relations with the landowner that were tinged with the paternalism characteristic of peonage in the Andes (Anrup, 1990). Competition among tenant farmers to gain the landowner’s favor was thus spurred and any type of collective action hindered. One of these strategies was the cargo system, which structured the hacienda as a hierarchical organization. Amantaní landowners were absentees, at least during the hacienda system’s final decades. Attracted by urban life, they resided in the departmental capital or, for the wealthier, in cities such as Arequipa or Lima. During most of the year, management of the estate remained in the hands of mayordomos and quipus, positions occupied by the tenant farmers themselves and based on the confidence of the owner. The cargo system created a strong hierarchy and also provided economic privileges: mayordomos and quipus usually received more and better land. As a result, the bosses took on a dual class role. On the one hand, they were sharecroppers and as such involved in the peonage relationship. On the other, they participated in the subsumed process of class, helping to extract surplus value from the campesino population and receiving for this service part of this surplus value in the form of land.1 The mayordomo’s position was not for life or for any specific term. Mayordomos were chosen by the owner from among his tenants of greatest confidence and for the length of time he considered appropriate. This was a decision that depended on his interests and the conduct of mayordomos and for which he was not held accountable. It promoted individual strategies and competition among sharecroppers to gain the favor of the landowner, ranging from trying to excel in work and behaving obsequiously to accusing the quipus and mayordomos of mismanagement or theft. The hacienda’s hierarchical system, although the most significant, was not the only mechanism fostering campesino differentiation. Cronyism, whether with owners or mayordomos and quipus, was another. Both the former and the latter often favored their friends, and a good relationship with the landowner could help one obtain economic privileges.

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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES TABLE 1

Investments Involved in the Acquisition of the Isla Cuentas Estate (in gold soles) Investment 1,700 1,500 1,400 1,300 1,200 1,000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

Number of Households 1 1 2 2 11 5 5 5 6 2 17 12 13 23 28

Source: Figures taken from the certified copy of the deed and treasury record for the purchase of the Isla Cuentas hacienda (private file of Moisés Yanarico). Note: To this table we must add domestic units not listed in the purchase documents, not having made investments for lack of greater economic ability or because they believed that the land in usufruct was sufficient.

In the 1940s, the islanders began to pressure the landowners to sell them the haciendas, and over the next two decades they succeeded. Once acquired, the lands were divided up among them, and various factors made this distribution unequal. One of these was that the plot used by each domestic unit during the time of the haciendas was considered the property of the campesino and not included in the sale process. As we have seen, the lots given in usufruct to tenant farmers were very different in quality and quantity. The principal factor was, however, the various investments made, which determined the total price at which the farms had been valued. Both the difference in investments and the difference in the distribution of land were considerable. The haciendas were divided into lots, and those who had produced more received more. The campesinos benefiting most from the distribution were those who had previously had more resources in usufruct, since this allowed them to accumulate a greater quantity of capital and make larger investments. Table 1 shows the differences in quantity of investments by sharecroppers who participated in the purchase of the hacienda Isla Cuentas, the largest one in Amantaní and the last to be sold.


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In most cases, the mayordomos and quipus were placed in charge of handling the buying and selling, which allowed them to falsify account books and assign themselves larger investments than those truly made. Moreover, as they were also responsible for directing the distribution of lands, they kept the best and more than their share. Therefore, with some exceptions, those who handled more resources during the time of the haciendas continued to be part of the predominant socioeconomic group. In other words, the disappearance of the hacienda system in Amantaní consolidated and accentuated campesino differentiation. THE LAND CRISIS During the third quarter of the twentieth century, land ceased to be the element establishing social and economic differentiation in Amantaní for two closely related reasons. I have already pointed to one: the collapse of the hacienda system, which allowed the islander free access to the capitalist market, and the resulting diversification of sources of income. Until well into the twentieth century, the southern highlands job market offered few opportunities for unskilled labor not part of a hacienda or community. Even so, the hacienda system established mechanisms for controlling its workers and keeping them away from the market. These mechanisms were basically but not exclusively in infrastructure. Specifically, the fundamental factor allowing for control and exploitation of the tenant farmer population was its need to comply with production relations that exploited while also allowing them to subsist and reproduce—what Marx (1973 [1867]) calls the “silent coercion of economic relations.”2 This silent coercion operated basically on two levels. First, tenants used land granted them by the hacienda, and losing it was the worst thing that could happen to them in a context of scarce or nonexistent organization of the capitalist job market. This obliged them to accept the production relations in which they were immersed; otherwise, the landowner would take away the parcels that were their means of subsistence. Therefore, monopoly of the land had not only an economic end—that of capturing surplus value—but also a political one: that the dominated group accept its subordination. The second level was the campesino relation to the capitalist goods and labor markets. Through various mechanisms the hacienda alienated the sharecroppers’ production and labor surplus values. In this way, even if physical contact with the market had been possible, access to it was blocked, since they had no merchandise with which to participate. They were therefore unable to accumulate the capital that would have allowed them to break their dependency on

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the means of production granted by the owner. To summarize, it was essential for the system to relieve the campesinos of their surplus value not only to obtain economic benefits but also to maintain their dependency. The principal mechanism for relieving the hacienda campesinos of surplus value was that established by the sharecropping contract, which in itself presupposed the alienation of most of their surplus labor in exchange for land in usufruct, but it was not the only one. Another mechanism was debt. The tenant was regularly indebted to the hacienda, and this was vital to the subsistence and reproduction of the campesino domestic group. Although a year of acceptable harvest could be sufficient to maintain the domestic group, a frost, drought, or hailstorm could knock the family economy off balance. In these instances, the landowner lent part of the farm’s harvest to his tenants. In most cases the landowner was probably neither capable of nor interested in recovering the loan, but the existence of debt prevented the sharecropper from creating capital. If he managed to accumulate capital, whether by accessing the capitalist labor market or selling his surplus production in the capitalist goods market, it could be taken from him by the landowner as payment of his debt. Faced with this situation, the tenant farmer found it more beneficial to maintain the debt and assign his possible surplus production to other activities, one of which was the cargo system.3 This system contributed to the hacienda’s goal of keeping sharecroppers isolated from the capitalist market by extracting the surplus value from tenant farmers through ceremonial expenses, thus preventing them from accumulating capital with which to access the market. Silent coercion of economic relations does not in itself explain the sharecropper’s separation from the capitalist market. The hacienda also created and utilized extraeconomic strategies aimed at increasing the physical isolation in which Amantaneños lived, among them failing to develop means of communication,4 creating obstacles to their obtaining formal education, and prohibiting military service. As the hacienda system entered into crisis in Amantaní, the relationship between tenant farmers and the capitalist market of goods and labor grew stronger. Population growth forced landowners to reduce the pressure on their workers and allow them access to other sources of income in order to balance their domestic economy if they were to avoid granting them more land in usufruct and reducing their profits. Other aspects of this process were the weakening of local powers as the nation-state was formed, the crisis of the Puno wool circuit, increasing education, the development of the communications media, and the relative lack of interest of the last generation of landowners, who had become liberal professionals in Lima and other large cities. The subsequent acquisition of haciendas by sharecroppers broke once and for all the barriers to their free access to the market.


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The second phenomenon that caused the land crisis to be a factor of socioeconomic differentiation was the reduction of agricultural production in relative and absolute terms. During the past two generations, the Amantaneño population has doubled, from approximately 1,700 inhabitants in 1950 (Ávalos de Matos, 1951) to 3,888 in 1993 (National Census). This increase must be placed in the context of (1) free access to the capitalist market through acquisition of land and the disappearance of the haciendas; (2) a fragmenting scheme of inheritance, which instead of expelling part of the population converts all members of the family into landowners, regardless of their numbers of children and the amount of resources available; (3) a little-developed labor market with respect to labor power of campesino origin, characterized by an inability to absorb all the available labor and dependence on scarce and seasonal jobs, poorly paid and often dangerous, without contracts or social security and in deplorable hygienic conditions; and (4) campesinos’ inability to modernize their means of production because of the lack of capital or a credit system for the small producer. Demographic growth without development of the means of production, with a population reluctant or unable to leave its place of origin because of difficult working conditions outside and the inheritance of means of production, changed Amantaní from an export zone to an importer of agricultural products and increased its dependency on the capitalist goods and labor market. Beyond this, demographic growth in this context brought about a reduction of production in Amantaní not only with respect to the population but also in absolute terms. As a consequence of demographic pressure, and particularly when the market was clearly disadvantageous for campesinos (with low salaries and high prices), Amantaneños adopted economic strategies tending toward the maximization of autarky. These strategies were based on obtaining the greatest possible profit from their productive resources to the point of overexploitation. They also found themselves driven to engage in activities causing degradation of the land and other natural resources. Although producing greater yields in the short term, this overexploitation and ecological mismanagement of resources in the medium and long term resulted in impoverishment and a considerable reduction in productivity. A survey done in 1994 in Incatiana, one of the towns dividing the island, revealed that 63 percent of domestic groups had kept one or more parcels fallow for several years. When asked to explain this, the majority (79 percent) replied that the main reason was the low fertility of the soil. This is reflected in a technical study carried out in Amantaní in the early 1990s, which noted that approximately 25 percent of the arable land had been eroded (CIRTACC,

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1991). As a result, Amantaní has seen its dependence on the capitalist goods market increase. One of the major factors in this process was the increase in the number of cattle that accompanied demographic growth. In Amantaní ownership of the land and its crops pertains to the family, but certain aspects of its control and the use of its pasture are communal. The reason for this is twofold. One is that there is no permanent pastureland, all of the land being parceled out and farmed. The other is that campesinos have their property divided up into small parcels to reduce the risk from weather and plant diseases. In this context, “communalization” of pasture land is needed to correct the shortcomings of small farming; it would be hard for each domestic group to keep cattle on its own farm, not to mention the extra work involved in their constant transfer from one parcel to another and the fencing that would be required (see Martínez Veiga, 1996). Each domestic group has an average of three to six sheep, with the animal population increasing with demographic growth and intensifying pressure on the soil. Because of the lack of sufficient pasture, cattle devour the stubble to the roots, and this has several negative effects on the ecological balance of the soil. On the one hand, the earth cannot be enriched by the compost of this stubble. On the other, it erodes further and further and loses the vegetation that protects its fertile layer from storms, whirlwinds, and other climatic elements. In the end, it becomes unfit for agricultural use or diminishes in productive capacity (Gascón, 1996). Another factor that has contributed to the loss of productive capacity in Amantaní has been the diversification of economic activities. Islanders have been driven to seek new sources of income in order to access the capitalist goods market upon which they now depend. The most frequent activity has been temporary migration for several years or during the months of the agricultural cycle that involve fewer farming tasks, but it has not been the only one: some campesinos, owners of boats that link Amantaní daily with the department’s capital, work transporting passengers and merchandise, others supplement agriculture with fishing, etc. As Collins (1987a; 1987b; 1988) has shown, this need by the Andean campesino population to diversify its sources of income has reduced the labor dedicated to domestic resources to less than what is needed, resulting in soil erosion and lower yields. The case of the terraces is paradigmatic. The steep slope of the island makes it largely dependent on pre-Hispanic terracing, but these constructions require constant repairs after storm-induced landslides. The period between harvest and planting was the time traditionally dedicated to these tasks. Temporary migration for long periods of time, seasonal labor, and work in other jobs prevent these agricultural activities from taking place, and without quick repair terraces can be totally destroyed.


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Other tasks necessary for agricultural production are given insufficient attention or neglected altogether, such as clearing the plots or turning over the earth before planting, and the result is a harvest inferior to what would be expected with appropriate care. Failure to prepare the land properly results in impoverishment of the soil because of insufficient oxygenation. Plant diseases that would be significantly reduced if the earth were turned to depth prior to sowing actually increase. Moreover, insufficient clearing and turning of the earth causes weeds to compete with crops and reduce their capacity for growth.5 Free access to the capitalist market of goods and labor in a context of diminished agricultural production has caused islanders to diversify their activities and behave less like small farmers. But the reduced importance of land, the element that had determined the socioeconomic structure of the island for centuries, has not meant a reduction in campesino differentiation. The latter has been perpetuated in the different form of participation in new sources of income, one of them being migration. MIGRATION AS A NEW ELEMENT OF SOCIOECONOMIC DIFFERENTIATION Throughout the twentieth century and especially beginning in the 1940s, Peru underwent an urbanization process that changed its profile from a rural and mountainous country to an urban and coastal one. Lima, the capital and hub of this process, went from 100,000 inhabitants to some 7 million in less than 100 years. This urban growth was not endogenous but based on the contribution of large contingents of campesino and Andean migrants. The city, until then the exclusive world of the criollo classes, was taken over by the indigenous world. Upper-class neighborhoods such as Lima-Centro and Rímac were turned into slums, while at the same time the city was besieged by shantytowns arising from more or less organized land invasions. Criollo society closed itself into particular neighborhoods such as San Isidro or Miraflores, which became upper-class “ghettos.” For decades this neo-urban population was identified with poverty and marginalization, but in the 1990s various studies pointed out that this was not necessarily so: a not insignificant percentage of that sector had progressed economically. Omar de León reckoned that although the majority of informal urban businesses in Peru functioned on the threshold of subsistence, around 29 percent were competitive and efficient, generated surplus value and capital, and employed a number of workers (León, 1996). The economic progress of this sector has not, however, broken the barrier between the indigenous

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and the criollo world. Socioeconomic differentiation among migrants does not mean that their most vigorous sector has joined the criollo middle class. Their success has not translated into increased interaction with this class, the traditional holder of economic power, or to residential mobility. Indeed, paradoxically, in certain shantytowns the price of land is higher than in the exclusive quarters of Miraflores and San Isidro (Soto, 2000). Racial discrimination, at least up till now, has served to prevent the intersection of the two worlds even when economic barriers have been overcome by a significant sector of the society of indigenous origin. 6 At the same time, exclusion from the criollo world does not mean a reproduction of indigenous models, behavior, and consumption patterns. Migrants and, especially, their children are creating new spheres of identity and value systems, reflected in the “tough crowds,” fans of the various soccer teams in the city, music (the rise of styles such as tecno-cumbia) and the youth gangs formed in the shantytowns (Sandoval, 2000). The agricultural crisis in Amantaní, as I have explained, did not affect all the islanders in the same way, and economic diversification was not the same for everyone. As profits from the land diminished, those with greater economic opportunities, whether because they owned land or because they had migrated with a certain amount of success and had saved money, invested in other sources of income. These more economically solvent campesinos were, for example, the owners of grocery stores that had opened on the island and boats that placed Amantaní in daily contact with the city of Puno. In addition, their lands were those least damaged ecologically, because with more diversified incomes they were not as pressed to overwork them as poorer residents were. Their improved economy also allowed them to purchase agricultural inputs from the market. They were able to invest in their children’s futures either by getting them an education or helping them economically on their migration (Gascón, 1999a). Campesino differentiation was, therefore, established through new activities, one of the most noteworthy of which occurred among migrants and the young: handicrafts in alpaca fur. Numerous studies have shown that migration is a highly structured strategy conducted through family networks, close friends, and compatriots without loss of contact with one’s community of origin (e.g., Skar, 1982; Lobo, 1984; Adams and Valdivia, 1991; Huber, 1997). The case of Amantaní is paradigmatic: this system of networks has allowed most of the island’s youth to work in Lima in the artisan manufacture of alpaca fur articles for export or sale to tourists, to the point of cornering production there. This is more surprising in that this species of animal has never been raised in Amantaní and there is no tradition of this type of craft. A small group of Amantaneño migrants in Puno and Lima learned the trade, and the demand for these


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handicrafts was sufficient to allow them to set up their arriving countrymen. Later some traveled to other cities—Arequipa, Juliaca, Sicuani, and others. But not all Amantaneño migrants who work in fur do so in the same way: some are businessmen while others work for them. The Amantaneños speak accordingly of “independent” and “dependent” furriers. It is those whose families already had more resources in Amantaní who have been able to establish their own shops as migrants and acquire the tools and supplies necessary to exercise the trade: semi-industrial sewing machines, furs, chemicals, etc. As their businesses grow and demand for production increases, they recruit compatriots of lower economic levels, who lack the resources to establish themselves independently, as workers. In this way the socioeconomic differences existing on the island are not only perpetuated but sharpened, since the production relation between them is now one of employer and worker: the former obtains surplus value from the work of the latter. An islander described this unequal relation as follows: The independent master furriers live well, but the workers do not. Young people learn the trade but are exploited by the employers. They pay very little. And of course, not everyone has the money to leave the businessman and buy his own tools. One of my nephews went with a businessman, and he made him drink beer because he was a partner in the beer business. All his salary went in beer. All the businessmen are exploiters. That’s why they have cars and televisions.

This differentiating process takes place outside Amantaní and influences the island to the degree that these migrants continue to maintain relations with their community of origin. The early 1990s produced a new phenomenon: the return of furriers to Amantaní, where they combined this activity with agriculture. This process occurred after the economic shock of 1990, which brought a great increase in the cost of living in urban areas. Although it also affected rural areas, the impact therefore was not as great: ownership of land, however little, allows Amantaneños to establish a relatively autarkic economy. Market decline and the lack of tourism, one of the most significant markets for fur crafts, caused many independent furriers to let any workers go and sometimes to return to Amantaní. Fur workers who had been laid off were also forced to return because of the limited prospects offered by the urban market. The independent ones returned with their tools and were able to continue working from home. Once they had accumulated a sufficient number of pieces they would travel to Lima or to Juliaca, where they had established sales outlets, to market them. Then, buying the necessary supplies from their earnings, they returned to the island to begin the cycle anew.

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If the market had once again presented sales opportunities for this handicraft production, the tertiary market in Amantaní might have grown. Socioeconomic differentiation among the latest generation of islanders would have been consolidated through this activity, since the furriers would have needed labor to meet the demand. As the market stabilized, however, many furriers who had returned left once again. Returning, for them, was a temporary strategy in response to market fluctuations. CASE STUDIES To exemplify the above, I will examine four cases: that of one of the first Amantaneños to take up this activity, those of two young islanders, one of whom had already established his own shop and the other of whom was on the way to doing so, and that of a dependent furrier. Manuel. Manuel was born in 1933 into a middle-class family. After completing his military service and working for a while in construction in Puno, he went to work as an apprentice in a fur craft shop. Then, having learned the basics of the trade, he went on to another shop belonging to a family in Lima, where he perfected his work. An accident that left him lame and family problems over the distribution of his grandparents’ land caused him to return to Amantaní, but a year later he went to Sicuani, where some relatives had been living, and with the few tools he was able to acquire went back to working as a fur craftsman. Sicuani is an important economic center halfway between Cuzco and Puno. The highway and the railroad that passed through it made it possible for him to establish sales outlets for his production, which was new to Sicuani. With the help of a government engineer he began to display his work in Cuzco, Peru’s most important tourist center, and eventually all of his production went to this city. Gradually, and through Manuel’s example, Sicuani became a center for the fur craft. Some of the new craftsmen were Sicuaneños, but many were Amantaneños who started moving there through a system of networks initiated by Manuel. In the early 1980s, when his children were older and one of them had married, he decided that it was time to leave the shop to that son and return to Amantaní for good. He has not gone back to fur crafts but rather has been working his lands, which, with his children well established as migrants, he has not had to distribute as inheritance. His efforts in agriculture allow him to live well and be considered a comfortable campesino. Osvaldo. Osvaldo was born in the late 1960s, the oldest child of a family that owned a grocery store and a major share in a transport boat. At 14, he left for Lima to learn the fur trade, moving into a maternal uncle’s house there and


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working as an apprentice in his shop. His uncle, who had migrated some ten years before, had learned the trade under the guidance of a countryman and later established his own business. When Osvaldo traveled to Lima for the first time, his uncle had four or five laborers, all Amantaneños, under his direction. Osvaldo and the other laborers did piecework; the owner paid them a previously stipulated price for each piece. Little by little, and with the help of his father, he acquired tools with the aim of establishing his own business. When he had obtained the necessary instruments, he began some independent work while still in his uncle’s shop. A few years later his brother Bautista arrived in Lima with the idea of learning the trade. Osvaldo, unhappy with his uncle because he had created obstacles when he worked for himself, took advantage of the opportunity to move to a brother-in-law’s shop, and his brother took his place in the uncle’s. Shortly thereafter, in 1993, he went back to Amantaní with all his tools and machinery and set up his own shop, first in his father’s house and then, after remarrying, in his own. From time to time he traveled to Juliaca to sell his crafts, mostly rugs, and buy the materials needed for his work— hides, soap, and thread. In time his brother, Bautista, having learned the trade, also returned to work as a laborer at his side. Osvaldo’s work as a furrier in Amantaní is not constant; it depends on the demand in Juliaca. But combining the handicraft activity with small farming has allowed him to balance his domestic budget. In 1996, his brother, a cousin, and occasionally a neighbor helped him, and he traveled more and more frequently to Lima to work for longer periods of time. It seemed as if he would end up back in the capital. Amadeo. Amadeo, the son of a well-off campesino, was born in the mid1970s. After two years of high school in Puno (a privilege reserved for few Amantaneños) he moved to Juliaca, to the house of an uncle who had a fur craft shop. While studying at the polytechnic high school, he learned the fur trade. Having finished high school and his training as a craftsman, he was invited by friends to Lima, where he went to work as a laborer. In a few years he had been in three different shops, switching according to the salaries offered. The last two belonged to Amantaneño craftsmen. With what he managed to save and with the help of his father, he acquired some of the tools and raw materials necessary to set up his own shop. In 1994 he returned to Amantaní to get married and work on his own for the first time. However, lacking certain instruments needed for his work, he established a relationship with a relative, also a furrier, who lent him the machinery in exchange for working as a laborer in his shop. Amadeo has been combining this occupation in Amantaní with temporary migration to Lima to work as a laborer in the shops of friends and

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acquaintances. His goal is to make enough money to buy the machinery he needs to become independent. Taking advantage of occasional trips to Lima, he works with baby alpaca fur. Although the raw material is more expensive, the prices he gets for his work in the capital, where handicrafts of adult alpaca fur do not sell, are much better than in Juliaca or Sicuani. He plans to set up his own shop, possibly in Lima, where the type of handicrafts he produces sells better, once he has obtained the necessary tools. Julián. Julián was born in 1969 to a family of limited means. At 15 he left to work in Sicuani in the shop of a friend of his father’s, where he learned the fur trade. While he was an apprentice, his earnings were very meager: room and board in the employer’s house and an occasional tip. As time went on, even though Julián felt that he knew the trade well enough to be a laborer, the owner kept treating him like an apprentice. Nevertheless, he accepted this situation for several years, possibly because of the obligations entailed in cronyism and also because his father intended to send another son to Sicuani. Finally, he returned to Amantaní and a short time later left for Iberia la Selva with a cousin to become a tenant farmer. Unable to tolerate the climate and the work involved in agriculture in the jungle, he returned to the island once again, where he worked with his father in agriculture until an Amantaneño furrier took him back to Lima. With the economic shock of 1990 and the reduction in demand for fur crafts, he became unemployed and returned to Amantaní. For several years he combined work on the family farm with temporary migrant work as a fur craftsman in Juliaca and as a construction worker in various towns in the department of Puno. In 1995 his former employer rehired him and he returned to Lima, still as a laborer. Given the socioeconomic level of his family, he had little hope of ever establishing his own business. CONCLUSIONS The case of the fur craftsmen of Amantaní seems to confirm the hypothesis set forth initially: although we cannot overlook the fact that in contexts of change such as the move from a rural to urban environment, in which the possibility of social mobility increases (Pérez Berenguer and Gascón, 1997; Gascón 1999a), the socioeconomic level of the migrant in his place of origin directly affects his possibilities for success in migration. It is the islanders who belong to better-off families in Amantaní who end up establishing their own businesses in the city; the remainder, even with the same level of skill, are unlikely to have an opportunity to work as anything other than employees of the former or of other entrepreneurs. Amantaneño society is a


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differentiated one, and this differentiation continues even as the factor that used to establish inequality—the land—is in crisis and a good portion of the population are migrants. This discovery suggests that in studying the urban migrant population we must know the social structure of the place of origin. The fact is that the migrant does not come into existence upon arriving in the city but arrives there with a heritage of social relations and economic possibilities that decisively influence his future and that are not the same for all. Golte (1995) argues that the economic success of migrant businessmen signals the end of the social differences based on ethnicity characteristic of the Andean region for 500 years, but the truth seems to be that this phenomenon is not likely to alter the Peruvian social structure. NOTES 1. Resnick and Wolff (1987) distinguish between “fundamental” and “subsumed” classes in terms of the distribution of surplus value. Fundamental classes produce or monopolize surplus value; subsumed classes do neither but carry out certain tasks that allow for the extraction of surplus value and receive part of it as compensation. 2. The mechanisms of domination on the hacienda are examined in depth in Gascón (1997; 1999b; 2000). 3. The issue of sharecropper debt has created controversy regarding who actually benefits from this system. Whereas the classic theory is that debt systems served the landowner’s interests (allowed for extracting the workers’ surplus production and surplus labor and keeping them on the hacienda), some have argued that the tenant farmer also profited from it—the debt ensuring his job and preventing his expulsion from the hacienda (Blanchard, 1979; Figueroa, 1984). The sharecropper’s income was greater than what he could make as a rural worker and his standard of living higher than that of small farmers (Martínez Alier, 1973). Others suggest that although the debt bound labor (either because the sharecropper could not leave the hacienda without paying his debt or because the loans stabilized the tenant farmer’s family economy, disposing him to remain on the farm), the sharecropper benefited because it was a perennial debt that was never paid. Given this, the tenant farmer was inclined to become indebted, since greater debt did not signify more labor output; on the contrary, access to the hacienda’s surplus value was greater, as was his standard of living (Guerrero, 1991; Jacobsen, 1993). Perhaps we should understand debt as an institution that has had differing effects throughout history as the socioeconomic context changed. At the beginning it was created by the dominant group to favor its own interests: in a context of high demand for labor, it was used by the landowner to appropriate the means of production of campesinos and convert them into tenant farmers and then to keep them on the hacienda. But this context changed over time. Labor began producing surplus value because of demographic growth, which was intensive from the eighteenth century on, or because of the early twentieth-century landowners’ interest in developing their productive means, which meant reducing the number of sharecroppers (Martínez Alier, 1973; Guerrero, 1991; Jacobsen, 1993). Suddenly the landowner could not free himself of his excess workers because of the obligations entered into with them. In part, these obligations were due to the system of debt, which was trans-

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formed from an institution that benefited him into a hindrance. The landowner became, as Deere says (1992: 105), “limited by the class relations in which he was involved.” 4. The first wooden ships, which were faster and had greater cargo capacity than the reed boats, were not built until the mid-twentieth century. 5. Another factor to consider in the land crisis is the drop in agricultural prices. As of the middle of the twentieth century, Peruvian agriculture stagnated in relation to growth in other economic and demographic sectors. This produced an increase in imports to meet the needs of the market, with which national agriculture could not compete because of often subsidized prices. In addition, the state tended to maintain tight control of agricultural prices in order to meet the needs of the urban population (Hopkins, 1981; Thorp and Bertram, 1988). 6. Regarding racism in Limeño society, see Oboler (1996).

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