From Mobilization to Rebellion, 1850–1899

At the beginning of the period, the relation of Huasicancha (and indeed the surrounding highland area generally) to the national political crisis took on a quite personal character, for there were a number of powerful families who played important roles both in Huasicancha's history on the one hand an in national developments on the other.^[3] General Caceres, heroic opponent of the Chileans, fought much of his campaign in the Mantaro area. He was a cousin of the owner of Hacienda Tucle and one of his reserve officers was the hacienda administrator. The Valladares family, owners of neighboring Hacienda Laive, however, were collaborators with the Chileans and members of the civilista party to which Caceres was opposed. But as the period developed, there was a shift from a conflict reflecting, "at bottom, the irreconcilable interests of individual chieftains and patrons, and their dependent followers" (Bonilla 1978:100), where great names within the Peruvian power-bloc mattered, to one where great names gave way to broader social forces in which guerrillas—originally recruited through personal ties of loyalty between patrón and peasant—became a force of their own pitted against both the large hacienda owners and the valley-based capitalist entrepreneurs.

The montonera campaign started as an expression of resistance to foreigners and those who collaborated with them and ended as a class struggle, a struggle that brought to the surface and set the stage for the ineluctible collisions between classes formed on the basis of the newly commercialized regional economy.

The Pre-War Situation

In the middle of the nineteenth century the Mantaro Valley was a fertile agricultural area surrounded by highland grazing lands and with poor communications over the Andes to the more commercialized coast. The conjuncture of classes, besides reflecting the changes that were occurring in the regional economy, was also spatially situated. The area was dominated by three towns on the left bank of the river: Jauja, Concepción, and Huancayo. Jauja and Concepción retained the character of their colonial past and were

still the seats of the largest hacendado families, who found markets for their produce on the coast (Manrique 1978). Huancayo, however, became increasingly the economic nexus of the valley, sharing its vigor with the prosperous smaller towns of Sicaya, Chupaca, and Chongos Bajo situated on the western side of the valley, up against the hillsides that reached up to the highland pastures in which Huasicancha was located (see map 1). Huancayo, the department capital, and these smaller towns (distrito capitals) were populated by a few smaller hacendados, independent farmers, manufacturers and comerciantes .^[4] All of these came to benefit increasingly from the growing mining economy, which, in the 1850s, was scattered through the area, but by the end of the century became concentrated to the north, in Cerro de Pasco. They were, then, distinct from the larger landowners in their reliance on the regional economy or, put another way, in their relative lack of reliance on the coastal markets.

Surrounding the valley was the high pampa best suited to llama and sheep grazing but where arable crops were grown in sheltered valleys for subsistence, and both the larger hacendados and the comerciantes of Sicaya, Chupaca, and Chongos Bajo (which, as distrito capitals and old ayllu seats, laid claim to highland pasture) had interests in these highlands. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the relationship between these groups and the highland pastoralists was one of uneasy tension; nevertheless, at midcentury there was still sufficient pasture to provide for a certain degree of coexistence.

The degree of independence of the pastoralists varied according to their links to the haciendas on the one hand and to the lower distrito capitals on the other. Around 1850 the labor requirements of the haciendas were not great enough to involve all pastoralists for very much of the time. The haciendas' labor force was made up to a small extent of permanent staff located on the estates and to a larger extent of people from the surrounding pastoralist communities. But this still left the majority of the community at any one time independent of the hacienda. For some communities however there were ties to the lowland distrito capitals. Though relatively independent economically, the highland community was, administratively, an anexo (annex) required to perform services for the lower town as a whole, as a means of acknowledging the de jure claim of the capital town to this highland pasture. Moreover, within these anexos poorer people acted as shepherds for the livestock owned by the comerciantes resident in the lowland towns and hence had direct ties of dependency to them. Hacendados and lowland comerciantes, then, both had claims on highland pasture.

Huasicancha was on the very edge of the Province of Huancayo, however, and this remoteness diminished the Huasicanchinos' subordination to lowland communities while putting Hacienda Tucle in an especially exposed position vis-à-vis highland pastoralists. In this sense then, Huasicancha was similar to other pastoral communities in the area but with a distinctiveness that de-

rived partly from sheer remoteness and partly from an historical tradition of resisting intrusions by families from the lowland towns. The combination of Hacienda Tucle's indirect link through its owner and administrator to General Caceres and his army of resistance and Huasicancha's relative independence from the claims of the increasingly commercialized valley towns and their comerciante inhabitants, gave to the Huasicanchinos a distinctive history in the formation of oppositional consciousness.

And it was the Peruvian-Chilean War from 1879 to 1884 and the years following it, which provided the quantam leap in the development of a vigorous culture of opposition born out of the role of the Huasicanchinos in guerrilla fighting. The events of the period vividly reveal how the particulars of local culture can become extended, through the outcome of historical events, to represent more universal forces; the pastoralists around Huasicancha began by fighting against the Chileans, then against specific landlord families whom they adjudged colaboracionistas , and finally against landlords as a class.

At the beginning the personalities seemed to stand paramount: Bernarda Pielago, the self-educated hacendada and businesswoman; Tomas Laimes, the ex-corporal and rebel general; and Andres Caceres, the Indios' taita (uncle) and eventual betrayer. At the end, these same personalities were lost in the greater sweep of forces represented by confrontation between commercial, predatory haciendas and highland pastoralists. As a result Huasicancha's culture of opposition, once juxtaposed against the names and personalities of powerful families, became increasingly set within the context of more impersonal forces of which personalities became merely the representatives.

In other words, at the outset what was occurring was not just a struggle between collaborators and patriots, nor between landlords and peasants, nor highland pastoralists and valley comerciantes, but struggles between particular families of landlords and comerciantes and particular groups of pastoralists, each pursuing their own goals and policies. By the end of the period, experience of events as they unfolded gave rise to the beginnings of clearly perceived conflicting forces. The effect then of this political engagement was to clarify in the consciousness of all participants a sense of the irresistable force of the commercializing haciendas and the immovable block of the resisting pastoralists—regardless of the personalities and families involved.

This observation is well illustrated by comparing two similar highland communities whose historical experience led to the emergence of differences in the nature of their political consciousness, specifically in the extent to which their local culture is indeed one of opposition to a prevailing hegemony. One community, Yanacancha (see map 1) used pasture claimed also by both a hacienda (Laive) and lowland comerciantes (from Chupaca). The owners of the hacienda, the Valladares, were a powerful civilista family who had supported the civilista claimant to the presidency, Echenique, and were later opposed to the war, collaborating with the Chileans. The other commu-

nity, Huasicancha, had successfully fought off claims to its pasture by Chupaca families. The primary link between hostility and interdependence for Huasicancha was with Hacienda Tucle. In contrast to Laive, the owner of this hacienda (Bernarda Pielago) had been a staunch supporter of President Castilla against the civilista President Echenique and then later supported General Caceres, who was Castilla's protegé and the hacendada's cousin. Caceres was the personification of opposition to Chile and actually mobilized the highlanders around Huasicancha to fight as nationalist montoneras. These interpersonal alliances and strategies prior to the war and then during it were to provide distinct experiences for Yanacancha and Huasicancha.

One of the three most powerful families in the region was the Valladares clan who lived in Jauja. Their fortune originated from mining, the profits from which were used to buy up haciendas in the area and restock them. This vast dynasty of interlocking family interests was, up to the outbreak of war, the most dynamic force in the region, owning in 1879 at least twenty haciendas covering over 300,000 hectares (Manrique 1981). By the 1870s it was headed by three men, the two brothers, Juan Enrique and Manuel Fernando, and the brother-in-law, Luis Milon Duarte, who was the political leader of the clan. All three were directly involved in the administration of their haciendas which they aggressively restocked immediately following purchase, with often devastating consequences for neighboring small herders. In 1848, for example, they had bought Hacienda Laive entirely denuded of livestock; by 1878, just before the war that was to shatter their fortunes, they had restocked Laive to the extent of 38,000 head of sheep.

In addition to the large families like Valladares, there were a group of smaller hacendados who often combined the ownership of just one or possibly two ranches with commercial activities in Huancayo. Among them was Bernarda Pielago, who owned Hacienda Tucle. Another of this group was Mariano Giraldez, who owned Hacienda Antapongo, which lay between Laive and Tucle and whose land Huasicancha also claimed as their own. Giraldez, the civilista mayor of Huancayo in 1877, was a political ally of the Valladares.

But the Valley also experienced the growth of local textile mills, a wide variety of craft workshops, and, above all, trade. The distrito capitals of Sicaya, Chupaca, and Chongos Bajo, old ayllu centers of the past, were now thriving trade centers with an important class of people who combined small-scale commercial farming with trading ventures. These towns all had claims to the pasture of their anexos in the higher pasturelands, but their interest in these so-called "dependent" communities was to control the commodity trade with them.

Once the Valladares family bought Laive and began restocking it, they were quickly brought into a potential conflict with Laive's neighboring highland community of Yanacancha, an anexo of Chupaca. Pastoralists had been

using land in the area relatively freely because, as a result of the previous owner's depleted stock, many estancias were left unused. The Valladares now pressed these pastoralists either to move back off the land or to remain with their animals, paying a rent in labor service as shepherds for the hacienda and accepting thereby the "protection" of the Valladares family (Samaniego 1974).

But this set off an old conflict between Yanacancha and its distrito capital, Chupaca, which had always claimed legal title to the land. The growing commercialization of the Mantaro Valley farms meant that these highland communities no longer bartered with them but grew equivalent root crops in sheltered valleys instead, while specializing in sheep farming for trade. The Chupacans, for their part, were prepared to leave the highlanders to their sheep farming as long as they sold their produce to Chupacan intermediaries in what was becoming a growing commodity market.

Wool prices remained strong from 1866 to 1876, which meant that the intermediaries became increasingly committed to this trade. But an economic collapse in 1876 led merchants to attempt more direct control of production and hence a greater share of the surplus on what they saw to be "their" highland pasture; it also led the pastoralists, themselves faced with falling prices, to seek out the best bargains by breaking the monopsony of the merchants in Chupaca. In August 1877 Chupacans invaded the pasture used by the Yanacancha pastoralists around Hacienda Laive and demanded both a rent and a commitment to sell livestock through them. The Valladares family, following the strategy of civilistas throughout the department (see Piel 1970:122), sought to mobilize the Yanacanchinos against Chupaca. The Chupacan comerciantes were, after all, far more dangerous and powerful claimants to the pasture that the Valladares family coveted, and, in this manner, the family was able to appear as the benevolent protector of the highland pastoralists. The Chupacans did have the support of a national political party, but it was through the influence of Mariano Giraldez, civilista ally of the Valladares who was mayor of Huancayo, that the Chupacans were removed from the pasture by a cavalry contingent (Samaniego 1974).

At this crucial moment then, just prior to the outbreak of war, when highlanders would be offered the opportunity of being armed and mobilized, the pastoralists around Hacienda Laive were being protected from the aggression of petty capitalist entrepreneurs in the valley by the local hacendado with the help of the armed might of the state, in the form of a cavalry contingent. It is important to contrast this situation with that of the Huasicanchinos, whose subsequent political mobilization was to be so different.

To begin with, Huasicanchino pastoralists had established a far stronger independence from the valley communities than had Yancancha. Indeed this independence and physical remoteness meant that Huasicancha was by no means as integrated into commodity relations as Yanacancha. One result was

that herd size continued to be constrained by the availability of "family" labor rather than by the more commercial relationships growing up in Yanacancha. Yanacancha's conflict was a direct result of these commercialized relationships: there were no pastoralists in Huasicancha who could herd over 800 sheep as was the case for a dozen or more families in Yanacancha.

By the same token, Hacienda Tucle lacked the commercial development of Hacienda Laive, and through its remoteness was more exposed to the whims of the local pastoralists. Nevertheless the relationship between Bernarda Pielago and the pastoralists of Huasicancha—one of suspicion and interdependence—was the crucial link between the community and national politics. Bernarda Pielago, with her partner Faustino Chavez, bought Hacienda Tucle from the Valladareses in 1846. This she owned with her two shops in Huancayo. As the most relevant "significant other" in the Huasicanchinos' experience at the time, it is worth dwelling for a moment on the kind of person she was.^[5] In her will she writes: "Born poor, I lived under the protection of my parents and when they died I was left an orphan with no more support than that of Providence nor more hope than that of my labours" (Archivo del Juzgado de Tierra, Huancayo ). Despite her poor beginnings, a local historian wrote of her, "Like women of the period, she lacked any formal instruction, which handicap she overcame by her great intuition; she played the piano, played chess, knew numbers and history, managed her haciendas and was rich" (Tello 1971:28). Married twice ("Of the first I have nothing to say"), she brought to her second marriage (to Fernando Fano) 30,000 pesos. He brought no capital whatever and died ten years later, leaving her childless. Indeed Bernarda had a poor opinion of marriage altogether; it gave her "nothing but pain and suffering."

Once having bought Hacienda Tucle, Bernarda gradually gathered a considerable fortune. Her partner soon died, leaving nothing but debts and, in paying these off on behalf of his heirs, she gained full control of the hacienda. The fundo itself remained a miserable building that she rarely visited, but this contrasted with her Huancayo residence, still inhabited by her heir in present-day Huancayo. This "mansion" was described as,

Very pretty and charming. Passing from the wide entrance to the house, one arrives at a beautiful garden surrounded by wrought iron railings which enclose vast corridors, from which one gains access to salons, bedrooms and other quarters. Within, the rear door is a special entrance where the llama trains are received, carrying produce from the haciendas. (Moreno de Caceres 1974:78)

The intricacies of personal ties and national politics are well illustrated if we pick up the story on 31 October 1854, when Bernarda Pielago, returning to this mansion from Hacienda Tucle on a mule, encountered the exhausted troops of Ramon Castillo and offered the ex-president hospitality in her man-

sion. Now in rebellion against President Echenique, Castilla was given Bernarda's full support. She put all her wealth at his disposal, turned the town into an arsenal, and organized the town's myriad tool shops and small manufacturers for the production of the materiel of war. Castilla's first term in office had coincided with the beginnings of economic expansion in the Mantaro Valley, and he, therefore, found support from Bernarda Pielago, whose wealth likewise had increased, as well as from many of the comerciantes of Chupaca and Sicaya.

In raising funds for Castilla, Bernarda turned to her cousin, Domingo Caceres, to raise financial support in Ayacucho. In return for these favors Castillo agreed to become the patron of the son of Bernarda's cousin, Andres Avelino, later to become General and then President Caceres. And when Castilla's rebellion led him to a second term as president, Avelino Caceres became committed to the same kind of professional militarism as his patron.

What we have then, in 1854, is the establishment of a firm alliance between the owner of Hacienda Tucle and national political figures with strong nationalistic and militaristic inclinations. Bernarda's support of Castilla eventually was to provide her with the patronage of General Caceres (himself later to become a president of the republic). And, in turn, it was because of Bernarda, the patron of Hacienda Tucle and its neighboring villages that, in the war with Chile, General Caceres was able to mobilize montoneras. But the experience of mobilization itself gave the pastoralists a new perspective on the world. It is a sign of changing political attitudes that at the outset of hostilities these montoneras referred to Bernarda's cousin, General Caceres, as taita; at the end their leader was sending him a message: "Tell Caceres I am as much a general as he is and will be dealt with as equal to equal."

The War and its Aftermath

The war with Chile (1879 to 1884) marked a turning point in the relations between hacienda and highland pastoralists: from this period on Tucle and Huasicancha were set on a path of perpetual conflict. During the war, highland pastoralists, acting initially as guerrillas in the patriotic cause against the Chileans, became aware of their own potential strength. With the war's ending, however, a political climate adverse to the pastoralists provided the hacienda with an opportunity to expand its boundaries as it had never done before. The war thus gave birth to a fatal combination—a self-confident peasantry and an expansionist landlord.

But the war had a far greater effect than this, for it acted to position the highland pastoralists—politically—in a wider set of class relations. Hacendados, valley merchants, and commercial farmers as well as highland pastoralists all saw the war affecting their interests in different ways. The

montoneras around Huasicancha, once mobilized, remained so. But the composition of their enemy shifted. At the beginning of hostilities these montoneras were fighting the foreign invaders; at the end they fought alone against a wide range of opponents—landlords, the commercial classes of the valley, and the agents of the state. Such an experience made a profound impression on their culture of opposition, coloring their attitude toward political confrontation for the century that followed. The events of the war then form a vital part of Huasicancha's contemporary politics.

Peru's war with Chile was a disaster in which successive presidents in Lima sued for peace, while a recalcitrant General Caceres waged his own campaign against the enemy in the central Andes (Bonilla 1978). This enemy included both invading Chileans and Peruvians who, in line with the presidents in Lima, were sympathetic to an early peace. Then, for two years after peace had been signed and the Chileans had left, Caceres continued to fight in the region, this time for the presidency, which he eventually gained in 1886.

To fight the Chileans with a meager force of less than 1,500 professional troops, Caceres embarked on what he called una guerra en pequeña o de guerrillas ("a small or guerrilla war"). This meant a sacrifice of control over the campaign in favor of fomenting resistance from independent, local militias of "patriots." By far the most enduring of these forces were the so-called montoneras recruited in the high and inaccessible mountains to the southwest of the valley, around the area of Huasicancha. These forces were originally recruited for a confrontation with the Chileans to be fought at Sicaya, in the valley itself.

After a small victory in the south of the valley in February 1882, Caceres retreated south to Ayacucho, leaving the enemy to occupy the valley. The latter quickly alienated the comerciantes through the administration of a head tax and food levies and then alienated the poorer peasants by their ostentatious cruelty toward "Indios." When spontaneous opposition broke out, it was among the highland pastoralists rather than the valley residents, but not near Huasicancha; rather it was on the opposite side of the valley, where Chilean troops were ambushed at Comas. This appears to have been the catalyst for confrontation. Systematic, organized resistance followed, with Caceres's assistance being focused on the towns of Sicaya, Chupaca, and Chongos Bajo, where the local comerciantes enthusiastically began the task of recruiting militia.

Based in Chupaca, a local comerciante, Jose Gabin Esponda, was commissioned to encourage support from the pastoralists in the highlands behind these towns. He was quickly impressed by the enthusiasm with which he was aided by Tomas Laimes, an ex-corporal, native of Huanta in Ayacucho and veteran of the Miraflores campaign (Tello 1971). Laimes mobilized guerri-

lleros from Colca, Huasicancha, and Chongos Alto. Soon a stream of peasants was pouring into Chongos Bajo and Chupaca to volunteer:

Chongos Bajo started up and swelled its forces with volunteers from the highland zone of Chongos Alto, Huasicancha and Colca. In charge of their preparation was Colonel Ceferino Aliaga of Chongos (Bajo). The patriot fighters from these pueblos arrived in Chongos Bajo infected with the courage, fervour and 'voz vanguardia ' of the subsequently famous bandolero (sic ) Tomas Laimes, acting 'cabo ' in the battle of Miraflores. (Samaniego 1972:17)

Troops were organized around the elected authorities of each village, and then battalions were arranged as confederations of neighboring villages. In this way, Tomas Laimes came to head the battalion that revolved around Chongos Alto, Huasicancha, and Colca.

The troops that originally faced the Chileans so disastrously at Miraflores two years earlier had been largely an army of amateurs scorned by the professional soldier, Caceres, and it seems that, on a smaller scale, the comerciantes of Sicaya envisaged a similar field battle: facing the enemy head on with their faithful followers. They were quickly and ruthlessly defeated on 19 April 1882. The Chileans then followed up their victory by driving into the highlands behind Chupaca and Sicaya and sacking Hacienda Laive to provision their troops with meat, an example not lost on the highland montoneras, as events were to show.

Thenceforth, the only effective campaigns were the guerrilla tactics of the montoneras. As a historian of the war describes it:

There always existed the right conditions for a retreat into the high ground around Chongos Alto, Ninalanya, Colca, San Juan de Jarpa, Potaca, etc.; it is worth noting that there existed a broad mountainous territory where the enemy's advantages were rendered null in large part, as much because in ravines artillery and cavalry lost much of their efficiency, as because the soldiers were less well adapted than the guerrilleros to operate in territory with these conditions. Peasants with immense endurance capabilities, accustomed to implausible marches who, accompanied by their inevitable bola de coca (wad of coca leaves), knew no fatigue, were hence dreaded rivals in a war in the mountains. They were able to count, moreover, on a perfect knowledge of the terrain to compensate for the overall disadvantage which resulted from their meagre and primitive arms (mostly pikes, spears, slings and rocks). (Manrique 1981:171–172)

It is important at this stage to remind ourselves of the alliances and conflicts that provide the context for the formation of the montonera fighters of this period. The Chilean soldiers, by no means familiar with the Andean Indios, treated them as scarcely human and this at a time when landlords in the

valley were apparently hosting Chilean officers in their houses. Nevertheless the initiation of the montonera campaign followed closely the vertical ties of allegiance associated with patronage. Caceres was in a sense the last of the caudillos , commanding a personal following of fighters. His aunt was the patron of Hacienda Tucle, and it was around this hacienda that the montoneras were most successfully recruited. When Caceres advanced back into the valley in July of 1882, these guerrilleros swamped Bernarda's Huancayo house. Against Bernarda's advice, the general let them into the reception rooms where they came forward and kissed his hand, calling him "Taita."

The montoneras' opponents formed around these kinds of allegiances. For the pastoralists around Huasicancha and Colca the enemy were not landlords generally at this stage but specific landlords sympathetic to the Chileans—and anyone who followed their leadership.^[6] What this meant for the consolidation of all the pastoralists in the highlands as a body united against a class enemy can be seen by reference once more to Yanacancha. Though pastoralists from all parts were recruited for the Battle of Sicaya, it is worth remembering that those who did the recruiting were the comerciantes of the lowland distrito capitals. These were the same comerciantes who had been intent on maintaining their dominance over the highland pastoralists of Yancancha (and its neighboring communities). In this struggle it had been the hacendado himself, Luis Milon Duarte, head of the Valladares clan, who had "protected" the Yanacanchinos. So, after the defeat of Sicaya, and with Duarte energetically recruiting supporters for the Chileans (Manrique 1981:233–234), the montoneras were unlikely to be focused around Yanacancha.

Meanwhile, enthusiasm for the national cause among medium-sized hacendados and comerciantes began to wane after the defeat of Sicaya, and Caceres, on a brief return to the valley late in 1882, issued orders that patriots were to identify traitors and execute them on their own initiative. When the Chileans reoccupied the valley in May 1883, they were met by a far more docile population than on their previous encounter, and this redefined the objectives of the montoneras around Huasicancha, who were now the only organized body of opposition to the Chilean army that confined itself to the valley. Guerrilla attacks therefore involved forays into the valley and its communications routes south to Huancavelica and Ayacucho, followed by retreats to the highland basecamps.

The campaign then involved two interdependent activities: offenses away from the basecamps and subsistence during the long periods of retreat. The war economy of subsistence (of necessity involving plunder) is simply the other side of the coin in which the more spectacular attacks on the enemy occur. Unless this is acknowledged, we are forced to decide whether the montoneras were either attacking the national enemy (as they maintained) or merely plundering the citizenry indiscriminately like bandits (as landlords and comerciantes in Huancayo later argued).

The first attacks on the Chileans began in July 1883 and doused the last embers of any possible mutual understanding between the commercial classes of Huancayo and the montoneras. As a Chilean battalion moved north toward Jauja, the montoneras attacked its rear from the south. They also used the opportunity to exercise their hostility toward those Huancaínos who appeared to be hosting the occupying army. Whatever their behavior at this time, their arrogant appearance in the town, armed with 200 Remington rifles, was enough for the city's burghers, and a call arose, repeated thereafter, to each and every passing commander to disarm the highland peasants.^[7] Such a call, involving as it did the disarming of the only effective resistance to the Chileans (Manrique 1981:308) reveals the sentiments now brought to the surface by the fortunes of this supposedly national war. To the propertied classes of Huancayo, nationalist fears of the Chileans were nothing to the class fears aroused by the sight of an armed and self-confident peasantry swamping the streets of the provincial capital. And as such sentiments of class hatred hardened in Huancayo and were reciprocated in the highlands; the montoneras now turned to the large haciendas to provide the resources for their war economy.

In late 1883 a Chilean advance on Ayacucho, followed shortly by retreat back to Huancayo, provided the montoneras with further opportunities of attacking Urriola's 1,500 men as they passed through the deep chasms leading out of the Mantaro Valley. A reporter from the Valparaiso newspaper, El Mercurio , referred to cholos , perfectly placed in carefully constructed fortifications, from which they fired down on the troops. A part of the battalion that tried to escape attack passed close to Huasicancha but was ambushed at Macchu, not a mile from the present village.

On the return journey the reporter (certainly with exaggeration) referred to 10,000 Indios molesting the troops from their highly-placed redoubts. Hacendados from Huancavelica provided the Chileans with a militia (Favre 1966:6), but the troops returned to Huancayo exhausted after two weeks of fighting. Leaving a small detachment in Huancayo, Urriola now left for Lima where his troops arrived "worn out and in rags" according to the El Mercurio correspondent. This marks the end of the montoneras' strictly nationalist campaign. On 29 November of that year Caceres wrote of the montoneras: "The pueblos' resistence to recoup the integrity and honour of the nation in these last days will merit a special place in the illustrious pages of Peruvian history" (Manrique 1981:343). But within three months he was issuing instructions to sow discord among these same montoneras (Favre 1975:64). From February 1884 the survival of the guerrillas as a consolidated and defensible force therefore began to surpass in importance their forays out of the mountains to attack an invading enemy. And this campaign of subsistence took on a momentum of its own that set the guerrillas against any and all newcomers.

In fact President Iglesias's signing of a peace treaty with Chile the previous October signified, for most of the valley residents, that the war was essentially

over. (Around Tarma to the north of the valley, Luis Milon Duarte had been appointing local authorities on the basis of their support for the occupying forces.) But the montoneras remained recalcitrant and began to direct their attacks against all who did not actively support them. They had already expropriated the livestock of Tucle's neighboring haciendas (owned by the colaboracionistas, Duarte and Giraldez), and they now turned against all outsiders who threatened their survival. Early in 1884 both Giraldez and Duarte were executed, and terror was used against inhabitants of Chacapampa (Huasicancha's neighboring village) when a number of men had their ears cut off by the guerrilleros. Discipline among the montoneras themselves was also increased against any changes of heart.

When the remaining Chilean forces retired from Huancayo in May, 1884, and Caceres began to move back north toward Huancayo, the montoneras appeared on the outskirts 5,000 strong and threatened to occupy the city.^[8] There appears to have been a general panic in Huancayo, but after the event Laimes withdrew back to the highlands before Caceres's arrival. Caceres's own strategy at this time greatly influenced this new stage of the montoneras' campaign. By the spring of 1884 he was prepared to agree to a peace with the Chileans so that he could turn attention to unseating Iglesias as president of the Republic. To do this he had to reestablish a broad base of support in the valley itself. But what he encountered on his return was an economically distraught group of hacendados and comerciantes united in their demand for the dissolution of the peasant forces in the highlands.

Why had this change occurred? It is necessary to look at the guerrilla campaign which required that between 1,500 and 3,000 people be led and kept in fighting condition, for it was this element of guerrilla warfare that most antagonized the dominant classes of the region. At the outset this part of the guerrilla campaign focused on securing materiel —food as well as goods that could be sold for arms. It was therefore directed against haciendas and not personnel (hacendados or administrators). But after Caceres's orders of February 1884 to encourage discord among the montoneras, a campaign to maintain an undivided fighting force (among guerrilleros from neighboring and hence often rival communities) meant increased discipline directed against fifth columnists.

Although the highland pastoralists' mixed economy of herding in the mountains and cultivating in the sheltered valleys was not significantly interrupted by the war (in contrast to the agriculture of the valley which had to feed the occupying troops), 1881 and 1882 were years of drought that severely affected subsistence crops. The attractions of using the large haciendas as the basis for a war economy of plunder, moreover, was made apparent when the Chileans themselves drove off animals from Laive early in the war. Eventually the montoneras occupied all the haciendas of the region and began, in line with Caceres's orders, to confiscate the property of colaboracionistas

(i.e., the herds of Laive and Antapongo). By the time these resources became exhausted (by the end of 1883 and early 1884) Caceres had ceased to be an ally and his aunt's hacienda—Tucle—previously occupied by the guerrillas, was now plundered for livestock.^[9]

There is no doubt that the pastoralists of Huasicancha did accumulate significant numbers of sheep during this period, and the desire to keep their booty lent great ferocity to their subsequent resistance. But it is also likely that livestock were driven westward to the coast and sold for the purchase of arms, which is what the guerrillas of Comas had done early in the war. Between the montoneras' first appearance outside Huancayo in 1882 and Laimes's capture in 1884, their rifles had increased from 200 to 750. After the war, when the hacendados tried to seek reparations from the peasants as well as turn national opinion against them, they were obviously at pains to exaggerate the extent of their own economic collapse due to the guerrilla campaign. Even so, the extent of the highland pastoralists' destruction of the haciendas can be seen, however partially, from the figures in Table 1.^[10]

There was another element in the survival campaign of the guerrillas—the maintenance of solidarity in extremely harsh conditions. This is a problem that inevitably increases over time, especially when large numbers of compatriots are living relatively peacefully by collaborating with the enemy. The montonera army was organized around existing village institutions of the Personero and his elected council and the varayoc who meted out sanctions within the village (see chap. 1). Both institutions, however, existed only within the bounds of each community and could not be extended across villages. Moreover the relationships between villages had traditionally been those of rivalry over pasture rather than cooperation against the haciendas. For example, Huasicancha's claims to land in Hacienda Antapongo were matched by similar claims made by the community of Chongos Alto, and their claims to Hacienda Tucle were disputed by the neighboring communities of Chacapampa and Moya.

Laimes and his right-hand man, Briseño, however, were not from these villages and their presence certainly helped to overcome local xenophobia. When, however, Laimes shared the spoils from the expropriated haciendas, he acted to promote unity. But when this resource ran out, he turned to other methods. Although Laimes and his followers were often later accused by local historians (residents of Huancayo and members of the professional classes) of assassination (as he was at his trial) very few specific cases are mentioned, given the length of the war and the number of guerrilleros. Those that are, Laimes freely admitted to. They were the executions of Giraldez, Wheelock (the Guatamalan Consul and probably with Giraldez at the time) and the gobernador of Moya. The first two he called "spies" and the last he justified in terms of his refusal to cooperate.^[11] All three assassinations fall within the bounds of Caceres's earlier orders to identiy and execute traitors. But more

significantly, they all took place after Caceres wished to sow discord among the montoneras. In other words, terror, directed both outward and inward (against the fainthearted), was introduced to maintain solidarity.

So the success of the montoneras' campaign was dependent not only on their formal and legitimate goal of molesting the occupying army and discouraging collaboration, it was dependent too on a war economy to provision not just a meager band of twenty to thirty professional guerrilleros but between 1,500 and 3,000 men. And it was also dependent on some form of war discipline. These requirements are interlinked, and as a national war turned into a civil war with elements of a class war emerging too (as was the case in 1884) so these facets ran over into one another.

For this Laimes was held responsible. For the dominant classes it was not at all inconceivable that the stone-faced Indios who kissed Caceres's hand in 1882 could become savage and vicious fighters soon thereafter. But it was, so it seems, inconceivable that they could actually plan and organize such strategies. And so within three weeks of his arrival back in Huancayo, Caceres set about the task of capturing Laimes and his three aides, Brisefio, Vilchez, and Santisteban.

It was a surprisingly easy task. Caceres had some 1,200 thoroughly worn-out regular soldiers, but no campaign was necessary, no siege, not even threats. It is a fascinating reflection on the complexity of their political awareness that these fighters who knew that they had molested the nation's enemies and that they were feared throughout the area, expected in consequence to be respected and treated on equal terms by the professional army. It is dif-

ficult otherwise to explain how Caceres so easily pulled Laimes into his web, there to be executed. Indeed on receiving Caceres's orders to present himself and his troops in Huancayo, Laimes replied from his mountain stronghold: "Tell Caceres that I am as much a general as he is and if he wants me to go to Huancayo he must treat me as equal to equal" (Tello 1971:77). And with a naive faith in Caceres's ultimate justice and fairness the montoneras descended into the valley and proceeded to Huancayo presumably with a view to striking a bargain with respect to the land under their control.

Once there, however, Laimes and his lieutenants were quickly separated from their troops, who were quartered in a schoolhouse (previously requisitioned as the Chileans' barracks) and surrounded. On 2 July 1884 a Council of War tried the four men, found them guilty of assassination, robbery, flagellation, and mutilation and executed them by firing squad. Laimes's statement, as recorded in the national newspaper, El Comercio (19 July 1884) is worth quoting at length:

After cross-examination he confessed having sacked the Haciendas Tucle, Laive and Ingahuasi whose produce had been divided up among his men. With reference to the death of the Gobernador of Mayo, he was dead as a result of his hostile reception (of the troops); and to the deaths of Señores Wheelock (Consul of Guatemala) and Giraldez which were done by his aide, Briseño, who assassinated them for having been believed to be spies for the Chileans, en el trayacto de Izcuchaca donde se les conducía presos; that he had accepted the honorific tribute of an Inca emperor was because he had been drunk (beodo ), to which other crimes could be ascribed; that it was certain that he had himself assassinated, or had assassinated, all who were accused of being traitors to la Patria; that thus it was that some had been mutilated who were believed to be enemies and guerrilleros who had incurred 'faltas.'

The montoneras, now supposedly rendered powerless without leadership and anyway in no mood to be left around Huancayo, had to be encouraged to retire peacefully. On 29 July a supreme decree was issued: "offering total guarantees to a comunero of Huasicancha in lands known as Analanya, Ananhuanca, Huaculpuquio and Patapata for having been servidor como guerrillero en la causa de la Nacion" (A.C.).^[12] The montoneras retired back to the hills, but their control of the area did not cease. Manrique, concluding his study of the Chilean-Peruvian War in the Mantaro Valley, writes "The postwar pacification process was extraordinarily complex and merits a separate study on which I am engaged" (1981:366), and the evidence of Huasicancha's position during this period is scant. But two years after Laimes's execution, the municipal proceedings of Huancayo still recorded discussion of the return of the four haciendas, and Bernarda Pielago's will of 1887 refers to the peasants' control of the hacienda and, more importantly, the hacienda's

livestock. Manrique estimates (1981:368) that as late as 1888, 45 haciendas from the south of the region up to Cerro de Pasco were still in the hands of guerrillas.

These experiences are a vital element in the Huasicanchinos' culture of opposition. As recently as 1981 villagers were pointing out bluffs and caves in the highlands and saying, "This is where we [sic] ambushed the Chileans" and "Here is where we hid during the guerrilla war." The war is talked about as a period in which villagers showed great tactical skills and cunning but were constantly betrayed by outsiders. During periods of repression when quiescence is forced upon them, oral histories of this period serve as important means for establishing their interpretation against the more widely accepted, prevailing "official version."

Thus, in 1937, when Huasicancha was engaged in its first major confrontation with Hacienda Tucle since the "montonera decade" (that period from 1882 to 1892) a prominent figure in Huancayo, later to become an APRA senator (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria de America [Popular Revolutionary Alliance of America])^[13] wrote of the guerrilleros: "Laimes with the pretext of combatting the Chileans only dedicated himself to committing crimes. He and his compañeros , far from confronting the enemy, killed defenseless compatriots. He went to his death a palid cholo of small build, with all the signs of a bad man, more dead than alive, weeping and in a cold sweat" (Tello 1971:75). This is far from the memory shared by the Huasicanchinos. Among them, the violence remembered is that perpetrated by Laimes's enemies. According to the popular history of Laimes's end, on his way to a conference with his cofighter Caceres, Laimes, unarmed because he trusted his companion-in-arms, was ambushed and then savagely and brutally executed.^[14]

The "montonera decade" was a drama which began with all the intrigue of the heroes in a Greek play and ended with the plebeian chorus taking center stage and refusing to let the curtain fall. It might be possible for a historian to uncover the economic forces and social structure that gave rise to the conjuncture of events around the Mantaro Valley, but I am more concerned here with the results of the political mobilization of Huasicanchinos than the cause. I think in this respect it is important to stress two elements in the unfolding of the campaign. The first is that it isolated the highland pastoralists around Huasicancha and broke their ties to the personal figures of patronage that opened this period. Despite the propensity to dwell on the character of leaders such as Laimes or the political ambitions of Caceres, the evidence suggests that these personalities became less and less decisive in the course of events. The highlands were not pacified, for example, until at least five years after Laimes's death.

And the second element offers something of an explanation of this. At a certain point political mobilization took on a momentum of its own. Too often, in our concern to get at social and economic causes of political move-

ments, we tend to forget that the movements themselves create their own institutions and ideas. For the purposes of understanding contemporary Huasicanchino culture, the important point to remember is that these do not entirely disappear with the end of hostilities. The institutions and ideas through which daily life is expressed in periods of apparent quiescence contain also a perpetual resonance of this oppositional culture, as is suggested by the statement of the Huasicanchino migrant, which opened this chapter.