1
Ayllu
JUAN CARLOS GALDO
What is the ayllu? To answer this question, it
is essential to review at least three historical
moments. First we will consider, within the
framework of indigenism, the theses
defended by José Carlos Mariátegui and Víc-
tor Raúl Haya de la Torre during the 1920s
and early 1930s, along with influential essays
like Tempestad en los Andes (1927; Storm in
the Andes) by Luis Valcárcel and El nuevo
indio (1930; The New Indian) by Uriel García.
Second, we will look at the reevaluation of
these theses in the fields of anthropology,
sociology, and history beginning in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century. And last
but not least, we will consider the place of
the ayllu in the twenty-first century in the
light of globalization and the reemergence
of indigenous identities in the Andean
countries.
The theses of Mariátegui and Haya de la
Torre regarding the Andean community are
similar; both ideologues agree in their assess-
ment of the indigenous community as an
inheritor of a socialism or primitive Incan
communism, and in confronting the Andean
community against semi-feudal landlordism.
For Mariátegui (1928/1971), the Indian com-
munity is an organic society that has not bro-
ken with its past and, despite the lethargy in
which it finds itself, can advance along the
path of modern civilization. The founder of
the journal Amauta bases his conclusions
on studies of Hildebrando Castro Pozo,
whose findings coincide generally with Val-
cárcel’s impressions. In Castro Pozo’s Nuestra
comunidad indígena (1924; Our Indigenous
The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, First Edition. Edited by Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781119076506.wbeps023
Community) and Del ayllu al cooperativismo
socialista (1936; From Ayllu to Socialist Coop-
erativitism), the notions of individualistic
capitalism and of communal solidarity are
opposed one to the other. Mariátegui confers
great importance on the conservation of com-
munal and social values as opposed to capital-
istic individualism: while the former is based
on ties of solidarity, the latter operates from
egoistic premises. This approach greatly
resembles the division established decades
later by Ranajit Guha (and developed by
Partha Chatterjee) between the domain of
the community and the capitalist rule with
regard to the peasants, the state, and the
nationalist movements in India. The first
group set their own domain of resistance,
materialized in insurgency movements, rebel-
lions that are always communal events dialec-
tically opposing “us” to “them” (the bourgeois
consciousness). Therefore, the peasant is an
active and conscious historical subject, who
derives individual identity from belonging
to the community and not from a contract
between individuals (Chatterjee 1993). For
Mariátegui, then, it is the oppressed indige-
nous culture based on solidarity, reciprocity,
and collective work that embodies an
“authentic” national culture.
In El nuevo indio, Uriel García openly con-
tends with Valcárcel against what he consid-
ers a romantic view of Indian and indigenous
institutions, which does not correspond to the
mestizo reality existent after the Conquest.
According to García, in Peru in the early
decades of the twentieth century, and long
before, the traditional community ceased to
be a viable alternative. Garcia recognizes that
the survival of indigenous life was, in effect,
due to a secular isolation, but argues
that, under the present circumstances (the
2
1920s), it no longer had any reason to exist.
The world in which “the ancient Indian” (as
García calls it) lives is characterized by a
closed habitat, isolated, a pantheistic and pre-
historic cell prior to the Inca Empire, which
had existed for time immemorial. “The new
Indian” is one inhabitant of the Andes influ-
enced by a number of factors: racial, environ-
mental, historical, and social. In other words,
“the New Indian” is no other than the mestizo.
Marisol de la Cadena has convincingly argued
about Garcia’s more Vasconcelian (mixed-
race) approach and labeled it “neoindianista”
in opposition to the racial and culturally pure
indigenism of Valcárcel (de la Cadena 2000,
143–144).
The historical context of this first indige-
nist outbreak occurred during the dictator-
ship (the so-called oncenio) of Augusto B.
Leguía. The government of Leguía had a clear
modernizing agenda in alliance with US
imperialism. However, it was precisely in this
period when, thanks to the indigenous move-
ment, the law of the indigenous communities
was enacted: “Augusto B. Leguia’s rise to
power in 1919 marked the beginning of the
crises of the aristocratic republic and a proc-
ess of capitalist modernization encouraged by
the state. Simultaneously, the realization that
indigenous people needed protection swept
through Peru. In 1920, a Constitution was
approved that recognized and legalized indig-
enous communities’ property. Steps were
taken to officially recognize community
lands, land registries were established, and
efforts were made to review the titles of high-
land estates” (Yépez del Castillo 2003, 41).
The process of land dispossession, the diffi-
culties of implementing the new laws, and
the reluctance of peasants to register their
communal lands under the purview of the
new legislation were captured in indigenist
essays and novels. From this view, the
Andean community, whose tenacious defense
and change processes were represented in
El mundo es ancho y ajeno (1941; Broad
and Alien Is the World) by Ciro Alegría, again
has the central role already assigned to it by
Mariátegui in the first decades of the twenti-
eth century.
History and anthropology were the disci-
plines that provided the methodology from
which the ayllu was studied during the
1960s and 1970s. In the field of ethno-anthro-
pology, and under the influence of structural-
ism, the name of John Murra stands out with
his model of “vertical archipelagos.” For their
part, John Rowe and Vivian Schelling (1991)
described the ayllu as a group of extended
families living together in a restricted area
and sharing a land rotation system under
the supervision of community leaders. For
these authors, the term was interchangeable
with “kinship group” or “community,” but
without the more traditional designation of
“clan” (Ouweneel 2003, 84). An interesting
critique of this view that dominated anthro-
pological studies for decades can be found
in the work of US anthropologist Orin Starn.
Starn (1991) characterized this perspective as
ahistorical and essentialist and called it
“Andeanist,” a clear echo of the concept of
the “orientalism” coined by Said. In these
studies, Starn finds a reified and exotic vision
of the Andean people, a vision that is
mediated by the tourism industry and that,
in his opinion, does not correspond to the
interaction of the people of the Andes with
modernity. In this regard, Weismantel cor-
rectly notes that this romantic imaginary is
in direct connection with “its literary fore-
bears in the Andes” (2006, 89), namely with
the indigenista cultural production. That is
to say, the same vision of the social sciences
that has permeated popular culture was in
turn influenced by the literary and political
discourses of indigenismo.
Another influential voice within the dis-
course of the social sciences has been that
of the Peruvian intellectual Aníbal Quijano,

who has explained the peculiarity of Latin
American subjectivity in terms of a dualism
that affects the imaginary and sensitivity of
its inhabitants. As a result of a continuing his-
torical tension between past and present,
sequential and simultaneous time, an alterna-
tive rationality occurs in which native ele-
ments incorporate those of the West
without losing their indigenous characteris-
tics. A “new utopia” (Quijano 1993, 152) con-
structed from this cultural resistance of
subordinate groups is presented as an alterna-
tive to Western rationality. Quijano refers
precisely to the oeuvre of José María Argue-
das, Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropolo-
gist, who died in 1969, as paradigmatic of the
Latin American cultural utopia that is more
rooted in regions, with sources of original cul-
ture as Mesoamerica and the Andean region.
In literature, the “mythic-aesthetic” mode
would best capture this historical simultane-
ity, as opposed to rationalist instrumentalism,
since it integrates the past with the present.
According to Quijano, the confrontation of
the private realm and the state as antagonistic
poles is resolved in a noncapitalist private
sphere such as those provided by the Andean
communities in which “civil society” outside
the state is based on principles of reciprocity,
equality, democracy, and collective solidarity.
Since the 1990s, a series of challenges to the
anthropological model and its conceptualiza-
tion of the ayllu have been formulated mainly
from the field of ethnohistory. For Arij Ouwe-
neel, for instance, the ayllu should be viewed
not as an egalitarian community or as a terri-
torial unit, but as a kind of lordship. Accord-
ing to Nils Jacobsen (1993), when the term
“community” or even “ayllu” was used in
connection with the land, it referred to the
geographic location and not its title or use
by social groups. From this perspective, the
ayllu ends up being presented not as a model
of an egalitarian society, but as an institution
of semi-feudal characteristics that reached its
3
distinctive features with land demarcation
implemented by the Spanish Crown under
the colonial system. Despite all adaptations
of colonial legislation to the Andean reality,
the development experienced by the ayllu
cannot be understood without this colonial
past that links it to the history of European
imperialism as it happens with the hacienda
(Ouweneel 2003, 90–92).
At the other end of the spectrum are those
who claim “an indigenous history, non-
Western and anti-modern” (Weismantel
2006, 91). This is the case with Grimaldo
Rengifo Vásquez, for whom the ayllu should
be seen as a community of relatives who nur-
ture each other. That community includes
people, plants and crops, rain, water sources,
and the surrounding mountains. What is at
the root of these relationships is conversation.
This conversation takes place between
humans (runas), deities (huacas or the gods
of the mountains, the apus), and the natural
world (Pachamama or Mother Earth) in a
realm of deep brotherhood. This line of inter-
pretation was developed first by Arguedas,
who described the ayllu as groups that were
related to their natural environment in condi-
tion of kinship. Thus the land was conceived
as part of the kinship system of the commu-
nity and not as a material possession, a terri-
torial unit, or a group of people (Ouweneel
2003, 86–87).
From a decolonial perspective, Marcelo
Fernández Osco argues that indigenous
mobilization conveys an indigenous episteme
and worldview that structure sociopolitical
relations and practices according to a model
of horizontal solidarity rather than a vertical
chain of command characteristic of the mod-
ern state. This form of solidarity is inclusive
not only of humans but also nonhumans.
The main site and source of these practices
is the ayllu, which, although debilitated
in its territorial reach, still embodies a prom-
ising perspective for living. The accurate
4
understanding of ayllu is essential in compre-
hending the logic behind indigenous move-
ments in the Andes in recent years.
According to this interpretation, the ayllu
has existed since “time immemorial in the
Andean world” (Fernández Osco 2010, 29),
and not only has avoided destruction but
has continued to fully function due to the fact
that it was never incorporated into colonial
hegemony, even after the creation of the
nation-state. However, and this is the main
argument of Fernandez Osco, the ayllu here-
tofore had not been considered as an auton-
omous space for knowledge, a worldview, or
a heuristics platform. There is a knowledge
that is held and transmitted through oral tra-
dition within the ayllu and that teaches deco-
lonial knowledge essential for learning to live
a good life. The Indians lost their status as his-
torical subjects and instead became objects in
the history of imperial reason, but the ayllu
“keeps order by maintaining an understand-
ing of the sacred character of everything”
(Fernández Osco 2010, 30).
The specificity of this knowledge is that it is
not based solely on written sources, but is
rooted in experience and practice, thereby fol-
lowing the teachings of Waman Poma de
Ayala. The ayllu then ends up being a synthe-
sis of knowledge and political practice, of
knowledge and know-how. While Western
rationality is a form of ego-centered rational-
ity, Aymara rationality, by contrast, begins
with the earliest events relevant to the collec-
tive memory. There are a number of Aymara/
Andean categories that serve as a vehicle for
this knowledge. Fernández Osco emphasizes
the importance of understanding the past
not as a rigid concept, but as a fluid one,
and he proposes the use of the term “ancestra-
lidad.” This ancestry teaches the indivisible
relationship between piq’i (reason) and
chuyma (heart) and that the wholeness of
the human being is only possible within the
community through interactions with other
humans and nonhumans. The ayllu, Fernán-
dez Osco concludes, functions as an interpre-
tive archive, “a sort of hermeneutical guide for
a good society and a good life which becomes
an alternative to conservative neoliberalism
having its origin in the modern episteme”
(2010, 35). This profound renewal proposed
by the Andean episteme can be understood
as a pachakutí – the word comes from the
Aymara and Quechua words pacha (time-
space) and kutí (revolution, to return) –
and involves a recasting of the Andean
nations on an intercultural base, guided by
an Andean worldview that at the same time
allows for the coexistence of differences.
In opposition to the epistemological poli-
tics of identity of the decolonial school are
those coming from ethnographic research
backgrounds, who contend that what stands
out among peasants in Peru and Bolivia,
and asserts their difference, is the use of a
language of poverty above one of cultural
identity. This point of view is developed,
for instance, in the work of Pieter de Vries
and Monique Nuijten, who argue that the
Andean culture does not exist as a unified
system that can be separated from other cul-
tural systems based in terms of community,
reciprocity, or cosmology. On the contrary,
the Andean is part of a postnational and
transnational discourse of cultural identity.
Following the anthropologist Adam Kuper,
de Vries and Nuijten maintain that the dis-
courses of cultural difference should be
placed under critical scrutiny – in other
words, must be deconstructed: “The point
is that attempts to construct cultural identity
only serve to mask the fundamental uproot-
edness and self-opaqueness of the subject …
radical otherness, as experienced by Andean
villagers, can better be evoked through a lan-
guage of material lack rather than being
represented through a discourse of cultural
identity” (2003, 70–71). The authors support
their findings with results from fieldwork

conducted in indigenous communities of
Peru and Bolivia (in this respect it is note-
worthy that they avoid the use of the term
ayllu); what impresses them most about the
villagers (mostly bilingual and experienced
outside their communities) is the humility
of their language about otherness, a language
that is based on notions of poverty and exclu-
sion more than on ideas of cultural identity
and abundance. Although the villagers
remain linked to notions of communal soli-
darity, what de Vries and Nuijten find most
remarkable is their insistence on a radical
otherness, in which the notion of commu-
nity, rather than reference to a set of positive
representations of a common culture, func-
tions “as an empty, yet shared signifier”
(2003, 72).
De Vries and Nuijten remain skeptical
about the viability of political movements
based on claims of shared racial identity
because of the dangers of trying to define a
“true” identity. (Who gets to define a com-
mon identity? Who represents it best? What
are the “right” and “wrong” habits and cus-
toms?) Although these primordial notions
of identity can lend themselves to political
manipulation, the reality is that people are
not easily seduced by discourses of culture.
These discourses are contradictory and unin-
telligible, not only for anthropologists and
outsiders, but also for local people who have
been engaged for a long time in forms of cul-
tural bricolage. To solve this impasse, de Vries
and Nuijten invoke Slavoj Žižek’s (1999)
notion of universality, wherein understand-
ing takes place in the mutual recognition of
a certain lack (or “otherness” in both the
“I” and the “other” as a means of avoiding a
cultural determination). Žižek’s approach
restores the notion of universality, not in
terms of the subject’s ontological impossibil-
ity of gaining access to another but precisely
because this “other” lacks positive ontological
support, and it thus avoids falling into the
5
trap of essentialism. De Vries and Nuijten
express it from this perspective: “Knowledge
in this view is the outcome of dialogic
encounters in which participants engage in
cultural negotiations, while the idea that
knowledge may be grounded in a political
project transcending the particularism of
local culture is unthinkable” (2003, 75–76).
The corollary of this view is that there is no
opposition between traditional customs and
the postmodern world of globalization,
because what emerges is a dynamic commu-
nity in which the comuneros of Potosi in
Bolivia or Usabamba in Peru devote them-
selves to their daily practices.
SEE ALSO: Postcolonial Studies; Postcolonial
Theory; Race in Latin America; Utopia
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